THE CURRENT STATUS OF THEORY AND RESEARCH IN INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

This paper details four alternative perspectives for conceptualizing the interpersonal communication process, emphasizing their implications for the theorist and researcher of interpersonal communication. The four perspectives discussed are the situational approach, the developmental approach, the law-governed approach, and the rule-governed approach. The strengths and limitations of each perspective are examined, and some suggested priorities for future research are offered.     

PROBLEMS WITH THE USE OF PROFILE SIMILARITY INDICES IN THE STUDY OF CONGRUENCE IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH

Profile similarity indices (PSIs) have become widely used in studies of congruence (i.e., fit, matching, similarity, agreement) in organizational research. PSIs combine two sets of measures, or profiles, from corresponding entities (e.g., the person and organization, supervisor and subordinate, organization and environment) into a single score intended to represent their overall congruence. Unfortunately, PSIs are conceptually ambiguous, discard information essential to testing congruence hypotheses, conceal the source of the difference between entities, and impose a highly restrictive set of constraints on the coefficients relating the measures comprising the PSI to the outcome. This article shows how polynomial regression analysis may be used to avoid problems with PSIs while capturing the underlying relationships PSIs are intended to represent. Limitations and extensions to the procedure are discussed.     

SELF-INTEREST,CREDIBILITY, AND MESSAGE SELECTION IN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: A RESEARCH NOTE

This paper reports the findings of a recent survey to determine the effectiveness of efforts by the Library of Congress to communicate with its employees about the Library's Affirmative Action program. Results indicated relatively low levels of employee information about the program. While the perceived credibility of the source was positively correlated with the amount of information absorbed, perceived self-interest in the Affirmative Action program was not.     

ORAL COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION: A SUMMARY OF RECENT THEORY AND RESEARCH

Editors Note: With this issue we inaugurate a new section of HCR devoted to summaries of research and theory in specialised areas within the field of human communication. Papers in this section will he designed to bring research and theory in a given area together so that both specialists and nonspecialists can determine the “state of the art” in that area up to the time the paper is published. Scholars who wish to prepare papers for this section are requested to contact the editor and make their interests known. Generally, papers for this section will be commissioned. However, unsolicited papers will be given full consideration.     

THE USE AND ABUSE OF FACTOR ANALYSIS IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

This paper discusses several decisions that researchers must make in their application of factor analysis to data related to communication phenomena. Several suggestions are provided to aid researchers in reaching appropriate decisions.     

PSYCHOLOGICAL SEX TYPE AND ANDROGYNY IN THE STUDY OF COMMUNICATION VARIABLES: SELF-DISCLOSURE AND COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION

This study extended the investigation of gender differences in two communication variables, self-disclosure and communication apprehension, by shifting the conceptual focus from the biological sex dichotomy to the more discriminating psychological sex-role designations: masculine, feminine, and androgynous. Using the Bern Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) as a measure of psychological sex type, the study showed that psychological sex type is superior to biological sex categories in identifying patterns of self-reported self-disclosure and communication apprehension. A number of hypotheses were considered with regard to total disclosure to same-sex friend or opposite-sex friend, and communication apprehension.     

THE CONSTRUCT OF AROUSAL IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

The construct of arousal is pivotal to those who investigate the relationship between emotions and communication. This study seeks to compare Zillmann's and Mehra-bian's concepts of arousal in order to identify common ground between the theorists. The goal is, through such commonalities, to provide a more complete and useful framework for understanding arousal's role in communication. This common framework is important to those researchers who find merit in both Zillmann's and Mehrabian 's theories, important to those in the field who look for an understanding of human communication from a variety of viewpoints.     

INTERPRETING THE MEASUREMENT OF CHANGE IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH1

Numerous advances have been made in the last two decades in the measurement as well as in the conceptualization of change. Golembiewski, Billingsley, and Yeager (1976) conceptualized change as: (1) gamma change—subjects change their understanding of the variable being measured; (2) beta change—subjects recalibrate the measurement scale; and, (3) alpha change—change detected with a consistent measurement scale (i.e., no beta change) and for which gamma change has been ruled out. The present research examined these types of change by administering the Survey of Organizations questionnaire to a sample of military trainers at Time₁ (N₁, = 222) and Time₂ (N₂= 242) with no intervention. This design may be referred to as two premeasures of an abbreviated time series design. The results are discussed within the context of the alpha, beta, gamma change typology. After ruling out gamma change, the results revealed that alpha and beta change could be distinguished from each other and that beta change had been measured. The potential causes of the detected beta change (i.e., the rival hypotheses affecting internal validity) are analyzed. The implications of these results are discussed for the present research as well as for other empirical investigations of organizational change.     

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFORMATION PROCESSING FRAMEWORK OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

The information processing framework of organizational communication is studied by introducing variables that reflect the individual's relationship to the organization; it is examined in terms of levels of information adequacy. This study focuses on explaining the variations in levels of information adequacy reported by organizational members. It emphasizes the importance of communicating sufficient information to employees irrespective of task-related communication needs. Findings from this study support an expanded information processing model of organizational communication. A revised model is proposed.     

PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: EVIDENCE OF CONCEPTUAL CONVERGENCE

This study investigates the degree to which performance feedback information can be conceptually housed within an existing theoretical framework of organizational communication. If one's job can be conceptualized as a work information environment, then logically there should be some communality between organizational communication and performance feedback information. In this study 213 faculty members at Iowa State University completed a questionnaire addressing patterns of organizational communication within their respective academic departments and feedback on their own job performance provided them by multiple sources. In order to uncover any underlying congruence between the communication and feedback constructs, the data were subjected to canonical correlation analysis. The results revealed that the type of feedback, source of feedback, and perceived reliability of feedback sources were all found to interact in logical patterns with selected dimensions of organizational communication.     

GROUP RESEARCH TRENDS IN SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY:

We report the results of an archival study of group research published in three organizational psychology journals (Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Academy of Management Journal) from 1975 through 1994 Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994), in a review of three social psychology journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin), suggested there is an increasing enthusiasm for the social psychological study of groups However, their data relations. We tested the proposal that research traditionally viewed as intragroup (e g, group performance) has been taken up by organizational psychologists. Our data support this contention, as the publication Pattern for intragroup research topics in the three organizational journals was an inverse of that reported by Moreland et al. Results are discussed in terms of historical and interdisciplinary     

STATUS AND ORGANIZATIONAL ENTRY: HOW ORGANIZATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL STATUS AFFECT JUSTICE PERCEPTIONS OF HIRING SYSTEMS

Despite the fact that cognitive ability tests are highly predictive of job applicants’ future performance, these tests are often viewed as procedurally unfair by both hiring managers and job applicants. In this paper, we build on existing rationales by theorizing that status—both personal and organizational—may affect individuals’ procedural justice perceptions of selection tests. In 2 quasi‐experimental studies representing 435 managers and executives across both the United States and United Kingdom, we demonstrate that status is a double‐edged sword: helpful for high‐status organizations that use demanding selection tests to choose applicants but harmful because high‐status job applicants view these selection tests as more procedurally unjust than low‐status applicants.     

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION: 1978

With roots in social psychology, human relations, and organizational theory and behavior, the discipline of organizational communication has emerged in the last 25 years with its own content, methodology, and applications. Although one of the first major literature reviews of this field was produced about 15 years after much of the early foundation research had been completed (Guetzkow, 1965), the next major reviews were published in half the time (Porter & Roberts, 1972; Redding, 1972). As further evidence of the sheer quantity of research being completed in this new discipline, four additional reviews and syntheses were published during the next four years (Pietri et al., 1974; Goldhaber, 1975; Bernstein, 1976; Richetto, 1977). In fact, as Richetto closed his 1976 overview of the field, he predicted that there would “likely be continued attempts at integrating and synthesizing findings” (p. 336). Little did he realize that within two years, three additional reviews would appear (Dennis, Goldhaber, Yates, 1978; Farace, Taylor, Stewart, 1978; Monge, Edwards, Kirste, 1978). The present synthesis and review, with its emphasis on findings and implications, combines the results of recent North American and European research with those of the first 16 studies completed by the International Communication Association (1CA) Communication Audit. We have divided the review into three major sections: a historical overview of the major findings from both North America and Europe; major findings from the ICA Communication Audit; and implications of all major findings for future research.     

INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNICATION NETWORKS AS A PREDICTOR OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

This study examines the relationship between involvement in a job-related communication network and organizational commitment. The findings indicate a complex relationship that is moderated by the degree of job involvement. For employees who are not involved in their jobs, involvement in the job-related communication network functions to foster commitment to the organization. Two major conclusions are drawn: (1) the impact of involvement in communication networks on employee attitudes and behaviors may occur only for individuals with certain characteristics; and (2) previous studies that have reported main effects for individual variables on organizational commitment may need reinterpretation in light of the disordinal interaction obtained here. The possibility that different commitment processes operate for different kinds of employees is explored, with special emphasis on those employees for whom communication is a potent factor in determining attitudes. Implications for future research on the relationship between communication network involvement and other employee responses are discussed.     

THE ALPHA PERCENTAGE AND EXPERIMENTWISE ERROR RATES IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

Experimentwise error rates of the type proposed by Ryan (1959) are discussed and contrasted with anew measure of the likelihood that the results of a series of significance tests are Type I errors. This new measure, the Alpha Percentage (a%), shares the advantages of experimentwise error rates over individual alpha levels in reducing Type I errors in communication research, but the Alpha Percentage has much greater power than currently used experimentwise error rates to detect significant effects. Four arguments against the use of experimentwise error procedures are discussed and EW, EP, and a% rates are reported for Communication Monographs and Human Communication Research.