FEATURED AUTHOR

Gerald W.C. Driskill

Professor
U.A.-Little Rock

Dr. Gerald Driskill is a Professor of Applied Communication Studies and Graduate Program Coordinator at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Since 1990, he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Organizational Culture, Intercultural Communication, Communication Ethics, and Communication Theory. He has published numerous articles on effective and ethical organizational communication and guided over 250 graduate students in using the OCA model for cultural analysis.

Subjects: Communication Studies, Work & Organizational Psychology

Biography

Gerald W. C. Driskill seeks to live out a mission to inspire and equip others to co-create better social worlds through positive and ethical communication. The love of his life, Angela, and two children, Eli and Abby, share a passion to create loving and transformative relationships locally and internationally. As Graduate Program Coordinator in the Dept. Applied Communication at the U.A. Little Rock, he teaches Organizational Communication and Culture, Intercultural Communication, and Communication Theory. In a previous life, he taught at Assumption Business College in Bangkok, Thailand as well as in an early release program at a prison and a day care center in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. His more recent workshops and trainings have included Heifer International, U.S.A.I.D. Grant: FATA Region Students, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, and Global Ties-Arkansas. He participates on an interdisciplinary team (LRCS) which seeks to improve understanding of the impact of faith-based community engagement, to engage students in giving back to the community, and to provide relevant and meaningful findings to the community.

Education

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Organizational Culture and Intercultural Communication

Personal Interests

Hiking, Distance Running, Writing fiction and non fiction stories

Books

Featured Title

Articles

Connecting with Community and Facilitating Learning through the Little Rock Congregations Study

Published: Dec 18, 2020 by Metropolitan Universities Journal
Authors: Glazier, R., Driskill, G., Kirk, L.
Subjects: Communication Studies, Urban Studies

Universities are anchor institutions that connect communities. The Little Rock Congregations Study (LRCS) is an approach to community engagement with faith-based organizations in an urban setting. Our research creates greater university visibility of the university, student involvement in research, and substantive findings that inform the greater body of knowledge and our own community.

The Most Integrated Hour in America: Reframing the Organizational Discourses of Church Purpose

Published: Jul 02, 2019 by Communication Studies
Authors: Driskill, G. & Jenkins, J.
Subjects: Communication Studies, Work & Organizational Psychology

Religious organizations play a significant role in regard to race relations. This study adds to our understanding of pastor framing practices via three dialectical tensions: integration-segregation, belief-practice, and vertical-horizontal. The analysis also reveals how these dialectics were framed through improbability, double bind, alternation, selection, connection, and transcendence, as well as their impact upon ethnic relationships.

The power of a mission: Transformations of a department culture through social constructionist principles

Published: Nov 14, 2018 by Journal of Innovation in Higher Education
Authors: Driskill, G., Chatham-Carpenter, A. & McIntyre, K.
Subjects: Work & Organizational Psychology, Communications Studies

This study analyzed the transformation of a departmental culture through a process of implementing a new mission statement. The revised departmental mission promoted positive practices and rituals that transformed faculty relationships and student learning. These positive and ethical practices were derived from social constructionist principles, which guided collaborative organizational communication behaviors consistent with the new departmental mission.

A Dialectic Analysis of a Community Forum on Faith: The “Most Segregated” or Separated Hour?

Published: Feb 10, 2014 by Journal of Applied Communication Research
Authors: Driskill, G., Arjannikova, A., & Meyer, J.
Subjects: Communication Studies

The incongruity of homogeneity in churches prompted this analysis. The phrase, “the most segregated hour in America,” surfaced and our analysis revealed varied functions of irony : (1) countering the assumption that segregation is wrong through alternation; (2) framing through transcendence based in dramatic irony; (3) relying on a personal narrative based on selection. We extend tension-centered research by explicating the role of irony in opening spaces within contested discourse.