Offers specific advice for technical writers on how to deal with five different kinds of difficult writing projects and/or clients: the reluctant client, the disorganized client, time-resource crunches, differing visions, and an unstable product. (SR)

Applies a model of impression management to explore the process whereby women in organizations present themselves to others and the impressions they create. Devotes particular attention to how these impressions influence women's experiences in organizations. Suggests future research direction for clarifying the impact of gender impression and…

Discusses the role of feedback in performance technology and suggests ways to improve both the accuracy and the effectiveness of the feedback. Desirable characteristics of feedback are described, including promptness, directness, reliability, and usability; and the need for assessment and assimilation following feedback is explained. (LRW)

Surveys 140 randomly selected profit and nonprofit organizations covered in 7 newspapers, and interviews journalists and organizational respondents. Finds that systematic discrepancies between organizations and reporters on the salience, selection, and interpretation of news reports were more common for public sector mechanistic bureaucracies of…

Analyzes jargon and themes of the total quality (TQ) and high commitment work systems visions. Juxtaposes linguistic references of both visions and reveals a gap in TQ. (SR)

Focuses on communication and organizational socialization, first briefly describing common assumptions. Discusses several assumptions that undergird extant socialization models, taking an ambivalent stance toward their value for future research. (RS)

Maintains that the goal of editing technical writing is not to resist incursions against "correctness" but to facilitate communication. Argues for letting authors use the words native to their own technical idiom. (SR)

Outlines a model shift in public relations between those who use only symbolic activities and those who use substantive behavior. Investigates and deconstructs the meaning of image. Suggests that organizations focus on more precise concepts of symbolic objectives and evaluate their success in achieving them. (HB)

Analyzes the boundaries for four communications subject areas that may be taught in business schools: organizational, business, management, and corporate communications. Provides theoretical models for such an analysis of discipline boundaries and their interrelationships. (HB)

The Ethics Forum at Buffalo State College (New York), a program in which new ideas for addressing long-standing problems are fostered among faculty and staff, is described in the framework of a situational leadership model. The model allows analysis of the groups's highly directed, coaching, supporting, and autonomous activities. (MSE)

Presents an initial formulation of a dysfunctional group dynamic in which one focal individual creates a dysfunctional group. Identifies habits of individuals and properties of systems that result in the emergence of such an individual. Presents the interactional dynamics which constitute and sustain this group dynamic and discusses three types of…

Examines systematically 11 years (1979-89) of organizational communication research. Finds that research has focused primarily on three topics: (1) climate and culture; (2) superior-subordinate relations and communications; and (3) power, conflict, and politics. Finds also that the majority of the studies were framed within a modernistic-empirical…

Explores four topics: (1) organizational rhetoric as a fourth great system of rhetoric; (2) the modeling of organizational rhetoric; (3) representational magic in organizational rhetoric; and (4) the research and pragmatic implications of the fourth system. (MG)

Presents thoughts on organizational rhetoric from the point of view of social scientists, progressives, practitioners, rationalists, and polemicists representing useful touchstones for understanding, analyzing, and critiquing the rhetorical products of today's organizations. (MG)

Networking as a goal of training can increase communication, problem solving, and flexibility. Necessary steps are selecting participants to support the network, including provisions for trust and relationship building, ensuring the transfer of training, and encouraging followup and accountability for transfer. (SK)