Extracting Meaning and Relevance from Work

Abstract

This manuscript explores an organization’s listening environment as a mechanism used by employees to interpret organizational information and translate signals into meaning and relevance, culminating in identification with and commitment to the organization. Firmly grounded in theory and research from diverse academic literatures and research traditions, especially Social Learning Theory from Social Psychology, hypotheses are developed and then tested in a carefully designed study. Data collected from employees in a high-performing manufacturing organization offer an ideal setting for testing hypotheses, while holding other contextual variables constant. Statistical findings imply that employees who perceive work environments as being facilitative of interactive communication between and among employees respond with heightened attachments to organizations. The study’s results admonish scholars to include listening in future studies of business communication and organizational behavior, while managers are encouraged to assess the mechanisms their organizations use to facilitate an organizational listening climate at work.

Keywords

listening environment organizational identification organizational commitment communication climate shared meaning

Communicating, Working, and Listening

Undeniably, in face-paced, complex business environments, organizations rely on communication for the agility needed to coordinate critical resources and complicated tasks. Whether from executives, coworkers, customers, suppliers, or even competitors, workers must navigate the tidal wave of communications arriving daily, so that all stakeholder requirements are satisfied. Equally irrefutable, copious amounts of information enter an organization’s systems daily through multiple portals, fueling an elaborate exchange among employees trying to make sense of their work environments. Increased competitive pressures for innovation and collaboration demand organizational leaders listen intently to problems, ideas, and opportunities expressed by customers and employees, so that the ever-increasing demands of the marketplace can be effectively translated and communicated for action (Helms & Haynes, 1992).

Management scholars from a host of research traditions (cf. Daft & Weick, 1984, for review) seek to document and understand how employees extract meaning and relevance from the signals bombarding the work environment. Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory (hereafter, SLT) emphasizes more than other theories the importance of communication in creating a mutually agreed-upon meaning of an organization’s culture and climate. Yet, while business communication researchers have documented with clarity the strong, positive links between effective communication processes and organizational attributes and outcomes (cf. Flynn, Valikoski, & Grau, 2008), the listening environment¹ suffers as an overlooked but potentially critical attribute of organizational communication, despite listening being promulgated by theorists as worthy of research attention in the context of organizational performance (Brownell, 1994; Gilchrist & van Hoeven, 1994; Jacobs & Coghlan, 2005; Johnston, Reed, & Lawrence, 2011). Gilchrist and van Hoeven (1994) conceptualized listening as an organizational attribute reflecting the extent to which employees ascribe positive value to the organization’s responsiveness to employee input. In concordance, Brownell (1994) views a listening environment as perceptions of the enduring attributes of the organizational communication climate used to create a shared understanding and meaning. More recently, researchers provided empirical evidence to validate the team listening environment construct as a subdimension of the greater communication environment (Johnston et al., 2011).

Based on the work and conceptualizations of these scholars, a research model and pilot study was designed to explore how performance-related information facilitates employee perceptions of the listening environment and, in turn, bonds employees to the organization. Specifically, our investigation asks: Does a listening environment relate to the ability of employees to translate organizational information and attach with the organization, as evidenced in employee organizational identification and commitment? This study advances the body of knowledge and practice of managerial communication by preliminarily testing linkages previously only hypothesized by scholars. Figure 1 visually portrays the construct linkages discussed in the introductory literature review above and explicated in the hypotheses below.

Figure 1.

Research Model for the impact of listening environment on organizational attachments.

Performance Information Availability in the Listening Environment

The theoretical underpinning of this research is that, without information available within the communication environment, the substance needed for the extraction of meaning and relevance cannot exist, and while a truism of sorts, the nature of the information made available can have distinctive impacts. Griffin (1983) in a seminal study confirmed that making performance information available facilitates work group communication, both talking and listening. Moreover, research by both Smidts, Pruyn, and van Riel (2001) and Thomas, Zolin, and Hartman (2009) revealed that information quality (e.g., usefulness, accuracy, timeliness) and quantity (e.g., completeness, sufficiency) facilitate employee perceptions of a positive organizational communication climate, including communications being open and trustworthy. Taken together, these research results suggest that making organizational information available that is adequate, meaningful, and relevant for employees’ performance will likely create a more effective communication at work.

As SLT proposes and research supports, employee perceptions of an organization’s listening environment are influenced by the perceived availability of organizational performance information (Jacobs & Coghlan, 2005), because employee receptivity to performance information is a clear indicator of the extent to employees perceive communication is occurring in the organization and establishes the baseline necessary for an effective listening environment. The testing of this relationship provides a confirmatory validity check to ensure that the foundational theories driving this research and measures are operating properly in detecting variance specifically in perceived availability of performance information and perceptions of the proposed attribute of organizational communication climate—the listening environment. Therefore, we pose the following foundational hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1: Increases in perceived availability of organizational performance information will be positively associated with the assessment of the organizational listening environment.

The Listening Environment and Organizational Identification

Beyond the baseline of perceived organizational information availability, we explore how the listening environment may be related to employee attachment to organizations, beginning with organizational identification. According to SLT, organizational members, through reciprocal communication within the organizational environment, not only build a shared understanding of the situation but also assess their fit as members of the work community (Jacobs & Coghlan, 2005). Without doubt, communication activities constitute a powerful influence on employee organizational identification, beyond the information being shared (Joseph, Rajendran, Kamalanabhan, & Anantharaman, 1999; Nakara, 2006; Smidts et al., 2001; Wiesenfeld, Raghuram, & Garud, 1999), because the give and take interactions between the employee, as a dynamic actor, and the forces of the organizational environment allow for the ongoing extraction of meaning, by taking in characteristics of the organization, clarifying interpretations of these characteristics with other members, and making judgments on the level of fit or belongingness, all of which are needed for organizational identification. Listening is a natural mechanism for absorption of knowledge and understanding of complicated and sometimes contradictory information about the organization (cf. Levin, 1989).

The impact of organizational listening activities on employee organization identification has received promising empirical support. For example, building on Levin’s (1989) philosophical contention that communication resonates among groups and generates collective meaning, Jacobs and Coghlan (2005) confirms that listening is a critical active employee response within the organization learning process. In addition, Brunner (2008) established that listening behaviors help build and maintain business relationships, suggesting future research measure organizational listening and its impact on improving morale and productivity. Because of the suggested impacts of the listening environment, we propose to test explicitly the impact of listening environment on the depth of employee identification with the organization.

Hypothesis 2: Positive perceptions of the organizational listening environment will be associated with higher employee identification with the organization.

The Listening Environment and Organizational Commitment

Building on the previous theme of a positive listening environment facilitating employee organizational identification, we shift our attention to the relationship between the listening environment and organizational commitment. A plethora of studies have sought to uncover antecedents that positively impact employee commitment to organizations, not only in terms of positive affect but the loyalty needed to continue membership and focusing of critical thinking and actions toward achieving organizational goals (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Mowday, 1998).

Although somewhat complex, theorists and researchers clearly assert that managers who communicate effectively can positively impact the psychological state of their employees, yet the precise communication processes through which communication enhances the attitudinal commitment of organizational members remains unclear (cf. Haas & Arnold, 1995). Researchers from multiple disciplinary perspectives suggest the need for investigation and refinement. For example, organizational culture expert Chatman (1991) in a seminal writing advocated that increased time spent in social interaction between organizational members facilitates employees’ perception of a stronger fit with the organizations, because of the extensive learning that occurs regarding how closely members’ values match organizational values and characteristics. Organizational listening pioneer Brownell (1994) proposed, “Strong listening environments are characterized by a concern for the individual employee and his or her values, needs, and goals” (p. 3). From the managerial psychology literature, Helms and Haynes (1992) asserted, “Listening to employees and colleagues has advantages beyond the information being imparted, since listening to another individual indicates their opinion is valued and respected” (p. 18), theorizing that enhancing the communication processes within an organization increases employee responsiveness and commitment. By listening to each other, organizational members create a shared understanding of the organizational environment, as the openness and coagulation of information facilitates stronger employee commitment (van Vuuren, de Jong, & Seydel, 2007).

While the communication literature offers empirical support for a strong listening environment creating in employees an enduring persistence or commitment, especially when people try to make sense of difficult and complex situations (Bodie & Jones, 2012; Toller, 2011), we offer the following hypothesis about the listening environment in a business context.

Hypothesis 3: Positive perceptions of the organizational listening environment will be associated with stronger employee commitment to the organization.

Mediating Role of Organizational Identification on Listening and Commitment

Because our research is focused on isolating the role of the listening environment on employee attachments to organizations, we seek to control for the potential mediation of organizational identification between listening environment and commitment, thus isolating direct effects of the listening environment on commitment. Without doubt, researchers have explored identification and commitment as constructs that capture two important facets of employee organizational attachment. Unfortunately, the two sets of scholars have worked largely independent of each other, motivating Ashforth, Harrison, and Corley (2008) to admonish that “commitment and identification scholars can make more progress working in concert than independently” (p. 334). Consistent with the preponderance of evidence presented in a Special Edition of the Journal of Organizational Behavior (cf. van Dick, Becker, & Meyer, 2006), we join the chorus of scholars who have conceptually, theoretically, and empirically concluded that organizational identification and commitment are distinct constructs linked in a causal sequence in which identification is a necessary but not sufficient condition for commitment (Ashforth et al., 2008; Cole & Bruch, 2006; Marique & Stinglhamber, 2011; Meyer, Becker, & Vanderberghe, 2004; Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001).

The current state of thought suggests that employee attachment via organizational commitment does not necessitate the same fused interdependency as through organizational identification, such that the self-definition encapsulated in employee identification almost certainly influences but is not a sufficient condition for employee commitment (cf. Ashforth et al., 2008). Through a series of papers building toward a conceptually integrative framework for organizational commitment and identification, Meyer and colleagues theorize that affective organizational commitment develops in part due to employees’ identification with a social target, because employees are more likely to share values and possess an internal drive that promotes that target’s goals (cf. Meyer, Becker, & van Dick, 2006). Empirical support for the integrative theory is scarce in spite of persistent calls for statistical validation (Cole & Bruch, 2006; van Kippenberg & Sleebos, 2006). Compelling evidence is provided in a study by Herrbach (2006), in which removing the common variance between identification and commitment reduced the relationship between identification and work-related attitudes from statistically significant to nonsignificant, suggesting a causal linkage, even though correlation analysis cannot imply direction. Even stronger evidence emerged in a study investigating “we-ness,” a variable closely related to identification, that utilized a rigorous experimental design and structural equation modeling to document that conditions of strong “we-ness” led to higher individual identification with the organizational group that, in turn, promoted higher commitment to the organizational project, suggesting identification being an antecedent condition for commitment (Haslam, Ryan, Postmes, Jetten, & Webley, 2006). Recently, in an effort to deconstruct the organizational identification construct into finer-grain components and investigate differential impacts of each component’s relationship to organizational commitment, Marique and Stinglhamber (2011) found that occupational and work group identities, subcomponents of organizational identification, distinctively influenced organizational commitment. Adding to this growing body of literature seeking to unravel the relationship between identification and commitment, this pilot study investigates organizational identification as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the relationship between the listening environment and organizational commitment. We offer the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4: Organizational identification will partially mediate the impact of the listening environment on organizational commitment.

Method

As an exploratory study, we investigate proposed theoretical linkages between perceptions of the listening environment and important organizational bonding characteristics. To collect validating data, we sought the cooperation of a plastic injection molding manufacturing firm with three locations, thus allowing for a stable industry context, a single corporate-level communication environment, but with some interlocation variance and a wide range of occupational statuses. This approach of relying on a small number of participants in a rich research context of a single company is consistent with other studies exploring the nature of organizational listening characteristics, both in The Journal of Business Communication (e.g., Haas & Arnold, 1995) and The International Journal of Listening (e.g., Brunner, 2008). The trade-off from using this methodology, of course, is that our results are not generalizable far beyond the research context. Based on the results of our pilot study, future researchers will be able to replicate our study in more generalizable contexts to bolster security in our findings.

The highly competitive nature of the plastic injection molding business and importance of innovation and cost containment in creating differential advantage created a situation in which attracting and retaining employees was critical to the firm’s success. With support of executives, surveys were sent to the administrative assistants of the three plant supervisors, who distributed surveys to all 108 employees to be completed on a voluntary and anonymous basis. Sixty-six respondents completed the survey, providing a favorable response rate of 61% (Baruch & Holtom, 2008). Demographics validate the diversity desired for our investigation. Participants were 46% female and 39% male; and 53% were Caucasian, 18% were African American, 9% were Hispanic, and 5% were “other.” Ages ranged from 21 to 58 years, with 37% being less than 40 years old. Representation of reported jobs included 12% supervisory, 13% technicians, 35% machinists and forklift drivers, 3% maintenance, and 12% “other.” With respect to length of tenure with the firm, because of recent expansions, 28% of the respondents were with the company 1 year or less, while 35% were employed for 1 or 2 years and only 19% had more than 2 years of tenure, highlighting the company’s concern with attachment and commitment.

Analysis Methods

In testing our hypotheses of the listening environment, we evaluated the appropriateness of regression versus structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the research objectives and sample characteristics (Gefen, Straub, & Boudreau, 2000). While the Barron and Kenny causal steps approach is conservative and an imperfect test of mediation (cf. MacKinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West, & Sheets, 2002), even proponents of the more modern and rigorous bootstrapping technique (Hayes, 2009; Preacher & Hayes, 2008) would argue against the use of SEM with a sample size as small as ours (n = 66). Based on the nature of this pilot study and small sample size, we decided to utilize regression analyses, which are the best linear unbiased estimators and are robust against violations in assumptions (Neter, Wasserman, & Kutner, 1989).

Measures

The following scales were employed in the study to capture the hypothesized constructs. Consistent with the previously cited studies, all items were measured on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree (e.g., Bartels, Pruyn, de Jong, & Joustra, 2007; Carmeli, Gilat, & Weisberg, 2006; Cole & Bruch, 2006; Mael &Ashforth, 1992).

The Listening Environment was measured using seven items of the Team Listening Environment scale by Johnston et al. (2011). Based on the context of a manufacturing firm, the words “people in my plant” were substituted for “work group members” where appropriate. Examples of the items include “The people in my plant listened to what I have to say” and “The people in my plant show me that they understand what I say.”

Organizational Information was measured using Flynn, Schroeder, and Sakakibara’s (1994) quality management scale, with five items modified to conform to information relevant to the specific manufacturing environment of this study. The scale captures both the awareness of quality being a key performance outcome and the availability of related information. Items adapted to the context of this manufacturing firm include “Information on scrap rates is available to employees,” “Information on heldware/redticket is available to employees,” and “My job requires I make decision about quality.”

Organizational Identification was measured by drawing inspiration from researchers striving to develop a valid scale for organizational identification. We drew from the domain of organizational social identity (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Tajfel & Turner, 1985) and empirical referents of social identity in an organizational context (Callero, 1985; Cole & Bruch, 2006; Mael & Ashforth, 1992; van Kippenberg, van Kippenberg, Monden, & de Lima, 2002) to employ a parsimonious three-item scale consistent with leading research in organizational identity (Bartels, Douwes, de Jong, & Pruyn, 2006; Bartels et al., 2007; Carmeli et al., 2006; van Kippenberg et al., 2002). Moreover, the broad yet transparent nature of items provided a measure of the identification construct at a level closely paralleling that being utilized for organizational commitment. The items are as follows: “Being a [co. name] employee is an important part of who I am,” “For me, being a [company name] employee means more than simply working here,” and “I would feel a loss if I were forced to give up being a [co. name] employee.”

Organizational Commitment was measured using a nine-item scale extracted from Mowday, Porter, and Steers’s (1982) well-established Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). The OCQ provides an overall assessment of employee organizational commitment, which we chose based on our study being a preliminary investigation of the influence of the organizational listening environment on organizational attachments. Sample items include, “I find my values and [co. name] values are very similar” and “I really care about the fate/future of [co. name].”

Results

Descriptive Statistics

The reliabilities of the scales employed in this study were investigated using Cronbach’s alpha, with the following results: Organizational Information, α = .715; Listening Environment, α =.928; Organizational Identification, α = .814; and Organizational Commitment, α = .877. The only potentially problematic result was for Organizational Information (.715), which is an exploratory use of a five-item subset of the more extensive quality management scale of Flynn et al. (1994). As Nunnally (1978) and Churchill (1979) suggest, Cronbach’s alphas in the .70 range, although modest, can be sufficient for basic research, and the marginal value for increasing reliability when compared to costs is often not worthwhile, considering the purpose (see Nunnally, 1978, pp. 264ff). Given the basic and exploratory nature of the research, internal consistency of scales is acceptable for further analysis.

Correlations between all research variables were calculated (see Table 1). As expected, organizational identification and commitment were moderately correlated (.72), leading us to investigate the discriminant validity of the two scales. Three pieces of evidence support the distinctiveness of the constructs, even though correlated. First, theory suggests that both constructs are organized in the same ontological network of phenomena associated with varying levels of organizational attachment, and as an antecedent of commitment, identification should be empirically correlated with commitment. Second, measures of each construct contain both face and construct validity of measuring different, though related, phenomena, with each item clearly measuring different aspects of organizational attachment. Third, we sought empirical evidence to support discriminant validity of the two scales. An exploratory factor analysis was employed to ascertain if items from the commitment scale would load together and separately from items in identification scale. If items in each individual scale loaded together and separately, discriminant validity would be supported. A maximum likelihood factor analysis, using direct oblimin oblique rotation, was used to allow for the correlation between factors. As expected, items from identification loaded on the first factor with items from commitment loading on the second factor, suggesting that each scale is measuring distinct phenomena, even though the factors are moderately correlated. Further, performing confirmatory factor analyses in AMOS with the original scales for each construct, we analyzed the results of a chi-squared difference test comparing the one-factor test of all 12 “attachment” indicators to the each of the two-factor solutions. While the one-factor model proved to be statistically significant (χ² = 156.4, df = 54, p = .000), both commitment (Δχ² = 118.2, df = 3, p = .000) and identity (Δχ² = 268.2, df = 9, p = .000) models had statistically significant higher chi-squared results as separate nested models. Taken together, evidence strongly suggests that identification and commitment constructs, through correlated, measure distinct, though related, phenomena.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Study Variables (n = 66).

	Mean	SD	Listening	Commitment	Identification
Information	3.89	0.68	.53**	.67**	.52**
Listening Environment	3.79	0.76		.66**	.61**
Organizational Commitment	3.98	0.62			.72**
Organizational Identification	3.88	0.80			–

Regression

As shown in Table 2, the direct effects of the first three hypotheses were supported when tested with linear regression. Specifically, Hypothesis 1, predicting organizational information positively influencing the organizational listening environment, was supported (R² = .275, F_(1,62) = 23.55, p < .001). Hypotheses 2 and 3 predict the positive influence of the listening environment on employee attachments to the organization. The direct and positive impact of the listening environment on organizational identification, proposed in hypothesis 2, was supported (R² = .370, F_(1,62) = 37.03, p < .001), as was the direct positive impact of the listening environment on organizational commitment, offered in hypothesis 3 (R² = .436, F_(1,62) = 48.79, p < .001).

Table 2.

Regression Results of Direct Effects From Hypotheses 1 to 3 (n = 66).

	R ²	F test	Beta	β
Hypothesis 1: Information and listening environment	.275	23.55**	.525**	.605
Hypothesis 2: Listening environment and identification	.370	37.03**	.608**	.640
Hypothesis 3: Listening environment and commitment	.436	48.79**	.661**	.540

p < .01.

With the direct effects of the listening environment on commitment and identification supported, the mediating role of organizational identification was tested following the widely accepted method of Barron and Kenny (1986). Results are displayed in Table 3. The first requirement was that the independent variable (listening environment) significantly influences the mediator variable (identification). Second, the independent variable (listening environment) also significantly affected the dependent variable (organizational commitment). In the required third regression, organizational identification was entered first in the equation to extract the variance in organizational commitment explained by organizational identification, and then, the listening environment variable was entered to ascertain the impact of listening environment in explaining the remaining variance in organizational commitment. Indeed, the Baron and Kennedy method strongly supported a partial mediation role of organizational identification, in that the listening environment, which initially explained 43.6% of the variance in organizational commitment, dropped to a mere 7.7% (R² = .077, F_(1,62) = 11.99, p < .001), supporting a mediation affect.

Table 3.

Regression Results for Mediating Role of Organizational Identification on Listening Environment and Organizational Commitment (n = 66).

	R ²	R²Δ	F test	Beta	β
Hypothesis 3: Listening Environment and Commitment	.436**	.436	48.79**	.661**	.540
Hypothesis 4: Dependent Variable = Commitment
Step 1: Identification	.523**		69.10**	.510**	.396
Step 2: Listening Environment	.600	.077**	11.99**	.350**	.284

p < .01.

Discussion

Increasingly complex data-saturated business environments strain sustainable connections between people and institutions, making the extraction of meaning and relevance from work a challenge to organizations striving to maximize human resource talent. In this pilot empirical study, we investigated listening environment as a potentially important organizational attribute associated with favorable employee attachments to organizations. We were able to isolate for study the listening environment of a single thriving organization, demonstrating a positive association between the listening environment and both perceptions of performance information availability and employees’ attachments to the organization. These research outcomes provide tentative but suggestive support for SLT as a framework for studying the processes through which organizations and employees bond via the listening environment.

While for more than a half century researchers have portrayed listening as a valuable interpersonal skill for managing employees and customers effectively (Rogers & Rothelisberger, 1952), heretofore only minimal empirical research has explored the theoretical notion that the organizational listening environment positively impacts employee work outcomes (Brownell, 1994; Flynn et al., 2008; Helms & Haynes, 1992). Whereas Smidts et al.’s (2001) research linked the broad communication climate and employee organizational identification, our pilot study examined the relationships between employee perceptions of the more narrow listening environment and organizational identification and commitment. This probing analysis begins to answer Jacobs and Coghlan’s (2005) conjecture that the listening environment provides an important social context for gleaning information from the organizational setting and, through a discursive relationship, allows for the process of employee–organizational bonding to blossom. While Brunner (2008) established that listening behaviors were important in building and maintaining business relationships, the results of this study bolster her suggestion that future research investigate the impact of the organizational listening climate on improving morale and productivity and explore organizational-level listening and its influence on work outcomes.

An ancillary, but still significant, contribution of the study to the literature is to provide more confirming evidence of organizational identification mediating the relationship between listening environment and commitment. We join other scholars in providing evidence that identification is a necessary but not sufficient condition for organizational commitment. Our findings help to solidify the tentative conclusion of Meyer and colleagues’ (cf. Meyer et al., 2004) that commitment arises in part from employee organizational identification. More specifically, our results provide encouragement to Meyer and Herscovitch’s (2001) call for researchers to discover organizational characteristics, such as a listening environment, that managers can shape to create a work environment that creates a “we-ness” between employees and organizations. While our study clearly lacks generalizability, given the juvenile nature of the theory and research, the results of this pilot study provide assurance and encouragement to those who have worked toward understanding the listening environment as a resounding component of the communication climate.

Managerial Implications

This research assuredly aligns with decades-long admonitions of scholars for practitioners to improve organizational communication and reinforces current theory in the field, suggesting that “communication” is almost certainly too broad of a behavioral construct to target specific managerial actions. The listening environment, as conceptualized herein, may narrow the focus by which managers help to engage employees in the organization’s success. Clearly, nurturing positive listening environments, and facilitating employee perceptions of being heard and valued, contributes to a subsequent willingness to attach to an organization (Guzley, 1992; Matthews, Diaz, and Cole, 2003; Smidts et al., 2001; Thomas et al., 2009). Moreover, by providing meaningful and accessible information to employees, managers can influence perceptions of the listening environment. With information entering the ethos of the work environment at exponential rates, in the process pushing out interpersonal interactions, a positive listening environment can bolster the inseparability of employees, customers, and organizational identification (Brownell, 1994), thereby defending the humanity of work against the deafening roar of data. Accordingly, managers may be able to fuel strong and productive attachments more efficiently and effectively by creating conditions in a work environment resulting in employee beliefs that the organization respects and values their thoughts and ideas (Flynn et al., 2008).

Future Research

This exploratory study suggests opportunities for researchers to advance knowledge in the business communication and management literatures. Parceling the idiosyncratic listening environment from the greater communication environment appears a viable pathway for refining mechanisms organizations use to foster a positive work culture in which meeting employee needs and motives can facilitate higher productivity, efficiency, and responsiveness to customer needs (Helms & Haynes, 1992). One obvious opportunity, made apparent throughout, is to implement this study with independent samples representing a cross sampling of organizational listening environments to increase the generalizability of the results. A major limitation of our research is using a small sample from a single organization. While rich in depth of understanding the impact of a listening environment on organizational attachments within a specific context, the generalizability of results needed to make secure statements about the construct relationships is highly limited, and any causal relationship should be interpreted with extreme caution. Following Hayes’s (2009) challenge, more modern analytic methods of mediation must be applied in communication studies to advance the impact of this research.

Conclusion

In spite of the limitations, the results of this study provide initial empirical evidence for only previously theorized ideas, including the following: (1) listening, in addition to an interpersonal skill, can be studied as a perception of organizational climate characteristics and (2) a positive listening environment correlates with stronger employee attachments to organizations. With increasing pressure to pursue a competitive advantage through talents and networks of human resources, creating a positive organizational climate can help build synergistic employee connectedness and collective behaviors needed for sustainable organizational success. Often overlooked and underappreciated, this organizational characteristic can have a resounding impact on focusing employee beliefs and behaviors in a noisy competitive business world.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Katharine E. Lawrence for her helpful analyses and comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Kendra Reed is an Associate Professor of Management at Loyola University New Orleans. She earned her PhD in management from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her research interests include factors impacting employee performance, diversity, and change, with articles published in the Journal of Managerial Issues, Journal of Leadership Studies, and Journal of Business Communication. Prior to an academic career, she spent seven years working in the Human Resource profession.

Jerry R. Goolsby is the Director of Graduate Programs for the College of Business, Professor of Marketing, and Hilton/Baldrige Eminent Scholar of Music Industry. He earned his PhD from Texas Tech University and has served on the faculties of Oklahoma State University and the University of South Florida. An active researcher and writer, his articles have been published in the top marketing journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Having an expertise in quality management and organizational development, he consults for numerous companies and industry associations.

Michelle K. Johnston is an Associate Professor in the College of Business at Loyola University New Orleans, where she teaches managerial communication classes to MBA and undergraduate students. She received her PhD in communication studies from Louisiana State University. She publishes articles on communication processes and outcomes in journals such as the Journal of Business Communication and Journal of Managerial Issues. An expert in business communication, she consults for several prominent business leaders.

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