Congratulations to Associate Professor Elizabeth M. Minei (Communication Studies), who has won the Sage Business Cases Editors Choice Award for 2022 for a case study she wrote called “‘The Policy is Nice but Not Really Written for Us’: LGBTQ+ Workplace Challenges.” The award recognizes “the best of the best in the Sage Case Collection for originality of concept, classroom utility, timeliness of subject, and quality of writing.”
Head shot Elizabeth Minei
Professor Elizabeth Minei
Minei has published three other articles this year. They are:

Minei’s award-winning article focuses on two problems at a fictional company:  the mistakes and assumptions made by an HR department concerning the policies and practices for their LGBTQ+ employees, and  internal communication issues that prevent feedback from frontline workers from reaching the decision makers in the organization. The case follows the HR director’s discovery that despite well-intentioned changes to the organization, the HR team has “missed” on crucial needs of the LGBTQ+ employees during the nomination process for a prestigious diversity and inclusion award. The case shows how  written policy and organizational practice do not always align, and how how well-intentioned diversity initiatives can fail when marginalized individuals can’t easily communicate with senior decision-makers.

Minei’s research interests include leadership, high-reliability organizations, small-group/team communication, entrepreneurial issues, globalization and glocalization, and cyberterrorism. She says she’s fascinated by the intersection between interpersonal and organizational communication, and frequently studies High Reliability Teams (HRTs), leadership, supervisor-subordinate communication, small business growth, and message framing processes.  She has received numerous other research awards, including the Stanley L. Saxon Applied Research Award for her work assessing the communication practices between firefighters, and again for the interactions between supervisors and subordinates concerning illegitimate tasks. She also won the Ragan-Kramer-Wieder Qualitative Dissertation Award for her work with small businesses.

She holds a PhD from the University of Oklahoma.

Published by Beth Harpaz