Communication and Satisfaction in Organizations

The present study, based on data obtained in a set of health and social welfare agencies, attempted to develop some measures for examining organizational communication and to relate those measures to worker satisfaction. The communication properties of primary concern were the formality of the communication network and the direction of communication in the organization. The results indicated that these dimensions could be specified empirically and that their relationships to satisfaction measured. Those relationships were found to vary depending upon whether satisfaction with the job or with co-workers was the focus. The study discusses several implications of the differentiation made among dimensions of communication and proposes some hypotheses to be tested in further research on the social-psychological correlates of organizational communication patterns.