A Contingency Approach to Communication Skill Importance: The Impact of Occupation, Direction, and Position

In an attempt to identify the important communication activities in organizations, researchers have conducted a plethora of studies; these studies, however, lack integration and are marked by major contradictions. This project was undertaken to determine whether such inconsistencies between the studies were due to methodological issues or to the lack of a multidimensional approach—one that recognizes important contingencies in the organizational context . This investigation examines the impact of direction and occupation on communication skill importance for entry-level positions in finance, management, engineering, and law. The results substantiate a three-dimensional model, based on direction, occupation, and position, for the examination and application of communication skill importance in organizations.