To ensure smooth communication and collaboration, here are some troubleshooting tips to address common issues:
Check Internet Connection: Verify that you have a stable and reliable internet connection. Use a wired connection when possible, as it tends to be more stable than Wi-Fi. If using Wi-Fi, make sure you have a strong signal.
Update the Browser or App: Ensure that you are using the latest version of the web browser. Developers frequently release updates to address bugs and improve performance.
Clear Browser Cache: Sometimes, cached data can cause conflicts or issues. Clear the browser cache and cookies before joining the meeting.
Test Audio and Video: Before the meeting, check your microphone and camera to ensure they are working correctly. If you are a speaker, you can click on "Start Practice Session" button test to ensure audio and video devices are functioning.
Close Other Applications: Running multiple applications in the background can consume system resources and lead to performance issues. Close unnecessary apps to free up resources for the Dryfta meeting platform.
Restart Your Device: If you encounter persistent issues, try restarting your computer or mobile device. This can help resolve various software-related problems.
Use Supported Browsers: Ensure you are using a browser supported by the meeting platform. Recommended browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
Allow Necessary Permissions: Make sure the Dryfta meeting platform has the required permissions to access your microphone, camera, and other necessary features.
Disable VPN or Firewall: Sometimes, VPNs or firewalls can interfere with the connection to the meeting platform. Temporarily disable them and see if the issue persists.
Switch Devices: If possible, try joining the meeting from a different device to see if the problem is specific to one device.
Reduce Bandwidth Usage: In cases of slow or unstable internet connections, ask participants to disable video or share video selectively to reduce bandwidth consumption.
Update Drivers and Software: Ensure your operating system, audio drivers, and video drivers are up to date. Outdated drivers can cause compatibility issues with the Dryfta meeting platform.
Contact Support: If none of the above steps resolve the issue, reach out to the platform's support team. They can provide personalized assistance and troubleshoot specific problems.
By following these troubleshooting tips, you can tackle many common problems encountered on Dryfta meeting platform and have a more productive and seamless meeting experience.
20230719T150020230719T1800Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environmentsHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Enhanced global hybrid work team communication and belonging: Assessing the influence of sociolinguistic and cultural intelligence
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Today's rapidly-shifting workplaces require critical attention to complex global hybrid team communication: What are the biggest communication challenges for linguistically and culturally diverse teams? Which capabilities improve outcomes? Leaders, and those advising them, must react to these digital transformation needs.
There's also an urgent "need to develop human-centric skills – the ability for leaders and teams to connect, collaborate and create together" (Van Der Veen, 2021). Intercultural communication is paramount for international/domestic and organizational/functional cultures, multiple languages and time zone dynamics to reap rewards of engaged collaboration (Goettsch, 2016).
While human-centric cultural intelligence is often overlooked, it contributes to inclusive, belonging experiences when record disengagement is aggravating workplace communication. Organizations must get "back to human" by learning together in collaborative hybrid ways across differences, since "this can't be managed by an app" (Kahn, 2021).
Top language/culture challenges for global hybrid teams are underrepresented in research. This session bridges hybrid dissonance with cultural awareness/action. The presenter's deep perspectives as educator, researcher and practitioner will prompt listeners to adopt technical and human-centric insights.
The cultural intelligence (or CQ) framework – including sociolinguistics – is the capability to relate and work effectively in complex diverse situations, mitigating biases. CQ capabilities (unlike IQ, values, personality) improve through education, training and practice (Ang, 2021; Livermore, 2021; Ng, 2022).
Per the Cultural Intelligence Center (2020), CQ predicts personal adjustment/adaptability; judgment/decision-making; negotiation effectiveness; trust/idea-sharing/innovation; leadership effectiveness; and improved productivity/cost-savings. CQ is measured in Drive (multicultural interaction interest/persistence/confidence); Knowledge (understanding culture similarities/differences); Strategy (multicultural awareness/planning); Action (intercultural work/relationship adaptation).
This study gathered CQ assessment results from university professional workshops in 2022. Participants totaled 61 at proposal submission. Preliminary research questions included: What are language/culture challenges for global hybrid team collaboration? What are individual and team CQ strengths? What are self-identified CQ improvements? Polling and discussions provided more participant variables: increased pandemic-instigated hybrid teams and cultural exposure; shifting job market opportunities; and uncovered internal critics and blind spots. Initial analysis suggests leaders prioritize their own CQ before helping teams and that CQ is an underdeveloped capability across teams (particularly Knowledge and Action). Full findings – along with shared CQ development strategies – are expected to empower organizations to target CQ to increase belonging, collaboration and outcomes in an evolving hybrid workplace.
Bibliography:
Ang, S. (2021). Cultural intelligence: Two bowls singing. Oxford University Press.
Goettsch, K. (2016). Working with global virtual teams: A case study reality check on intercultural communication best practices. Global Advances in Business Communication: Vol. 5: Iss. 1.
Kahn, T. (04 June 2021). 'Back to human': Why HR leaders want to focus on people again. McKinsey & Company.
Livermore, D., Van Dyne, L., & Ang, S. (2021). Organizational CQ: Cultural intelligence for 21st-century organizations. Elsevier.
Ng, K., Ang, S. & Rockstuhl, T. (2022). Cultural intelligence: From intelligence in context and across cultures to intercultural contexts. Springer: New York, NY.
Van Der Veen, N. & Reid, A. (February 2021). Amplifying personal and leadership development through group coaching. Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria.
The role and importance of small talk during performance appraisal interviews in a virtual workspace
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
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In this paper, we will examine language use at a small-sized service-oriented Belgian company that operates globally. More specifically, we focus on the role and importance of small talk during performance appraisal interviews which are conducted online in English as a lingua franca between managers at the headquarters in Belgium and sales agents who work for the company virtually from a multitude of places around the world. In the corporate communicative contexts of job interviews and other types of workplace discourse, previous research has shown that workplace talk often involves sequences that are not relevant to main purpose of these interactions, also referred to as 'small talk' (see for example Holmes 2000; Komter 1991; Köster 2004). However, the occurrence of such sequences has yet to be examined in the context of performance appraisal interviews. The dataset consists of 14 video-recorded performance appraisal interviews which took place online between sales agents who work for the company remotely across the globe and managers based at the HQ in Belgium. Additionally, two playback interviews were conducted with the managers involved in the performance appraisal process. These two types of data then guide us in examining how and why off-topic 'small talk' occurs during these types of interactions. On the basis of a turn-by-turn analysis of the interviews, we shed a new light on the role and value of small talk in the performance appraisal interviews at this company. As the interlocutors lack a physical shared workspace and only interact virtually, the analysis shows that small talk comprises of a number of different topics which are discussed both before, during and after the evaluation itself, and that it functions as a means to establish rapport, to get to know the agent and to help construct a shared implicit understanding of the company's norms, values and corporate culture. As such, small talk is not considered optional at this globalized company, but rather forms an integral part of the genre of the performance appraisal interview which helps the managers to 'talk the institution into being' (Heritage 1984) in a virtual workspace, thereby "creating and maintaining a specific institutional reality" beyond the physical reality of a shared office (Van De Mieroop and Schnurr 2017: 88).
References Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Holmes, Janet. 2000. Doing collegiality and keeping control at work: Small talk in government departments. In Justine Coupland (ed.), Small Talk, 32-61. New York: Routledge. Komter, Martha L. 1991. Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews: A Study of Talk, Tasks and Ideas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Köster, Almut. 2004. Relational sequences in workplace genres. Journal of Pragmatics 36. 1405-1428. Van De Mieroop, Dorien & Stephanie Schnurr. 2017. 'Doing evaluation' in the modern workplace: Negotiating the identity of 'model employee' in performance appraisal interviews. In Jo Angouri, Meredith Marra & Janet Holmes (eds.), Negotiating Boundaries at Work: Talking and Transitions, 87-109. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Presenters Fien De Malsche PhD Candidate, University Of Antwerp Co-authors Mieke Vandenbroucke Tenure Track Research Professor, University Of Antwerp
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
The worldwide health crisis disrupted academic life and accelerated the move towards online teaching at the university (García-Morales et al., 2021). Many lecturers had to adapt to the unforeseen change this situation demanded. They were pushed to deliver technology-driven lessons with little or no previous training (Saha et al., 2022). However, the massive inclusion of online teaching in traditional universities has marked a turning point in these institutions (Torrecillas, 2020). More than ever, universities need well-prepared faculty who guarantee high-quality online teaching. Lecturers must take on some challenges caused by the constraints of the new virtual work environment. Instructors involved in the live online lectures require specific competencies to effectively foster and enhance lecturer-student interaction in class (Querol-Julián, 2021). The affordances and limitations of online and face-to-face instructional environments determine participants' interactional and discursive practices. Thus, the objective of this study is to shed some light on the influence that the digitalisation of the workplace has on classroom interaction. We have adopted a case study methodology to compare interaction in parallel lectures delivered online and face-to-face. That is, we examined two pairs of classes in Applied Physics given by the same lecturer on the very same topic in virtual and physical settings. In the online lessons, only the instructor turned on her camera. The students used their microphones and a written chat to communicate. A video dataset of about 6 hours was collected and analysed following the conversation analysis approach. We use ELAN software to carry out the multilayer annotation of the 75 episodes of interaction performed. The analysis of the parallel lectures revealed substantial differences regarding the frequency and elaboration of the episodes of interaction and the participants' agency. The study evidences the instructor's need to adapt interactive discourse strategies to the new digital teaching scenario as part of her professional development.
García-Morales, V. J., Garrido-Moreno, A., & Martín-Rojas, R. (2021). The transformation of higher education after the COVID disruption: Emerging challenges in an online learning scenario. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 196. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.616059 Moorhouse, B. L., Li, Y., & Walsh, S. (2021). E-classroom interactional competencies: Mediating and assisting language learning during synchronous online lessons. RELC Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688220985274 Querol-Julián, M. (2021). How does digital context influence interaction in large live online lectures? The case of English-medium instruction. European Journal of English Studies, 25(3), 299-317. https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2021.1988265 Saha, S. M., Pranty, S. A., Rana, M. J., Islam, M. J., & Hossain, M. E. (2022). Teaching during a pandemic: do university teachers prefer online teaching? Heliyon, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08663 Torrecillas, C. (2020). El reto de la docencia online para las universidades públicas españolas ante la pandemia del Covid-19. ICEI Papers COVID-19 2020. Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, Madrid. https://www.ucm.es/icei/file/iceipapercovid16
Presenters Mercedes Querol Julián Senior Lecturer, Universidad Internacional De La Rioja (UNIR)
Adjusting to new technology in customer training interaction
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Digitalization of the workplace and the products that companies sell to their customers has led to a situation where both workplace and customer interaction requires interacting with various technologies. For business professionals this means an ongoing challenge in developing new skills and routines not only in technology-mediated communication but also in training their customers to use their technology-enhanced products. Health technology companies marketing their smart devices are a case in point. Our presentation focuses on this changing scene of customer training interaction in a health technology company that has developed a digital mobility stick for mobility measurement and exercise. The study is situated within technology-oriented workplace studies (e.g., Heath et al. 2000) where the role of technology in interaction and especially technology-mediated interaction has gained increasing attention (e.g., Heinonen et al. 2021). However, few studies have investigated the training of customers in using a new technology (=a specific type of object) or taken a longitudinal perspective, which would allow the exploration of how orientations to new technology change once the technology has become familiar. This is where our focus lies: we aim to shed light on the ways that business professionals and customers adjust to new technology in interaction. We draw on ethnographic data collected from the above-mentioned health technology company in the spring of 2021, when the company was developing a new service concept around their product. The data include, for instance, video-recordings, observation and field notes of customer training interactions at two points in time, planning documents and interviews with the company representatives. Drawing on our ethnographic understanding of the development work, we zoom in to the video-recorded customer training interactions. Applying multimodal interaction analysis (Norris 2004) and multimodal conversation analysis of objects-in-interaction (e.g., Day and Wagner 2019), we show how in their first meetings with the customers, the company representative mediates between the customer and the new technology before the customer learns to interpret and subsequently use the technology on their own, and how in the second meetings the customer has become an active user of the technology. Our longitudinal analysis suggests that the newness versus familiarity of the technology as a specific type of object is consequential to the interaction and the progressivity of action (cf. Nevile 2019). The findings shed light on the complex communicative competences needed in technologized business settings. References Day, D., and Wagner, J. (Eds.) (2019). Objects, Bodies and Work Practice. Multilingual Matters. Heath, C., Knoblauch, H. and Luff, P. (2000). Technology and social interaction: The emergence of 'workplace studies'. British Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 299–320. Heinonen, P., Niemi, J. and Kaski, T. (2021/aop). Changing participation in web conferencing: The shared computer screen as an online sales interaction resource. Applied Linguistics Review. Nevile, M. (2019). Objects of agreement: Placing pins to progress collaborative activity in custom dressmaking. In D. Day & J. Wagner (Eds.) Objects, Bodies and Work Practice. Multilingual Matters, pp. 3–32. Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing Multimodal Interaction: A Methodological Framework. Routledge.
Paper notes as an expression of organizational culture
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Paper notes are a widespread phenomenon in the workplace, even in times of home office and digital work platforms. As soon as one enters a physical working environment, they will find paper notes on desktops, in the office kitchen, in meeting rooms, workshops or store areas, etc. Their ubiquity and wide range of functions make them an interesting object of research for various disciplines, including management and organizational studies, anthropology (e.g., Dundes&Pagter 1992), or applied linguistics. Within linguistics, small texts have recently come more to the fore as a research object (e.g., Pappert&Roth 2021; Svennevig 2021). However, there are hardly any linguistic studies on such text formats of organizational communication so far (e.g., Ogiermann&Bella 2021). Our project adopts an ethnographic perspective and aims to investigate the discursive practices that paper notes serve or reflect in organizational contexts. For this purpose, we have started to collect paper notes from various workplaces in Austria and Germany, e.g., offices in companies, universities, schools, public authorities, doctors' surgeries, or craft workshops. Methodologically, we have adopted a pragmatic approach to paper notes and focus on speech acts, multimodality, emergent topics and discourses, discursive strategies (e.g., humor), as well as the linguistic features that characterize them. Our findings suggest that paper notes in organizations are often used for regulatory purposes, i.e., to demand certain behaviors. Furthermore, they are a means of self-expression and, as such, they can take different forms (e.g., witty statements about one's work performance, direct or indirect criticism, comments on the working atmosphere, or one's role within a subgroup). Sometimes, they also play a role in measuring and improving team performance. Hence, paper notes are a discursive arena in which members of an organization negotiate norms, expectations, and relationships, or communicate their attitudes to these. From an ethnographic perspective, they are also interesting, as they do not necessarily reflect an organization's espoused cultural values, in the sense of Schein (2004). On the contrary, they often express consent or dissent with an organization's official culture and thus point to the enacted culture (Keyton 2005: 181-183). In our presentation, we will explore and characterize several types of paper notes. Based on this, we will discuss to what extent they are products of the enacted organizational culture and can be used by practitioners as clues for the analysis of organizational culture. References Dundes, Alan & Carl R. Pagter. 1992. Work hard and you shall be rewarded: Urban folklore from the paperwork empire. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Keyton, Joann. 2005. Communication & Organizational Culture. A key to understanding work experiences. Sage. Ogiermann, Eva & Spyridoula Bella. 2021. On the dual role of expressive speech acts: Relational work on signs announcing closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Pragmatics 184/1: 1-17. Pappert, Steffen & Kersten S. Roth (Hrsg.). 2021. Kleine Texte. Peter Lang D. Schein, Edgar 2004. Organizational culture and leadership (3rd edition). Jossey-Bass. Svennevig, J. 2021. How to do things with signs. The formulation of directives on signs in public spaces. Journal of Pragmatics 175: 165-183.
Presenters Regina Goeke Assistant Professor, Vienna University Of Economics And Business
Sharing a laugh to negotiate one’s leadership position in talk about decision-making
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
In the post-bureaucratic era of work, project-based work has become common in many organizations, resulting in changes in leadership identities. The projects are dependent on self-organizing teams and team leaders, whose work is to ensure that organizational goals are implemented successfully. (Räisänen & Linde, 2004) For facilitating such work, group leaders may use a variety of digital platforms to support and manage project management processes (e.g. Darics, 2017). In our study, we take a discursive perspective to leadership in such an organizational context. Using the concept of deontic authority (see, Stevanovic & Peräkylä; Van De Mieroop, 2020), we look at how a team leader caught between the team and upper management manages their role in episodes where decision-making is discussed with the team.
We use authentic recordings of naturally occurring meeting data from a project promoting organizational change in a Finnish white-collar company. The data consist of video-recordings of both face-to-face and digital workshops and material from a digital platform used in the project. We are particularly interested in meetings in which the team leader discusses upcoming, ongoing or finalized decisions with the team members. Drawing on qualitative micro-oriented research methods from conversation and discourse analysis, we discuss fragments in which the group leader either presents herself as a follower in relation to the decision that is communicated, or as a co-leader who contributed significantly to the decision-making process.
We found that shared laughter is an important resource in this process, and that it takes the form of laughing at a third party, in particular the project leader's group. The results show how the team leader manages to pursue laughter from team members to get their attention, after which she cuts off the laughter and moves quickly back to serious talk. The digital platform can be utilized for both pursuing the laughter and cutting it off. Through shared laughter, an ingroup identity is constructed, and the group leader's identity is protected from criticisms when the leader did not contribute to the decision-making process. Finally, we argue that the highly ambivalent and implicit nature of the laughables is emblematic of the complex balancing act the group leader has to engage in with regard to her deontic rights within this highly complex leadership constellation.
References
Darics, E. (2017). E-Leadership or "How to Be Boss in Instant Messaging?" The Role of Nonverbal Communication. International Journal of Business Communication 57(1), 3–29. Räisänen, C. & Linde, A. (2004). Technologizing Discourse to Standardize Projects in MultiProject Organizations: Hegemony by Consensus? Organization 11(1), 101–121. Stevanovic, M. & Peräkylä, A. (2012). Deontic authority in interaction: The right to announce, propose and decide. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(3), 297-321. Van De Mieroop, D. (2020). A deontic perspective on the collaborative, multimodal accomplishment of leadership. Leadership, 16(5), 592-61
Presenters Esa Lehtinen Professor, University Of Jyväskylä
Practices of tacit sales work in product demonstration workshops
Oral Presentation[SYMP37] Interactional and discursive practices in changing work environments03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
In the contemporary economy, new work often emerges within specialist and human services that aim at advancing organizational learning, well-being and engagement. The rise of the service sector has also created entirely new professions. One example of these are hybrid artist-developers, namely, creative professionals who have expertise in arts and use art-based methods for the purposes of organizational training and development (see Lehikoinen et al. 2016; also Berthoin Antal et al. 2016). However, although art-based interventions are increasingly utilized in organizational settings, they are still a new concept to wider audiences, thus forcing the professionals to actively reach out for potential customers and make their services known. In this way, sales and marketing are necessarily an integral part of their work practices. In this presentation, we investigate how sales and marketing are accomplished in the work of a photographic artist who provides art-based training workshops for organizations. The data come from demonstration workshops where the artist publicly presents her services to prospective customers and business collaborators. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis as a method, we examine a feedback sequence at the end of the workshop where the audience members ask questions concerning the service product, followed by the artist's response. Previous research has shown that audience questions may be used for resisting top-down organizational plans by pinpointing challenges related to their real-life applicability. Accordingly, the presenters may orient to counteract such criticism in their responses. (Nissi & Lehtinen 2016.) Our results show how the artist similarly orients to potential criticism and uses extended response turns to promote and maintain the good image of her service produce and to reach consensus with different audience members. The question format however restricts the design of the artist's response. Our presentation contributes to previous research on sales work by advancing understanding of sales encounters where no customized product is yet offered or no price discussed between a salesperson and a customer (cf. Clark et al. 1994; Niemi & Hirvonen 2019). In this way, it also sheds light on the dimensions of promotional discourse within the work of new hybrid service professionals.
References:
Berthoin Antal, A., Woodilla, J. & Johansson Sköldberg, U. 2016. Artistic interventions in organisations introduction. In: U. Johansson Sköldberg, J. Woodilla & A. Berthoin Antal (Eds.), Artistic interventions in organizations: Research, theory, practice, pp. 3–17. London: Routledge.
Clark, C, Drew, P. & Pinch, T. 1994. Managing customer 'objections' during real-life sales negotiations. Discourse & Society 5(4), 437–462.
Lehikoinen, K., Pässilä, A., Martin, M. & Pulkki, M. (Eds.). 2016. Taiteilija kehittäjänä: Taiteelliset interventiot työssä [Artist as a developer: Artistic interventions at work]. Helsinki: University of Arts Helsinki.
Niemi, J. & Hirvonen, L. 2019. Money talks: Customer-initiated price negotiation in business-to-business sales interaction. Discourse & Communication 13(1), 95–118.
Nissi, R. & Lehtinen, E. 2016. Negotiation of expertise and multifunctionality: PowerPoint presentations as interactional activity types in workplace meetings. Language & Communication 48, 1–17.
Fien De Malsche
Mieke Vandenbroucke
Mercedes Querol Julián
Niina Hynninen
Regina Goeke
Esa Lehtinen