CONTENT IN A BUREA’UCRATIC sen-me *

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thesis entitled

COMMUNICATION ROLES AND COMMUNICATION CONTENT
IN A BUREAUCRATIC SETTING

presented by

Donald MacDonald

has been accepted towards fulfillment ' *
of the requirements for

Ph .0. degree in Communicafi on

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Major professor

 

DateJanuary I3, |97I

0-7639

ABSTRACT

COMMUNICATION ROLES AND COMMUNICATION CONTENT
IN A BUREAUCRATIC SETTING

BY

Donald MacDonald

The communication structure of an organization determines, in
part, how organizational functions are carried out. This structure
may be isomorphic with the expectations represented by policy docu-
ments and the organization chart, or may be sharply divergent from
managerial expectations that decisional authority and communication
centers should coincide. Knowledge of these relationships can be
useful in system analysis and planning.

This study investigated the communication structure of the
headquarters staff of a federal agency, disregarding formal channels
or offices. Three content-functional areas of communication were
examined: production, innovation, and maintenance.

Data were obtained by: (1) a Communication Questionnaire
requesting a respondent to provide demographic and self-perception
data on a number of communication-related issues; (2) a Personal
Contact Checklist, in which a respondent hdicated with whom and how
frequently he communicated in each content-functional area; and

(3) a Personal Contact Questionnaire, in which a respondent indicated

perceptions of a frequent communication contact--on the same issues
about.which he had given selfiperceptions.

Analyses were conducted on the basis of reported reciprocated
frequent contacts. Considering only reciprocated linkages, communica-
tion networks were constructed and two communication-functional roles
identified in each content-functional area. Liaisons, defined as
analogues to articulation points of graph theory, constituted the
role of particular theoretic interest. Nonliaisons, who conduct most
of their work communication in relatively stable cliques, were compared
with liaisons on several dimensions.

It was predicted that liaisons would be perceived by their
frequently-contacted nonliaison co~workers, and would perceive them-
selves, to have more: (1) communication contacts in the system:

(2) generalized influence: (3) production-related information:
(4) non-production-related information: and (5) potential control over
the flow of work-related messages.

Other hypotheses predicted that liaisons: (1) who were seen
as high in message flow control would also be seen as influential:

(2) would perceive the organization's communication system as more
"open,': (3) would be more satisfied with communications from top
management: and (4) would be more likely to hold formal supervisory
office if identified in terms of production communication than if
identified in the other functional networks.

Respondents were all of the professional-level employes on the
agency's headquarters staff. This census made tests of significance

inapproPriate: therefore, a statistic was devised to control for

different response ranges from index to index and any difference as
predicted was taken to support an hypothesis. A product moment
correlation coefficient described the relationship between message
flow control and perceived influence.

Twenty-one liaisons were identified in the production communica-
tion network, but only five for innovation and two for maintenance
communication. With this imbalance, the relationship between formal
office and the liaison role could not be tested directly. However,
two-thirds of all liaisons were found to hold such positions.

Nonliaisons perceived their liaison contacts to have more
conmunication contacts, more generalized influence, and slightly
more production-related information. They also perceived liaisons to
have somewhat more non-production information: however, liaisons held

the same view of their nonliaison contacts. Liaisons were perceived

 

to have more potential message flow control.

Liaisons seen as having high message flow control were also
seen as higher in organizational influence. As predicted, liaisons
saw the communication system as more "open," and were more satis-
fied with comunication from top management.

The findings suggest that knowledge of liaison location should
be important to management, since some were ng£_in supervisory posts.
Top managers apparently see production as much more important than
innovation or systememaintenance functions, but there are cracks in
the system. Inequities between transmission and feedback loops were
described, with the implication that management might well give

additional attention to the feedback process, upward and downward.

COMMUNICATION ROLES AND COMMUNICATION CONTENT
IN A BUREAUCRATIC SETTING

BY

Donald MacDonald

A THESIS

Submitted to

Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR.OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Communication

1970

© Copyright by
DONALD MACDONALD
1970

To Janus

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A career reflects the contributions of many peOple. I owe thanks
to many for the phase of my life that is ended by this dissertation.
Their number is too great and their contributions too varied to all
be listed here, but a few cannot go unrecognized.

Dr. David K. Berlo encouraged me to take up a second career
and sustained me in times of difficult readjustment. He also challenged
me to extend myself to new horizons. Finally, he made possible the pre-
sent study. To him goes special gratitude.

My dissertation director and committee chairman, Dr. R. Vincent
Farace, quietly and unobtrusively led me down the byways of organiza-
tional research as a partner--but teaching all the way. His unflag-
ging good humor and unflappable approach to difficult tasks have made
them easier, and his demands that I examine my assumptions about organi-
zations have forced me to grow even when I did not wish to do so.

The intellectual parent of this dissertation, as of so many
others, was Dr. Eugene Jacobson, of the Department of Psychology. His
breadth and depth of knowledge and constant ability to excite intel-
lectual ferment have been the most stimulating forces in my graduate
education.

Dr. Verling C. Troldahl, teacher, adviser, antagonist and friend,
refused to let enthusiasm substitute for rigor in or out of the class-

room. It was sometimes painful, but always profitable.

iii

Dr. Max Reindl, El Profesor, became a valued colleague both in
organizational research and in questioning me at every step in my
intellectual develoPment. Graham Kerr served a similar function as
friend, officedmate and colleague.

Fellow researchers on this project, Jerry Buley, Dick Connelly,
Ed Wotring and Peter Mange have assisted more than they may know,
not only with labor, but also with eternal questions.

My wife, Frances, deserves thanks beyond my ability to express:
through eight states, two countries, and 20 "homes," she supported my

goals with quiet solicitude and love.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

LIST OF TABI‘ES O O O O O O O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O C O O Viii
LI ST OF FIGUMS O O O O. O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O 0 O O O O O x

APPENDIX LIST 0 O O O 0 O O O O 0 O 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 129

Chapter
I O INTmDUCTION O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 1
The Stream of History: Previous Research . . . . . . . 6
The mdels O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O 6
The Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Anotl‘ler VIEW"SY8temS o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 11

Structure and Flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Data Gathering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Communication Structure--Report and Observation . . 19
Dimensions of Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

II. RESEARCH CONTEXT AND HYPOTHESES . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Rationale for Components in the Present Study . . . . . 26

The Content of Communication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Variables and Hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Communication Behavior and Personal

Influence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Message Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Perceived System Openness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Satisfaction with the Conlnunication System. . . . . 40

Content and Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Relationships of Content to Position or Role. . . . 43
Significance of Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

III. THE “SEW DESIm O O O O 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O 46

The Study Population. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Generalizability of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . SO
Operationalizing Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Numbers of Communication Contacts . . . . . . . . . 54
Influence in the Organization . . . . . . . . . . . 55

IV.

Possession of Work-Related
Information. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Possession of Non-Production Information
Control Over Message Plow. . . . . . . .
Openness of the Work-Related
Communication System . . . . . . . .
Satisfaction with the Work-Related
Communication System . . . . . . . .
Pretest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Data Collection. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Data Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Sociomatrix. . . . . . . . . . .
Missing Data . . . . . . . . . . .
Hypothesis Evaluation. . . . . . . .

FINDINGS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

General Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sociometric Analysis . . . . . . . . . .
Description of the Population. . . . . .
Sociometric Description. . . . . . .
Demographic Characteristics. .
Data Sources for Hypothesis Testing.
Scale Analysis for Hypothesis Tests. . .
Tests of Hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . .
Number of Communication Contacts . .
Influence in the Organization. . . .

Possession of Work-Related Information
Possession of Non-Production Information

Control of Message Flow. . . . . . .
System Openness. . . . . . . . . . .
Communication Satisfaction . . . . .
Content and Communication Role . . .

CONQJUS ION O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O O O
S ‘1er O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Suggestions for Further Research . . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

APPENDIX

vi

Page

56
56
57

57

58
59
61
64
64
64
65

66

66
69
82
82
84
88
88
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
100

102
102
109
115
120

128

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

LIST OF TABLES

Frequency distribution of contact nominations at the
daily or more often levels by 179 reSpondents. . . . .

Grouped frequency distribution for contact nominations
at all frequencies by 179 respondents. . . . . . . . .

Frequency of non-response to Personal Contact
Questionnaire items, from 177 respondents. . . . . . .

Reciprocated contact groupings by content-functional
area prior to segment analysis . . . . . . . . . . . .

Frequency of reciprocated contacts by content-
functional area matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Reciprocated contact communication groups, by content-
functional area, after segment analysis. . . . . . . .

Categorization of tentative liaison persons within the
production communication matrix by contact description

Communication contact choices made by liaison and
nonliaison respondents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Duration of employment in the agency (at
any level 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O O O O 0

Previous military service of respondents . . . . . . .

Inter-item correlations for the index of number of
communication contacts (self-perception) . . . . . . .

Inter-item correlations for the index of number of

communication contacts (other perception). . . . . . . .

Inter-item correlations for the index of organizational

infl‘lence (861 f‘perceptiOHS) o o o o o o o e o e o o e

Inter-item correlations for the index of organizational
influence (Other-perceptions, o o e o o o e o o o e o o 0

vii

Page

67

68

68

73

74

77

79

83

86

87

90

90

91

91

Table

15.

16.

Page

Inter-item correlations for the index of communication
system openness (self-perceptions). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Inter-item correlations for the index of communication system
satisfaction (self-perceptions) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

viii

LI ST OF FIGURES

Figure Page
1. Graph Theory concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

2. Distribution of matrix combinations into a
two-bY'tWO contingency table 0 o o o e o o o o o o o o o o o 44

3. Frequency polygon for choices received by
liaison and nonliaison persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

ix

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Theories of organization, as well as theories about organizations,
consistently pay obeisance to the importance of communication in human
social systems. Each theory, however, views the nature, functions,
and effects of communication somewhat differently.

Two theoretical points of particular relevance to the analysis
and design of social systems are role theory and systems theory.

Roles designate positions delineated by sets of expectations and behaviors,
whereas systems theory examines where roles occur and how they evolve
in the complex of relationships that describe operating organizations.
Cadwallader (1968: p. 438) notes:

From the point of view of cybernetics, any large scale

formal social organization is a communication network.

It is assumed that these can display learning and in-

novative behavior if they possess certain necessary

facilities (structure) and certain necessary rules of

operation (content).

Historically, a more usual view of the organization is projected
by the organizational chart; the hierarchy of positions, rights and
functions implied by the ”chart” view of social organizations tends to
become reified together with an implied rigidity of communication

channels. Buckley (1968: p. xxiv) explains the differences resulting

when the organization is perceived as an open system:

The dethronement of material substance as the only reality,
the bedrock, has shifted the focus to the fact of organiza-
tion per se as the more fundamental problem for study. This,
in turn, means a shift from statics . . . summativity, and a
one-way causality to dynamics, process, emergence, and
complex mutual interactions and feedback cycles. It is not
the nature of the parts alone that are basic to any whole,
but the way they are interrelated that gives them their
characteristic proPerties.
Thus, the bridge is made from a particularistic psychological view of
single personalities in environments to the relationships among indi-
viduals or groups in varying social settings over time. The way is
opened for consideration of the effects of structure upon organizational
members and the effects of members upon structure.
Communication is seen by systems-oriented students of human inter-
action as the glue that holds social systems together. What is glued
is roles, as Miller indicates (1955: p. 515):
Communications make feasible complex organizations of
systems. . . . A given individual or behaving subsystem
can, of course, be part of several systems at once,
equilibrating at least partially with all of them. To
deal with this fact the concept of 'role' has been
developed in social psychology.
Most of the research contributing theoretically or methodologically to
the present study requires application of systems concepts and explication
of role concepts.
Among the systems concepts of greatest relevance in terms of the
present study are those of boundary and structure.
Boundary is usually defined by inclusion or exclusion of members, ‘
depending on the nature and level of inquiry into the system. A person
may be a student--in a given discipline, at a specific institution, or

a member of some other organization. In each instance the criteria for

inclusion are different and therefore the boundaries are different.

3
Miller's description (1955: p. 516) is apt, for it introduces informa-
tion into the criteria:
How does one locate a boundary? . . . One decides upon
the order of magnitude of difference in rate or exchange
of information or energy which one will accept as indication
of boundary.
In other words, boundaries are set somewhat arbitrarily, and are
concerned with levels of permeability to information or other energy.
Structure, on the other hand, is seen as more specifically relational
in nature. In Buckley's terms (1968: p. 493:
Interrelations may be mutual or unidirectional, linear, non-
linear, or intermittent, and varying in degrees of causal
efficacy or priority. The particular kinds of more or less
stable interrelationships of components that become established
at any time constitute the particular structure of the system
at that time.

Both of these concepts, structure and boundary, are central to the

present study and its progenitors in method and theory.

Roles are important to the study of human social systems in that
after identifying constituent elements of a system one can describe and
analyze the multiple relational effects deriving from change in any of
the elements. The "sent" and "received" roles postulated by Katz and
Kahn (1966: pp. 174-182) in explicating organizational relationships
are bases for human interaction in relatively stable collectivities.
Jacobson, Charter and Lieberman (1951: pp. 18-27) suggest that
analyses of role prescriptions, behaviors and relationships may enable
researchers to predict attitudes, perceptions and behavior of system
members, especially as these variables affect the success, failure,

adaptability or rigidity of the organization. And they add (1951: p. 19):

People in organizations tend to have relatively uniform
expectations about the behavior of persons in various

positions and the behavior of these persons is inter-
preted in terms of such expectations.

Roles are usually thought of in the formal context of office
incumbents, because of the formulations of Weber and the establishment
of bureaus in all political-social entities. Roles require that incumr
bents be responsible for agreed-on behaviors and that the relationships
between roles be more or less stable-~thus the ideas of structure and role
are intimately related. Weiss (1956: p. 5) comments on this relative
stability :

The over-all system of coordinative relationships changes
only slowly in the course of ordinary events, and it is
in part this stability which is emphasized by the phrase
'operational structure.‘ . . . The segmented functional
activities of an organization are integrated by means of
the organizational structure.

One danger that inheres in viewing an organization as the network
of social relationships that enable it to conduct its business lies
in regarding the described relationships as the structure of the organi—
zation, or as the necessary conditions for survival. Such a view is
particularly likely if one applies the concepts of biological systems
uncritically to the socially contrived systems that we label organiza-
tions. As Katz and Kahn (1966: p. 108) conclude:

Organizations are less integrated than biological
systems: their patterns of c00perative interrela-
tionships also represent constrained adjustments of
conflict and struggle. . . . The implication of this
model is that organizations are always in process of
change and that the constancy is exaggerated by the
fact that the verbal label for describing an organiza-
tion remains the same even when the processes of
organization do not.

A plethora of books and articles in the past few years purport to

analyze organizations as open systems. Many seek enlarged application of

EDP and computer techniques to production information management: others
are specific extensions of decision theory. Among the many the present
author has examined, only Katz and Hahn integrate open systems theory,
the study of human roles, and the functions of communication in organiza-
tions. These authors perceive the organization as comprising energic and
information systems; the latter has the function of controlling the for-
mer (1966: p. 223):

Communication-the exchange of information and the trans-

mission of meaning--is the very essence of a social

system or an oeganization. The input of physical energy

is dependent upon information about it, and the input

of human energy is made possible through communicative

acts.

Despite an emerging realization that organizations consist
largely of patterned networks and flows of communicative relationships
(Dorsey, 1957), the bulk of research concerning organizational communica-
tion is not amenable to a systems approach.

Given the two aspects of organizational communication systems--
structure and flow--the present study proceeds from the position that
analysis of structure logically precedes analysis of flow. This approach
might be seen as an analogy to a school building: the structure affects
what will occur in the building, but is not identical with what will
occur.

Therefore, organizational structure is examined from the point of
view of communication linkages that members perceive concerning three
aspects of their work environments: production, innovation, and
system maintenance. The communication roles, or functions, are defined
by the number, direction, and nature of communication contacts that a

person has with other members of the organization. Different communica-

tion-functional roles are compared as to their occurrence in the three

content-functional categories, receipt of work-related communications,
control of message flow, perceptions of communication climate Open-
ness, and satisfaction with the organization's management communication

system.

The Stream of History:A Previous Research

 

A common complaint by scholars who attempt to synthesize
research about communication in organizations is that there is a dearth
of studies of "live" organizations. Various rationales have been
advanced, including the imprecision associated with field studies and
experiments, the cost factors involved in constructing experimental
organizations for study, theoretical constraints, and others. At the
present stage of research development one probably could assemble a
maximum of 100 studies whose findings are based on empirical data
applied to message content, message flow, perceptual differences between
individuals or groups in organizations, and role correlates. Much of
this body of research is severely limited, given a view of organiza-
tions as open systems and the function of communication as being to
explicate and facilitate relationships within or between systems.

One of the limitations is implicit in all organizational research--
dependence upon theoretical views of man. The concern with communication
in many settings emerged from an hypothesized Rational Man, while a

lesser emphasis grew out of Marxist social economics.

The Madels :

 

The "classic" theory, growing directly from Weber's analyses

of bureaucracy (Weber, 1947), is also called the "machine“ theory.

Its conceptual primogenitor is Adam Smith's Economic Man, who was aware

 

of all relevant variables entering into any decision, and who rationally
concludes all agreements to maximize his own best interests. In this
approach to organizations, as Leavitt indicates (1965: p. 1146):

One improves performance of tasks [the manager does]

by clarifying and redefining the jobs of people and

setting up clearly defined relationships among these

jobs, with authority, responsibility, and coordination

mechanisms spelled out.
A modification of this position is found in the work of such organiza-
tional engineers as Sayles (1958), who attempt to modify peoPle by
means of modifying work structure, in order to improve task performance.
The assembly line is an example of such modification, designed in part
to control the interactions of organizational members: machines deter-
mine how people will and/or may interact. A person is regarded mainly
as a mechanism to be fed orders and directives: the single goal is
efficient production.

A different theoretical position, but one which still limits the
nature of research, is what Leavitt (1965: p. 1148) refers to as the
"communication network": it is based on laboratory studies of communica-
tion, structure, and task performance (Bavelas, 1950: Shaw, 1954:
Mulder, 1960). In this model the communication structure is imposed upon
the participants explicitly, being varied according to the nature of
the task involved or the hypothesis being tested. The expectations of
organizational behavior emerging from the many studies of this genre are
that highly structured, centralized communication leads to more

efficient production when the task is repetitive and relatively simple,

but that a looser structure permitting wide use of a variety of channels

is more productive under conditions of uncertainty, or when tasks require
creativity or are relatively complex.

Much alike, although not identical, are what Leavitt describes
(1965: p. 1152) as the "people" and "power equalization” approaches:

Historically, these people approaches moved through

at least two phases. The first was essentially

manipulative . . . How can we get people to do what

we want them to do? . . . Moreover, much of the early

work on 'overcoming resistance to change' was still

responsive to the same manipulative question.
Later, he writes, other approaches to changing people who are in organi-
zations were developed, but the emphasis remains on changing people
first, then changing the organization.

Mayo's dedication to democratic ideals led to the Human Relations
emphases concerning the effects of cross pressures upon employes and the
importance of affect within formal social systems. It would be super-
fluous to summarize the Hawthorne Studies (Roethlisberger and Dickson,
1939) here, but it should be noted that through them a view of the
worker evolved as 22£_highly rational, 225 aware of all relevant
variables, and possessed of a psychological approach to his ”own best
interests.” Therefore, the Human Relations model suggests that more
channels be instituted for upward, downward and lateral communication
and that all employes be encouraged to use them. Research interest
centers upon superordinate-subordinate relationships, primarily in
psychological terms, and assumes a high value for what is described
as ”communication openness.”

The ”power equalization” approaches, largely identified with

Likert (1961), have much in common with the Human Relations school,

but concentrate on the locus and level of decision-making. Partici-
pative management, in one form or another, is their hallmark. Multi-
channel communication is again called for, but more carefully controlled
and with increased emphasis upon frequent measurement of the variables
between system input and output.

The idea of an Open system is not entirely exclusive of the con-
cepts contained in the Human Relations and "power equalization" approaches;
rather, it complements them by viewing each variable as interdependent
with all others (Likert, 1961; Katz and Kahn, 1966: Cadwallader, 1968).
Recent exponents of the systems approach, such as Blake and Mouton
(1964), emphasize a pragmatic balance between concern for people and
product, demanding evidence in either case for relationships between ex-

penditure and organizational return.

The Research:

 

Where the point of departure for communication research is the
"classic” model with its mechanistic assumptions, one may trace messages
across hierarchical levels or test employe awareness or understanding
of specific messages or classes of messages. Such experiments as
Dahle's (1954) reveal that certain channel combinations are generally
more effective and that certain material is more effective in one channel
than in another.

Some studies associated with the "classicw'model do attempt to
relate the perceptions of one organizational group to the perceptions
of another group (Odiorne, 1954), often concluding that a message-
source's expectations about message effects are wide of the mark,

especially when the characteristics of individuals in the groups are

801

10

different. Gustad‘s study of college faculties and staffs (1962) is
cast in this mold and arrives at just such conclusions.

By combining scores into aggregate indices on some variables,
Freshley (1955) is able to establish that there are separate, although
overlapping, group and individual effects on attitudes supervisors hold
toward the functions of communication in organizations. Blau (1960)
carries this concept further by use of an analysis of variance technique,
but still is constrained to the formal organization.

While Wickesberg (1967) addresses himself to analysis of ”commu-
nication networks," his assumptions and method do not permit him to
specify network membership or the relationships between certain organi-
zation members. Two of his findings are significant in the present
context: a majority of his respondents reported themselves as concerned
mainly with a single functional type of communication: and Wickesberg
(1967: p. 257)1 noted that "individuals move wherever in the organi-
zation advice, counsel, information and expertise may be found.”
Communication roles are explicit in the first finding and recognition
of informal communication's role in task attainment is implicit in the
second.

Distortion of upward communication is probed in Read's (1962)
study of supervisors in a large commercial organization. He establishes
that upwardly mobile executives, and those who don't trust their super-

visors, filter information in special ways as they report upward. In

 

1. Wickesberg considers: information transmission, instruction, problem-
solving, approvals, and "scuttlebutt."

11

similar vein, Triandis (1959a, b) explores the relative effectiveness
of communication in boss-employe pairs when their cognitive orientations
are similar or disparate, finding greater effectiveness when they think

alike about jobs and people.

Another View-Systems

The studies enumerated share two kinds of theoretic and methodolo-
gical limitations in not adapting to the structural and processual
aSpects of systems theory. Specifically, they encourage the researcher
to conceive of spearate or separable organizational components, usually
to be separately analyzed. The theoretic approach advocated in the
present study avoids some of the former class of limitations and sets
the stage for treatment of the latter class.

In part, these limitations may be attributed to a lack of
familiarity with concepts of relationality in communication. When
one moves from the molecular “member" level to dyads, triads, groups, or
whole organizations as units of analysis, and when one is concerned with
the relationships among the units or their members, then the ways in
which data are gathered and the questions to which analysis is applied
in the cited studies will not provide relevant observations.

Among the clearest exceptions are those studies in whose tradition
the present investigation follows. Research in the machine theory
tradition conceives of communication between formally prescribed roles,
and asks questions about communication between or among classes rather
than among relatively role-free individuals. The sociometric approach

applied to organizational communication by Jacobson and Seashore (1951)

12
permits roles to emerge from process, in terms of some set of Operating
functions rather than by fiat. In short, this organizational model
assumes that an adequate description of communication relationships--
hence of organizational structure-~wi11 not emerge when only formal rela-
tionships or positions are considered. It suggests defining "what is"
by inquiring how people perceive that they communicate.
Organizational roles are constructed from the resulting networks

of relationships, whereupon they may be compared with formal roles or
personal or group attributes. Thus, one may generate hypotheses that
probably will not be derived from other procedures.1 This view is sys-
temic in that it requires the researcher to focus on some of the variables
that Cadwallader (1968: p. 439) posits as the thrust of cybernetics:

A cybernetics model would focus the investigator's attention

on . . . (l) the quantity and variety of information

stores in the system: (2) the pattern of the subsystems:

(3) the structure of the communication networks: (4) the

number, location, and function of negative feedback loops: . . .
When one begins to examine networks and patterns, the nature of the re-
search problem is changed from that posed by the machine theory. The

concepts from.which data are obtained, as well as the application of

analyses that may be performed, are different.

Structure and Flow:
Before we examine methods as they apply to analysis of communica-
tion in organizations, we must define structure and flow as aspects of

such communication.

 

1. Selltiz, st, 21,, (1959) present a three-step approach to social
research: (1) explore the system to provide empirical bases for other
research: (2) describe the system and define its characteristics; and
(3) test hypotheses generated by the first two steps.

13
When an attempt is made to identify the ”structure" of communica-

tion relationships in a group, a formidable task is encountered: how
to separate structure from process in a living system (Schwartz, 1968:
p. 21). Although this appears to be a standing problem in organizational
communication research, Etzioni (1961: pp. 137-141) provides a point
of entry:

A number of studies relate the amount and nature of

communication flow to structure of organizational units.

. . . Organization is pursued in the social organiza-

tion tradition: and structure comes close tg_what‘!g_
call communication networks. [Italics mine.]

 

 

Yet another approach to defining structure in terms of communica—
tion is made by Dorsey (1957: p. 84), who sets forth the basic elements
of his network model:

The net . . . consists physically of a complex of decision
centers and channels which seek, receive, select, transmit,
subdivide, classify, store, recall, recombine, and
retransmit information. . . . 222.225 i§_formed by the
arrangement 2; decision centers and channels into subsystems
g£_patterns of varying degrees of stability.

 

 

 

cessing gf information. . . . [Italics mine.]

 

Schwartz (1968: pp. 8-16) adds to the network view of organiza-
tional communication, commenting on the positive function of regarding
communication networks, first, without regard to the formal constraints
of authority, prescribed function, or spatial relation. In other words,
he would observe behavior or obtain reports of behavior from organization
members, and use the data to construct a ”map" of the organization.

Only after determining how people g2 interact would he consider normative
or prescriptive variables. The sociometric questions asked in the style
he (and the present study) follows permit construction of a more complete
map of coulnunication relationships than is possible with those asked in

the studies considered on pages 14-18 below.

14

Structure enters into the conceptualization of communication flow
by defining the position at which a message transaction takes place.

It is prior to process. The methods for delineating flow are different
from those most useful in making clear the communication structure of
a social system (see below).

Structure, then, will be taken to mean the functional relationships
among discernible parts of a system (Miller, 1965a: p. 349). £3551
refers to the movement of messages through channels in the organization,
emanating from and directed toward role-positions. Structure is inves-
tigated in the present study: flow is not, although one study discussed

here provides a partial "map" of communication flow.

Data Gathering:

 

One may compare several methods as they apply to the explication
of structure or flow.

Several observers have commented that the technique of the sample
survey is not well suited to the study of organizations, for surveys
”atomize" the system into supposedly independent elements by more or
less random selection of observation units, ignoring the social context
that is central to the concept of ”organization“ (Blau and Scott,

1962: p. 18: E. Katz, 1960: p. 439: Schwartz, 1968: pp. 9-10). Perhaps
the clearest statement of the problem is made by Coleman (1958: p. 28):
The individual remained the unit of analysis. . . .
The very techniques mirrored this well: samples
were random, never including (except by accident)
two persons who were friends: interviews were with
one individual, as an atomistic entity. . . . As

a result, the kinds of substantive problems on
which such research focused tended to be problems

 

15

of 'aggregate psychology,‘ that is, within-

individual problems, and never problems concerned

with relations between people.
While a type of survey instrument is applied in the present study,
the interpersonal behaviors elicited are such that they show the relation-
ships among peOple and form a base for the study of message flow and the
generalized process of formation, maturation, and disintegration of
centers of communication.

The strength of statistically valid samples is that they enable
the researcher to generalize beyond the limits of the cases involved.

When one observes a non-random sample of members of the social unit,
findings may be discussed only in terms of that unit: to generalize would
require that the social units serve as entities to be sampled, just as
people or households are sampled in survey research.

This illustrates the peculiarity of the present approach to
organizational research. To describe the communication structure of a
small or medium-size organization, one must conduct a census of the
members. Such a method of "sampling” imposes limitations on data handling
and on size of organization studied, because of the cost to observer and
observed. One may use snowball sampling (a form of cluster sample)
when the population is large enough, but to date little or no use of
such techniques has been reported in organizational communication research.
It would require selecting a random sample of respondents, determining
their communication contacts, and then ”mapping” the communication
structure for each resultant cluster of respondents.

Other methods for selecting units of observation have been devised

to describe the structure and flow of communication. Schwartz summarizes

16

the field well, describing how he approached the selection of a research
tool (1968: pp. 8-9):

Four general data-collection methods appear in the
literature: (1) sociometric techniques (e.g.,
Jacobson and Seashore, 1951), (2) tracing of a
given message after it diffuses through the organi-
zation (e.g., Davis, 1953a, b), (3) the communi-
cation log or audit wherein a census of messages is
recorded by members over a given period of time
(e.g., Burns, 1954), and (4) timed random sampling
of messages (e.g., Hinrichs, 1964). . . . Problems
in operationalization due to content heterogeneity
and noncontinuity of transaction are inherent in
each method.

The movement of messages probably has been analyzed most thoroughly
by Davis (1953a, b), who devised a research tool labeled Episodic Com-

munication Channels in_0rganizations (ECCO) to trace the diffusion of

 

 

specific messages through the target population. By studying the paths
of a sufficient sample of messages, the researcher can determine the
stability of routes followed and can infgg a partial communication
structure (as it relates to the message sample). The description of
flow is more surely established than the nature of structure by his
techniques. Other problems arise with this approach: the method by
which messages are generated, and protection from premature diffusion are
among them. Davis does not describe clearly how the insertion point is
determined for messages--a situation which would be ameliorated were the
full communication structure first elucidated, together with its emergent
communication-functional roles.

Communication logs have been used in several studies (Burns, 1954:
Walton, 1962: Farace and Morris, 1969). The method consists of having
the subjects maintain running records of all their communication contacts

over some period of time. The contacts can then be mapped to indicate

17

the total network of relationships. Obtrusiveness is one major weakness
of the method: respondents may tire of maintaining the logs for
extended periods, and the act of record-keeping may affect communication,
depending on the setting and the communication content.1 Of lesser
concern is sample adequacy when messages are considered as units, for
there are several available means to randomize at the message, individual
or time period levels.2

Because of the limited "map" of communication structure produced by
ECCO, and because of the cumbersome nature and Obtrusiveness of the com-
munication log approach, the present investigation turns to other sources
for a research tool.

The remaining techniques that appear to be applicable to groups of
a significant size lie in the field of sociometry as modified from
Moreno's use of affective choices to a wider range of application
(Torrance, 1955). This mode of describing the communication structure
of an organization permits the use of several manipulative and statistical
techniques falling under several theoretical orientations.

For the purpose of the present study, the "connectedness” of system

members (Festinger, £2, 21,, 1950: Milgram, 1969: Shotland, 1969:

 

1. Early in 1969 the 0.8. Attorney General proposed that government
attorneys keep minute-by-minute logs of their communication activities,
as a ”time-budgeting" device: the resultant outcry concerning invasion
of privacy squelched the plan. Similar objections were raised by a
small number of respondents during the Farace—Morris study of a Residen-
tial College, in which the present investigator took an active part.

2. One suggestion is to use small radio receivers, such as hospital
staffs commonly wear, to signal when interactions should be recorded.
Without some "cueing" method, there is danger of encountering respondents
who let contacts "pile up" for a period of time, attempting to remember
times and details: Burns experienced difficulty in this way with one
executive in his study.

18

Guimaraes, 1969) will not be pursued. While these studies do address
themselves to the communication structure of social systems, they con-
centrate on multilink potential influence channels inappropriate to the
present concerns, such as communication-functional roles. Rather,

concepts of separation, of network decompoSition, are used to form the

 

bases for identification of communication roles.

Using sociometric techniques, Jacobson and Seashore (1951) have
investigated the use of communication relationships to define organi-
zational structure and to assess communication's effect on the attitudes
and behaviors of members. Weiss (1956) is more interested in defining
the structural and functional aspects of the over-all organization.
Jackson (1959) takes ”social worth" as his principal substantive concern,
utilizing several of the techniques initiated by Jacobson and Seashore.
Marvick (1958) chooses to examine the importance of consensus among
organization members as to the perceived ”power centers” of the
organization, and the implications those perceptions have for the output
of the organization.

Schwartz (1968) follows the Jacobson, Seashore, and Weiss leads
in describing three communication roles defined by communication contact--
liaison, nonliaison, and isolate. He then delves into some liaison role
attributes in one organization, testing a series of hypotheses about the
salience, power, and communication functions perceived in incumbents
of the role.

Each of these sociometrically oriented studies asks a variant of
the question, "To whom do you talk about ---?' Given an individual's

responses, his communication contacts can then be counted. By analyzing

19

reciprocated contacts, and questions asked about them, one can determine
direction of initiation and influence and confirm the respondent's
perceptions of dyadic interaction. When people are grouped according
to the nature of their communication contacts, then the correlates of
such "groupness" can be examined and the linkage points between groups
can be specified. These procedures will be followed in the present

study.

Communication Structure--Report and Observation:

Communication is behavior, often the only behavior that can be
observed to assess attitude, attraction and other internal-state human
conditions. But investigators are limited in how they may obtain
communication data. Redding (1966: p. 78) lists the following ways of
describing a Specific communication event:

(1) The event as perceived by the sender,

(2) The event as perceived by the receiver,

(3) The event as perceived by some third party,
acting as a disinterested observer,

(4) The effect of the communication event [often
through other perceptual reports], and

(5) The degree to which senders and receivers . . .
report satisfaction with the given communi-
cation event or program.

 

While one might add a sixth mode, agreement between participants that

a certain communication event occurred, the common thread remains
perception. Burns (1954) commented that his respondents reported what they
thought they were doing, and Katz and Kahn (1966: p. 177) state the

situation even more generally:

20
In the immediate sense, the individual responds
not to the objective organization . . . but to
that representation of it which is in his psycho-
logical environment.

One may assess perceptions by more than one method for a single
event, attempting to increase response validity. Fortunately, there is
other evidence of the reality of the perceptual report. Goetzinger and
Valentine (1962) tested communication log reports against direct obser-
vation of respondents and found "satisfactory correlation." Summarizing
several other studies of the relationships between the reported and the
observed, Videbeck and Bates (1959: p. 7) write:

Gibb cites two studies in which group member identifi-

cations of leaders are substantially comparable to

identifications made by independent observers. Bates

and Cloyd found that the 'ranks of members based upon

the volume of interaction as recorded by the Bales

method and rank orders derived from summarized ratings

of group members' correlated within the range of .88

to .94.
On the basis of such evidence the present investigator assumes that res-
pondent reports of communication contact, when reciprocated or validated

by other reported data, are sufficiently reliable for the analyses in-

tended.

Dimensions of Relationships:

Since the systems approach to organizational communication avoids
initial consideration of hierarchy, concepts such as upward communication,
downward communication, diagonal communication, and lateral communica-
tion lose much of their meaning. A complete model of a communication
system would have several dimensions. One provides a trace of a single
dyadic relationship: for more than two people, two dimensions are required

for a record of contacts. Schwartz (1968: pp. 20-21) suggests that

21

member attributes would comprise a third dimension. Time would be a
fourth permitting the description of process.

An electronics technician can read a wiring diagram and decipher
the channels that energy must follow, the capacity of each channel, the
amount and location of resistance and other characteristics of the system
represented. He can predict the system's operation. In a similar manner
the communication researcher attempts to construct a “map" which may be
interpreted to show the presence or absence of communication contacts be-
tween system members in dyads, in groups, and as a total system. He hopes
to observe the direction of communication flow, its frequency and content,
and other relevant information. In each case he assumes some system 2227
bility, so that he can predict the system's operation within some limits.

If the communication structure is as stable as Weiss and others
(see page 4) suggest, the map provides a descriptive base from which
other analyses can proceed. If the structure changes over time (see page
5), then some method for detecting and measuring the significance of the
change should be employed. One can detect the change, but at this time
one cannot accurately assay its significance.

To illustrate, consider a hypothetical case. A group of ten people
is questioned at Time 1 and again at Time 2 to determine their communica-
tion relationships. On the basis of the members' responses, a two-
dimensional map is drawn, showing who communicates with whom. The two
maps are different, so the investigator asks whether they are variants
of a single network or constitute two networks.

Again, consider the same group, measured at Time 3 and at Time 4.

In this case, however, the map appears not to change. Then the

22

investigator finds that between Time 3 and Time 4 several group members
left and were replaced. Is the network the “same" for the two measure-
ments?

Today we have neither conceptual nor mathematical means to answer
these questions satisfactorily. We can say that the two groups are
different, or that a group does change over time, but we cannot express
the statistical significance of the changes. The crux of the statistical
problem is that we have been unable to assess the probabilities that
each person will communicate with each other person in a social system,
and therefore have not derived a theoretical distribution to use in
applying known tests of difference (Davis, 1953a, Lingwood, 1969).

If the initial purpose of mapping relationships is to define
structure through reports of communication, then a practical solution is
suggested by Thayer (1967: p. 67):

If the individual is viewed as a complex information

processing system, research on human behavior in organi-

zations could be based on a view of the individual as

the focal point of a set of information vectors which

define that individual's functional role in the

organization.
Sociometric techniques offer a means to operationalize the "information
vector"--and through them to define the communication-functional roles.

When one considers the role-types that may be functional for such
an analysis, there are several choices. Walton's Maggetic Centers theory
(Walton, 1962) of organizations has appeal: however, the idea that some
members of a system have "magnetic” qualities that draw communication to
them has an unnecessarily teleological quality. While Davis' ECCO
(David 1953a, b) technique charts the paths of messages, it places a consi-

derable burden upon the investigator, who must infer the larger communica-

tion structure of the organization.

23

The technique and assumptions introduced by Jacobson and Seashore
(1951), and developed by Weiss (1956) and Schwartz (1968), present both
structure and a means for identifying communication roles in a straight-
forward manner. The present weakness of this approach, as discussed
above, lies in an inability to specify the significance of change in
a network or of the differences between networks-~a weakness shared by
the other methods as well. Nevertheless, it offers a "gestalt" that
makes it appropriate to the concerns of the present study.

Given the nature of sociometric techniques and the concept that
communication linkages can be used to define organizational roles, one
may then delimit the interpersonal subsystems more specifically. The
next chapter is addressed to that task, as well as to presenting a

rationale for hypotheses about communication-functional roles.

CHAPTER II

RESEARCH CONTEXT AND HYPOTHESES

The present study has three purposes. One is to extend description
of the liaison role beyond previous research. Another is to compare
perceptions of organizational communication climate held by occupants
of different communication-defined roles. The third is to begin consi-
deration of some relationships between communication content and
communication networks.

Correlates of membership in an organization are examined by
Piper (1968), who establishes a set of contacts for each individual
observed and applies tests of difference to the perceptions of egg and
3152;, Cognitive correlates of formal position in organizations are
described by Blau (1960), Triandis (1959a, b) and Zajonc and Wolfe
(1963). However, there is little research evidence on roles as defined
by communication contacts.

If formal roles affect perceptions and perceptions affect be-
haviors, then roles defined by communication contacts may exhibit similar
differences as evinced by the occupants of formal positions. That is,
liaison persons might hold one view of "climate," of communication
effectiveness, and of the loci of influence in the organization, while
nonliaison persons hold a divergent view.

Three communication-functional roles have been defined: however,

the limitation is neither conceptual nor methodological. Jacobson and

24

25

Seashore (1951: p. 33) take the existing communication structure as an
underlying concept for the description and analysis of complex groups:

'Organization structure' can be conceptualized in

terms of communication events which connect pairs of

individuals, and thus establish patterns of contact

among individuals and among groups.
This view is compatible with the open systems concepts enumerated by
Buckley (1968), Cadwallader (1968), and Miller (1959).1 It is further
elaborated in the methodological study conducted by Weiss and Jacobson
(1955: p. 662):

An organization's structure reflects the coordina-

tion patterns within it, and its analysis and des-

cription is essential to the understanding of the

division of labor, the communication processes,

and the adjustment and growth mechanisms of the

complex unit.

The same authors (1955: p. 662 fn), "on theoretical, intuitive
and practical grounds," believe that it is more useful to define groups
by their distinctiveness or separateness than by indices of cohesion or
potential communication contact, when the goal is to describe an
organization comprising two or more groups. Rossi (1966: p. 200)
makes a further distinction between these approaches to group definition.
The interpersonal environment, he relates, is "the set of stimuli pre-
sented to an individual by those persons with whom he is in contact on
a direct and unmediated basis," a set of forces acting on the individual

in a collectivity. Therefore, Rossi eschews pgtential contact as the

basis for group definition, as does the present investigator.

 

1. See pages 1-3, above.

26

Several researchers have addressed themselves to the study of the
occupants of "linking" roles in organizations. Davis (1953a, b)
labels them as ”liaison" persons, but fails to operationalize the term
by procedure or location. Walton (1962) describes "magnetic centers"
to whom communications are drawn by characteristics of the occupants.
Ross and Harary (1959) go beyond the liaison-nonliaison-isolate tricho-
tomy derived and developed by Jacobson, Seashore, Weiss and Schwartz,
to conceptualize and describe linking agents who strengthen or who

weaken organizations in which they are found.

Rationale for Components in the Present Study_

 

The methods developed by Jacobson and Seashore (1951) and Weiss
and Jacobson (1955) enable an investigator to relate sociometrix
(sociometric matrix) data to functional processes in the organization
being studied. The form of matrix analysis suggested by Forsyth and
Katz (1946) and Festinger (1949) provides a graphic representation of
binary-coded contact data (only two entries may be made: "1” I contact,
and "O” - not-contact).

In decomposing the matrix into its structural components, a set
of concepts is applied to identify and to explain how to derive the
components (Weiss and Jacobson, 1955: pp. 663-664):1

a. Wg£k_g£gup_was defined as a set of individuals whose

relationships were with each other and not with members

of other work groups (except for contacts with liaison
persons or contacts between groups).

 

1. For a detailed explanation of these concepts and how to apply them
to data in an organization, see Weiss (1956: pp. 88-108).

27

b. Liaison person was defined as an individual who worked
with at least two individuals who were members of work groups
other than his own.

 

c. Contact between groups was defined as a single working
relationship between members of sets of individuals who
otherwise would be classified as separate work groups.

 

The term work group is not exactly accurate, as applied in the present

 

study, and also could be confused with the formally-established work
groups in an organization. Clique is a possible alternative, but the
literature relating to interpersonal relationships about work matters
is virtually unanimous in using gggup_rather than clique. Therefore,

the reader is cautioned that work group does not here possess all the

 

attributes proposed by Shepherd (1964: pp. 1-7) and others, but
does possess most of them.

The roles defined in the present study are 222 dependent on the
organization chart. While it is expected that groups as defined by
communicative interaction and by the organization chart will overlap,
and that some liaison persons will be predicted by the formal structure,
that is not a requirement. Describing the loci of liaison persons in
a government research agency, Jacobson and Seashore (1951: p. 37)
report that they are found “at all status levels in the organization."
Among the possible explanations for disjunction of the formal roles or
groups and those which are communication-defined would be the existence
of a kind of "system openness" that encourages members to deal directly
with whatever individuals or groups are found to be functional for job
accomplishment.

Jacobson and Seashore define work groups (communication cliques)

[in terms of communication contacts alone. Schwartz (1968: p. 23) adds

28

that work groups are separated into segments of the larger organization
by means of removing liaison persons from the sociomatrix.

WOrk groups have been defined differently. Festinger, 33,.31.
(1950), require completely interconnected triadic relationships as the
basic units of their groups.1 That is, each member of a triad must
have a relationship to each other member. The task-space analyses con-

2 are also based on the

ducted commercially by the Herman Miller company
completely connected triad, but permit lower contact “saturation“ in
larger groups. Another possibility is to define boundaries by a ratio
where in-group choices exceed the out-group choices. The present study
follows the procedure established by Weiss and Jacobson, identifying
the work group (communication clique) as a matrix segment in which no
member has more than one nonliaison contact outside the segment.

The liaison person, here defined as having at least two contacts
in work groups (cliques) other than his own,3 is conceptually different

from the contact between groups. Weiss and Jacobson explain (1955:

p. 263 fn):

 

1. Since they are concerned with other relationships than communication
about work, clique is the appropriate term.

2. Members of the Herman Miller, Incorporated, research division
discussed their concepts and matrix programs with members of the
Michigan State University Psychology and Communication departments on
May 12, 1970. It may be noted that.§g£_is used in the company's
research lexicon much as Jacobson, Seashore, 35, 21,, have used work

2:022.

3. Piper (1968) and others use single links to locate liaison persons.
.For this reason, and because of less rigorous means of partitioning
groups, they experience difficulty in defining either the liaison

role or unambiguous groups.

29

These concepts correspond in many respects to the con-
cepts of articulation point . . . [and] bridge . . . in
the mathematics of graph theory. The concept of separate
work groups corresponds to the graph theory concept of
component.

It is a dictum of decision theory that decision centers should
coincide or be conjunctive with communication centers. A major function
of the liaison role logically seems to be that of relating important
components, however defined. Ross and Harary (1955: pp. 257-258)
comment on the importance of the liaison role:

Positions in an organization which appear as articulation
points in the graph of the organizational structure may
be viewed as having special static and dynamic properties.
From a static viewpoint, a liaison person is crucial be-
cause his loss destroys the connected unity of the organi-
zation. Thus an organization or other structure is

most vulnerable at articulation points.

The critical nature of the liaison person for the dy-
namic or flow functions of an organization arises from
his non-substitutability in paths. For example, if a
liaison person is a 'bottleneck' the organization suffers
badly, while if he is efficient he tends to expedite the
flow of the entire organization.

It is obvious, then, that the liaison person is a communication
channel or relay point between at least two groups (cliques). Jacobson
and Seashore (1951: p. 37) add a stroke to the picture of this role,
noting that liaison persons have ”many, frequent, reciprocated, and
important contacts that cut across the contact group structure.“

There are other links between groups, however. A single contact
(between groups) corresponds to a single bridge in graph theory, and
a double contact (two people have contacts with another group) is

analogous to the double bridge. Perhaps these relationships can best

 

be seen in diagram, as Weiss (1956: pp. 88-89) describes them:

30

[Single Bridge

 

Liaison
Link

L1 3.1 801‘! J

Person

 

Figure 1: Graph Theory Concepts.

There is a problem, in the case of multiple bridges, of deter-
mining whether certain configurations are separate groups connected
by bridges or are loosely connected single groups. The solution is
idiosyncratic, i.e., the investigator must set some maximum group size
based on other considerations, or must apply some ratio of in-group
to out-group contacts in order to define boundaries.

The liaison person may be a group member--except for liaison
contacts have most of his contacts with one group--or he may not be
a member of any regularly defined group. Weiss and Jacobson (1955:
p. 666) describe their classification system for liaison persons:

Tentative liaison persons, whose frequent contacts were
all with one of the separated groups, even though some
of them were not reciprocated, were considered to have
membership in that group. . . . One third of [the total
number of the] liaison persons had many contacts with
each other and few with any single work group. They
were characterized as a liaison set. The rest of the
liaison persons were assigned to the primary work groups

in which they had frequent contacts as liaison group_mem-
bars, or remained as liaison individuals.

 

31

The member of a group who is not a liaison person is termed a

nonliaison qroup member. Jacobson and Seashore found that twenty per

 

cent of their subjects were liaison persons, and that all but one of
the others were nonliaison group members. Schwartz, on the other hand,
found that fifteen per cent of his subjects were liaison persons,
thirteen per cent were isolates, and most of the others were nonliaison
group members (there were two nonliaison individuals).

The single isolate found by Jacobson and Seashore was a visitor
to the organization: those found by Schwartz were predominantly in
similar categories-~temporary staff or visitors. Strictly applied,
the isolate concept means that a person neither chooses nor is chosen:
practically, it is more useful to apply the label to individuals who
have few, infrequent, unreciprocated contacts--in the nature of those

persons whom Walton (1962) defines as peripherals. Given the stricter

 

definition, one might assume that in a mature organization there would

be few if any isolates.

The Content of Communication

 

Just as Wendell Johnson (1943) observed that ”You can't write
writing,” so it is that a person in an organization must communicate

about something. Jacobson and Seashore ask subjects to review in memory

 

the past two or three months, to think of the people with whom they
have communicated, and then to name those people. In addition, they
ask about the subject matter involved, communication frequency, and
importance of contact. Schwartz (1968: p. 180) approaches the matter
in similar fashion, asking for reports on people "with whom you have
worked most closely. . . . Check how frequently in an average week you

have contact with (talk in person, phone, or write) each of them.”

32

One suggestion arising from Schwartz's study is that the reported
communication structure might be different if the nature of communication
to be reported on were more explicitly described (Schwartz, 1968: p.
150):

Rather than a general work-related criterion, data based

on more specific types of information may reveal transaction

initiation differences which were masked in the present

study.

While Davis (1953b) states that different liaison persons emerge for
different content areas, reports on his ECCO research do not indicate
either the sample-base of messages or the selection process used to
identify liaison persons. Wickesberg (1967) also notes that most of
his 93 respondents function mainly within single content areas.

Given these findings, it is surprising that later research has
not tested content category systems in field studies. There is no
dearth of proposals. Guetzkow (1965: pp. 542-550) discusses experimen-
tal approaches to communication in networks, suggesting five content
categories for such transactions: authority, task-expertise, status,
information, and friendship. Katz and Kahn (1966: pp. 39-47, pp.
239-241) offer two categorizations. The more general is based on Parsonian
concepts and presents a set of five types of organizational subsystems:
production, support, maintenance, adaption, and management. The
second concerns superior-subordinate communication: Job instructions,
job rationale, procedures and practices, feedback, and indoctrination
of goals. Referring to the former of these Katz and Kahn taxonomies,

Schwartz (1968: p. 8) suggests attaching communication content to each

system and then trying to extract the relevant communication networks.

33

Schwartz's study, however, describes a communication network
(structure) in generic terms (1968: p. 12), i.e., he looks toward a
record of all message transactions that occur between all organization
members, regardless of the frequency or content of those messages.

While he comments that separate content categories might yield separable
communication networks, with overlapping membership across substructures
Of the organization, he does not test the proposition. Instead, he
concludes that "procedures yielding a best-approximation Of extant
communication structures represent an improvement over previous research
strictured by the machine theory conceptualization."

Two classifications with fewer categories are offered. Thayer
(1967: pp. 94-96) proposes three information systems: Operation,
regulation, and maintenance-development. Similar in maintaining the
simplicity of three categories, but appearing to be somewhat more in-
clusive, is a suggestion made in a recent essay by Berlo (1970: pp.
8-11):

There are three classes Of uses that people make of

communication: production, innovation, and maintenance

of the social system in which communication occurs. . . .

I am suggesting three kinds of functions: getting a job

done (productivity), exploring new behavioral alterna-

tives (innovation), and keeping the system--and its

components--functioning (maintenance).
The present study attempts to Operationalize Berlo's three content areas,
assuming that they present members of an organization with a meaningful
and relatively inclusive way Of looking at their communication within
the system.

Berlo does not contend that a transaction is likely to be concerned

with only one Of the categories-~quite the contrary. For present purposes”

however, the requirements of isolating communication structures in terms

34

Of content demand an artificial separation. One must keep in mind through-
out the ensuing discussion and analysis that any single communicative
act may include elements of any or all of these categories.

Elucidating his concepts, Berlo equates production communication
with "an instructional pattern and a review procedure to insure compliance
with a predetermined position." It is, he says, the mechanism Of control,
involving the giving and taking of orders and more than a trace Of
persuasion. Innovation, on the Other hand, shuts out consideration Of
predetermined positions, inhibits habitual methods Of thought and action,
and searches for the unique or untried.

Maintenance communication is different from the Other categories
both substantively and conceptually. For one thing, production and
innovation systems Often have maintenance subsystems built into them.

More crucial, however, is the nature of the concept: in Berlo's frame-
work, maintenance includes establishing and changing concepts Of self
and other, and the generation and control Of rules for interpersonal
relationships.

In addition, he Observes, each participant must determine in each
communicative transaction whether control, search, or maintenance are
relevant to his needs and purposes, and what his responsibilities toward
it are in relation to those of the other participant(s).

The present study cannot accomodate all of the dimensions of the
maintenance modality as described above. Rather, it takes maintenance
to ”mean” primarily the establishment and management of interpersonal
relationships and socialization as to the "rules about the rules" of

an organization.

35

Variables and Hypotheses

The variables selected are directly related to communication be-
havior in organizations. They will be reported as the perceptions Of
respondents about their own attributes and as the perceptions that
respondents have of other members of the organization. In each instance
where a person acts as an informant about another person, the two must
agree that they are in direct contact. Where, however, a person reports
his perceptions of himself or of organizational attributes, such agree-
ment is irrelevant.

Since structure, rather than flow, is investigated in the present
study, data may be gathered at one point in time. Causal statements
cannot be made, although perceived differences in the behavior of in-
dividuals and groups will be used to describe the organization's com-
munication structure.

The variables will be treated as members of the following variable-
classes: (1) perceived interpersonal communication behavior: (2) per-
ceived influence in the work group: (3) perceived degree of control
over messages: (4) perceived opgnness Of the organization's communica-

tion system: and (5) reported member satisfaction with the organization's

 

communication system. A sixth variable-class concerns network differen-
tiation by message content.
The first five hypotheses, below, are directly related to the

first purpose stated for the present study, positing correlates of the
liaison role in a formal organization. The final three hypotheses are
devoted to aspects of the second stated purpose, that Of comparing or-
ganizational perceptions held by Occupants of different communication
roles. Network differentiation is explored rather than tested in this

study.

36

Communication Behavior and Personal Influence.--One Of Schwartz's

 

initial findings (1968: pp. 122-123) is that the professional staff

of a college within a university recognize those persons who have more--
and more structurally diverse-~communication contacts than other persons
in the organization. The staff also perceive liaison persons to have
more influence than other members have over the "power structure" Of

the college. Walton (1962) hypothesizes that Centrals differ from
Peripherals in having more power, authority, and expertise--and supports
these predictions. While it seems clear that nonliaison members
recognize these characteristics, communication role research to date

has not examined gglgfperceptions of liaison roles.

If the role is understood by others even though they do not know
the term, then the liaison role may also be understood by its occupants.
Indeed, one reason for becoming a liaison person may be that such a
person is active in seeking out other pe0ple in order to request and
give information or advice.

H1: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have a

greater number of communication contacts than
nonliaison persons have.

H2: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have more

influence in the organization than nonliaison
persons have.

The Weberian view Of formal social systems implies that liaison
persons will have more work-related information than nonliaison persons
have, since this approach to the concept Of hierarchy includes the
assumption that supervisors know more than their subordinates about the

tasks and techniques attendant on group goals. The Walton finding on

expertise of communication Centrals supports this position to some degree.

37

It is proposed here that high information level about task-related
communication content is a facet of expertise.

If a liaison person seeks the role, he should perceive himself as
having such information. Thus, two hypotheses may be stated relative
to role positions:

H3: Nonliaison persons perceive liaison persons tO have
more production information than nonliaison persons have.

H3a: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have more produc-
tion information than nonliaison persons have.

There is little empirical basis for predicting the distribution of
perceptions about innovation or maintenance communication in organiza-
tions. However, if communication serves social-emotional needs as
indicated by Bales (1958) and others, then liaison persons may be expected
to have a wider access to information than indicated by the statement Of
Hypotheses 3 and 3a. Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955: pp. 113-114) report
on the generality of the role:

Strategic social location seems to lead to a key communication role.
Thus, 'centrality' tends to be the most significant location. . . .
An important clue to the discovery of significant points Of
interpersonal communication is tied up with the idea of location
within a group structure.
Liaison persons, by definition, are “central" between groups if not
within them. In such positions they are exposed to more information
from more varied sources than are their workmates. For example, Becker
(1970: p. 268) considers the communication position of initial adopters
of innovations in social units:
Most investigations are able to show that opinion leaders
utilize a greater number of outside-the-group sources
of information about new things than do their followers.

If liaison persons are central between groups, and if being in a

central position means that the occupant has more organization-relevant

38

stimuli impinging upon him then such persons should be centers of a
broad range of information. Again, one may compare the perceptions
held by liaison and nonliaison individuals.
H4: Nonliaison persons perceive liaison persons to
have more information related to innovation and
maintenance than nonliaison persons have.
H4a: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have more
information related to innovation and maintenance

than nonliaison persons have.

Message control.--Laboratory studies of organizational structure

 

and message flow have delved into the effects of communication control.
Generally, communication has been presented as a dependent variable
(Bavelas, 1950: Leavitt, 1960). There are exceptions to this model,
however, one being Hickey's manipulation of control, with centrality
as a dependent variable. He describes three types of communication
control within a structured social system (Hickey, 1968: p. 51):

Three elements of information control can be distinguished.

One can control--in a transmit or not-transmit sense--by

handling the messages, or . . . by arranging the channels,

or . . . by manipulating the content of the messages.

Hickey hypothesizes that the "status perceptions [that] peri-
pherals hold of the central position will increase as the latter's
power to control information increases." The hypothesis is supported
for channel and content control, but not for transmission alone. "It
may be,“ he concludes (1968: p. 53), "that this . . . role, while it
is seemingly quite common in society [the lobbyist and public relations
man are examples], is not often distinguished in lay conceptions of
roles, functions, and statuses.”

Of course, when one considers the control over information that

people have in organizations, one must also consider the relationships

39

between such control and the formal authority to control. In other
words, certain information will be found at points predicted to have
it by organization planners. Simon (1957: p. 306) expresses this
expectation most succinctly: "Decision centers must of necessity either
coincide with or be in conjunction with communication centers."
Keeping this in mind, message control may be seen as the power
to modify messages or to initiate new messages affecting work related
conditions. Organization members who are perceived to have such control
ought also to be perceived as "central." Thus, hypotheses may be
stated concerning perceived interpersonal communication behavior:
H5: Nonliaison persons perceive liaison persons to
have more control over flow of messages than non-
liaison persons have.
H6: Persons who are perceived by their communication
contacts to have high control over message flow are also
perceiVed to have more influence in the organization

than other members have.

Perceived system openness.--Formal position in an organization

 

has been found to predict attitude toward the system's communication
programe-toward whether the system is perceived as ”open" or "closed."
For example, Gustad (1962) finds significant differences between percep-
tions of professors and their deans and department heads: supervisors
see the system as more "Open" than do their subordinates. Halpin (1966)
obtains essentially the same results from his investigation of the

Organizational Climate in public schools. By "open," Halpin means that

 

certain kinds of attitudes and behaviors predominate. Among the 67
items comprising his eight descriptive scales are several statements
of particular relevance to the analysis of the communication structure

of an organization:

40

1. Supervisors behave so that subordinates feel
free to discuss important things about their
jobs with their supervisors.

2. Supervisors try to get their subordinates'
ideas and opinions and to make constructive
use of them.

3. Supervisors willingly share information with
their subordinates.

4. Subordinates accept communications from their
supervisors at face value.

5. Decision-makers are perceived (and perceive themselves)
to be aware of subordinates' problems.

Pelz and Andrews (1966), who investigate the behavior and atti-
tudes of scientists and engineers in a variety of settings, conclude

that "system openness“ is importantly related to innovative output and

._—-.

to willingness to participate in an organization. The more highly
trained scientists appear to feel the effect of degree of system open-
ness more than their technical colleagues and assistants.

Jackson (1959), inquiring into the communication activities and
perceived ”social worth" of the staff members of a child welfare
agency, finds the idea of openness a better predictor of status among
professional than among administrative staff members.

It should follow that occupants of "superior” communication roles
will also see the jOb related information system as more open.

H7: Liaison persons perceive the organization's

communication system for work-related matters
to be more ”open" than do nonliaison members.
Satisfaction with the communication system.--The correlates of

satisfaction are complex, considered in the context of a social organiza-

tion. Some of the same concerns involved in system openness appear also

41

to be related to satisfaction. Blau (Blau and Scott, 1962: p. 130),
for example, finds that the inability to go to one's supervisor for
advice-has an adverse effect on satisfaction among professional employes
in a government agency. He also notes, however, that the degree of
satisfaction is highly related to "supplying advice and information when
needed. . . . ” In the instances he discusses, formal means were in-
adequate to the needs of the employes for consultation on specific

and immediate problems: therefore, they developed informal, extralegal
means--consultation pairs.

The present study approaches the concept of satisfaction through
positing a need for timely, accurate, easily used information, obtained
through appropriate channels. In a sense, the proposition is that peOple
who have access to more work-relevant information have, in fact, more
potential power: that having such power is self-assuring: and that
people with such information will therefore report being more satisfied
with the work related information system.

H8: Liaison persons are more satisfied with the organi-

zations system of work-related information communica-
tion than are nonliaison persons. [SOCS]
Content and Communication

Three particular problems must be addressed here: (1) the content
categories chosen have not previously been tested as to respondent
recognition or as to relative exclusivity: (2) there is little evidence
upon which to base predictions about relationships between content and
organizational communication role: and (3) there are no adequate statis-
tical measures of the significance of observed differences between
matrices when the matrix entries are reports of contact or non-contact

between members of a social unit.

42

Content categories.--Several classifications of communication have
been discussed (see pages 34—37, above), none of which has been tested
in an organizational population. The categorization used here (Berlo,
1970: pp. 8-11) suggests that communication has a few broad utilities
which cover all or most situations. In hopes of avoiding situation-
specific definitions of the categories--production, innovation, and
maintenance--of communication in various social systems, a means was
devised to provide organization members with category descriptions that
are familiar to them and which they can reliably assign to the categories.
The procedure adOpted is introduced at this point in order to provide
background for later discussion of specialized networks.

A series of 39 statements was assembled, each statement describing
or illustrating a kind of communication behavior found in organizations.
The statements were selected from survey instruments that have been
used to test perceptions of communicative and administrative styles in
organizations,1 as well as from the present author's experience as a
member of two organizational communication research teams.2

These statements were prepared in two forms: 1) as a list, with
columns representing the three categories at one side of the list: and
as 39 slips of paper, each bearing one of the statements and an index
number. In the former case, respondents were asked to assign each state-

ment to one of three named categories, having received a one-sentence

 

1. Administrative Rating Scale (Wagner & Knower, 1959), Task Communi-
cation Questionnaire (Harkin, 1968), Organizational Climate Description
Questionnaire (Halpin and Croft, 1963).

2. Faculty and student communication in a residential college were
found to be mainly about class and administrative matters, contrary to
expectations of the college's founders. Employee of a large company
placed almost total emphasis on task-communication.

43

description of the category. In the latter case, respondents were asked
to separate the 39 statements into three piles, based on whatever themes
they perceived in the statements. In this instance, no description or
key-word was given to respondents to help them sort the statements into
categories. Respondents were also solicited for additional statements
appropriate to each of the categories. Forty members of the agency
were test respondents, 20 to each version.

The most frequently chosen statements for each category became
the foundation for compressed descriptions of the categories. These
descriptions, in turn, were used to help respondents in the main study
sort out the nature of their communication with different co-workers.
Given this "meaning” for the content categories, one may consider how the
content is used.

Relationships of Content to Position or Role.--Two studies of

 

organizations1 indicate that a majority of organizational communication
is task specific. Other research (Wickesberg, 1967: Odiorne, 1954:
Dahle, 1954) largely neglects examination of non-task content. The
available evidence does little to help generate expected relationships,
although there is some implied correspondence between production infor-
mation communication and the organization chart.
H9: Liaison persons identified primarily in terms of

production content are more likely to hold super-

visory positions than are liaison persons identified

primarily in terms of innovation or maintenance

communication content.

Because the networks that are associated with the proposed content

categories have not previously been explored in relation to an

 

1. See page 42, above.

44

organization's communication structure, the present study will be
directed toward explication rather than toward prediction.

Significance of Difference.--Guimaraes1 suggests that the possible
responses in any Boolean matrix (permissible codes are l or O)"949!
9L1, 1,0, and lilf-can be placed into the apprOpriate cells of a two-

by-two contingency table:

 

0 0,0 0,1

 

1 1,0 1,1

 

Figure 2.--Distribution of matrix

combinations into a two-by-two con-

tingency table.
He reasons that if one can generate a theoretical distribution, then
one can evaluate matrix differences by means of the x2 statistic. With-
out such a distribution, it must be noted, comparison of matrices
involves unknown sampling errors in each matrix, vitiating the obtained
chi-square value.

Lingwood (1970) also has approached assaying matrix differences,

using a somewhat different rationale but again relying on the x2 statis-
tic. He, too, is unsure of the theoretical distribution of communication

contacts in terms of expected accessibility of one organizational

member to another, but suggests a random model as a starting point.

 

l. A prOposal made to members of the faculty, Department of Communi-
cation, Michigan State University, in May, 1970.

45

Davis (1963) suggests that "a reasonable standard for emergent structures
might be 'equalitarianism'." None of these approaches seems tenable
to the present author, in that their assumptions of random access are
antithetical to the concept of structure in organizations.
Starbuck (1965: pp. 373-379) demonstrates that an organization
//
chart can be graphed in terms of relations, given a Boolean matrix of
the relations: he describes a six person matrix to illustrate hierarchical
status. Perhaps, he suggests, such analysis will lead to explanation
of complex activities such as communication and problem-solving. He
adds an important caveat (1965: p. 381):
However, effective treatments of complex phenomena
[he includes communication] are probably several years
and many contributors in the future. Hierarchical
status does illustrate how relations among people can
be cast into rigorous symbolic networks and useful
conclusions drawn--and that is the essence of applied
mathematics.
In view of such cautions and the present state of mathematics

as art or science, the procedures proposed in the present study are

suggestive and descriptive, rather than inferential and generalizable.

CHAPTER III

THE RESEARCH DESIGN

Sociometric techniques have previously been adapted to communica-
tion data, in attempts to reflect the operational structure of the

1 Two of these studies chose to define

social units being investigated.
the role-structure of the organization in terms of work-contacts--
communication interaction--between pairs of members.

The liaison concept appears to be important to the study of
communication systems in that the nature, location, and frequency of
"linking" roles has many implications for uncertainty absorption in the
systems, organizational design, and communication climate.

Jacobson and Seashore (1951), in the process of looking at a
wide array of communication behavior in a newly formed government
research agency, conceive and explicate three roles: Liaison, non-
liaison, and isolate persons. Schwartz's study (1968), which lends
direct impetus to the present investigation, examines the liaison role

in a college faculty through the eyes of nonliaison faculty members

who regularly communicate with the liaison persons.

 

1. Davis (1969: p. 93) writes: "Structures that emerge within a
group already possessing a formal structure are called qurating
structures. [They] may indeed be partly a function of the formal
structure, but they also are a response to the actual demands of the
task, people and setting. . . ."

 

46

47

Both of these studies entail analysis of responses garnered from
organizations with relatively "flat“ formal structures and strong academic
orientations. Evidence from investigations in similar agencies (Pelz
and Andrews, 1966) supports the view that the desire for personal auto-
nomy is higher in such organizations than in many other settings--
with effects upon communication networks.

The present study establishes and probes the nature of communication
roles in a hierarchical government bureau that is relatively stable,
differentiated as to tasks, and with a wide range of education and work
experience on its staff.

The organization has responsibilities to survey an important part
of the social-physical environment and to establish and carry out
programs designed to improve that environment. The present study was
addressed only to those members of the organization officed in one large
building which is the headquarters location for several organizations.

The total headquarters staff of this organization includes 288
persons, ranging in grade from clerk to very senior executive. Most of
the staff are civilians, but there are a few military positions. Civil
Service grades represented range from GS-4 (clerk) through GS-18
(senior executive), as well as Public Law 313 appointees and one Execu-
tive Level appointee.1

Each person was asked to complete three instruments: (1) a

questionnaire providing demographic and self-perception data on issues

 

1. In general, grades four through eight are clerical. A GS-9
normally requires the baccalaureate degree. Grades 16 through 18 are
equivalent to general or admiral military ranks. P.L. 313 appointees
are usually persons of special technical or professional qualifications.
The Executive Level is actually outside the civil service system,

being a Presidential appointee.

48

relevant to this study: (2) a checklist of the names of people within
the office with whom the respondent communicates (indexed by content-
functional area, frequency, and contact importance): and (3) a question-
naire eliciting perceptions about the people with whom a respondent
reports frequent communication contact.

The communication contact data were entered into matrices, each
matrix cell representing a possible conjunction of comunication contact
reports, with the following possibilities:

a. A does not contact 3 and _B does not contact A.

b. 5 contacts _B, but a does not contact A:

c. p contacts 5, but A does not contact _B_.

d. Each reports contacting the other.

From the matrices of reciprocated contacts, communication-defined
groups were constructed. Through this procedure, described in detail
by Weiss (1956: pp. 88-108), the investigator identified liaison and
nonliaison members of the organization. Questionnaire responses provided
by liaison and nonliaison respondents became the data for role analysis
and hypothesis testing. To qualify as a data source, a person completing
a questionnaire must have reported contact with the person(s) about

whom he was an informant.

The Study Population

 

Two groups of people served as data sources for the present study:
one comprised gll_of the emergent liaison persons: the other comprised
gll_nonliaison persons who were in frequent reciprocated contact with
liaison persons.

Jacobson and Seashore (1951) found 35 liaison persons in a popula-

tion of 196: most liaisons were also members of regular work groups,

49

but a few had contact mainly with other liaison persons, forming a

liaison set. Schwartz (1968) identified 21 liaison persons among 142

 

faculty and administrative members of a college. Using roughly the
same proportions to predict the incidence of liaison Persons in the
present case, one would expect about 30 such individuals for each content-
functional area. Schwartz (1968: p. 30) observes that prediction is
risky: the number and nature of liaison persons in an organization will
depend on, at least, ”the task coordination demands or the degree of
rigidity in adhering to formal hierarchical lines'5 one organization may
have many more liaison persons than another per unit of membership.

A further limitation placed on data analysis in the present study
was this: where the communication structure is partitioned in terms
of one of the three content-functional areas, the sample size was
likely to be reduced. Were the study to be conducted in a very large
population, or in a random selection of organizations, communication
networks could be derived by sampling respondents and then using the
”snowball” cluster sampling technique to generate a network for each
initially-selected respondent. This procedure, however, would be very
costly.

Therefore, all liaison persons identified in the professional staff
of the organization comprised one "sample." Compared with them was a
group of nonliaison persons who were in frequent contact with liaison
persons. Thus, self-perceptions held by liaisons and nonliaisons, and
other-perceptions held by liaison-nonliaison dyad members, could be
examined to determine whether their perceptions of the organization and

of communication behavior were similar or dissimilar.

50

Generalizability gf_Results. Before one may apply tests of

 

significance of observed differences, certain assumptions must be met
which seldom arise in a case study. Jacobson and Seashore (1951) and
Weiss (1956) observe this limitation and report their data as percen-
tages and frequencies not amenable to much further statistical manipu-
lation. Schwartz, however, applies the E-test for independent means
to two bodies of data in testing his hypotheses. It is significant
that Schwartz (1968: p. 117) comments on this:

Statistical tests of differences in this section and

in the hypothesis testing section are applied in a

heuristic sense to attempt to provide an approximation

of potential parameters. Two problems plague the appli-

cation of statistical tests to the data of this study:

(1) the study population from which the samples were

taken is not randomly drawn and the generalizability

of the findings must depend on future comparative studies

to determine the representativeness of the population:

(2) the "sample" of liaison persons is not a random sample

[sic] hence violates a basic assumption of the statistical

tests.

The matter of the proper use of such tests became a center of
interest following Selvin's article (1957) criticizing their use in
survey research. Different schools of thought on the use of inferential
statistics in case studies have generated at least a score of articles
in the literature.1 One view is that since inferential statistics
rest on an assumption of samples that are somehow randomdy drawn, that

is the one condition of their use that cannot be violated. The other

extreme position (not adopted here) is that one may describe the

 

l. Morrison and Henkel (1969) provide an example of the first position:
Winch and Campbell (1969) illustrate the "middle" way: Gold (1969)
presents a case for wider use of inference in such studies. All agree
that inference i§_widely used in case studies.

 

51

significance of an observed difference between two categories that
exhaust the population in regard to some population variable, regardless
of the sample base, as reporting an attempt to fit data to a model, and
is ”superior to subjective variable judgments of importance." The
moderate position (in relation to the above positions) is that one may
apply inferential tests only ig one first generates a large set of
randomly drawn observations on the same population and then compares

the set of experimental interest with this derived distribution.1

One of the more recent articles summarizes the uses and misuses
of such tests (Morrison and Henkel, 1969: p. 133):

Significance tests are not legitimately used for any
purpose other than that of assessing the sampling

error of a statistic designed to describe a particular
population on the basis of a probability sample. The
notions of sampling distribution and sampling error
have no meaning in statistical inference apart from the
assumption of randomness in the selection process--
randomness being a central feature in all probability
designs.

There are Opposing views, but all assume that the results have
somehow been drawn from a larger set of results. Schwartz attempts to
circumvent this problem by selecting two somewhat independent groups
of nonliaison persons as data bases for reports on the behavior of
liaison and nonliaison groups. Since the people reported on are not a
random sample in terms of selection or allocation, he only partly
succeeds.

The essential position adopted in the present study is discussed

by Lipset, Trow, and Coleman in their book, Union Democracy_(l953: pp.

 

 

1. Drs. Verling C. Troldahl and Lawrence Sarbaugh, of the Department
of Communication, Michigan State University, are planning to generate
a distribution for certain factor analytic data.

52

478-485). When the goal is to delineate relationships on a single
organization, they posit, statistical tests such as the x2, which is
most often used in social research, may be too strong, too weak, or
simply irrelevant. Pursuing the third of these possibilities, they
address themselves to the basic question of how a social scientist
approaches the notion of significance (pp. 483-484):

Further studies upon different organizations will consti-

tute more reliable confirmation, for they test the hypotheses

in a different population, which a [chi square] test used

on this data could never do. . . . Even if all assumptions

for such tests are fulfilled, the population to which the result
is generalized is not the population from which the sample

was drawn. 'I£_is'q_theoretica1 population, of all men in

certain kinds QETOrganizations. [My italics.)

 

 

In summary, under the conditions of the present study the assess-
ment of meaning to differences in either self-perception or other-
perception cannot rest on t-tests or other statistical tests of
difference to which significance levels are ascribed. A difference
may be described in terms of percentage or relative frequency on
some characteristic, or by means and standard deviations of index scores.
Whether the difference is ”significant" cannot be defended on statistical
grounds.

There are "certain kinds of organizations" to whose members one
might generalize the results of the present study. These more or
less similar organizations may include the headquarters units of large
governmental control or development programs. Here, however, the
study organization was chosen in part because its management permitted
its members to be Observed: within the organization, all relevant
people became respondents. How much more, or how much less, similar the
organizations are is a matter to be explored through replication rather

than to be assumed.

53

To date, the communication-functional roles of interest here have
been studied in another government bureau and in the faculty of a
specialized college. The present study should help to confirm concepts
arising in those studies. But the nature of the roles, and their
correlates, will be adequately confirmed only when other studies have

been completed in other settings.

Qperationalizing Variables

 

By use of responses that describe the self— and other-perceptions
of respondents, one may compare the perceptions each role holds of the
other. Nine hypotheses and two corollaries were examined in the present
study: all but two made use of Likert-type scales to operationalize
variables (Edwards, 1957: pp. 155-157: Oppenheim, 1966: 133-142).

One hypothesis was tested by means of a correlational technique: the
final hypothesis was tested by comparison of identified liaison persons
with the organizational chart.

Where possible, questions or entire scales were taken from
previous research in order to insure useful measurement by utilizing
experience reported in the literature. In such cases, the sources are
noted (see below): in other cases, however, scales were changed from
their original applications or were entirely new.

Five choice-points were provided for each Likert-type item, on
the basis that a greater selection becomes difficult for the respondent.
The steps used in Likert-type items closely follow the Dodd and Gerbrick
model (1960: pp. 30-31), except for the use of ”neither agree nor
disagree" rather than their term, ”indifferent," which may have negative

rather than neutral connotations in some settings.

54

Some way must be devised for deciding whether items contributing
to an index do indeed appear to measure the same thing, or "go together."
The scales used here include at most five items, a fact which limits
the techniques available to test scale internal consistencies. Item
inter-correlations were used: items that correlated poorly or negatively
with other items considered for index inclusion were deleted (Nunnally,
1967: pp. 364-365).

The items used to Operationalize variables are stated below. To
preclude confusion, only one version of each statement will be listed:
it should be noted that most of the statements will have a "This person"
version in addition to the ”I" version contained here. The instruments
are reproduced in the appendix.

All items using the Likert-type responses to form summated scale
ratings use either the strongly agree, agree, neither ggree nor disagree:

disagree, and strongly disagree foils or a set composed of much more

 

than, above, about the same pg, below, and much less than.

 

 

 

Number g£_Communication Contacts. Three of the four items used

 

to measure this variable were abstracted by Schwartz (1968: pp. 47-49)
from Walton's model-testing study of the ”magnetic centers" of communi-
cation in an organization (Walton, 1962: pp. 79-109). Whereas Schwartz
used the words "contact with people in more or fewer clique groups” to
operationalize the structural diversity of contacts, the concept
appeared to measure perceived number of contacts as well. The fourth
item contributing to this index was devised by the study staff, primarily
as a means of differentiating seeking and being sought for information.

The items are:

55

I communicate with more people in this organization
than most people who work here do.

I have access to very few supervisors and managers,
compared to most people around here.

In most organizations there are small groups of people
who prefer to work or relax together. I_have contacts
in more of these groups than most people do around here.

We want you to think of the persons you know in the

AGENCY and to compare yourself with them on several
questions. First, people differ with respect to the
number of other people they communicate with each week
about work-related activities (getting the job done,
thinking of new ideas, etc.). As compared to other

AGENCY employes, how do you rate yourself--is the number
of people you communicate with: [Well above average, etc.]

Responses values to the second item, above, were inverted, then the
numerical values of responses to the four items summed into one score.
The higher this score the more communication contacts the respondent
should perceive himself (or be perceived) to have.

Influence ip_the Ogganization. Schwartz (1968: pp. 55-57) labels

 

this variable "diffuse Opinion leadership," rather than the more general
”influence." However, he defines the variable in terms of influence.
Again, Walton's concept of magnetic centers of communication (Walton,
1962: pp. 83, 87, 91) is germane, in that his respondents apparently
see influence over other contacts by a magnetic center as enhancing
communication with persons occupying that role. The first of the three
items contributing to this index was adapted by Schwartz from Walton:
the other two items were adapted from an extensive study of scientific
and engineering personnel in a variety of agencies by Pelz and Andrews
(1966: pp. 17-18). The items are:

The people who have a lot to say about what goes on
around here respect the suggestions that I make.

56

Compare the amount of influence you have on what goes
on around here, in terms of work-related activities.
Compared to other AGENCY employes, is the amount of in-
fluence you have: [Well above average, etc.]

Now about matters not specifically related to work--

such as teaching new people the ropes, helping to smooth

out interpersonal problems, etc. Is the influence you

have on these kinds of things: [Well above average, etc.]
Responses to these items were summed into one score. The higher this
score the more the reSpondent should perceive himself (or be per-

ceived) to have influence in the organization.

Possession g£_Work-Related Information. If an instrument is to

 

 

be made generalizable across settings it must use general rather than
highly specific categories to elicit responses about what people talk
about or what they know. Therefore, the present study asked respondents
to respond to statements about all three content-functional categories--
production, innovation, and maintenance--at tentatively general levels.

The item used to elicit responses about production communication is

 

straightforward:

Compared to other AGENCY employes, how do you rate the

level of knowledge you have about work-related activities?

Is it: [Well above average, etc.]
The wording used to obtain perceptions of a person's communication knowledge
about non-production matters is slightly different in referring to "this

person,“ or "he.”

Possession ngNon-Production Information. Rather than attempt

 

 

to measure knowledge of innovation and maintenance matters separately in

this exploratory study,1 it was decided to ask respondents about

 

l. Questionnaire length precluded more items for several scales.

57

topics "not related to work," defining these by example in the question
asked. The single final item is:

How about your knowledge level about topics that are not

related to work . . . what's going on within the agency,

who works well with whom, who's happy here and who's

not, etc? Is your level of knowledge:

[Well above average, etc.]
The higher the score on this item, the more such information the res-

pondent should perceive himself (or be perceived) to have.

Control over Message Flow. The published reports of Hickey's (1968)

 

experiments with communication control and perceived centrality in five-
person networks do not Operationalize control in terms of voluntary
communication behavior: rather, a confederate igpgses the various forms
of control. In field investigations such as the present study, such a
control is not available. To c0pe with the role of passive observer,
therefore, two items were used to elicit reports of perceived control.
The statements were abstracted from the pr0positions advanced by Hickey
(1968: pp. 51-53):

When someone needs to get a message to some group or

person in the AGENCY, I can usually tell him the

best way to do it.

When I think it's best for the group I work with, I

can control . . . expedite or delay . . . messages about

our work.
The numeric responses to these statements were summed into one score
for each respondent. The higher the score, the more message flow con-
trol the respondent should perceive himself (or be perceived) to have.

Qpenness 95 the WOrk-Related Communication System. Halpin (1963) ~/"

conceives of the organizational climate as a continuum from closed to open,

measured by eight scales which were factor analyzed from responses made

58

by more than 1700 persons to 80 statements. He uses 64 of the statements
in his Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire.

He describes an Open climate, in part, as one imbued with feelings
of trust and freedom from secretiveness: people do not hoard information
to gain or maintain power. Pelz and Andrews (1966: pp. 248-249) also
suggest secretiveness as dysfunctional to creativity and productivity.
From these sources a series of statements was constructed to measure
the variable of communication system openness in the present study.

People around here are really encouraged to take any
kind of work-related problems to their supervisors.

When suggestions are made by employes around here,

managers seldom give the suggestions serious considera-

tion.

At our staff meetings or work-group meetings there is

free, two-way discussion of any problems that are

brought up.

The numeric responses to these three statements were summed into one
score for each resPondent, after inverting scores for the second item.
The higher the score the more open the respondent should perceive the
system to be.

Satisfaction with the Work-Related Communication System. This
variable was operationalized by five statements, each touching on a
different aspect of the communication system.

The information we get from top management (Director,

Assistant or Deputy Directors) is usually in very useful

form-~easy to use.

Generally speaking, the information we get from top
management about work-related matters is accurate.

When top management puts out information to employee, you
can believe it completely.

 

One trouble with work-related information we get from
top management is that it's usually late--not here
when we really need it.

59

The information that we get about work-matters from top

management is usually cogplete-—we are told all that's

necessary.
Response values to the fourth statement were inverted and the numeric
scores for all five summed into one satisfaction score for each respon-
dent. The higher this score the higher the satisfaction of the respondent

with the communication system. It should be noted that the items concern

content and style rather than medium or channel.

Pretests

While a majority of the scales assembled for the present study
have been used successfully elsewhere, they have not been used in jux-
taposition. Further, the items used in the present study comprise only
part of a larger set of items, all administered to the study pOpulation
at the same time.

In order to pretest the items, the author visited the offices of
the study population and administered the complete set of instruments
to four persons. The fact that the main study would be conducted in
that pOpulation within a week precluded more extensive tests, in order
to avoid sensitization.

Pretest purposes included the following: (1) to evaluate data
collection procedures: (2) to uncover ambiguous wording of instructions
or test items: (3) to predict the number of frequent contacts and gauge
how many Personal Contact Questionnaires would be required for each
respondent: and (4) to determine special limiting factors of organiza-
tional history that might affect the study.

Interviews with the pretest respondents indicated that the stable

employment pattern in the agency resulted in a very wide circle of

60

contacts: therefore, it was planned to permit each person 32 line spaces
on the Personal Contact Checklist. Twelve Personal Contact Questionnaires
appeared to be adequate. Since, however, the instruments were to be
group-administered, with a study staff member present, respondents might
obtain more if needed.

Legitimation occurred prior to the period of pre-test. The
Chairman of the Department of Communication, who has been a communica-
tion consultant with the agency for several years, met with most of the
study population. Together, the agency Director and the consultant noti-
fied employes that a series of communication studies would be conducted
throughout the organization: the consultant outlined the general tenor
of such studies and was strongly and publicly supported by the agency
Director. Employe questions were answered and the entire group assured
of response anonymity during the studies.

Pretest interviews revealed two examples of perceived ambiguity
in question wording, in that it was not clear whether respondents were
being asked to reply in relation to the entire headquarters staff, or
only in relation to their own offices or divisions. The pretest respondents
felt that the set of instruments was too lengthy: none completed them in
less than an hour, although asked to complete only gpg_Personal Contact
Questionnaire.

Special environmental conditions include the following: (1) a dozen
surveys and studies had been conducted on the study population within
recent years, several in progress at the time of the present study:

(2) some employes perceive any new study as an attempt to “finger” people

for dismissal or reduction in grade. Therefore, it became imperative that

61

fear-arousal be kept to a minimum: on that basis, several proposed items
were deleted from the over-all study, although none pertained to the

present study directly.

Data Collection

 

Respondents were scheduled for specific rooms and times to complete
the study instruments. Scheduling was coordinated by two representa-
tives of the study staff, who were attached to the agency for several
weeks prior to and following the study. One of these persons was an
employe of another unit of the agency, and one a recent graduate of the
present author's department. These two persons rescheduled respondents
who could not meet the schedule and provided study instrument packets
to employes who were absent during the principal data collection period.

Four days were planned for the administration of the study
instruments to all respondents present for work. The headquarters staff
of the agency included 288 employes, of whom 185 “professional level"
persons became the study population. Identical instruments were ad-
ministered to all other employes as well.

Four persons comprised the study staff. One monitored each
scheduled data-collection session, introducing the study and answering
questions about "how to do" various parts of the instruments. In addition,
each instrument had a set of instructions attached. To attain minimum
variation in the introductory statements, staff members rehearsed and
each referred to a written outline as he spoke.

To control within-group interaction effects and to minimize between-
group interaction outside the data gathering session, several precautions

were taken. Employes were scheduled into one of four reserved conference

62

rooms, in the case of professional employes, or a small theater in the
case of clerical level employes. Each group size was controlled so as

to permit physical spacing that would preclude one person seeing what
another wrote. Employes were scheduled in advance from an organizational
roster, in such manner as to enable most members of an office to complete
the instruments within a short time period. Groups were stratified by
civil service grade so far as possible, to reduce the psychological
pressures that might attend having one's supervisor in the same room.
When all scheduled respondents had arrived, or 15 minutes after the
scheduled meeting time, monitors (members of the study staff) intro-
duced the study and repeated assurances of the confidential nature of

the information that employes would provide. To about ten per cent of
the employes this was new information, for they had not attended the
legitimation meetings held three weeks earlier by the agency director

and the communication consultant.

Monitors said nothing to indicate that respondents could or could
not refuse to participate. Three employes asked such questions prior
to data collection, and were told: (1) the nature of the study required
virtually total participation: and (2) the study had the personal and
public support of the agency's director.

Two employes refused to complete the instruments at all: one was a
secretary and the other a professional level employe. When the secretary
Objected, another employe apologized for her conduct to the entire group,
indicating strong support for the stated goals of the study. Four other
employes remarked orally that they had not completed the instruments in

good faith: only one of those was a professional employee. During the

63

two subsequent weeks the study staff representatives with the organization
reported three similar remarks, only one from a professional-level employe.

The monitor for each data collection session distributed packets
of the study instruments to each respondent. Each packet, in a large
unsealed envelope, contained: (1) a Communication Questionnaire with its
own instruction sheet: (2) a letter explaining the Personal Contact
Checklist: (3) the Personal Contact Checklist with spaces for 32 contact
nominations: (4) a letter explaining the Personal Contact Questionnaires:
and (5) twelve Personal Contact Questionnaires.

Each respondent was asked to place all used and unused materials in
the large envelope after completing the study instruments, and to seal
the envelope. Persons who requested additional Personal Contact Checklist
sheets or Personal Contact Questionnaires were provided them by the monitor
from a supply maintained for the purpose.

The agency Director, his two principal assistants, and eleven other
high-ranking persons were permitted to complete the study instruments in
their offices. All but one did complete them and make the additions or
corrections requested after initial screening of the data by members of
the study staff. The packets for these persons were delivered and picked
up by the study staff, and questions were answered personally or by
telephone.

At the end of four days, 255 of the 288 persons on the headquarters
staff had completed the instruments: at the end of 15 days 179 of the
185 professional level employes had completed the instruments. Employes
who were ill, on vacation, or on duty away from the central offices
were contacted immediately upon return by one of the two staff liaison repre-

sentatives, with packets of the instruments and a request for completion.

64

Questionnaires and Personal Contact Checklists were tallied, iden-
tified, and checked for omissions or logical errors within 72 hours after
completion of the initial data collection period. A list of discrepancies
was mailed to the two staff liaison representatives, who then contacted
the appropriate respondents with requests for completion or revision

of instruments.

Data Analysis

 

The Sociomatrix. Reported communication contacts were used to

 

construct three matrices: each contained only the reports of reciprocated
contacts that occur weekly or more often within a single content-functional
area.

Liaison and nonliaison persons were identified in each matrix,
following the procedures described by Weiss (1956: pp. 88-108) and
Schwartz (1968: pp. 61-66), so that hypotheses concerning self- and
other-perceptions could be evaluated.

To arrive at the reciprocated dyads, reciprocation was operationa-
lized as mutual listing on the Checklists, regardless of reported con-
tact frequency or of discrepancy between reported contact frequencies.
Although Schwartz assumed reciprocation in some cases when a population
member was a non-respondent, the present study makes no such assumption.
Virtually 100 per cent participation was anticipated, so the assumption

was not necessary.

Missing Data.
A Personal Contact Checklist line entry was used only when it in-
cluded the name of a person in the study population and a contact fre-

quency for that name within a content-functional area. Omission of the

65

"importance" dimension did not affect hypothesized relationships, although
future analyses should be conducted on this dimension.

A Personal Contact Questionnaire was not used unless at least half
its entries were completed. The actual cutting point did not require
amplification of this rule. In those cases where most entries were
completed, but one or more response was missing, the average response
on that item made by other people in the appropriate communication-

functional role (liaison or nonliaison) became the value ascribed to

 

the missing response. Where pg_response was made to a set of items

constituting an index, the index was not used for that person.

Hypothesis Evaluation.

 

The study design must be described as an exploratory, empirically-
based case study, without random sampling of respondents or observations
on respondents. The effects of this condition upon the use of inferen-
tial statistics have been treated earlier.1 Therefore, a statistic was
devised to provide a re5ponse-range-free description of the degree to
which role behaviors "go together" for all hypotheses except number six,
which required a correlational approach, and Hypothesis 9, which compared

incidence of liaisonness with formal organizational position.

 

1. See pp. 50-52, above.

CHAPTER IV

FINDINGS

This chapter summarizes and describes the sociometric analysis and

liaison person identification procedures used, presents an analysis of

index scales, describes respondent characteristics, and discusses tests

of the hypotheses.

General Analysis

 

By the means described in Chapter III, 97 per cent of the study
population completed questionnaires and checklists within 15 days after
data collection began. Two Communication Questionnaires were discarded
because they still contained less than 50 per cent useable responses:
thus, 96 per cent of the respondents provided useable data.

There were 875 frequent (daily or more often) contact nominations
by 179 respondents in the study pOpulation: 844 Personal Contact
Questionnaires were completed for those responses after follow-up action
by the staff liaison representatives--a 96 per cent success rate. At
least one Personal Contact Questionnaire was completed by 176 persons, or
98 per cent of the population responding at all. The frequency distri-

bution of frequent nominations is presented in Table 1.

66

67

Table 1. Frequency Distribution of contact nominations at
the daily or more often levels by 179 respondents.

 

 

Number
of PCQ
O 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ll 12 13 15 16 23

 

F. 3 10 28 29 25 25 13 11 11 7 7 1 3 1 l 1 1

Range - O-23 Mean a 4.97 Median = 4.82

 

Based on the experience of the Jacobson and Seashore study in a
governmental bureau and the Schwartz study in a college, as well as the
four pretest cases in the present study, 32 line spaces were available
on the Personal Contact Checklist. Counting only the first 30 nominations
by each reapondent, a total of 3130 nominations were made at all fre-
quencies. The limit Of 30 nominations was necessitated by the following
circumstances: (1) one person listed 158 contacts and two other res-
pondents listed more than 60: (2) several respondents wrote comments
indicating that at one time or another they contact virtually all mem-
bers of the staff: (3) other respondents appended an ”etc." to the bottom
of their lists of contacts.

Examination of the Personal Contact Checklist form revealed a
likely cause of this problem. Pretest interviews indicated that the
number of pe0ple contacted in the ”less than once or twice a month” cate-
gory might be very large, so it was planned to delete that category,
leaving “once or twice a month” as the least frequent possible nomina-
tion. The author inadvertently deleted the "once or twice a month”
category instead. The omission was not noted under the pressure of

time in revising the instruments for main study administration.

68

Because of this situation, only contacts in the "once or twice a
week“ or more frequent categories were considered in the present study.
The frequency distribution of contact nominations within this restric-
tion, and given the artificial t0p limit of 30 nominations per respondent,
is presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Grouped frequency distribution for contact nominations
at all frequencies by 179 respondents.

 

 

Cate-

gory
0-3 4-6 7-9 10-12 13-15 16-18 19-21 22-24 25-27 28-29 30 or more

 

F 7 20 21 13 24 15 17 10 8 14 30

Range t 1-30 (158) Mean = 17.6 Median = 16.5

 

Of the 844 completed Personal Contact Questionnaires, 11 were
rejected because they were less than 50 per cent complete. They were
the products of seven respondents. Missing values were found in 12 of
the Communication Questionnaires, or 7 per cent, and in 142 of the Personal
Contact Questionnaires, or 17 per cent. Table 3 presents a summary of
the data missing from the Personal Contact Questionnaires that is germane
to the present study.

Table 3. Frequency of non-reSponse to Personal Contact
Questionnaire items, from 177 respondents.

 

 

 

Number of 1
items not 1 2 3 4 5 6 10 11-18 19
completed

Frequency 44 19 6 34 22 6 l 8 2

 

1. One respondent appended a note indicating that newness in the
organization precluded judgments of communication behavior or of

69

There were missing items in 12 of the Communication Questionnaires,
aside from the two from which more than half the responses were missing.
Not counting the two rejected Questionnaires, there were 23 item-
responses missing.

2 All

Missing data were recorded as indicated in Chapter III.
analyses which follow are based on the recoded data, except for Pearson
product-moment correlations, which were calculated with a computer

program that accounts for missing data.3

Sociometric Analysis

 

The data for sociometric mapping of the perceived communication
structure of the agency's professional-level employes were taken
from the Personal Contact Checklist. The total number of contacts re-
ported resulted in an average of almost 17 contacts per person, con-
sidering only the top three frequency categories and an arbitrary
limitation of 30 contacts per person. Schwartz (1968: pp. 91-93)
reported an average span of seven contacts: Weiss and Jacobson (1955:
p. 663) reported an average span of about 12 contacts per respondent.
Schwartz limited his respondents to reporting weekly or more frequent
contacts, while Weiss and Jacobson permitted reports of frequencies as
low as "several times a year." It is likely that the employment

stability and the coordinative nature of the agency examined in the

 

characteristics of other employes. This accounts for both cases in
the ”19” category.

2. See page 69 above.
3. MDSTAT, a Michigan State University Agricultural Experiment

Station program written for the CDC 3600 and 6500 computers. The
program is on file at the university Computer Laboratory library.

70

present study contributed to the much higher average number of contacts
reported. POOple who have been members of a given staff or of field
branches of the same agency for as long as 20 years probably know and
communicate with most of their fellow employes at one time or another.

Only reciprocated contacts were used to identify the properties
of the communication structure required for the present study. This
means that not only must a person nominate another as a communication
contact, but that person must agree by naming the first person as a
communication contact also.

To determine reciprocation in a form that could be analyzed
visually, a matrix was constructed with code numbers for the 185
professional-level employes placed at the top and left margins of
the matrix in alphabetical order. Although both the Weiss and
Jacobson and the Schwartz studies began with a semi-ordered listing
based on organization charts, the present study based the entry of
contact nominations on an alphabetic list, using the instructions
contained in weiss"pure conceptual model' description (1956: pp.
90-91).

This procedure was adopted for two reasons. The first was to
facilitate coding of the instruments in the initial data-checking
phase, and the second was to preclude any effect of listing-order upon
identification of groups and liaisons. To further test whether the
order of listing would affect results, one matrix segment was analyzed
four times, selecting a different entry point each time. The final
results were identical in terms of group membership and liaison
identification. What did differ was the number of successive itera-

tions required to group contacts closely around the main diagonal:

71-

when the early entries have many contacts themselves, all sense of
pattern is lost. Weiss‘s admonition to begin with people having few
contacts is mandatory.

While the test procedure discussed here lends support to the
contention that entry order does not affect outcome, it was necessary
to test the proposition in the present study, since the nominations
had to be partitioned into three matrices according to the content-
functional area involved. An adequate test, analyzing an entire
matrix using both initial order procedures and comparing outputs, is
not likely, considering the labor involved.

Initially, a "1" was entered into the appropriate cell for
every communication contact nomination in the "more than once a day"
category; a "2" was entered for a nomination in the "once a day”
category: and a "3" was entered for each "once or twice a week"
nomination.

The second phase required matching nominations to determine
reciprocation. The procedure used in the present study was somewhat
different than that adopted by the earlier studies, but performed the
same tasks. Here, two investigators were required to concur on
matching entries, one in each axis. Thus, one analyst would report that
respondent number 100 chose respondent number 41 as a “2" and the other
might report that number 41 did not indicate contact with respondent
number 100 at all.

The result of this procedure was a second matrix containing only
reciprocated contact nominations. A series of symbol and color codes

was established for this matrix, in order to facilitate later examination

72

of specific frequency levels of contact. An "x" was used to refer to
a reciprocated contact at the daily or more frequent levels: a '0'
meant that one person reported daily or more frequent contact, but
that the other person in the dyad reported contact only once or twice
a week: and a 'l' meant that one person nominated another as a "more
than once a day” contact, while the second person did not mention the
first at all. This last category was not used in any subsequent
analysis. Reciprocated weekly contacts were indicated by the symbol
”3..

Yet a third matrix was constructed for each content-functional
area. Following the instructions given by Weiss, communication groups
were identified by reports of contact made by the respondents (1956:
Pe 90)!

According to the conceptual model, persons with few
contacts (small row totals in the matrix) would not
be liaison persons: their contacts would be among
members of the same subgroup. Listing such a person
first followed in turn by his contacts, the separate
groups should fall into place. . . . to avoid succes-
sive listing of unrelated individuals in divergent
chains. . . . a fresh start could be made with another
person having fewer contacts.

Schwartz describes the re-ordering and its purpose (1968: p. 94):
Groupings of individuals in the final matrix was ac-
complished by inspecting the locations of tentatively
identified reciprocated choices in the preliminary
matrix and relisting individuals within the second
matrix in order to bring each into adjacency with a
majority of the other individuals with whom he had
contacts. The purpose of the re-ordering was to
create clusters of contacts around the diagonal as
required for*matrix analysis.

This matrix, of course, made use of reciprocated contacts at all three

frequencies. Final analysis, utilizing reciprocal contacts in the
daily or more frequent categories, provided the basis for hypothesis

testing.

73

When the third matrix had been constructed for each content
functional area, it was found that the numbers of participants varied
according to the area involved. That is, for each content-functional
area a different subset of respondents agreed that they did indeed
communicate with one another. The production communication matrix,
as expected, was largest, with 166 participants. The innovation matrix
included 93 participants, and the maintenance communication matrix in-
cluded only 7l respondents. The data on groupings within each matrix
prior to segment analysis are presented in Table 4.

Table 4. Reciprocated contact groupings by content-functional area
prior to segment analysis.

 

 

 

Number

in group 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 lo 11 13 16 19 21 60 Total
Number

of groups 9 5 4 6 1 4 l l 2 l 1 l 3 1 l 41
Production

groupsonlylll4-21- 111-1-115

Innovation
groups only 4 2 1 l l l - l l - - - 2 - - 14

Maintenance
groups only 4 2 2 l - l - - - - - l - l - 12

 

The number of reciprocated contacts also varied by content-
functional area, even when controlling for the number of persons in the
matrices. There were 588 reciprocated contacts among the 166 persons
in the production matrix (§'- 3.5), 244 reciprocated contacts among

the 93 persons in the innovation communication matrix (§'- 2.6), and

74

144 reciprocated contacts among the 71 contributors to the maintenance
communication matrix (§.- 2.0). The distribution of reciprocated con-
tacts by matrix is presented in Table 5.

Table 5. Frequency of reciprocated contacts by content-functional
area matrix.

 

 

Reciprocated
contacts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 n

 

Production 34 35 33 l6 l7 7 12 7 2 2 1 588
Innovation 45 17 19 6 3 2 l - - - - 244

Maintenance 35 15 13 4 2 2 - - - - - 144

 

These frequencies represent one-way communication linkages, since they
were taken from both halves of a symmetrical matrix. Therefore, the
production communication matrix represented 294 reciprocated dyads, or
twodway pairs. Similarly, there were 122 reciprocated dyads in the
innovation communication matrix and 72 in the maintenance communication
matrix.

Using these reciprocated contacts, Weiss's procedures were
followed to specify group members and liaison persons.

First, the matrix for a content-functional area was partitioned,
or divided into groups that included most of the non-zero cells per-
taining to their members' contacts. Weiss explains (1956: p. 91):

The same partitioning is applied to both the rows and
the columns, so that the principal submatrices (those
lying along the diagonal) are square. The set of in-
dividuals identified.with each principal submatrix is

called a segment. The concrete interpretation is that,
except for liaison persons, each individual is included

75

in the same segment with the people he contacts, i.e.,
each segment contains one or more of the conceptual
separate groups.
Although Weiss recommends that the researcher limit segments to 50 mem-
bers, one segment of the production communication matrix contained 60
persons. The others were all of smaller size, in part because of the
division of communication into three content-functional areas, and also
because of the three step iterative process utilized in grouping res-
ponses as closely about the main diagonal as possible.
There were 16 segments in the production communication matrix,
most of them irreducible by further analysis because of the iterative
process followed to this point. The innovation communication matrix
contained 12 subgroupings with as few as two members in a group. The
maintenance communication matrix contained 13 groups, also ranging
upward from two members.
Where there were any outside contacts, the segment members with
such contacts were listed, as were their outside contacts, and the
number of such contacts for each person was determined. Weiss notes
that (1956: p. 91):
The person having the highest total obviously is a
liaison person and he is deleted from the matrix. When
that person and all of his contacts are deleted, the
process is repeated until no member has more than one
outside contact.

What remains from this process is known as a reduced segment.

Each reduced segment was the considered separately, re-ordering
its rows and columns so that contacts were adjacent. At this point,

whatever conceptual groups existed were within the boundaries of their

segments. The goal of this process was to identify work-communication

76
groups and the liaison persons who linked those groups together. The
most general rule within segments is that if two groups would be
separated upon the removal of an individual and his contacts,1 then
that person functions as a liaison and should be deleted from the matrix.

Many of the tests for liaison status did not apply to innovation
or maintenance communication matrices: (1) their members were easily
separated into communication groups without interconnection; and
(2) the re-ordering described above had already grouped most communica-
tion contacts very closely.

Only two liaisons were identified within the 71-person maintenance
communication matrix, and five in the 93-person innovation matrix. There-
fore, most of the following discussion applies only to the production
communication matrix. Possible reasons for the paucity of liaison
persons in the other networks are discussed in Chapter V.

Segment analysis added to the numbers of separable groups and
tentative liaison persons. The maintenance communication matrix now
had 15 groups, innovation 20, and production 27. Nine of the 35 ten-
tatively identified liaisons served that function only within their
own segments. Table 6 presents the frequency-by-size distribution of

groups after segment analysis.

 

1. Some other contacts are pemmitted. Where one person in a group
contacts one in another group, the graph theory analogue is the
single bridge. As in the Schwartz study, the present study permits
as many as three bridge contacts between otherwise separated groups.
Weiss cautions (1956: p. 105): ”A reasonable number when a group
is called for, and no decision rule was necessary in the present
study.

 

77

Table 6. Reciprocated contact communication groups, by con-
tent-functional area, after segment analysis.

 

 

 

Number

in group 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ll 14 16 Total
Total

groups 12 6 16 6 6 6 4 2 2 l 1 62
Production

groups 3 l 9 2 3 3 2 2 l l 0 27
Innovation

groups 5 3 3 2 3 2 l O 0 0 l 20
Maintenance

groups 4 2 4 2 0 l l 0 l O 0 15

 

Tentative liaison persons were so identified because they were
removed from segments on the basis of multiple contacts outside their
segments. Following procedures devised by Weiss and applied also by
Schwartz (1968: pp. 99-102), based on the concept of the articulation
point in graph theory, criteria were set for final identification of
liaison persons:

1. A liaison person is considered a member of a

communication group if a majority of his contacts, not

including contacts with other liaison persons, are

within the group. These are liaison group members.1

2. A liaison person must have at least two contacts

outside his group, not counting other liaison persons.

An exception occurs if he has contact with two or more

liaison persons outside his group.

3. A liaison individual does not have a majority of
contacts in any one group, but has contacts with members

 

1. A more complete description of checks is presented by Weiss (1956:
pp. 106-108), including matrix squaring to resolve ambiguities and
the use of additional data in determining communication roles. These
procedures were not required.

78

of two or more groups. These contacts may be with other

liaison persons only where those persons are themselves

members of groups. If there is a liaison set its

members qualify as a group for this purpose.

4. The liaison set consists of respondents who have

all or nearly all of their contacts with other liaison

persons, at least two of whom must be members of more

than one group, i.e., liaison individuals.

5. If a person is not a liaison individual by these

criteria, but also is not a member of any group, and

if such a person has all or nearly all of his contacts

with the members of a liaison set, he should be classed

as a liaison individual.

6. A nonliaison group member may have no more than

one contact outside his own group, except with liaison

persons, and must have a majority of his contacts within

his own group.

One exception to these criteria was taken in the present study.
Rather than requiring an absolute majority of contacts in one group in
order to qualify for membership in the group, a person may have a
plurality, or more contacts in that group than in any other.1 The status
of each tentative liaison person was evaluated to determine whether
each served the necessary linking functions and was not a bridge
contact. The results are presented in Table 7.

This topological analysis of the production communication matrix
identified eight of the tentative liaisons as bridge contacts instead.
That is, each had two contacts outside his own group, one of whom was
another liaison person, deleting the contact of either the bridge
contact person or of the liaison person had the same result--communication
between two groups was reduced to a single link.

Considering also the liaison persons identified in the simpler

maintenance and innovation communication matrices, 26 persons were

 

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82

found to be performing the liaison function among the 185 members of
the population. Two respondents served as liaison members of two
communication structures. The remaining members of each communication
matrix were determined to be nonliaison group members; every respon-
dent had reciprocated communication contact, at some frequency, with

at least one other person.

Description g£_the Population

 

 

Sociometric and demographic data characterize the occupants of
liaison and nonliaison roles; such information is also useful for
comparison of role occupants between studies. Demographic data were
obtained from two sources: the Communication Questionnaire and the
agency's most current personnel roster. Sociometric data were taken
from information supplied by the Personal Contact Checklist and its
resultant matrices.

Sociometric Description. Liaison persons made and received

 

more communication choices than did their nonliaison fellow employes.
It is not necessary to have many contacts in order to be a liaison
person, although Hypothesis 1 dealt with the perceptions that, as a
class, liaison persons gill_have more; rather, the contacts must be
strategically placed. Table 8 describes the nominations made.

It can be seen from Table 8 that liaison persons made roughly
twice as many nominations, on the average, than nonliaison persons
made, depending on the interaction frequency level. Schwartz (1968:

p. 104) reported much the same pattern; in his study liaison people

83

Table 8. Communication contact choices made by liaison and
nonliaison respondents.

 

 

 

 

Contact More than Once a day Once or twice
frequency once a day a week

n Mean n Mean n Mean
Liaison
members 124 4.8 91 3.5 201 7.7
(n-26)
Nonliaison
members 409 2.7 265 1.7 645 4.2
(n-153)

 

had an average of 1.4 contacts in the most frequent category, versus
0.7 for nonliaison” 3.1 in the ”once per day“ category, as compared
with 1.0 for nonliaisons) and 3.6 in the '2-3 per week" category,
compared with 1.9 for nonliaison respondents.

In choices received from other persons, as well, the liaison
members of the population exceed the nonliaison members. A total
of 330 choices (at all interaction frequencies) were received by
liaison persons (§'- 12.7), which may be compared with the 958 choices
received by 153 nonliaison members ('2? - 6.3)-half the liaison rate
of being chosen.

Figure 2, depicts the distribution of contacts received by the
two respondent categories. Numbers of persons receiving choices
have been computed as percentages, in order to remove the distortion
induced by great numerical differences in category membership.

It can be seen in Figure 2 that no liaison person received

fewer than six choices, while about 53 per cent (n - 81) of the

84

nonliaison persons received fewer than six choices, 78 per cent of
the liaison persons received more than ten choices (n - 20), as
compared with 13.7 per cent for nonliaisons (n I 21).

The proportion of liaison persons to the study population is
similar to that found by Schwartz. Twenty-six liaison persons
represent 14.1 per cent of the present study population of 185 employes:
Schwartz found 21 persons, or 15.5 per cent in his 142 college
faculty members.

In the present study, 21 persons were identified as liaison
persons in the production communication function, five in the innova-
tion communication function (one was also a production function liaison
person), and two in the maintenance communication function (one also
served as a liaison person for the innovation communication function).
Of these 26 persons, four were determined to be liaison individuals,
without membership in any one group. They did not, however, consti-
tute a liaison 2:2, for the majority of their contacts were not with
other liaison persons.

Demographic Characteristics. The data discussed here were
obtained from the 177 useable Communication Questionnaires and.an
agency personnel roster corrected to the date of the study administra-
tion. Year of birth and civil service grade data were taken from the
latter source. Data on the education of respondents and on other
jobs they had held inside or out of the agency were not accessible
to the study staff.

The average civil service grade of liaison persons was almost

one full grade-level higher than that for nonliaisons. The mean

85

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86

for liaisons was 15.1 (range - 12-19), while that for nonliaisons was
14.3 (range - ll-l9).1

In terms of age, liaison respondents were not much different
from the nonliaisons, averaging about a year younger than their
nonliaison co-workers. The respective ranges were 1907—1936 for
liaisons and 1902-1942 for nonliaisons.

Liaison role occupants appear to have served in the agency, at
some level, somewhat longer than nonliaisons. Because of the cate-
gorical responses permitted to the question used to elicit tenure
information, a mean could not be computed. Therefore, Table 9 presents

the percentage of n for each group within each category.

Table 9. Duration of employment in the agency at any level.

 

 

 

Liaison Nonliaison
Tenure (n - 26) (n I 153)
Category

t of n t of n

 

Less than 1 yr 0.0 3.3
1 yr, less than 2 0.0 3.9
2 yrs, less than 5 0.0 13.1
5 yrs, less than 10 50.0 32.7
10 yrs, less than 15 34.0 28.7
15 yrs, less than 20 15.4 18.3
20 yrs or more 0.0 0.0

 

Length of employment with the agency appears to differentiate between
liaison and nonliaison role occupants in at least one way. While a

fifth (n - 31) of the nonliaison respondents have been employed in the

 

1. There is no grade 19: it is used here to designate special high-
level appointees under Public Law 313. The agency Director is not
included in these calculations.

87

agency less than five years, no liaison person has so little agency
service. The important difference, therefore, appears to be that a
person must be with the organization some minimum length of tim --
at least five years in this case--in order to function as a liaison
member. Half of each group, liaison and nonliaison, has been with the
agency more than a decade, indicating its relatively stable nature.
One other question was asked about the personal backgrounds of
respondents: the existence or general nature of previous military
service. The question was deemed germane because of the chain-of-
authority location of the agency within government and because of the
quasi-military nature of some of the agency's mission. The response

distributions are presented in Table 10.

Table 10. Previous military service of respondents.

 

 

 

Liaison Nonliaison
(n a 26) (n - 153)
Response
Category % of n 8 of n
Retired for longevity
or medical reasons 15.4 11.8
Previous service:
did not retire 57.1 58.8
No previous service 23.12 27.52
Now on active duty 0.01 2.0

 

Previous military service is not highly correlated with filling

the liaison role. Further investigation, however, might reveal that

 

1. There was, however, one "No response" to this question.

2. One liaison person and four nonliaisons were female. It is unlikely
that they have records of military service, although at least two
clerical—level female employes do have such service.

88

certain kinds of such service differentiate in terms of communication
structure of the organization. For example, a former general might

be perceived as a particularly credible or reliable information source.

2253 Sources £25_Hypothesis 33252, The data from the Communica-
tion Questionnaires and Personal Contact Questionnaires were both used
as sources of mean scores on self-perception and other-perception of
liaison and nonliaison respondents.

A Personal Contact Questionnaire was used only where it represented
a report on a reciprocal contact, i.e., the two people agreed that they
communicated at some frequency, and at least one of the pair completed
a Personal Contact Questionnaire on the other. Twenty-four liaison
persons completed 47 Personal Contact Questionnaires on their reciprocated
nonliaison contacts: these questionnaires became one data source. Forty-
five nonliaison persons completed 55 Personal Contact Questionnaires on
24 reciprocated liaison contacts: these questionnaires became a
second data source. The Communication Questionnaires completed by the
24 liaison and 45 nonliaison persons described above became the other
major sources of data. Where, however, an hypothesis was based only on
self-perceptions within roles, all Communication Questionnaires within

each role were used to provide data.

.S_ca_1_._e_ Analysis for Hypothesis ge_s£._s_
Missing data transformations were accomplished for the 12 Commu-
nication Questionnaires which had data missing from columns pertaining
to the present study, and for the 131 Personal Contact Questionnaires
with 9 or fewer missing responses. The 11 Personal Contact Questionnaires

with 10 or more missing responses were deleted from the analysis.

89

Pearson productsmoment correlations were calculated. The corre-
lations were inspected to determine whether any item contributing to an
index scale correlated poorly or negatively with other contributing
items. On the basis of this test, two items were deleted from indices.

The first of these, Question 39 on the Communication Questionnaire,
was intended to measure the perceived number of communication contacts.l
Schwartz (1968: p. 47) had used the item as part of an index of the
structural diversity of communication contacts. The low correlation
in the present study between this question and others asking directly
how'many communications a respondent perceived himself having in the
organization (5 ranged from .0255 to .2451) indicated that the item
did not measure the same things as the more direct questions.

The second item deleted, Question 23 on the Communication Question-
naire, was intended to measure satisfaction with the organization's
work-related communication system. However, the item correlated either
very low or negatively with every other item contributing to the index.
The question asks whether work-related communication (from.top manage-
ment) is timely, while the other items ask about the accuracy, credi-
bility, utility, and completeness of communications from top management.
It is not illogical that accuracy, credibility, utility, and completeness
occur in a slow-moving information system.

The inter-item correlation matrices described below all represent
correlations that explain substantial amounts of variance and are

relatively consistent within a given index.2

 

1. The same question, as number 18 on the Personal Cbntact Question-
naire, was also deleted from analysis.

2. Were a sampling model used, the correlations would all be statistically
different from zero at or beyond the .001 level. See walker, Helen W.,

90

The matrix for the index of number of communication contacts is
presented in Table ll--self-perceptions of the respondents--and in
Table 12--perceptions about one's frequent contacts. Item numbers
in the fermer matrix refer to items on the Communication Questionnaire;
item numbers in the latter matrix refer to items on the Personal
Contact Questionnaire.

Table 11. Inter-item correlations for the index of number of
communication contacts (self-perception).

 

 

 

Item 27 35 39 50
27 x

35 .42 x

39 .25 .03 x

50 .67 .45 .14 x

 

n ranges from 178 to 179

Table 12. Inter-item correlations for the index of number of
communication contacts (other-perception).

 

 

 

Item 14 17 18 19
14 x

17 e 50 x

18 .35 .13 x

19 .70 .51 .33 x

 

n ranges from 813 to 819.

 

and Joseph Lev. Statistical Inference. New York: Holt, 1953,
p. 470.

91

The inter-item correlations for questions used to index influence
in the organization are presented in Table l3--self-perceptions of
respondents-and Table 14--other-perceptions by respondents of their
frequent contacts. Here, all correlations warrant retention. Again,
item numbers in Table 13 refer to questions on the Communication
Questionnaire and item numbers in Table 14 refer to questions on the
Personal Contact Questionnaire.

Table 13. Inter-item correlations for the index of organizational
influence (self-perceptions).

 

 

 

Item 28 58 59
28 x

58 .60 x

59 e29 .51 x

 

n ranges from 176 to 178.

Table 14. Inter-item correlations for the index of organizational
influence (other-perceptions).

 

 

 

Item 15 27 28
15 x

27 .73 x

28 e47 .50 x

 

n ranges from 785 to 796.

The correlations for the two questions contributing to the
index scale for control over message flow, numbers 16 and 29 from the
Personal Contact Questionnaire, are at an adequate level: r16 29 - .40
I

(n - 784).

92

Inter-item correlations for questions contributing to the index
of communication system openness are presented in Table 15. It will
be noted that correlations are consistent and relatively strong, so
that all three items may be retained in the index. Item numbers refer
to the Communication Questionnaire.

Table 15. Inter-item correlations for the index of communication
system openness (self-perceptions).

 

 

 

Item 34 37 41
34 x

37 .50 x

41 .41 .38 x

 

n ranges from 156 to 210.

The inter-item correlations for questions contributing to the
index of communication system openness are presented in Table 16.
Item number refers to questions in the Communication Questionnaire.

Table 16. Inter-item correlations for the index of communication
system satisfaction (self-perceptions).

 

 

 

Item 20 21 22 23 24
20 x

21 .63 x

22 .55 .65 x

23 .26 .16 .28 x

24 .62 .57 .51 .41 x

 

n ranges from 265 to 268.

93

Item 23, which concerns the timeliness of work-related information
communicated from top management, correlates weakly with other items
contributing to the index, when compared with the correlations among

those other items. Therefore, question 23 was deleted from analysis.

Testing Hypotheses

The hypotheses are discussed below, in order, together with
the major variables under which they were introduced in Chapter II.
The effects of the absence of a probability model, chiefly to render
the tests of significance inappropriate, were discussed in Chapter
III.

Hypotheses were evaluated by comparing mean values of scales,
using reports of respondents who functioned as liaison or nonliaison
persons and who agreed that they were in communication contact. In
some cases the perceptions of a group about its own characteristics
were used for comparison with the perceptions of another group.

The numbers of observations on which data were computed range
from 26 in the case of liaison person self-perceptions to 55 in
the case of liaison person self-perceptions to 55 in the case of non-
liaison perceptions of their liaison reciprocated contacts. In addition,
scores could vary in range from the five-point scale where single
questions were used to a 20-point scale used to assess satisfaction
with the communication system.

TherefOre, it was necessary to provide a statistic that would
indicate how much scores differed between groups in relation to how

much they could differ. To accomplish this, the mean difference

94

between group scores was computed and this mean difference was divided
by the average standard deviation between groups.

The term “support,“ as applied to findings, refers to any
difference in the hypothesized direction, using the statistic described
above. The absence of random observations or of treatment groups to
which subjects could be randomly assigned precludes the assessment
of statistical significance to observed differences. "Not supported”
refers to zero differences or to differences in a direction opposite
to that predicted.

The data bases used are summarized and labelled as follows:
Liaison person self-perceptions, defined as the responses made by 26
liaison persons identified in this study on Communication Questionnaires,
are labelled.£§§L§, Liaison perceptions of nonliaison frequent reci-
procated contacts, based on the responses contained in 45 Personal
Contact Questionnaires, are labelled EZEEP There are also nonliaison
person self-perceptions, based on 47 Communication Questionnaires
completed by nonliaisons in frequent contact with liaison persons:
these are labelled as NLSELF. Finally, there are nonliaison perceptions
of their liaison frequent reciprocated contacts: these are based on
55 Personal Contact Questionnaires completed by the nonliaisons on
their frequent liaison contacts, and are labelled EL:L?

Number 23 Communication Contacts. The first hypothesis concerns
perceptions that liaison persons have of themselves and of their non-
liaison contacts. Thus, 26 LSELP questionnaires and 45 L-NL question-
naires furnished the data sources. The hypothesis states:

H1: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have a greater number

of communication contacts than they perceive nonliaison
persons to have.

95

This variable was measured by a three-item scale with a possible range

in scores from O to 15. The findings are:

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 26 6-15 12.0 2.3
LSELF
Nonliaison 45 5-15 11.1 2.8
L-NL

The obtained mean difference was .9 in the predicted direction. Fol-
lowing the procedure described above, the range-free difference was
computed as .36, and the hypothesis was supported.

Influence in_the Organization. The second hypothesis established

 

the expectation that liaison persons see themselves as influential,
compared with their nonliaison contacts. The data groups compared were
LSELF and L-NL, as for the first hypothesis.
H2: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have more
influence in the organization than they perceive
nonliaison persons to have.

This variable also was measured by a three-item scale with a possible

range of scores from O to 15. The findings are:

 

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison
LSELF 26 6-14 10.8 1.7
Nonliaison
L-NL 45 5-15 10.6 2.4

The obtained mean difference was .2 in the predicted direction.' The
standard deviation for the L-NL perceptions, however, is considerably

greater than that for the liaison selféperceptions (LSELF): the

96

statistic used for evaluation results in a computed value of .1--
less than a third of the difference noted in Hypothesis 1. While the
hypothesis is supported, it can be seen that the support is weaker
in this case.

Possession sf Work-Related Information. Two hypotheses were
posited, one in regard to nonliaison perceptions of liaison persons
and the other concerning liaison self-perceptions. Each was measured
by use of a single five-point scale. The sources of data were NLSELF
(47 Communication Questionnaires completed by nonliaison persons about
themselves) and NL-L (55 Personal Contact Questionnaires completed by
nonliaisons on their frequent reciprocated liaison contacts) for the
third hypothesis, and L§§L§ and L:§L for the corollary.

H3: Nonliaison persons perceive liaison persons to

have more work-related information than non-

liaison persons perceive themselves to have.

The findings are:

 

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 55 3-5 4.3 0.7
NL-L
Nonliaison 47 O-S 4.1 1.0
NLSELF

The obtained mean difference was .2 in the predicted direction. Because
of the larger variation in NLSELP scores, however, the range-free statistic
computed value was a minimal .02: although the hypothesis is supported,

the evidence is weak.

H3a: Liaison persons perceive themselves to have more work-
related information than they perceive nonliaison
persons to possess.

97

 

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 26 4-5 4.4 0.5
LSELP
L-NL

The obtained mean difference was .1 in the predicted direction.
Applying the correction for variation, the difference is seen to be
.06, providing only minimal support for the hypothesis.

Possession sf Non-Production Information. Two hypotheses
predict that liaison persons will be viewed, and will view themselves,
as having more information about the organization that is ng£_directly
work-related than their contacts in the other groups. Each hypothesis
was measured on a single-item scale with a possible range of scores
from O to 5.

H4: Nonliaison persons perceive liaison persons to

have more information related to innovation and main-
tenance than nonliaison persons possess.
Data for testing this corollary hypothesis were LSELE and 2:52, as

for the first hypothesis. A single item was used to measure, with

possible scores ranging from O to 5.

 

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 26 1-5 3.1 1.1
LSELP
Nonliaison 45 1-5 3.8 1.1
L-NL

 

The obtained mean difference was in the opposite direction from that
predicted, with a value of .6: the value of the computed measurement

statistic is .39. Therefore, the hypothesis is not supported.

98

Control 2£_Message £123. The two hypotheses coming under this
rubric predict that liaison persons will be perceived to have high
control over message flow, and that any person so perceived will also
be perceived as possessing high organizational influence. The former
of these two hypotheses can be tested using the same procedures that
were used for the previous hypotheses. The latter of these hypotheses
required comparison of scores on message flow control and organiza-
tional influence through computation of a productpmnment correlation
statistic.

H5: Nonliaison persons perceive liaison persons to

possess more control over message flow than they
perceive nonliaison persons to possess.

The data for testing this hypothesis were taken from the same sources

used to test Hypothesis 4-dNL-L and NLSELF. The findings are:

 

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 55 5-10 8.1 1.3
NL-L
Nonliaison 47 0-9 6.5 1.5
NLSELF

The obtained mean difference was 1.6 in the predicted direction. The
computed value of the range-free statistic is 1.4, and the hypothesis
is supported.
H6: Persons who are perceived by their communication

contacts to have high control over message flow

will also be perceived to possess more influence

in the organization than other members have.
The relationships between message flow control and perceived influence

in the organization has been of theoretical interest for some time.

99

Hickey (1968) used a Bavelas network apparatus to test several hypotheses
about the nature and effects of control. He used his assistants as
network “central“ persons and had them systematically vary the wording,
timing, and channels for messages in relation to task accomplishment.
Hypothesis 6 tests one of his findings in an ongoing, formal organiza-
tion where control could not be an experimental variable.

The Pearson productpmoment correlation was computed on pairs
of scores representing message control and organizational influence
scales for the two data groups, ngg and E222! that is, the 45 Personal
Contact Questionnaires completed by liaison persons on their frequent
reciprocated nonliaison contacts, and the 55 Personal Contact Question-
naires completed (in the other direction) by nonliaison persons on their
frequent reciprocated liaison persons.

The obtained value of rxy was .57, which explains 33 per cent
of the variance in perceived influence. On this basis, the hypothesis
is supported.

System Openness. The hypothesis concerning system openness v”6
postulated that liaison persons would perceive the management communica-
tion system of the organization as more amenable to the exchange of
ideas and suggestions than would their nonliaison co-workers.

H7: Liaison persons perceive the organization's

communication system fer work-related matters
to be more "open“ than do nonliaison members.
This variable was measured by a three-item scale with a possible range

of scores from O to 15. The data sources for testing the hypothesis

are those used for Hypothesis 1. The findings are:

100

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 26 8-12 10.2 1.1
LSELF
Nonliaison 47 6-12 9.9 1.3
L-NL

The obtained mean difference was .3 in the predicted direction, and
the value of the computed statistic used to test the hypothesis is
.22. The hypothesis is supported.

Communication Satisfaction. This hypothesis follows from those
concerning the possession of information and suggests that possession
and satisfaction co-vary.

38: Liaison persons are more satisfied with the

organization's communication system for work-

related information than are nonliaison persons.
The hypothesis was measured on a scale consisting of four items con-
cerning different aspects of the communication from top management.

The possible range of scores was from 0 to 20. Data sources, LSELP

and L-NL were the same as for the preceding hypothesis. The findings

are:

n Range Mean S.D.
Liaison 26 10-19 14.0 2.9
LSELF
Nonliaison 47 0-17 12.2 3.6
L-NL

The mean difference obtained was 1.8 in the predicted direction. The
computed value of the test statistic is .5: the hypothesis is supported.
Content and Communication Role. Although there has been little

or no previous research relating communication-defined functional roles

101

and formal position in an organization, this hypothesis predicts that
work-related communication and formal authority go hand-in-hand.
H9: Liaison persons identified primarily in terms of

production content are more likely to hold super-

visory positions than are liaison persons identi-

fied primarily in terms of innovation and maintenance

communication.
It was expected that there would be enough liaison persons in each
matrix to permit comparing the role incidence with supervisory office
across matrices, thus testing the hypothesis. Too few liaisons were
identified in the innovation and maintenance communication networks to
permit such comparison.

However, it was determined that, of the 21 liaison persons

identified by analysis of production-communication reciprocated

 

contacts, 67 per cent (n = 14) held formal supervisory positions.
Three of the five innovation-communication liaison persons, and both
liaison persons identified in the maintenance communication network,
also held positions of formally-designated authority.

To determine whether a position was supervisory, the agency's
most recent personnel roster was checked; on it, the head of each
office was listed at the beginning of a section, followed by the names
and grades of office members, in descending rank order. An additional
check was provided by referring to the wording of titles, such as
"Supervisor," or "Chief."

Over all, 70 per cent of the identified liaison persons held
formal supervisory authority, lending some support to the concept
expressed by Simon, that positions of communication and decision impor-

tance do coincide.

CHAPTER.V

CONCLUSION

The present study examined communication linkages perceived by
the members of an organization concerning the production, innovation,
and maintenance aspects of their work environment. From these reported
linkages, networks of communication structure were constructed and the
persons performing two structural functions identified. These communi-
cation functional roles were compared as to their occurrence within each
content-functional network, irrespective of formal organizational rules,
and on several variables relating to receipt of work-related information,
satisfaction with the management information communication system, per-
ceived control over message flow, and the perceived openness of
communication climate.

This chapter summarizes and discusses the study findings, suggests
practical implications to management, and suggests further research into

communication functions and communication roles in formal organizations.

EM
With few exceptions, communication research in formal organizations

has concentrated on ascribed relationships, positing that certain inter-

actions will or will not occur between particular formally-defined roles.

102

103

The present study identified two structural communication roles--liaison
and nonliaison--in each of three content-functional areas of organiza-
tional communication. Schwartz (1968: p. 150) suggested that his
examination of communication in an academic setting might have profited
from separation of communication "about work” into some more specific cate-
gories, enabling the researcher to discern differences between liaison
and nonliaison role occupants according to the content of communication.
In the present study an attempt was made to determine whether liaison
persons who are identified serve in single content-functional networks
or across networks.

Liaison persons were identified in terms of the structural diver-
sity of their communication contacts, i.e., as analogues to graph theory
articulation points, whose removal from the matrix separates communica-

tion groups except for single links known as bridge contacts. Earlier

 

research emphasized the importance of the liaison position as a source
of information and of opinion leadership (influence in the organization),
and made clear that other members of an organization have relatively
clear perceptions of the liaison function in those respects.

To extend these perceptions, and to determine whether liaison
persons perceive themselves in similar ways, nine primary and two corollary
hypotheses were posited and tested.

Each respondent in the study population was asked to complete
three instruments: (1) a questionnaire providing demographic and self-
perception data on issues relevant to this and the larger study of which
it was part; (2) a checklist of the names of people within the popu-

lation with whom the respondent communicated, indexed by content,

104

importance and frequency; and (3) a questionnaire eliciting perceptions
of the communication characteristics of people with whom the respondent
reported frequent contact. Of the 185 population members, 179 com-
pleted the Communication Questionnaire (177 were useable) and Personal
Contact Checklist. Personal Contact Questionnaires were completed from
the 875 contact nominations listed as daily or more frequent (844 were
useable).

Information from the Personal Contact Checklists was entered into
matrices—-the frequent contacts reported from nominator to nominee.
Reciprocated nominations were determined and entered into second-stage
matrices; the network and other empirical analyses were based on these
reciprocated nominations.

In all, there were 986 reciprocated contact nominations, 588 in the
production communication matrix. Thus, there were 493 communication dyads
over the three matrices, 294 in the production matrix alone.

Reciprocated contacts were entered into the matrices so that a
respondent's contacts were grouped as close together as possible. This
resulted in the isolation of 62 communication groups; these groups, in
turn, yielded identification of 21 liaison persons in the production
communication matrix, five in the innovation communication matrix, and two
in the maintenance communication matrix. Since two persons served the
liaison function in more than one matrix, the actual total was 26
liaison persons. There were no communication isolates.

Data for testing hypotheses were taken from the Communication
Questionnaires completed by all liaison persons and by 47 nonliaisons in
frequent reciprocated contact with them, and by Personal Contact Question-

naires completed on each group by the other.

105

Number 2£_Communication Contacts. The crux of concern in the present

 

study is whether liaison persons perceive themselves to possess the
structural characteristics that their nonliaison contacts perceive them
to have, as measured by the comparison of self- and other-perceptions.
The first hypothesis stated that liaison persons would perceive
themselves to have more communication contacts than their nonliaison co-
workers. While the definition of the liaison role demands sociometrically
diverse contacts, it does not specify that liaison persons will contact
more other peeple. Schwartz (1968: p. 135) found that the nonliaison
members of his population did perceive liaison persons to have commu-
nication contact with more people than did the nonliaisons other non:
liaison contacts. The present study supports the preposition that

liaison persons also perceive themselves to have more contacts than

 

nonliaison persons.

Influence in_the Organization. The second hypothesis, too, acted

 

to test perceptions that liaison persons held of their own communication
position in the organization. This prediction stated that liaison persons
would view themselves as possessing more potential influence in the

work setting than their nonliaison contacts. The observed difference was
in the predicted direction, supporting the hypothesis. As with the

first hypothesis, the prediction was based on the perceptions that liaison
members had of themselves in relation to their communication contacts,
rather than the perceptions held of liaison members of the pOpulation.

Possession g£_WOrk-Related Information. Two hypotheses were

 

posited, one dealing with perceptions held by one's communication contacts

and the other with perceptions of one's own level of information.

106

Hypothesis 3, that nonliaison persons would perceive their liaison
contacts to have more work-related information, received support.

Hypothesis Be, that the 26 liaison persons would perceive them-
selves to possess more such information than their frequent nonliaison
contacts, received minimal support. Because the standard deviation of
scores on liaison perception of nonliaison contacts was half again as
large as that for liaison self-perceptions, there may be no real
difference.

Possession g£_Non-Production Information. The item used to elicit

 

information about these two hypotheses described the nature of communi-
cation involved as "not related to work-~what's going on within the
agency, who works well with whom, who's happy here and who's not, etc."

Hypothesis 4 utilized reports from nonliaison persons on their
liaison contacts, with the expectation that liaison members would be
perceived to possess more work-related information than nonliaisons
perceived themselves to possess. The hypothesis was supported.

The corollary, that liaison persons would also perceive themselves
to possess more information not related to production, was 393 supported.
The observed difference was clearly in the opposite direction, indi-
cating that liaison persons perceived their nonliaison contacts to have
mg£g_such information than liaison persons possessed. Since two-thirds
of the liaison persons identified were found to hold positions of
tormal authority, the observed difference may indicate also that
office and section heads in this organization repose considerable
confidence in the knowledge levels of their technical and advisory

staff members.

107

Control g£_Message Flow. The obtained mean difference (corrected

 

to the statistic used to test the hypotheses) supported the hypothesis
that liaison persons would be viewed as possessing more control over
message flow than nonliaisons possessed.

Hickey (1968) found that network members in a laboratory situation
who were seen as having high control over message content, timing, and
distribution channel were also seen as having high influence in the
network. Hypothesis 6 was designed as a partial test of this proposi-
tion in a formal organization. The index scales for control of message
flow and for organizational influence, based on the perceptions of
liaison and nonliaison persons reporting frequent communication contact,
became data for the computation of a product-moment correlation
coefficient. The obtained value of rxy' .57, explains about one-third
of the variance. Therefore, the hypothesis was supported.

Perceived System Openness. Hypothesis 7 predicted that liaison
persons would feel that the work-related communication system was more
gpgg_than nonliaison persons would perceive it to be, on the dimensions
of supportive supervisors and the free exchange of ideas and information.
The hypothesis was supported.

Communication System Satisfaction. The prediction of Hypothesis 8,
that liaison persons would feel more satisfied with the management
communication system than nonliaisons would feel themselves to be, was
given strong support, with the observed difference in the predicted
direction. The aspects of communication measured were accuracy, cre-

dibility, completeness, and utility (ease of use) of work-related com-

munication from top management.

108

Content and Communication Role. It was hypothesized that the

 

liaison role would be widely distributed in each of the three communica-
tion-functional networks. However, only two maintenance communication
liaison persons were identified, one of those serving also as a liaison
person in the innovation communication network. Five liaison persons
were identified in the innovation communication network--one serving

the same function for maintenance, as noted above-and one performing

as a production communication liaison person. This distribution
precluded useful comparison of the relationships of official position

to the liaison communication role across the three networks.

The hypothesis stated that production network liaison persons
would be more likely to hold official supervisory positions than would
liaison persons in the other networks. Of the 26 persons identified
as occupying this role, 70 per cent (n - 19) held official supervisory
positions. This was true for three of the five persons in the innova-
tion communication network, for both liaisons in the maintenance
communication network, and for 67 per cent (n - 14) of the 21 liaison
persons in the production communication network. On the basis of these
findings, it is considered that the hypothesis is at least partially
supported.

Additional Findings. A summary of topological and demographic

 

characteristics of liaison and nonliaison members of the population will
provide an overview of their functions.

Respondents in this study made almost 17 communication contact
nominations apiece, on the average, compared with 12 per respondent in

the Jacobson and Weiss investigation and the seven per respondent in

109

Schwartz's examination of a college faculty. Liaison persons nominated
more people than did nonliaisons at every contact frequency: 4.77 for
liaisons and 2.69 for nonliaisons at the "more than once a day" fre-
quency; 3.50 versus 1.74 at the "once a day" frequency; and 7.73 versus
4.24 at the "once or twice a week" level.

Liaison members also received more contact nominations than their
nonliaison co-workers; the mean over all frequencies of contact was 12.69
for liaison persons and 6.30 for nonliaison persons.

The liaison person averaged about one full civil service rank
higher than nonliaison respondents--15.l versus 14.3. And there was
evidence that liaison persons had been employed somewhere within the
agency's national system longer than their nonliaison contacts. It appears
that, for this organization at least, one cannot perform the liaison func-
tion until some threshhold level of service is reached. In this case,

the threshhold was five years.

Discussion

The design of this study placed limitations on interpretation of
the findings. The most important limiting factors were: (1) the study
population was selected for availability, and was in no way a random
choice; (2) even with this limitation, were there a well-defined larger
conceptual population, a case could be made for the use of statistical
tests of significance--but no such population was defined; and (3) with-
in the organization studied the applicable population was censused, re-
moving from consideration a third level at which a probability model

might have been applied.

110

The organization's history is such that findings must be applied
to other government agencies with great caution. During the past decade
the organization has undergone several personnel reductions; at the time
of the present study, no less than three other investigations were pro-
ceeding: and the agency anticipated imminent announcement of decisions
that would affect its future mission and structure. Therefore, mission-
related communication may have been in a state of somnolence, and the
networks derived may be untypical of the organization's long-term per-
formance. Replication, of course, would be the test.

As Schwartz noted (1968: p. 145), the phenomenological nature
of the data imposed a further limitation, in that the relationships be-
tween perceived and reported behavior may have induced distortion. There
was anecdotal evidence during data collection that some employes saw
the present study as another attempt to reduce the number and the pay
grades of staff members. If that feeling were widespread, it could in-
fluence perceived and reported communication behaviors; (l) respondents
might decide to rate their communication contacts artificially high,
restricting the range of responses; or (2) respondents might decide to
emphasize inoffensive responses, neither very high nor very low. There
was no evidence of the former ploy, but a few respondents observed that
they had used middle-range responses. Although such action would tend
to mask perceived differences, its widespread operation could not be
substantiated in the present instance.

Had respondents been provided lists of all staff members and asked
to base their responses on that list, then responses in the least fre-
quent category would have been relatively reliable. However, since all

nominations and other responses were based on unaided recall, it was

111

decided that the "once or twice a month" category demanded too much of
the respondents and was not reliable.

Several respondents listed contacts who were not members of the
population, but who were attached to "field units" of the agency. In-
quiry revealed that some headquarters staff members communicate more
frequently with field personnel than with other people in the headquarters.
Schwartz noted a similar problem in selecting a population imbedded in a
larger, functionally adjacent population. It is possible that if the
population had been defined to include field units, at least some dif-
ferent liaison persons would have been identified.

Two research staff members gave different replies to the question,
"On what basis should I select names to list?“ on the Personal Contact
Checklist. One replied that respondents should list a "good sample" of
their contacts, while the other told respondents to list the”contacts you
usually make.“ Either of these instructions could result in reducing the
number of persons listed and change the nature of the communication
networks. The degree to which they had that effect is not known.

Hypothesis 3a stated that liaisons would view themselves as posses-
sing more work-related communication than their nonliaison contacts.
Actually, liaisons perceived themselves as having about the same amount
of work-related information as their nonliaison contacts.

Several factors could have contributed to this finding, in addition
to the factor of confidence in technical staff as noted above: (1) a
relatively small sample of observations might have operated to reduce
variance; (2) there may have been a response bias to the mean; and (3)
since the same persons reported on themselves and on their contacts, the

single source of data might have served to reduce perceived differences.

112

Schwartz noted (1968: p. 149) that close working relationships, possibly
indicating friendship, could result in similar norms and perceptions by
dyad members. Similarly, a person may perceive the communication behaviors
and knowledge levels of his frequent contacts to be close to his own.
Blau and Scott (1962: pp. 129-131) concluded that members of a govern-
ment regulatory agency selected their co-workers as peer-consultants
largely on the basis of homophily: they tended not to choose people as
consultants who were too expert relative to themselves.

Hypothesis 4a, that liaison persons would perceive themselves to
have more ngnfproduction information than their nonliaison contacts, was
not supported. In this instance, both liaison and nonliaison persons
reported their frequent contacts in the other functional role to have
higher levels of such information about the agency and its personnel.
Comparing only the selffperceptions of liaison and nonliaison personnel,
however, it becomes clear that liaisons see their own information level
as higher than nonliaisons view theirs: the means were 3.15 for the 26
liaison persons and 3.09 for their frequent liaison contacts.

One plausible explanation, since each group saw the other as poses-
sing a higher level of infermation about non-production affairs, is a
courtesy bias. This was not apparent on other variables, and thus is
not accepted in the present case.

A second possible explanation is that the nonliaison group included
some respondents whose communication behavior was critically important
to the attainment of the assigned missions. Where such people maintained
many contacts but did not meet the criteria to be liaison persons, they

may have served to decrease the apparent difference between liaisons and

113

nonliaisons. Further research into the part played within networks by
high-contact bridge role occupants might lead to explanation of the un-
expected lack of support for these two hypotheses.

In Chapter III it was noted that decision and communication centers
should coincide; that expectation was confirmed. Schwartz expresses con-
cern that the diversity of contacts that nonliaison college staff members
perceived liaison persons to have might be ascribed to the administrative
posts held by many of those liaison persons. The present study could not
determine whether administrators should have more diverse contacts, but
it did determine that some top level adminstrators $19.222 function in
the liaison role.

This may be the result of conscious managerial style, or it may be
regarded as undesirable by the administrators concerned. The agency
director, for example, nominated and was nominated by a relatively small
group of the 183 professional level staff members. That this state was
perceived as undesirable by many members of his staff became evident to
the research team through frequently volunteered comments that he had iso-
lated himself from meaningful contact with members of his executive staff.

Some examples may illustrate. A middle-level executive stated that
he was "always second-guessing what other people want done, without
having the opportunity to check with them." A higher level executive
noted that he needed better feedback on his contributions to the system,
needed more information about the goals and mission priorities of the
agency, and would function more effectively if he had more contact two or
three levels "up the line.“ A third responsibly placed executive observed
that, "Relative lack of contact with the Director, Deputy Directors, and

our Assistant Director makes it difficult to know what they want.“ Similar

114

views were expressed at all levels, from clerical to executives with impor-
tant contributions to the agency's mission.

At the same time, the present study did determine that a majority
of liaison persons are administrators, and that they appear to be aware of
the importance of their communication role in the organization.

The practical implication of this, admittedly anecdotal, evidence
is that while the transmission loops for management communications may
occasionally encompass most of the organization, the feedback 100ps are
inordinately restricted. That is, the organization has provided little
or no means for taking into account cognitive or affective expressions
for the planning of future management communications.

Comparison of sociometric data between the present study and its
predecessors may illustrate some significant differences in both design
and populations.

Schwartz suggested that his respondents reported an average of only
seven contacts because of the "once a week” minimum response category
imposed in his study, while there was an average of 12 in the Jacobson and
Weiss study, where there was a greater contact frequency range permitted.
He then observed that the organization investigated by Jacobson, Seashore
and weiss was rather new and required much coordination in order to
accomplish its assigned mission. The college setting, on the other hand,
makes fewer demands on its members to closely coordinate many of their acti-
vities. The organization investigated in the present study was not new,
but did require extensive coordination of communication among its staff
members. Therefore, the nature of the organization seems likely to be the
principal determinant of interaction frequency, other things being rela-

tively equal.

115

The three content-functional communication networks differed mar-
kedly in size. One hundred and sixty-six persons reported reciprocated
contacts about production matters, compared with 93 for innovation and 71
for maintenance communication matters. However, all members of the main-
tenance communication network except one were also members of the innova-
tion communication network; in turn, all but two members of the innovation
communication network were also members of the production communication
network.

Despite this, there was little overlap among networks in terms of
liaison persons. Given these data, one may conclude that there is a
single large network, of which subsets are activated for different content-
functional matters. With so few unique members, the concept of separate
communication networks is uncertain at best.

The instructions for the Personal Contact Checklist may have affected
network membership; descriptions of the content-functional areas were
very brief, and oral introductions to the data collection sessions did not
elucidate on the descriptions. Where individuals asked about the "meaning"
of a content-functional area, they were given little extra information
for fear of introducing systematic bias. It may be that the population
did not understand the concepts of innovation and maintenance communication
as stated, although members of the population assisted in generating the

descriptions.

Suggestions for Further Research
Before additional research is conducted on communication structure
using the present model, intensive work must be done to devise a computer

program that will perform topological analysis. An example exists in the

116

Ross-Harary MIDAC program, although it is limited by the computer tech-
nology of that period (1956) and small matrix dimensions (44 x 44).

The sheer mass of labor, and hence the possibility of error involved
in the present method of identifying communication groups and roles is
prejudicial to replication. Computer technology has advanced by quantum
leaps in the past 15 years, so the problem should not be insurmountable.
Its solution would contribute to many analyses planned or contemplated
by students of communication, in many social settings. Until or unless
such a program is tested and implemented it is highly unlikely that repli-
cations over time, or over groups within a system, will be accomplished.

Given such a program, analysis could proceed beyond the present
descriptive level to identification of network partitions along several
dimensions--perhaps such concepts as central and peripheral persons and
group cohesion, which are already programmed into incompatible and less

heuristic computer analyses.1

With identification of communication group
membership and various communication roles or functions, techniques could
easily be applied to test the dynamics of communication. Schwartz aptly
concluded (1968: p. 164):

The greatest theoretic utility of the liaison role

concept will come from the study of dynamic properties

of the role. It is necessary to distinguish the func-

tions of the information treated and relayed by liai-

sons in terms of source purpose or receiver effect.

One technique that can be applied to findings of the present study is

Davis's ECCO analysis (1953a,b), used to trace the flow of messages through

 

1. Dr. Nan Lin devised two programs that group system members into cliques
using matrix multiplication procedures. Mr. Lytton Guimaraes modified these
programs to accept more dimensions and to compute more indices of socio-
metric interest. Both programs are available through the Department of
Communication, Michigan State University, East Lansing. With the procedures
adopted in the present study, the criteria are available for writing a
topological analysis program for networks as large as several hundred
members.

117

the structure of a social system. Messages can be introduced into the
system at predetermined times and points and their diffusion traced. Pre-
dictions would concern the centrality of liaisons and bridge contacts in
such diffusion.

The bridge contact function was not analyzed in the present study.

It was only in the final stages of testing the qualification of potential
liaison persons that several bridge contacts were differentiated. They
appeared to have many of the characteristics of liaison persons, such as
frequently choosing and being chosen, and thus may represent part of a
continuum of ”liaison-ness." Schwartz, Rogers, Amend and others have
suggested that variables contributing to an index of the degree to which

a person might be regarded as a.liaison role occupant would include: the
total number of contacts; the number of intergroup contacts; and the number
of reciprocated contacts. The present author suggests at least these
others: proportion of out-group to in-group contacts, perceived impor-
tance of contacts, and whether the contacts are seen as sporadic or con-
tinuous (or at least cyclical). Certainly, there are similarities and
differences of degree between the liaison person with few but strategically
placed contacts, the liaison person with numerous links outside the organi-
zation, the liaison with many links but within the organization, and the
bridge contact person with similar sets of links.

There is yet another approach to the analysis of the liaison role,
that of determining the functions performed by the linking process in the
organization. Ross and Harary (1959) have described system members who
"strengthen” and those who ”weaken," according to how they function as

points of uncertainty absorption. Schwartz, similarly, casts the analysis

118

of the liaison function in terms of the forms of message control exer-
cised. Does the liaison person control the timing, channel, or wording
of messages, or some combination of these? Again, the possibility of a
continuous variable is presented.

Finally, Mitchell (1970: pp. 235-236), in his list of propositions
about the diffusion of an educational innovation, suggests not only that
liaison persons are likely to be in strategic important positions, but
that some liaisons function as informal opinion leaders, without the bene-
fit of formal authority position. As the diffusion progresses, he contends,
the network of liaison persons changes, with some people becoming less
important and others gaining importance. One change noted was that early
liaisons were more likely than later liaisons to be persons in positions
of formal authority. Thus, Mitchell lends support to the position taken
throughout the present study, that replications over time are critical to
the analysis of the liaison function in a social system, if one accepts
communication as process.

The persons identified in the liaison role through the present study
reported considerably higher satisfaction with the management communica-
tion system. Interviews with staff members indicated that communication
was differentially distributed in the system, to the extent that some
agency members did not have information needed for efficient job planning.

The relationship between satisfaction with the system and increased
system efficiency (or effectiveness) is by no means monotonic. However,
much previous research does show a positive correlation between prompt,
broadly-disseminated information about organizational policies that affect

employes and their commitment to the system. The burden of evidence in the

119

present instance is that widespread employe disaffection may be traced
in part to perceived withholding of information by senior staff members.
Differential access to information, insofar as that information is per-
ceived to be one's due, or is perceived to be needed for effective goal-
attainment, can result in unintended and dysfunctional power relationships.
The suggestion is made, therefore, that both transmission and feedback
leaps be extended for a greater variety of organizationally-relevant in-
formation, especially in time of organizational flux.

In extending these 100ps, maximum.use could be made of the formally-
constituted, as well as the sociometrically-defined, liaison members of

the organization.

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APPENDIX

APPENDIX

STUDY INSTRUMENTS

Communication Questionnaire

Instructions for Personal Contact Checklist
Personal Contact Checklist

Instructions for Personal Contact Questionnaire

Personal Contact Questionnaire

COMMUNICATION QUESTIONNAIRE July, 1970

Department of Communication
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan 48823

As Dave Berlo said to all of the staff at the Meetings with
[DIRECTOR] three weeks ago, no one in [AGENCY] will see any of the comple-
ted questionnaires, nor will anyone be identified by name with any of
his answers. We need your full and frank answers; however, we can promise
you that only the Michigan State research team will see individual ques-
tionnaires.

We do ask for your name because we are charting the communication
"map" of [AGENCY]; however, names will be transferred to numbers imme-
diately.

l. MYNAMEIS:
(Remember, only the MSU research staff will read this)

 

PLEASE MARK AN "x" EESIDE JUST ONE OF THE POSSIBLE RESPONSES To EACH
QUESTIONNAIRE NUMBERED ITEM:

EXAMPLE: How frequently do you read the FEDERAL TIMES?

Every issue

Three out of four issues
x About half of the issues
About one out of four issues
Very seldom
I have never read it

llll

2. Before I took the job I have now, I . . .

Worked inthis agency at a very similar job
Worked in this agency at a different kind of job
Worked for another government agency at a very similar job
Worked for another government agency at a different kind of
job
Worked for a non-government organization at a very similar job
Werked for a non-government agency at a different kind of
job

Other: (What, please?)

llll

 

 

3.

Now,

In regard to armed forces service, I . . .

Retired, for longevity or medical reasons
Served on active duty, but not until retirement eligibility
Have not served in the 0.5. armed forces

I have been employed in the [AGENCY] organization (at any level)

Less than 1 year

A year, but less than 2 years

Two years, but less than 5 years
Five years, but less than 10 years
Ten years, but less than 15 years
Fifteen years, but less than 20 years
Twenty years or more

0
H

let's turn to the first of the Communication questions

[ONLY QUESTIONS PERTINENT TO THE PRESENT STUDY ARE INCLUDED]

20.

21.

22.

The information we get from top management (Director, Deputy or
Assistant Directors) is usually in very useful form--easy to
use.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

 

Generally speaking, the information we get from top management
about work-related matters is accurate.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

When top management puts out information to employes, you can
believe it, completely.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

“Y O!!!

23.

24.

26.

27.

28.

30.

One trouble with the work-related information we get from top
management is that it's usually late--not here when we need it.

 

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

 

The information we get about work-matters from top management is
usually complete--we are told all that's necessary.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

When someone needs to get a message to some group or person
in Headquarter, [AGENCY], I can usually tell him the best way
to do it.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

I communicate with more people in this organization than most
people who work here do.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

The people who have a lot to say about what goes on around here
respect the suggestions that I make.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

When I think it's best for the group I work with, I can control--
expedite or delay--messages about our work.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

34. People around here are really encouraged to take any kind of work-
related problems to their supervisors.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

 

35. I have access to very few supervisors and managers, compared to
other people around here.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

 

37. When suggestions are made by employes around here, managers seldom
give the suggestions serious consideration.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

 

39. In most organizations there are small groups of people who prefer
to work or relax together. I.have contacts in more of these groups
than most other people do around here.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

 

41. At our staff meetings or work-group meetings there is free, two-way
discussion of any problems that are brought up.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

We want you to think of the persons you know in [AGENCY] headquarters,
and to compare yourself with them on several questions.

50. First, peOple differ with respect to the number of other people
they communicate with each week about work-related activities
(getting the job done, thinking of new ideas, etc.).: As compared

51.

56.

57.

58.

to other [AGENCY] employes, how do you rate yourself--is the number
of people you communicate with:

Well above average for [AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

How about the number of people you communicate with about other
things (the 'grapevine,‘ generally what's going on around here,
etc.). How do you rate yourself--is the number you communicate
with:

Well above average for [AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

llll

Now, instead of thinking about communication contacts, think about
how much you know about work-related activities. Compared to
other [AGENCY] employes, how do you rate the level of knowledge
you have about work-related activities? Is it:

Well above average for [AGENCY]
Above average
About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average
Well below average

How about your knowledge level about topics that are not related
to work...what's going on within the agency, who works well with
whom, who's happy here and who's not, etc.? Is your level of
knowledge:

Well above average for [AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

 

Finally, compare the amount of influence you have on what goes
on around here, in terms of work-related activities. Compared
to other [AGENCY] employes, is the amount of influence you have:

Well above average for [AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] employes
Below average

Well below average

59.

How about matters not specifically related to work--such as
teaching new people the ropes, helping to smooth out inter-
personal problems, etc. Is the influence you have on these
kinds of things:

Well above average for [AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

PERSONAL CONTACT CHECKLIST

 

(Write your name here)

INSTRUCTIONS

 

1. On the attached Checklist are Spaces for certain information about
your work-related communication with other members of this organization.
You will be asked: their names, how important the contacts are, and
how frequent they are, and generally what function such contact serves.

2. The names are needed to complete the "mapping" of the "communica-
tion territory" here; however, no one within OCD will see any of the
names you use.

3. Please print, or write clearly, so the coder can read it.
4. Consider only the poeple who work in Headquarters, OCD!

5. "Communicate" includes: face-to-face conversation, formal or
informal meetings, memos, letters, intercom, telephone conversations,
etc.

6. About the "functions" of your contacts with the peOple you name....
There are three types of communication listed on the Checklist: they
are headed Production, Innovation, and Maintenance. There is a short
description of each function in the heading. For each person you
communicate with about work, indicate...

 

 

a. In what area or areas you communicate. If only one, all
right. If you communicate in all three areas, mark responses
for all three. If you don't communicate in some area, don't
mark any responses for that area.

b. How important is it to you, when you communicate with this
person about this?

c. How frequently do you communicate with this person about this?

 

 

 

EXAMPLE:
PRODUCTION INNOVATION MAINTENANCE
Impor. Freq. Impor. Freq. Impor. Freq.
l 2 3 l 2 3 4 1 2 3 l 2 3 4 l 2 3 l 2 3 4
Joe Smith x x x X

 

Harry Brown x x x x

 

 

 

 

 

 

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR PERSONAL CONTACT QUESTIONNAIRES

In order to complete the attached questionnaires, you will have to look
again at the Personal Contact Checklist you just finished. The Checklist
is a record of the peOple in this organization with whom you communicate
about work-related matters.

At the top of each one of the attached questionnaires are the words
NAME OF CONTACT, followed by a blank line. Look at the Checklist--
and determine which is the first name that has a "more than once g_day"
or “once 2.221? contact frequency checked off.

Write that person's name on the first questionnaire, after the words
NAME OF CONTACT. Then, complete the questionnaire keeping only that
person in mind. When you have completed the first questionnaire, look
at the checklist to select the next person with whom you have at least
daily contact about work matters; write that person's name in the blank
at the top of the second questionnaire, etc.

Continue this process until you have completed a Personal Contact question-
naire for each person with whom you have at least daily contact about any
of the three categories; Do not complete a questionnaire for any person
with whom you interact less often than once a day.

There may be more questionnaires than you need; if so, please return both
the unused and the completed questionnaires. If you need extra question-
naires, tell the survey staff member in the room, and he will provide
them.

Your c00peration and patience are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

PERSONAL CONTACT QUESTIONNAIRE

NAME OF CONTACT:

 

(Print clearly--only the researcher will see it)

INSTRUCTIONS: The name above is one you have listed as a ”once a day"
or ”more than once a day” communication contact. Please answer the
following questions about this person. Give your first impressions,
and mark only one response tg_each question.

1.

 

This person communicates with more people in this organization
than most other people who work here do.

Strongly agree
Agree '
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

The pe0ple who have a lot to say about what goes on around here
respect the suggestions that this person makes.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree

When someone needs to get a message to some group or person in
Headquarters, [AGENCY], this person can usually tell him the best
way to do it.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

This person has access to very few supervisors and managers, compared
with other people around here.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

S.

In most organizations there are small groups of people who prefer to
work and relax together. This person has contacts in more of these
groups than most other people do around here.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

Hill

We want you to think of the persons you know in [AGENCY] Headquarters,
and to compare this person with them on several questions.

6.

7.

First, people differ with respect to the number of other people they
communicate with each week about work-related activities (getting
the job done, thinking of new ideas, (etc.). How do you rate this
person--is the number of people he communicates with:

Well above average [for AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

How about the number of people he communicates with about other
things (the 'grapevine,' generally what is going on around here,
. How do you rate this person--is the number he communicates

m
[1’
O
0

Well above average [for AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

lllllS:

[QUESTIONS NOT PERTAINING TO THE PRESENT STUDY ARE DELETED.]

12.

Now, instead of thinking about communication contacts, think about how
much he knows about work-related activities. Compared to other
[AGENCY] employes, how do you rate the level of knowledge he has about
work-related activities?

Well above average [for AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for most other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

l3.

14.

15.

16.

How about his knowledge level about topics that are not related to
work--what's going on within the Agency, who works well with whom,
who's happy here and who's not, etc.? Is his level of knowledge:

Well above average [for AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

Finally, compare the amount of influence he has on what goes on around
here, in terms of work-related activities. Compared to other [AGENCY]
employes, is the amount of influence he has:

Well above average [for AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

 

How about matters not specifically related to work--such as teaching
new people the ropes, helping to smooth out interpersonal problems,
etc. Is the influence he has on these kinds of things:

Well above average [for AGENCY]

Above average

About the same as for other [AGENCY] staff
Below average

Well below average

When he thinks it's best for the group he works with, this person can
control--expedite or delay--messages about the group's work.

Strongly agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree

Strongly disagree

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