Organizational Communication Commons^™

The Effects Of Inadequate Training On Knowledge Management Systems: Retention Crisis Of Captains In The United States Army, Lexis R. Grudzinski

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the relationship between the United States Army’s communication strategy in knowledge management for officers and the desires of captains to continue serving beyond their service obligation. Amidst the current retention crisis (Winkie, 2023) at the captain rank, blame often falls on factors outside of the Army’s control. This research, however, seeks to investigate a factor within the Army’s control and offer workable solutions.

For this research, we will use the common definition of knowledge management (KM): the process of creating, capturing, and organizing knowledge within an organization in a way that improves efficiency. KM includes both explicit …

Turnover Talk: Organizational Turnover Communication And Its Effects On Turnover Intention, Organizational Identification, And Job Satisfaction, Ethan L. Carroll

Theses and Dissertations

Employee turnover intention has been a focus of organizational research within the field of communication. Communication can affect organizational culture, relational dynamics, and even information flow throughout organizations, which all have influence over employee decisions. The body of literature that pertains to turnover is vast; however, the gap that this study aimed to fill was looking at communication about turnover. The purpose of this study was to investigate and explore communication related to turnover within organizational practices and interactions. This study used a mixed methods approach that first explored the concept of turnover talk and, second, investigated the impact of …

Leading The Temporary Workforce: Leadership Communication And Adaptation Among Seasonal Employees, Alfred Kwabena Obiri

Theses and Dissertations

Seasonal employees constitute an essential yet understudied workforce sustaining organizational operations during peak demand periods across industries. Despite the growing organizational reliance on temporary employees, organizational communication studies have primary focused on permanent employees with extended socialization periods, leaving important questions about how leadership communication operates in compressed timeframes inadequately addressed. This qualitative study examined how leadership communication practices shape seasonal employees’ adaptation, belonging, and morale within the temporal constraints characteristic of temporary employment. Drawing on organizational socialization theory, leader-member exchange theory and cultural dimensions, this study employed semi-structured interviews with 19 seasonal employees across hospitality, camp, retail, and education …

From Deference To Dialogue: How International Gtas From High Power Distance Cultures Adapt To U.S. Classroom Dynamics, Deborah Akua Afi Appiah

Theses and Dissertations

International graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) from high power distance cultures play a significant role in undergraduate education at U.S. universities, yet they face challenges that go well beyond language proficiency. Coming from educational backgrounds where teacher authority is unquestioned and hierarchical, these GTAs must navigate American classrooms that operate on fundamentally different assumptions, where authority is earned rather than assumed, informality is the norm, and students expect to question, negotiate, and be personally known by their instructors. The present study examined how eighteen (18) international GTAs from seven (7) high power distance countries perceived and adapted to these differences while …

Investigating The Impacts Of Facial Gestures On Global Participants’ Perception Of The Speaker, Perception Of The Message, Emotional Responses, And Engagement During Video Conferencing, Hanan Mohammed Alghamdi

Theses and Dissertations

Facial expressions play a crucial role in shaping communication and emotional understanding during virtual interactions. This study investigated how facial expressions influence participants’ perceptions of the speaker, perceptions of the message, emotional responses, and engagement during video conferencing across diverse cultural contexts. A hybrid experimental design was implemented using self-administered questionnaires to collect quantitative data and examine cause-and-effect relationships. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three facial-expression conditions Positive (smiling and joyful), Negative (angry or nervous), or Neutral (expressionless) and viewed speakers representing three ethnic backgrounds: White American, Black American, and Middle Eastern. Using a seven-point semantic differential scale, …

Game Or No Game: Navigating Office Politics And Female Leaders Success Through The ‘Labyrinth’ Metaphor Lens, Clementina Edema

Theses and Dissertations

The examination of women and leadership has always focused on power dynamics, biases, and identity inside organizations, particularly with the challenges women encounter in the workplace. This study presents the concept of office politics as it pertains to women’s career advancement and its impact on female leaders in the workplace. The objective of the study is to examine how women in organizations navigate office politics, dealing with it as a barrier to career progression. The labyrinth metaphor proposed by Eagly and Carli (2007) served as the conceptual framework to illustrate the challenges women encounter in organizations while pursuing leadership roles. …

Exploring Advancement Department Staff Perspectives On Strategic Communication And Philanthropic Donor Giving At Public Universities, Miranda Hodges

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated advancement staff perspectives on how donor communication impacts philanthropic giving at higher education institutions. The purpose of this study was to identify the communication practices that are most influential for philanthropic donor giving. While prior research has examined university marketing efforts, why alumni give back, and how affinity for a university compels donors to give, there is a research gap in how strategic communication impacts donor behavior at public universities. Eight university advancement staff members (N=8) from public universities across the Southeast United States were selected through purposive sampling and interviewed via semi-structured interviews. After interviews, …

Same Story, Different Narratives: The Influence Of Refugee Concerned Organizations On Egyptian Media, Shaimaa Gheith

Theses and Dissertations

It has been documented in the literature that media usually portrays refugees negatively, which affects how the public reacts to them. Consequently, organizations catering to refugees, referred to in this thesis as Refugee Concerned Organizations (RCOs), try to influence the media aiming to influence the public. So, they produce prepacked information and employ different communication tools. Using the agenda building theory, this research investigated the influence of communication tools used by RCOs on Egyptian media focusing on Facebook and news websites. Qualitative content analysis was conducted for 615 Facebook posts and 111 News reports and supplemented by semi-structured interviews with …

How Do They See Us?: Unhcr's Representations Of Syrian Refugees In “Every Second Counts” Campaign, Marah Khalid

Theses and Dissertations

Representation is not just an opinion; it is the recreation of realities, facts, and stories that encourage receivers, who are readers and viewers, to build perceptions of a certain topic, objects, events, and human beings. Studying the representation of refugees in the media, UN agencies, and International organizations' press releases, videos, and images has been the main focus for many scholars for decades. However, little is known about refugees' perspectives on visuals produced by UN agencies. This research tries to add to the few studies concerning the captured human object, refugees, perspective using Hall’s encoding/decoding model (Hall, 1997) to analyze …

The Uses And Gratifications Of Social Audio-Focused Apps: A Case Study Of The Clubhouse Application, Dalia Abdelhamid Younes

Theses and Dissertations

Social audio has recently emerged recently as a new form of social media based on voice. It spread rapidly through the Clubhouse application, which became a significant trend during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aims to explore Egyptian content creators' motivations to join Clubhouse, study their motivations to produce their content, and identify the gratifications obtained from using this application. It also seeks to investigate the application`s sustainability within the Egyptian context by outlining the challenges faced by the Egyptian content creators. The study employs the uses and gratifications theory, conducting in-depth interviews with 17 Egyptian content creators. The findings …

Evaluating The Chief Of Staff Of The Air Force 2016 Initiative To Revitalize The Squadron: A Thematic Content Analysis Of Appreciative Inquiry Mechanisms, John M. Huntz

Theses and Dissertations

A thorough thematic analysis and literature review were undertaken to understand better the integration of AI mechanisms within the Revitalize the Squadron initiative. To facilitate the initiative's implementation, the aim is to provide commanders with practical instances, dimensions, findings, and results. Throughout the coding process, instances of AI’s mechanisms were discovered in the literature. The link between PE and HQR boosted the overall vitality within the squadron, where vitality was determined to be the goal. AI, as a whole, was not found in the literature, but the analysis determined that the Revitalize the Squadron initiative was “Appreciative” in nature.

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.

Visual Messages Of Conflict Reporting On Twitter: Visual Frames And Ethical Standards, Hasan Karademir

Theses and Dissertations

This comparative study employs the theoretical frameworks of framing and hierarchy of influences model to analyze the ethical forces affecting journalists on Twitter and simultaneously their visual frames constructed in their images on Twitter. It investigates the portrayal of the Yemen conflict in the personal Twitter accounts of Yemeni journalists who were affiliated with the United States (US) and Qatari news organizations. Several studies have pointed out the graphic war coverage of Arab news organizations whereas scholars argue that US news organizations provide sanitized coverage on war zones (Johnson & Fahmy, 2007; Silcock, Schwalbe, & Keith, 2008; Karniel, Lavie-Dinur, & …

From The Margins To The Center: Legitimation Strategies From An Alt-Right Case Study, Lauren C. Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a growing interest in understanding Donald Trump’s election in 2016 as part of the historical trajectory of white racial identity politics, we do not know much about how ideas deemed “radical right” become mainstreamed. My study builds on extant research that implicates the emergence of the think tank industry by viewing one such right wing think tank as a racialized organization. My analysis focuses on the organizational strategies of the National Policy Institute (NPI). Google searches for NPI spiked in 2016 with their vocal support of Trump and visible organizing in D.C. Using Williams’ (2018) theoretical framework of organizational …

An Analysis Of The Elements Of Collaboration Associated With Top Collaborative Tools, Kristopher C. Nagy

Theses and Dissertations

United States government agencies have historically experienced problems with inter-agency information sharing and collaboration. In fact, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United Stated recommended that the U.S. government “increase information sharing” and “improve collaboration across government agencies.” To this day, no collaborative tools are being used to fully address that recommendation. In fact, there is little agreement as to what collaboration necessarily means and what characteristics or capabilities are best suited for the design and use of collaborative tools. Before we can improve collaboration across agencies, we need to better understand the nature of collaboration itself, and …

A Conflict Resolution Guide: Handling Conflict Within Organizational Cultures And Among Various Discourse Communities In A Corporation, Marilyn Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Conflict has been generally recognized as stemming from a lack of communication or ineffective communication in most workplaces, but a misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge of organizational cultures and discourse communities are almost equally to blame. Knowing how to communicate and work together and learn from each other is helpful, but internal and external conflict may be prevented or resolved from simple knowledge of organizational establishment. For anyone to listen to what you have to say involves you presenting yourself as an ethical person. Having a personal code of ethics is a start, but you must be able to …

An Empirical Investigation Of Factors Influencing Knowledge Management System Success, John F. Whitfield Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Knowledge has been viewed as a critical component for organizations. Consequently, organizations implement Knowledge Management Systems (KMSs) to seek competitive advantages, but they may encounter mixed results. This research draws on previous information system and knowledge management system success-related literature and selects eight factors that are believed to be critical for the successful implementation of a KMS. These factors were derived through a literature search of current KMS success-related literature. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that could have a clear influence on the development and implementation of KMSs. The study presents the empirical examination of a …

High Performing Teams: The Moderating Effects Of Communication Channels, Edgard I. Zamora

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to support the Air Force's goal of improving team performance by bringing visibility to several overlapping areas of study where little comprehensive research has been conducted. Specifically, an officer's ability to successfully complete his or her mission has been complicated in recent years by the emergence of new communication technologies. For example, communication networks now make it possible for pilots to fly Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) who sit on one continent while the aircraft and mission planners are on another and, although they may not see each other, their physical separation does not negate …

A Study Of Information Exchange Between United States Air Force Bases And Their Surrounding Communities, Andrew C. Clewett

Theses and Dissertations

Data, information, and knowledge are exchanged daily from United States Air Force (USAF) bases to surrounding communities. The purpose of this research is to aid managers and commanders in gaining a better understanding of their information flow and bettering their information management practices. The research specifically seeks answers to the questions of where information is exchanged, why information is exchanged, and to whom information is exchanged with.

Organizational And Individual Effects On The Reporting Of Wrongdoing In The Workplace, Brian M. Stumpe

Theses and Dissertations

The study focuses on the organizational context in which the act of whistle-blowing occurs within organizations. The study suggests that many aspects of the context in which whistle-blowing actually occurs may be within the span of control of managers. Thus, management can possibly take steps to after certain aspects of the organizational context and ensure that organizational members are willing to report wrongdoing observed within their organization. To fulfill this objective, the study analyzes survey responses taken from military members' and civilian employees' responses to a 1997 survey distributed throughout the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC), Wright Patterson Air Force Base …

Impact Of Actual Facilitator Alignment, Co-Location, And Video Intervention On The Efficacy Of Distributed Group Support Systems, Brian J. Heberlie, Mary O. Tolbert

Theses and Dissertations

The growth of distributed group support systems (GSS) suggests that organizations will continue to bring dispersed groups of people together to make decisions over computer networks. In many instances those groups are temporarily assembled to address a task and then summarily disbanded never to work together again. In order for users to effectively use the GSS issues of trust and control need to be addressed within the GSS design. Users have perceptions about the fairness of structural and social determinants of the GSS design. These perceptions influence both the decision making process and process outcomes. This article shows the negative …

Why Didn’T You Tell Me?: Toward Building A Model Of Why Information Is Not Shared Well In Organizations, Robert C. Kitchen

Theses and Dissertations

The effective use of information in an organization is vital to its success. One of the biggest investments being made today by companies is in their information infrastructures. However, with all of the resources being dedicated to improving information flows, evidence shows that organizations still do not share information as widely as they could or should be. Many studies have been conducted to learn the reasons why people in organizations do not share information as well as would be good. However, no study was found that reported the relative frequency of reported reasons for not sharing information. This paper gathers …

An Assessment Of Mentoring Functions And Barriers To Mentoring, Kristopher A. Singer

Theses and Dissertations

A study of 91 Coast Guard junior officers and their mentors established the construct validity for mentoring functions and barriers to mentoring. The Air Force relies on supervisors to provide mentoring to their subordinates. The key predictors of whether junior officers report their supervisors as mentors were similarity between mentor and mentee and the quality of the supervisory relationship in terms of LMX and psychosocial and career development mentoring functions. The results demonstrated evidence for a compensatory theory of mentoring. Multiple mentors do not have a synergistic effect on mentoring relationships. The key predictors of reporting an additional mentor (other …

An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of Online Peer Feedback At The United States Air Force Academy, Annette M. Driscoll

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the effectiveness of the Air Force Academy's Department of English local area network peer feedback system. Four main questions were examined. These questions explored a) whether students reported improvement in their writing, b) whether students reported that feedback is worthwhile, c) whether students reported that LAN sessions increase enjoyment of writing, and d) what types of feedback the students 1) received and 2) found most helpful. Three groups were studied. Forty-six students received feedback online, fifty students received feedback face to face, and thirty-three students did not receive feedback. Comparisons were made for the questions mentioned above …

Media Use And Performance In Air Force Organizations: Testing The Value Of Media Richness Theory, Lawrence D. Harrison Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Communication is a critical factor in any organization. The choices Air Force members make when communicating have a direct impact on mission accomplishment. Media Richness Theory (MRT) recognizes that communication needs, and the ability of various media to support them, are influenced by a number of factors involving the message content, situational elements, and its symbolic aspects. The theory predicts employees who use more appropriate communication media face to face conversation, telephone, e-mail, and written correspondence as predicted by the theory, will be more effective performers. The ability of MRT to explain supervisory performance ratings for a group of junior …

Air Force Media Use And Conformance With Media Richness Theory: Implications For E-Mail Use And Policy, Heather L. Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Communication has become a major aspect of a manager's job. When communicating, they are faced with many choices of what media to use - some include face-to-face, telephone, e-mail, or written. Managerial effectiveness can improve if managers make appropriate media choices. Thus, it is important to study how Air Force managers perceive media and what kind of choices they are making based on those perceptions. Media Richness Theory suggests that media choices are affected by content reasons, situational reasons, and symbolic reasons. This study examined Air Force managers and found they conform highly with Media Richness Theory in their media …

Whose Information Is It Anyway? An Argument For Information Stewardship, Trevor W. Plant

Theses and Dissertations

Information is an important resource for businesses and government, with information quality influencing decision quality, and highlighting our need to manage our information well: as a resource. Information Resource Management (IRM) has as its goal the management of information as a resource, but has not been implemented with the level of success expected. Problems with the implementation of IRM are indicated by the presence of redundant or inconsistent data, inability to share information across systems, and difficulty finding the information on systems. We propose that these difficulties are related to behaviours linked to perceived ownership of corporate information by organisational …

Multimedia And Audience: Implications For Executive Summaries, Donna M. Grudziecki

Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to put technical reports into a multimedia format, this thesis explored audience analysis and multimedia issues related to executive summaries. While multimedia has been shown to be effective at conveying complex information in certain environments, little research has been done to apply this technology to technical reporting. This thesis concentrates on the executive summary audience because the executive summary is the most read and most important section of a report. To analyze the audience, I conducted telephone interviews with report readers using an interview form I developed based on Mathes and Stevenson's guidelines for conducting an audience …

An Investigation Of A Usaf Information Resource Management Community World Wide Web Site, Kristin A. Waldner

Theses and Dissertations

This research project investigated establishing a World Wide Web (WWW) site dedicated to the United States Air Force Information Resource Management (IRM) community. The project determined guidelines for successful, appropriate format and content for such a site. To discover what benefits the IRM community might achieve, the project explored those benefits achieved or expected to be achieved by the business community and by government agencies with established WWW sites. The project also attempted to define an average profile of active duty IRM community Internet and WWW users. The above objectives were accomplished through a literature review and through the use …

A Solid Surface From Which To Explore: The Executive Summary As The Frontispiece Of A Technical Hyperdocument, Alicia M. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzes the purpose and organization of a well-written executive summary, reviews the characteristics of hypermedia, and compares the strengths and weaknesses of a typical executive summary published originally on paper and now under consideration for transition to hypermedia in order to determine which elements of an executive summary are essential before effective transition to hypermedia. The executive summary of a technical report is a stand-alone description of what was done, how it was done, what the results were, why they matter, and where further information is found in the report body. Executive summaries have a wider audience than …