Communication Patterns, Organizational Structure, and Man: Some Relationships

Abstract

Organizations are an essential part of everyone's environment. Yet, a thorough understanding of the organization as a comprehensive system, its formal structural properties, and the relationships of individuals acting within them is lacking. A prime reason for this would appear to be that field-study measurement techniques are inadequate to the task. Using the string that ties the organization together–intraorganizational communication-an attempt has been made to develop measurement schemes that can treat the organization as a whole without losing sight of its parts. Data have been obtained from a large manufacturing firm, and a subset has been used to test three conjectures relating formal structure characteristics with communication patterns as distinguished by mode. Some support was shown for associating written communication patterns with the authority structure, telephone communication patterns with the task structure, and face-to-face interaction with the physical structure.

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