The Process of Studying Process in Organizational Communication

Abstract

An overview of historical, design, and analytical issues relevant to the study of communications over time."Which are you drinking? The water or the waue?"-John Fowles (39, p. 192)The search for knowledge is a search for pattern in experience. A pattern that is seen in reference to time is called a process. Understanding the many and varied processes at work in the physical world has long been the ultimate goal of science, for to understand a process implies that we can explain it, predict it, and control it, at least in principle. In the physical sciences, remarkable progress has been made in the quest for this form of knowledge. For example, physicists have begun to understand the processes of fusion and fission, chemists, the processes of bonding and electrolysis, biologists, the processes of genetic transfer, and geologists, the processes of continental drift. Since its inception, researchers in the field of communication have also placed strong emphasis on examining communication phenomena that change over time, as a perusal of any of the early influential texts in the field will quickly reveal. Such a review would include Schramm's The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (102), Berlo's The

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