The duties of a staff development coordinator at a large residential school for the mentally retarded consist of planning, coordinating, and implementing all training for employees. Such a person must function in the multiple roles of educator, process consultant, mediator, troubleshooter, and manager. Training for such a position should include…

In order to help in the analysis and evaluation of organizations, this paper presents a model that combines a functional perspective with a rules approach. An organization is viewed as an entity analogous to a culture that can be analyzed by identifying its collectively defined master contract; it may be critiqued by assessing the process by which…

Poor results in organizational communication research may be due to the lack of comparative research, relying instead on small, unrepresentative samples from one or two organizations. Measurement techniques such as the communication audit and the network analysis make possible the comparison of different organizations and the collection of data…

Twenty-one criteria for assessing communication effectiveness in organizations provide the basis for discussion in this document. Grouped under the general heading of communication rules, the criteria are described according to five categories: structure, messages, media, communicator, and potpourri (factors that affect the decision making of…

A contribution to the literature on organizational communication, this book has three objectives: to provide access to information on recent literature in organizational communication; to develop a classification system for the literature; and to provide abstracts of the literature published in 1976. The introductory chapter comments on the year's…

Top corporate management requires communications departments that maintain credibility with the public by developing the following qualities: integrity established through consistent and honest messages; accuracy based on solid research; authority derived from an understanding of the subject and from drawing on appropriate expertise; a…

Among the causes of the recent breakdown of the business/press relationship is the increasing public and press questioning of business, coupled with the failure of business leaders to explain the benefits of the free enterprise system. This failure, caused largely by the direction of business leaders' energies inward toward their companies rather…

This paper contains a theoretical analysis and empirical study that support the major premise of Robert Dubin's minimal-linkage construct-that restricting communication links increases organizational stability. The theoretical analysis shows that fewer communication links are associated with less uncertainty, more redundancy, and greater…

Each year the officers of the United States National Student Association are required to report on their activities. The report is for the year 1974-75 and discusses activities in the administration of the national office including a brief overview of the finances and operation of the national office. On-going administrative programs including the…

There is a crucial need in the field of higher education for a methodology of self-study and self-evaluation of the effective and efficient management of postsecondary institutions that deals with facts as well as perceptions as they relate to institutional management. The Management Systems Inventory (MSI) addresses itself to this need. MSI is a…

The effect of feedback on group cohesiveness (measured in terms of group and task attractiveness) for a person who is performing a simple, highly repetitive task was studied. One hundred business administration students, randomly assigned to five member groups, completed a series of trials having the goal of determining the number commonly held by…

More courses in the relatively new area of organizational communication should be offered because the subject matter is transdisciplinary in scope, method, and application, and the area holds promise for contributing to the advancement of knowledge and the possible unification of the sciences. Such courses can explain the communication processes…

The simulation of real world problems in an organizational communication classroom by presenting students with case material for analysis, investigation, and discussion has the advantages of being convenient and of allowing students to apply the facts, concepts, and techniques they have learned. This paper contains a variety of cases which provide…

An infographic model is proposed to account for the operation of systems within their information environments. Infographics is a communication paradigm used to indicate the clustering of information processing variables in communication systems. Four propositions concerning environmental uncertainty and internal communication network complexity,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between individual group members' concepts of tasks and their tendency to communicate with each other about tasks as related to the groups' abilities to adapt to the demands of a dynamic environment. Data was gathered from five persons in the Audiovisual Support group of the American…