Information Systems Research · 1990 · 242 citations · 33 references
Social SciencesCommunicationOrganizational BehaviorCommunication Research MethodsCommunication TheoryOrganizational CommunicationCommunication Channel SelectionCommunication StrategiesCorporate CommunicationManagerial CommunicationUpward CommunicationWorkplace CommunicationChannel AppropriatenessCommunication ChannelsFeedbackInformation FeedbackInformation QualityOrganizational Communication ChannelsOrganizational Performance AssessmentPerspective-shift Experiences
The study aimed to identify the perceptual dimensions used by 158 managers and staff to differentiate fourteen communication channels and to assess whether communication direction influences these perceptions. The authors examined six candidate criteria—channel accessibility, information quality, immediate feedback, cue variety, personalization, and receiver accessibility—using multidimensional scaling and collected responses for lateral and downward communication directions. The findings revealed a three‑dimension perceptual framework—information feedback, accessibility, and quality—along with a shift from sender‑to‑receiver perspective between lateral and downward communication, underscoring the need to account for direction in research and suggesting that this framework can inform future studies on task/media relationships and organizational performance.
The primary objective of this study was to identify the perceptual dimensions used by 158 managers and their professional staff at a single large manufacturing firm in differentiating fourteen distinct communication channels available in the firm. Six candidate criteria for differentiating these channels were examined (channel accessibility, information quality, immediate feedback, cue variety, personalization, and receiver accessibility) using multidimensional scaling. A secondary objective involved assessing whether communication direction influenced perceptions. Responses were obtained for two intraorganizational communication directions: lateral and downward. Results indicated that these individuals applied a perceptual framework involving three dimensions: information feedback, accessibility, and quality. Further, a perspective shift from the “message sender” to the “message receiver” was observed in moving from lateral to downward communication. The observations of directional differences demonstrate the inappropriateness of either ignoring communication direction in research designs and of directly transferring research models and instruments that pertain to one communication direction to another direction. Taken together, these results may prove helpful in developing a richer theoretical basis for exploring task/media relationships, which in turn may lead to future research findings providing recommendations for improving individual and organizational performance.
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