An Information Processing Analysis of Organization Information Adequacy/Abundance

Abstract

Penley (1982) attempted to clarify the understanding of information adequacy/abundance by examining the relationship between the internal and external systems of an organization and the match between the information processing requirements of a system and its capacity. His model did not consider the effect of communication effectiveness on the relationship. This article expands the model proposed by Penley by considering both the place of communication effectiveness as well as the potential for interactions between communication effectiveness and the internal and external systems of an organization. While support is found for the importance of communication effectiveness in the model, no interactions were found to be significant. In general, the results provide support and expand on Penley's results.

Direction, Function, and Signature in Electronic Mail

“…Daft and Lengel (1986, p.559) argue that structural mechanisms must &dquo;enable debate, clarification, and enactment more than simply provide large amounts of data.&dquo; The structural mechanisms of electronic mail may not be conducive to these communication functions. Therefore, an increased use of electronic mail by an organization could lead to a fundamental lack of informational adequacy and to greater informational uncertainty and equivocality throughout the organization (Alexander, Helms, & Curran, 1987;Daft & Lengel, 1986;Daft & Macintosh, 1981).…”

“…The upward, downward, and horizontal directional categories used in the present study are the same as Huseman and Alexander's (1979) categories and similar to Galbraith's (1974) and Alexander, Helms, and Curran's (1987) categories. The fourth category used in the present study contained mail received from people in other offices in the organization.…”

“…Richmond, Davis, Saylor, and McCroskey (1984) emphasized the importance of influence attempts in organizational communication. Alexander, Helms, and Curran (1987) suggested the administrative communication category which contained meeting announcements, requests to meet, and minutes from past meetings. The personal/social category contained all non-work related mail files.…”

“…Rice and associates (1984) called the electronic medium a fundamental influence on the communication process, affecting both the content of what is communicated and the communication process itself. Alexander, Helms and Curran (1987) suggested that an individual manager's communication adequacy, defined as the amount and types of information received by the manager from a variety of sources, is directly impacted by the technology of the communication channel. Ugbah and DeWine (1987, p.2) suggested that the use of electronic mail has complex implications for an organization.…”

The impact of personality on training‐related aspects of motivation: Test of a longitudinal model

“…In contrast, motivation to learn refers to a particular training event in the near future. Employees might form general attitudes toward training due to experiences like school, prior training, organizational information policies, or human resource practices (Alexander, Helms, & Curran, 1987).Consider an employee who is scheduled to begin an organizational training program. As the start of the training approaches, this employee' s motivation to learn within this program is influenced by information that is provided by the employer (brochures and briefings, for instances).…”