Pamela Shockley-Zalabak

Trust in top management and immediate supervisor: The relationship to satisfaction, perceived organizational effectiveness, and information receiving

Utilizing 2068 individuals in 60 organizations in the U.S. and Italy, this study (a) examines the overall relationship between trust in top management and immediate supervisor and overall estimates of satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness, (b) compares the amount of variance in satisfaction and effectiveness that can be explained by trust in top management to the amount of variance explained by trust in immediate supervisor, and (c) clarifies the role of information receiving as a predictor of trust in top management and immediate supervisor. Results of a canonical correlation analysis indicated that the canonical equation explained 49% of the variance in the linear composites (Canonical R = .69, p < .001). Trust in top management was more strongly associated with satisfaction and effectiveness than was trust in immediate supervisor. Tzvo separate multiple regression analyses indicated that after controlling for geographic location of company and type of industry, information received about job and organizational issues uniquely explained 26% of the variance in trust in top management and 13% of the variance in trust in immediate supervisor.

Engaged Scholarship and the Creation of Useful Organizational Knowledge

Engaged scholarship represents one way for making our research relevant to organizational practitioners by bridging the gap between theory and practice. Engaged scholarship is viewed as a form of collaborative inquiry between academics and practitioners that leverages their different perspectives to generate useful organizational knowledge. We explore the possibilities associated with engaged scholarship in three specific contexts: (1) theory-building and research, (2) pedagogy, teaching, and education, and (3) institutional opportunities and constraints as they relate to issues of tenure and promotion and creation of the engaged campus.

Adhering to Organizational Culture What Does It Mean? Why Does It Matter?

As a result of pervasive interest in communication and culture, increasing efforts are being focused on understanding communication/culture relationships and relating them to important organizational processes and outcomes. In an effort to contribute to our understanding, the present study was designed to determine whether thematic rules can be identified as direct reflections of culture and to relate thematic organizational rules to employee values, perceptions of actual and desired message sending and receiving activities, and organizational outcomes, such as perceptions of organizational success and satisfaction with organizational relationships and rewards. The results indicated that rule-value discrepancies, message sending differences, message receiving uncertainty, work satisfaction, and estimations of organizational quality and survival are interrelated and supportive of previously postulated theoretical relationships among values, culture, behaviors, and outcomes.

The center for excellence in oral communication: Integrating communication across the curriculum

There is widespread debate in the communication discipline regarding the appropriateness and efficacy of communication across‐the‐curriculum programs. Currently, pedagogical approaches are in different stages of development and testing at a variety of academic institutions. This article describes the approach taken by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to communication across‐the‐curriculum courses and programs.

Protean places: teams across time and space

Proteanism is about the simultaneous disruption of place and the seeking of a new sense of place. These metaphorical concepts of the fluid yet grounded, the shape shifting and consolidation, and the evolving creation of a sense of place are applied to a discussion of changing organizational forms and communicative processes. These new formings within ever-changing forms are referred to as Protean Places. The protean concepts of sequentiality, simultaneity, and sociality are examined within the context of what we know about changing organizational forms, major communicative processes, and the history of a virtual customer service team organized across time and space. Finally, the metaphor of Protean Places and the case study are utilized to provide direction for future research, theory building, and practical application in organizational communication.

Assessing the Hall Conflict Management Survey

This article profiles one of the first instruments used to assess interpersonal conflict in organizational settings, the Hall Conflict Management Survey (CMS). It demonstrates how the Hall scale reframes Blake and Moutons (1964) original dimensions and tests conflict-handling styles in personal, interpersonal, small group, and intergroup contexts. Through assessing the reported reliabilities of the scale, the article concludes that although the scale is widely used in training, the psychometric properties of the instrument are suspect, inconsistent across studies, and need additional development.

Organizational Communication and Culture: A Study of 10 Italian High- Technology Companies

An important contribution of this research is the testing in international envi ronments of communication and culture models previously developed within U.S.A. high-technology organizations. Specifically, this research demonstrates that relationships among organizational culture themes, employee values, organizational communication activities, and perceptions of a variety of organi zational outcomes are similar but not identical for U.S.A. and European high- technology organizations. Secondly, the research extends previous work by identifying cultural dimensions that are related to a variety of communication processes.

Conflict Avoiders and Compromisers: Toward an Understanding of their Organizational Communication Style

This study examines the organizational communication style of individuals with different conflict-style preferences and the relation-ship of conflict-style preferences to organizational position, employment expectations, and communication satisfaction. The results indicated that individuals with preferences for conflict avoidance and compromising exhibited identifiable organizational communi-cation styles. Furthermore, managers were more likely to use a competitive conflict style than nonmanagers, while those who expected to stay in their present position were more likely to use a compromising style.

Communication Theory and Training Approaches for Multiculturally Diverse Organizations: Have Academics and Practitioners Missed the Connection?

While a number of articles have looked at the importance of multicultural training in the workplace over the past 30 years, there is little concrete agreement that documents the common fundamental elements of a “successful” diversity initiative. A review of the training literature suggests the importance of human communication theory and practice without including important research, methodologies, and practice from the communication discipline. This article examines formal diversity approaches, provides examples from the literature of several successful diversity initiatives in larger organizations, identifies the limited use of communication-based approaches in diversity training, and discusses the importance of integrating communication theory and practice in future training efforts.

Perceived organizational effectiveness, job satisfaction, culture, and communication: Challenging the traditional view

This study challenges the traditional view that organizational culture, relationships, and communication activities precede or produce the outcomes of job satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness. Specifically, the study (a) empirically examines job satisfaction and perceived effectiveness for their potential as important explanatory processes for the outcomes of organizational culture, relationships, and information receiving and sending, and (b) empirically compares the traditional model with the competing conceptualization. Results of a canonical correlation analysis utilizing 2245 individuals in 21 organizations in various parts of the world indicate that 54.8% of the variance in perceptions of culture, relationships, information receiving, and information sending can be explained by job satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness. Results of a nested model comparison of the two models using latent variable path analysis demonstrated that the competing conceptualization is a significantly better fit to the data than the traditional view.