BRIDGING DIFFERENCE THROUGH DIALOGUE: A CONSTRUCTIVIST PERSPECTIVE

Differences in culture invariably underpin the communication failures and misunderstandings that lead to social conflict and dissension. In contemporary organizations, for example, conflicts in values between different occupational groups have the potential to create significant organizational dysfunction. Equally, however, bridging between these conflicts may present an opportunity for organizational learning and insight. Dialogue provides a means of bridging between such differences, but it is notoriously difficult to implement. In this article, we explore the potential of Personal Construct Theory as a way into dialogue. We illustrate our argument with the results of a workshop that involved senior managers and clinicians from a large public hospital.     

Refusals and Rejections Designing Messages to Serve Multiple Goals

This experiment was conducted to test a rational model of the elaboration of themes found in rejection messages. The experiment involved a situation in which a candidate for membership in an organization must be rejected by an agent of the organization. The model proposed that five themes would be found in the rejection messages, elaborated selectively as a function of the relationship between organizational agent and candidate (friend vs. stranger) and the basis for the rejection (qualified vs. unqualified candidate). The experiment was replicated with American and Japanese participants in the role of organizational agent; no differences due to nationality were anticipated. Results showed partial support for the initial rational model, but the findings also pointed toward two key revisions of the hypothesized model: First, two new themes in rejection messages were identified; and second, there were substantial differences in the way Americans and Japanese elaborated themes to serve their goals.     

UNDERSTANDING SELF-OTHER AGREEMENT: A LOOK AT RATER AND RATEE CHARACTERISTICS, CONTEXT, AND OUTCOMES

This study investigated (a) the relative importance of a number of biographic (e.g., age, race, gender) and contextual (e.g., span of control, functional area) variables and their interactions on self-other agreement and (b) the relationship between self-other agreement and outcome variables such as performance and compensation. Usable data were collected from 3,217 managers and their multi-source raters in 527 organizations. Multivariate regression procedures (as opposed to categorization procedures) were used to determine the sources of rating disagreement. Results indicated that a significant portion of variance in self-other ratings was accounted for by the set of background/context variables. Self-other agreement was also related to performance, compensation, and organizational level, though rating patterns differed.     

Message Design Logic and Message Goal Structure Effects on Perceptions of Message Quality in Regulative Communication Situations

O'Keefe has suggested that variations in the goal sets individuals choose to pursue and the form of reasoning they employ are sources of variation in message designs. She offered an analysis of the specific consequences of differences in goals (“message goal structure”) and in forms of reasoning (“message design logics”), and shouted how this analysis could be used to describe systematically functional variations in regulative messages. The study reported in this article explored the consequences of differences in message design logic and goal structures for success in regulative communication situations; Messages that differed in these properties were presented to subjects for evaluation on a number of functionally significant dimensions. Level of message design logic was straightforwardly associated with every type of effectiveness that was assessed. Differences in message goal structures had more selective effects on message evaluations, often involving interactions with the level of construct differentiation of the message evaluator.