Although organizations spend increasingly large amounts of money on training, little effort or money is spent on evaluating the effectiveness of training programs. When evaluations are done, they are often designed for specific programs and often consider only participant reactions and immediate learning, and ignore behavior changes and long-term…

Findings of a study that examined how information is used in schools that have adopted shared decision-making practices are presented in this paper. The study focused on how first- and second-year principals access, use, and value various kinds of information. A total of 24 out of 29 Louisiana LEAD schools responded to a questionnaire, an…

This paper addresses what characteristics of institutional approaches to change succeed in achieving stated institutional aims within a higher education context. It asserts, through an examination of two case studies, that successful organizational change depends on context-laden feedback-driven processes that result in steady incremental…

This paper reports on the restructuring efforts and activities undertaken in Virginia Beach from 1991 to 1994. The district has begun a massive effort to downsize, reorganize, and restructure the organization to focus on shared decision making and student performance. A special effort has been made to build coalitions among employees, with the…

When the Mississippi State University (MSU) Library undertook a major reclassification project in March 1989 to convert 175,000 Dewey Decimal titles into the Library of Congress Classification, the Technical Services staff involved in the planning realized that communicating policies and procedures to all levels of library personnel would require…

Principals can influence instruction by working through the linkages that govern teacher behavior. What these linkages are, how they affect instruction, and the impact of the principal on them are the focus of this paper. Two kinds of linkages are distinguished: bureaucratic and cultural. An explantation of both, with particular attention to…

A review of current research indicates parallels between the strategies and perceptions involved in gender-specific chidren's games and those guiding adult corporate participation. Involving a frequently elaborate organization of rules that emphasize at once an adventurous role with few physical restrictions and the need for team play, boys' games…

Discusses financial aid publicity in high schools: problems which can be expected, goals to be accomplished, and specific activities and functions designed to achieve the stated goals. Emphasis is on simplifying and clarifying the information given by colleges to high school counselors and students. (JT)

A study explored employees' perceptions of argumentativeness in the organization, specifically examining (1) how employees perceive argumentativeness and the value of argumentativeness in the organization, (2) to what extent employees argue in the workplace, and (3) whether there is any relationship between these two variables, the perception of…

The Speech Communication Club at St. Cloud University (Minnesota), begun in 1981, serves as a good example of how nonperformance student organizations lead to student growth and departmental development. Results of a survey which measured the club's effectiveness indicated that students enter the organization with different goals dependent on the…

This study investigated college student involvement in campus religious organizations to determine the functioning of organizational and interpersonal communication. Data were elicited through open-ended interviews with 16 members of a Catholic student center at a state university in the Midwest. Interviews were also conducted with the director,…

Too often African American students in communication courses are confronted with communication principles which to them seem inappropriate, unrealistic, and simply false. Current conceptualizations of organizational communication suggest that the organization consists of one culture (often depicted as predominantly white and predominantly male).…

This paper reviews selected literature pertaining to quality circles (defined as a small group of people who meet voluntarily, on a regular basis, to learn and apply techniques for identifying, analyzing, and solving work-related problems), in particular that literature focusing on communication-related variables. It examines 52 studies from the…

Two studies examined the relationship between various indicators of communicative work dependency and response satisfaction. Work dependency is a structural variable that influences individual information processing needs, while response satisfaction is a relational variable pertaining to the communication climate of organizations. For Study One,…

A study examined the effects of three presentational modes--transcription, audiotape, and videotape--on raters' evaluations of male and female speakers using a powerless, powerful, or mixed speech style. A powerless speech style was characterized by the use of message elements such as qualifiers, tag questions, polite forms, and disclaimers. A…