The digital age has introduced a deeper sense of connectivity in business environments. By relying more heavily on current technologies, organizations now experience more effective communication and collaboration opportunities. "Online Collaboration and Communication in Contemporary Organizations" is a critical scholarly resource that…

Every day in America more than 50 million children go to neighborhood public schools. Parents send them off with every hope they will be safe while there. And yet, as has been the case in too many cities, violence shatters that hope. The Council of Educational Facilities Planners International (CEFPI) seeks to lead in the effort to bolster schools…

In this essay we foreground the value of engaging meaningfully with practitioners in our work. We review research by scholars whose work cuts across topics and contexts to gain insight into the power and practice of human communication as it shapes the world in which we live-highlighting work that is at its best because of its co-creation with…

We systematically analyze the role of social comparison processes in organizations. Specifically, we describe how social comparison processes have been used to explain six key areas of organizational inquiry: (1) organizational justice, (2) performance appraisal, (3) virtual work environments, (4) affective behavior in the workplace, (5) stress,…

Organized action need not depend on group consensus. Karl Weick's theory argues that only minimal shared understanding is needed and that common ends and shared meanings may be outcomes of organized action, not prerequisites. This paper reveals four communication mechanisms that generate and sustain equifinal meaning (multiple routes to a single…

New technologies such as the CT scanner are challenging traditional role relations among radiology workers and may be altering the organizational and occupational structure of radiological work. This paper expands recent sociological thought by showing how identical CT scanners occasion similar structuring processes and created divergent forms of…

Explores the institutionalization of a fairly new Bureau of Consumer Services within the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Using documentation and participant observation, this paper analyzes the Bureau's manipulation of symbols and the developing ceremonies of exchange that ensured the Bureau's growth and survival in an interorganizational…

This paper examines some of the various findings contained in the current literature on humor in the workplace. In recent years, the communicative role of humor in the workplace has received attention--particularly in management-related publications. Consequently, the paper explores the emergence of humor as a management tool and the advantages…

Based on J. E. Grunig's four models of public relations practice (press agent/publicity, public information, and two-way asymmetric and two-way symmetric practice), this paper examines the potential applicability of these models to internal communication systems in organizations. Following an introduction, in which Grunig's models are briefly…

To explore communication patterns within organizations, a network analysis was conducted of a large New York financial institution with 98 departments and 66 branches. Functional analysis revealed that departments had more and stronger communication linkages than did branches. Departments were also closer in communication distances than branches.…

The need for further research was indicated by the results of a limited exploration of the concept that principal's communications with teachers mediate between the principal's leadership styles and the effectiveness of the organizations they head. Twenty-seven Kansas elementary principals of schools with student populations between 215 and 315…

This study was undertaken to determine the extent of the perceived communication and support linkages between high school principals and vocational agriculture teachers in the state of Indiana. A survey questionnaire using a Likert-type scale was mailed to all vocational agricultural teachers and their respective high school administrators in the…

This paper argues that while organizational research includes a diverse array of naturalistic approaches, a gap exists in the organizational literature that can only be filled by the ethnography of communication (EC). The paper proposes that, instead of using speech to do qualitative research, speech itself should be studied as the topic of…

A number of organizational communication analysts have argued that the field is in the midst of a paradigm shift, away from a strictly rational to a more transactional view of organization, but their arguments are not situated in a well-explicated communication theory. This paper argues for the existence of two, mutually exclusive worldviews of…

Reality shock within organizations can be defined as the discrepancy between an individual's expectations established prior to joining an organization and the individual's perceptions after becoming a member of the organization. To investigate the effects of reality shock on organizational commitment, 109 bank tellers were monitored for 10 months…