Mark L. Knapp

Measuring Interpersonal Conflict in Organizations: Where Do We Go from Here?

This critique indicts conflict style literature for focusing on disagreements rather than incompatibilities, for downplaying the role of interdependence between parties in assessing interpersonal conflicts, and for failing to cast interpersonal conflict within an organizational system. This article also questions the exhaustiveness and representativeness of the two-dimensional models that form the five styles. It argues for reframing communication to include nonverbal and contradictory messages, multiple meanings, linkages between message tactics and strategic behavior, and inconsistencies between intentions and communicative tactics as conflict develops. Finally, it argues for contingency and political models of organizing to guide researchers in selecting appropriate variables and models to study interpersonal conflicts.

The construct of intent in interpersonal communication

This paper discusses three perspectives of intentionality—the encoder, decoder, and interactional—relevant to issues in interpersonal communication. Each perspective provides a different way of both conceptualizing and researching intentionality. The encoder perspective examines various ways in which intentionality manifests itself within human consciousness while the decoder perspective is primarily concerned with the way in which interactants attribute intentions to one another. Finally, the interactional perspective argues that intent manifests itself as part of a negotiated process between interactants and therefore encompasses both the individual encoder and decoder orientations.

The interactive framing of play in adult conversations

Drawing upon the theory (developed by Bateson and by Goffman) of play as a metacommunicative frame created interactively, this study examined how adults frame play through their messages and behaviors. Interactants signalled play through such messages as overt invitations, nonverbal cues, abrupt topic changes, and outrageous or put‐on utterances. The nature of these messages led to different types of episodes labelled as play with a partner, play for a partner, and play at a partner. Often the signalling of play is incomplete, or “taken‐for‐granted” by participants. Implications for future research on play, metacommunication, and interpersonal interactions are discussed.

Electronic bumper stickers: The content and interpersonal functions of messages attached to e-mail signatures

The two-phase study reported here examined the content and communication function served by electronic bumper stickers (EBSs). EBSs consist of the sayings that are included in an e-mail signature file following personal identifiers such as ones name, phone number, and postal address. In the first phase, 334 EBSs were gathered and content analyzed into one of five message categories. In order of frequency (greatest to smallest frequency) they were: wisdom, humor, advice, religious, and socio-political commentary. In the second phase, open-ended responses from 134 EBS users were coded into one of six motives for interpersonal communication (Rubin et al., 1988). The relationship between ones motive for using an EBS and the content of ones EBS was not statistically significant. The implications of EBSs and e-mail use for mediated communication competence are considered.

Communication Paradoxes and the Maintenance of Living Relationships with the Dying

Analysis of communication patterns in the face of dying stresses the presence of contradictory and interrelated factors. Issues of contact (involved/uninvolved), feelings (hide/reveal), and the handling of information (exercise control/abdicate control) are discussed as dialectical tensions that need to be assessed from the perspective of multiactor involvement.

Shall ye know the truth? Student odysseys in truth‐seeking

Understanding truth is central to both the mission of higher education and the process of communicating effectively. But truth may also be difficult to intellectually and pragmatically grasp. To find out how our students were dealing with truth, we asked them to interview professors and others with advanced degrees. Despite interviewees who were often equivocal, ambiguous, and contradictory in their responses, our students seemed remarkably able to understand what was happening. Rather than lose faith, students emerged from this exercise even more determined to negotiate the complexities of “truth”; for themselves, recognizing it as more journey than destination.