About

Karen K. Myers is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on organizing, including the communicative constitution of organizations and workplace interactions such as socialization and assimilation of newcomers, emotion management, intergenerational interactions, and work-life balance. Her work often examines how these factors are associated with the development or erosion of organizational identification and worker wellbeing. She employs qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods in her research. Karen Myers earned her Ph.D. in Organizational Communication from Arizona State University in 2005, her M.A. in Communication from the University of New Mexico in 2001, and her B.A. in Business from Arizona State University in 1985. She has a background of owning and leading a business that researched, wrote, and published organizational histories before entering graduate school. Her research includes membership negotiation, vocational anticipatory socialization, the communicative constitution of organizations, emotions in the workplace, generational cohorts, workplace flexibility, and organizational identification. She is a co-author of the book 'The Communicative Constitution of Organizations: The Four Flows Model' (2025). Her work has been published in various academic journals, including Management Communication Quarterly and Human Communication Research. Additionally, she is a co-founder of the Department of Communication’s Alumni Council and was the founding faculty advisor to UCSB’s Marketing Association. She has also served as an Associate Dean in the Graduate Division and remains passionate about graduate education.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Engineering
• Public relations
• Business
• Psychiatry
• Knowledge management
• Nursing
• Medical emergency
• Marketing
• Applied psychology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Emotion and Humor in Leadership Communication

  2025-03-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter summarizes key research about the use and functions of emotions in leadership communication and emotion-related effects. The introduction reviews traditional (pre-2000) leadership styles, functions, situational, and transactional/transformational approaches and the key facets of leadership communication and emotion that they illuminated. The body of the chapter reviews contemporary (post-2000) scholarship concerning characteristics, competencies, and functions of emotions that are required of leaders, the relational functions of emotion enacted by both leaders and members in leadership communication, and the burgeoning scholarship on leadership and humor. Besides offering a summary of key themes, the conclusion suggests directions for future research and discusses implications for practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Delegation to AI versus Human Agents: Contrasting Logics in Work Roles

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Delegating administrative tasks to an AI tool has been increasingly touted as a viable strategy for boosting worker productivity. Existing research on delegation has almost exclusively focused on how executives delegate to human workers, making it difficult to compare the differential effects of delegating to an AI tool versus a human assistant. To explore how AI technologies are enabled to take over principals’ work relative to human assistants, we conducted interviews with human executive assistants (n = 17) and AI technology developers (n = 14) to compare how each group enacted their work roles relative to delegated executives’ work. We identified differences between human assistants and AI tools across three components of work roles: role knowledge (personalization vs. aggregation), role strategy (replication vs. optimization), and role mission (protection vs. transformation). We discuss the implications of these differences for theorizing work roles and delegation to AI and human agents and the practical implications for executives as they make choices about if and how to delegate aspects of their work.

  PublisherDOI

• An integrated model of graduate student and departmental efforts shaping impostor phenomenon and assimilation

  Communication Education · 2024-03-06 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  This qualitative study examines communicative processes associated with graduate students (N = 124) in their struggles with the impostor phenomenon (IP, commonly known as impostor syndrome) and their integration into and experience in graduate programs (aspects of organizational assimilation). We identified two mutually implicative relationships. First, participants described the interplay of their attempts to assimilate into the graduate program and management of IP (internal factors). Second, participants narrated departmental, communicative efforts by others (peers, faculty advisors) and the department culture that communicated expectations (external factor) as strongly interlinked to graduate students' IP management and their organizational assimilation. We offer findings focused on the intersection of communication and instruction, and extend theorizing with an integrated model depicting narrated individual-departmental processes that may shape IP management and organizational assimilation. We conclude with a discussion about theoretical implications and practical applications for training faculty to improve their guidance and mentoring of graduate students to reduce IP.

  PublisherDOI

• Engaging people with lived experience in a national research network: Experience from the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging

  Alzheimer s & Dementia · 2024-12-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Engagement of People with Lived Experience of Dementia (EPLED) was a new cross‐cutting program introduced as part of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) for their second 5‐year phase (from 2019 to 2024). The initiative was supported by the Alzheimer Society of Canada as part of their commitment to the CCNA. EPLED had three objectives: (1) support persons with dementia and care partners to be actively involved in the CCNA research process; (2) work with CCNA research Teams, Cross‐cutting Programs and Partners to develop novel mechanisms and formats to further this collaboration; and, (3) advance the methods of patient engagement in research by embedding evaluation. One of the main activities of EPLED was to recruit and support an Advisory Group of people from across Canada with diverse lived experiences of dementia. Since 2020, EPLED Advisory Group members became involved in various CCNA central and research team activities as well as contributing as co‐presenters and co‐authors in academic and non‐academic venues and as co‐applicants and co‐investigators on research grants. Advisory Group members also took on roles advocating for more people living with dementia in research roles. Key factors described for the success of the Advisory Group were developing trusting relationships, providing education, offering support, being flexible and acknowledging tensions between research, practice and lived experience. Ongoing challenges often related to the gap between research and practice and balancing EPLED’s research objectives with aspirations for advocacy and system‐level change. Looking forward to the third phase of the CCNA, key challenges will include: developing capacity to meet increasing research funding expectations of engagement while also ensuring meaningful engagement, engaging new perspectives by recruiting new Advisory Group members while also retaining expertise from existing members, evaluating the impact of engagement and initiating EPLED‐driven research initiatives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Use of Lecanemab and Donanemab in the Canadian Healthcare System: Evidence, Challenges, and Areas for Future Research

  medRxiv · 2024-11-23 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  ABSTRACT Lecanemab and donanemab are monoclonal antibody therapies that remove amyloid-beta from the brain. They are the first therapies that alter a fundamental mechanism, amyloid-beta deposition, in Alzheimer disease (AD). To inform Canadian decisions on approval and use of these drugs, the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging commissioned Work Groups to review evidence on the efficacy, and safety of these new therapies, as well as their projected impacts on Canadian dementia systems of care. We included persons with lived experience with Alzheimer disease in the discussion about the benefits and harms. Our review of the trial publications found strong support for statistically significant group differences, but also recognized that there are mixed views on the clinical relevance of the observed differences and the value of therapy for individual patients. The drugs are intended for persons with early AD, at a stage of mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia. If patients are treated, then confirmation of AD by positron emission tomography or cerebrospinal fluid analysis and monitoring for risk of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities was recommended, as done in the clinical trials, although it would strain Canadian resource capacity. More data are needed to determine the size of the potentially eligible treatment population in Canada.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From Mixed Methods to Mixed Research Approaches for Qualitative Organizational Communication Research

  2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Contents

  2024-06-17

  paratextOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Your Connection is Unstable”: Remote Socialization and Effects on Organizational Assimilation

  Management Communication Quarterly · 2024-06-06 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study examined remote socialization of knowledge workers who began work remotely and the immediate and more distal effects on their organizational assimilation (OA) and other outcomes. We identify potential aftereffects as reported from interviews with 21 workers collected soon after entry and also approximately a year later to understand these longer-term effects. The data demonstrate their job competency and recognition were least affected, their ability to develop familiarity with others and role negotiation were moderately affected, and involvement and acculturation were significantly affected. Remote socialization reduced organizational identification when participants felt less connection, linked to turnover. Early-career (vs. mid-career) newcomers reported more disappointments, which led to breaches of their psychological contracts and premature turnover. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for remote socialization and the longer-term distal effects on their OA and connection to their organization.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Healthcare Professionals’ Emotional Labor and Management of Workplace Violence with Underserved Patients in the Safety Net Context

  Health Communication · 2023 · 5 citations

  • Medicine
  • Nursing
  • Psychology

  Healthcare providers (HP) work in high-stress situations, interacting with patients and families who are often in crisis. HPs who work in safety net clinics, which provide care to uninsured, Medicaid recipients and other vulnerable populations, interact with patients who are frequently frustrated by long wait times, extensive paperwork, short appointments, and have generally lower health literacy. Many patients have chronic conditions and substance use disorders which has been associated with higher likelihood to be perceived as verbally aggressive and/or perpetrate workplace violence (WPV). Using interviews with 26 HPs at safety net clinics, we investigated how HPs manage interactions with aggressive patients and avoid burnout. Findings are based on emotional labor constructs describing why and how workers use emotion management strategies to smooth communication and relationships with clients/patients. According to our participants, HPs perform emotional labor to de-escalate interactions, prevent WPV, and to develop relationships with patients who might become regular clinic patients. We found that HPs perceive an influence of the clinic context on patient aggression management, hold initial perceptions that shape engagement with aggressive patients, and report emotional labor and burnout that came from interacting with aggressive patients to prevent WPV. We offer implications that extend research on emotional labor and burnout, provide guidance to healthcare organizations, and offer directions for future theory and research.

  PublisherDOI

• Navigating Water Cooler Talks Without the Water Cooler: Uncertainty and Information Seeking During Remote Socialization

  Management Communication Quarterly · 2022 · 42 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Public relations

  Research on newcomer uncertainty and information seeking behaviors has largely assumed that newcomers could interact with and observe others in physical work settings. This study examined how organizational newcomers sought information during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic without such possibility. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 individuals who began jobs remotely between February and November 2020, we uncovered three major areas of uncertainty: workplace relationships, task/role performance, and organizational norms. Our findings demonstrate how these newcomers managed the uncertainties through six information seeking tactics: organizing virtual small talks; initiating unsanctioned in-person meetings; asking overt and targeted questions; utilizing digital repositories; unintentional limit testing; and anticipating future information seeking. We discuss implications for remote newcomer socialization and provide propositions for future research.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bernadette M. Gailliard

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  10 shared

• Jody L. S. Jahn

  9 shared

• David R. Seibold

  8 shared

• Linda L. Putnam

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  5 shared

• Robert D. McPhee

  Bond University

  5 shared

• Courtney W. Davis

  Azusa Pacific University

  4 shared

• Samantha Rae Powers

  Howard University

  3 shared

• Cliff Scott

  3 shared

Education

• PhD, School of Human Communication

  Arizona State University

  2005