Abstract:
This qualitative study explores communication among twelve battered women's advocates. It highlights their experiences of communication at work. A disconnection existed between the agency's recommended communication style and the way participants experienced talking with coworkers and supervisors during staff meetings, specifically, and across agency sites, generally. Along with study participants, I found that organizational and administrative changes along with internal conflict strained staff relations that adversely affected their abilities to function optimally within the organization. In this instance, a feminist communication approach was difficult to maintain and to support in the bureaucratic nonprofit organizational structure in which A Place for Change operated.
