Management Communication Quarterly

This study explored the impact of downsizing on levels of uncertainty, coworker and management trust, and communicative effectiveness in a health care organization downsizing during a 2-year period from 660 staff to 350 staff members. Self-report data were obtained from employees who were staying (survivors), from employees were being laid off (victims), and from employees with and without managerial responsibilities. Results indicated that downsizing had a similar impact on the amount of trust that survivors and victims had for management. However, victims reported feeling lower levels of trust toward their colleagues compared with survivors. Contrary to expectations, survivors and victims reported similar perceptions of job and organizational uncertainty and similar levels of information received about changes. Employees with no management responsibilities and middle managers both reported lower scores than did senior managers on all aspects of information received. Implications for practice and the management of the communication process are discussed.

Based on an in-depth analysis of excerpts from a board meeting in a drug rehabilitation center, this article shows how a group of managers displays a form of intelligence that cannot be reduced to the simple sum of their respective contributions. Although this phenomenonhas been illustrated so far in the context of high-reliability organizations, this analysis extends previous findings by showing that a form of collective intelligence can be found more generally in patterns of conversational behavior. The managers are shown to be constructing, amending, and adding a series of textual blocks that ultimately represent the heedfulness of the group. Although it can only be achieved on the “terra firma” of interactions, collective minding is shown to be a phenomenon that always transcends the “here and now” by interrelating this latter with the “there and then,” a phenomenon of translocalization that can be identified as a form of organizational intelligence.

On China’s current path toward modernization, information sharing and effective communication become major learning challenges. This article explores how the change and emerging tensions are managed. Data collected from a Sino-foreign joint venture and a Chinese joint-stock company, analyzed within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory, indicate that Confucian authority chains and guanxi should be viewed as two complementary and interactive principles. The communicative configuration generated by these two principles is in transition in Chinese organizations. The zone of proximal development emerging for communication in Chinese companies takes the shape of two-way movement: toward an increasingly personal character of the Confucian authority principle on one hand and toward an increasingly production-oriented character of the principle of guanxi on the other hand. The successful design and implementation of communication systems in Chinese companies will largely depend on management’s ability to understand and shape this historical change.