George Edward Cheney

George E. Cheney is an educator, writer, speaker, facilitator, and consultant. Together with his wife and colleague, Sally Planalp, he has a primary residence in Moab, Utah. Cheney is an internationally recognized leader in the area of organizational communication and focuses his work on the improvement of organizational processes with special attention to the triple bottom line and the pursuit of socially and environmentally responsible economic development. Cheney draws from a variety of disciplines and professions in his work, including sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, marketing, management, and applied ethics.

Education Cheney was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, where he was co-valedictorian of Cardinal Mooney High School (1975). Cheney has a B.A. in Psychology, from Youngstown State University (1980, summa cum laude), an MA (1982) and a PhD (1985) in Communication from Purdue University in 1985 (where he was ranked first for a university-wide fellowship).

Academic positions Currently, Cheney is an adjoint professor at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, an adjunct professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and an adjunct professor at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He is also an Associate Investigator with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, where he was recently a professor of communication studies and the coordinator of doctoral education and interdisciplinary research in the College of Communication and Information. In addition, he is an associate of the faculties of humanities, social sciences and business at Mondragon University in the Basque Country, Spain. Previously, he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984-1986), The University of Colorado at Boulder (1986-1995), The University of Montana (1995-2002), The University of Utah (2002–10) and The University of Texas at Austin (2010-11). Cheney held tenure-track or tenured positions in all these institutions.

Areas of interest and contribution Cheney's research and teaching interests include identity in organizations, professional ethics, globalization, consumerism, and peace, in addition to workplace democracy and economic solidarity. Recognized as a leader in the area of organizational communication, Cheney has helped to expand the boundaries of that specialty to include important social and economic issues of our times as well as considering the implications of practices in all sectors for the larger society. He is also known for drawing upon, and in certain ways, bridging different epistemological traditions, including elements of empiricism, interpretive research, critical studies, and postmodernism to allow for more complete and nuanced pictures of social phenomena. Also, he has helped to internationalize the study of organizational communication, considering how insights about practices in employee participation and the communication of organizational identity in different nations and cultural contexts.

Grants Cheney has participated in several grants (totaling nearly US$1,000,000) for collaborative research projects in the U.S. USDA and New Zealand (Marsden Fund, in projects on corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability led by Dr. Juliet Roper at the University of Waikato). The most recent included a Louis J. Kelso fellowship from Rutgers University, for research on best practices in establishing, maintaining, and enhancing “ownership culture” in worker cooperatives (2012-2013). For several years, he worked on Rural Cooperative Development grants through the USDA in collaborative work with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center.

Innovative courses and workshops Cheney has developed a number of innovative courses that bridge theory and practice and that have been offered at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Books Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C., Eds. (2014). The Routledge companion to alternative organization. London: Routledge. Cheney, G., May, S., & Munshi, D., Eds. (2011). The International Communication Association handbook of communication ethics. New York: Routledge. (This volume received a disciplinary award.) Cheney, G., Christensen, L. T., Zorn, T. E. Jr., & Ganesh, S. (2011). Organizational Communication in an age of globalization: Issues, reflections, practices, 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (Note: This is an upper-division undergraduate and master's level textbook; it was revised extensively from the first edition; it received a disciplinary award.) Cheney, G., Lair D. L., Ritz, D., & Kendall, B. E. (2010). Just a job? Communication, ethics and professional life. New York: Oxford University Press. (This book was nominated for several disciplinary awards.) Christensen, L. T., Morsing, M., & Cheney, G. (2008) Challenging corporate communication: Convention, complexity and critique. London: Sage. May, S., Cheney, G., & Roper, S., eds. (2007). The debate over corporate social responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press. (This book received a disciplinary award.) Cheney, G., & Barnett, G., eds. (2005). Organization<->Communication: Emerging perspectives, Vol. 7: International and multicultural approaches. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005. Cheney, G., Christensen, L. T., Zorn, T. E. Jr., & Ganesh, S. (2004). Organizational Communication in an age of globalization: Issues, reflections and practices. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (Note: This is an upper-division undergraduate and master's level textbook.) Cheney, G. (1999). Values at work: Employee participation meets market pressure at Mondragón Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. (Note: An updated paperback edition with a new preface was issued September 2002. This book received a disciplinary award.) Cheney, G. (1991). Rhetoric in an organizational society: Managing multiple identities. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. (Note: This included a case study of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ 1983 Pastoral Letter The Challenge of Peace; the book received a disciplinary award, as did the dissertation that preceded it.)

Selected recent articles and chapters (since 2000) Derezotes, D., Planalp, S., & Cheney, G. (in press). Transforming conflicts over sustainability. In T. G. Matyok & P. Kellett (Eds.), Communication and conflict transformation: Local to global engagements. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Azkarraga, J., & Cheney, G. (in press). Mondragon: Cooperatives in global capitalism. In S. Berger, L. Pries, & M. Wannöfel (Eds.), Companion to workers’ participation at the plant level: A global and comparative perspective. London: Palgrave. Wang, Y., Cheney, G., & Roper, J. (2015). Virtue ethics and the practice-institution schema: An ethical case of enlightened business practice. Journal of Business Ethics, 127, 1-13. Christensen, L. T., & Cheney, G. (2015). Peering into transparency: Challenging ideals, proxies and organizational practices. Communication Theory, 25, 70-90. Henderson, A., Cheney, G., & Weaver, C. K. (2014). The role of employee identification and organizational identity in strategic organizational and organizational issues management about genetic modification. International Journal of Business Communication, 52, 12-41 Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C. (2014). The question of organization: A manifesto for alternatives. Ephemera, 14, 621-636. Cheney, G., Santa Cruz, I., Peredo, A.M., & Nazareno, E. Introduction. (2014). Special issue on worker cooperatives. Organization. 21, 591-603. Cheney, G., Kendall, B., & Munshi, D. (2015). Ethical universalism. In J. Bennett, ed., Encyclopedia of intercultural competence. Los Angeles: Sage. Cheney, G., Christensen, L. T., & Dailey, S. (2014). Identity, identification and organizational communication. In L. L. Putnam & D. Mumby (Eds.), The third handbook of organizational communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Webb, J. T., & Cheney, G (2014). Worker-owned-and-governed cooperatives and the wider cooperative movement: challenges and opportunities within and beyond the global economic crisis. In Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to alternative organization (pp. 64–88). London: Routledge. Cheney, G., Beck, G., & Cline, R. (2013). Community conflict, engagement, and ethics. In J. Oetzel and S. Ting-Toomey (Eds.), Handbook of conflict communication, 2nd ed (pp. 487–512). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cheney, G., and Grant, S. (2013). Values. In V. Smith (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Work (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) Cheney, G., Lair, D. J., & Kendall, B. E. (2013). Making organization matter: Looking back and looking ahead (20th anniversary issue). Organization, 20 (1), 67-77. Cheney, G., & Zorn, T. E. Jr. (2013). The meaning of work and meaningful work: Implications for cross-national comparison and practice. In Goodboy, A. (Ed.), Translating Scholarship into Meaningful Practice (pp. 315–322). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Azkarraga, J., Cheney, G., & Udaondo, A. (2012). Work, decision making, and participation at Mondragón: The experimental case of LANKI's partnership with FAGOR. In M. Atzeni (Ed.), Alternative work organizations (pp. 76–102). London: Palgrave. Ortiz, E., Agyeman-Budu, E., & Cheney, G. (2011). How should corporate social responsibility address labor migration, in light of market globalization? In K. Korinek & T. Maloney (Eds.), Migration in the 21st century: Rights, outcomes, and policy (pp. 54–76). Routledge. Cheney, G. (2008). Bureaucracy. In W. Donsbach (ed.), Encyclopedia of Communication (available online from the International Communication Association (6 pp.). Cheney, G. (2008). The ethics of engaged scholarship. In J. L. Simpson, J. K. Barge, & P. Shockley-Zalabak (Eds.), special issue of the Journal of Applied Communication Research, 36, 281-288. Cheney, G., Zorn, T. E. Jr., Planalp, S., & Lair, D. J. (2008). Meaningful work and personal/social well-being: Organizational communication engages the meanings of work. In C. * Beck (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 32 (pp. 137–186). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cheney, G. (2007). Organizational communication comes out. In K. Krone & L. Harter (Eds.), Forum on organizational communication and the public intellectual. Management Communication Quarterly. Cheney, G., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2007). Considering “the professional” in communication studies: Implications for theory and research within and beyond the boundaries of organizational communication. Communication Theory, 17 (2007), 146-175. Kendall, B. E., Gill, R., & Cheney, G. (2007). Consumer activism and corporate social responsibility: How strong a connection?” In S. K. May, G. Cheney, & J. Roper (Eds.), The debate over corporate social responsibility (pp. 241-266). New York: Oxford University Press. Henderson, A., Weaver, C. K., & Cheney, G. (2007). Talking facts: Identity and rationality in industry perspectives on genetic modification,” Discourse Studies, 9 (2007), 90-42. (lead article) Simpson, M., & Cheney, G. (2007). Marketisation, participation and communication within New Zealand retirement villages: A critical-rhetorical and discursive analysis. Discourse & Communication, 1, 191-222. Cheney, G. (2006). Democracy at work within the market: Reconsidering the potential. In V. Smith (Ed.), Research in the Sociology of Work, vol. 16: Worker participation: current research and future trends (pp. 179–204). Oxford, UK: Elsevier/JAI, 2006 Cheney, G., & Christensen, L. T. (2006). What should PR theory do, practically speaking? Journal of Communication Management, 10, 100-102. Cheney, G., & Cloud, D. L. (2006). Doing democracy, engaging the material: Employee participation and labor activity in an age of market globalization. Management Communication Quarterly, 19, 501-540. (lead article) Cheney, G., Christensen, L. T., Conrad, C., & Lair, D. L. (2005). Corporate rhetoric as organizational discourse. In D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick, N. Phillips, & L. Putnam (Eds.), Handbook of organizational discourse (pp. 79–103). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Roper, J., & Cheney, G. (2005). Social entrepreneurship: History, dimensions, and limitations. Corporate Governance, 5, 95-104. Ganesh, S., Zoller, H., & Cheney, G. (2005). Organizational resistance and globalization from below. Communication Monographs, 72, 169-191. Lair, D.J., Sullivan, K, & Cheney, G. (2005). The rhetoric and ethics of personal branding. Management Communication Quarterly, 18, 307-343. Cheney, G., & Lair, D. J. (2004). “Following” and leading dissent in U.S. politics and labor. In N. S. Huber and J. T. Wren (Eds.), Building leadership bridges 2004 (pp. 115–139). College Park, MD: International Leadership Association. Cheney, G., Wilhelmsson, M., & Zorn, T. E. Jr. (2002). Ten strategies for engaged scholarship. Management Communication Quarterly, 16, 92-100. Stohl, C. & Cheney, G. (2001). Participatory processes/paradoxical practices: Communication and dilemmas of organizational democracy. Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 349-407. (recipient of award) Taylor, J. R., Flanagin, A., Cheney, G., & Seibold, D. R. (2001). Organizational communication: Key moments, central concerns, and future challenges. In W. Gudykunst (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 24, pp. 99–137. Cheney, G. (2000). On interpreting interpretive research: Toward perspectivism without relativism. In S. R. Corman & M. S. Poole (Eds.), Perspectives on organizational communication: Finding common ground (pp. 17–45). New York: Guilford. Zorn, T. E., Christensen, L. T., & Cheney, G. (2000). Do we really need constant change? San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.