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In response to the disruptions caused by COVID-19, hospitals around the world proactively or reactively developed and/or re-organized their governance structures to manage the COVID-19 response. Hospitals' governance played a crucial role in their ability to reorganize and respond to the pressing needs of their staff. We discuss and compare six hospital cases from four countries on different continents: Brazil, Canada, France, and Japan. Our study examined how governance strategies (e.g., special task forces, communications management tools, etc.) were perceived by hospital staff. Key findings from a total of 177 qualitative interviews with diverse hospital stakeholders were analyzed using three categories drawn from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies framework on health systems resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: 1) delivering a clear and timely COVID-19 response strategy; 2) coordinating effectively within (horizontally) and across (vertically) levels of decision-making; and 3) communicating clearly and transparently with the hospital's diverse stakeholders. Our study gleaned rich accounts for these three categories, highlighting significant variations across settings. These variations were primarily determined by the hospitals' environment prior to the COVID-19 crisis, namely whether there already existed a culture of managerial openness (including spaces for social interactions among hospital staff) and whether preparedness planning and training had been routinely integrated into their activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CARD (comfort, ask, relax, distract) is a vaccine delivery framework that includes interventions to improve the patient's experience. CARD has not been previously implemented in long-term care (LTC) settings. This study evaluated drivers to implementation for COVID-19 vaccinations in an LTC facility. Postimplementation interpretive evaluation including qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys with eight participants. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was used for analysis. Adverse reactions to vaccinations and CARD interventions, including local reactogenicity and systemic reactions, were abstracted from medical charts of residents. Eight CFIR constructs emerged. Staff perceived CARD was complex because it added steps to vaccination delivery. Motivated to meet residents' needs, a receptive implementation climate of support among staff led to using strategies within CARD, such as administering topical anesthetics and omitting alcohol skin antisepsis prior to injections. Having an effective network like the residents council positively influenced implementation by allowing residents to voice their opinions. Facilitators to implementation included staff knowledge and beliefs and staff's commitment to their organization, which was focused on person-centered care. Barriers included lack of available resources (inadequate staffing), insufficient communication between management and staff and lack of awareness of CARD, and external policies not aligned with CARD. Chart reviews conducted for 93 vaccinated residents corroborated perceptions of vaccination and CARD intervention safety, revealing a low rate of local and systemic adverse reactions and no cases of skin infection. We identified positive and negative implementation drivers. Future research is recommended to expand the strategies employed and involve residents more directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon findings from the organizational communication, management, and marketing literatures, this study evaluates three competing models describing sales force communication. The results of the analysis suggest that the theorized PEO (Sales Manager Communication Practices↵ Sales Force Communication Environment↵ Salesperson Communication and Job Outcomes) Model best accounts for the relations between sales manager communication practices and salesperson communication and job outcomes. Specifically, the PEO Model holds that sales manager communication practices are positively associated with salesperson perceptions of communication quality. Communication quality is positively associated with salesperson satisfaction with communication; salesperson communication satisfaction is positively related to salesperson's job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These results and their implications for developing an effective sales force communication environment are detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of computer applications today use multimedia content such as images, sound, and video over distributed networks of computers. Often, a dispersed set of users, with varying demands, requires ongoing access to this content. Effective placement of the multimedia content at different locations/processors thus becomes essential to ensure acceptable quality of service at a reasonable cost. Achieving this requires the consideration of a set of issues quite different from that required for traditional data distribution. These include (a) scale, both in terms of individual objects and in aggregate, (b) importance of form or appearance, making resolution levels an important, controllable variable, and (c) the temporal dimension, placing stringent demands on response time. These concerns make distribution of multimedia content more than a straightforward extension of traditional distribution approaches. The authors develop a model and a supporting approach to facilitate effective distribution of multimedia content, focusing on multimedia applications in corporate intranets. The model consists of multiple criteria to reflect different aspects of quality of service and cost which they formulate by leveraging variance in resolution levels to capture trade-offs among these criteria. Since the multiple-criteria allocation model is NP-complete, they propose a decision support approach that generates locally efficient solutions using designer-specified targets and evaluates them using fuzzy-set-based heuristics. The complete model and the approach have been implemented in a prototype to ensure feasibility. The authors demonstrate use of the prototype for a medical imaging application that illustrates applicability and usefulness of our proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impacts of two types of meeting facilitation that occur in traditional and GSS environments: process and content facilitation. Based on existing facilitation, leadership, and GSS research, and structuration theory, the authors articulate hypotheses regarding the impact of GSS use and each type of meeting facilitation on meeting processes and of meeting processes on outcomes. Meeting processes examined in this study included relationship development, participation, issue-based conflict, interpersonal conflict, and negative socioemotional conflict. Outcomes explored were the groups' satisfaction with the decision made and with their meeting process, and the quality of the groups' decision products. Empirical investigation provides the following findings: Process facilitation had a positive impact on meeting processes. Content facilitation had a negative impact on meeting processes. The interaction between GSS use and both process and content facilitation had no significant effect on meeting processes. Meeting processes had a strong positive impact on satisfaction, but no impact on product quality. Implications for meeting facilitation are discussed and future research directions proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By mid-1998, approximately 200 different controlled experiments had been published in 230 articles in refereed journals or major conference proceedings, which examined processes and outcomes in computer-supported group decision making. This paper is a concise overview of what has been studied and how: the systems, independent, intervening, adaptation, and dependent variables, manipulated or measured, and experimental procedures employed. Part I categorizes the contextual and intervening factors. Part II analyzes 1,582 hypotheses resulting from pairings of independent and dependent variables. The results show that the modal outcome for group support systems (GSS) compared with face-to-face (FtF) methods is "no difference," while the overall percentage of positive effects for hypotheses that compare GSS with FtF is a disappointing 16.6 percent. Experiments with seven to ten groups per treatment condition working on idea-generation tasks and using GSS technology show an improvement up to 29.0 percent. These results are moderated by technology, process structure, communication mode, group factors, task type, the number of experimental groups per treatment condition, and the type of dependent variable measured. The purpose of this paper is to aid the GSS researcher by presenting detailed results of what has been studied and found in previous experiments, along with a discussion of what needs to be studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on increasing sales productivity by getting salespeople to work smarter. The cost of selling has increased significantly over this decade. A recent survey reports that the average cost of an industrial sales call is $131, and the total selling cost to close a sale is $751 at 5.5 calls per completed sale. However, a salesperson's personal contact with a customer is, and is likely to remain, the most effective method of making a sale. Increasing the salesperson's effectiveness during an interaction, thus, continues to be a major sales management task. The research with over 2000 sales-people working for over 200 companies indicates that a key factor for increasing salesforce productivity is getting salespeople to work smarter during their interactions with customers. This view contrasts the principle underlying many motivation programs currently in practice which are designed toward motivating salespeople to work harder-to spend more time selling, make more calls, and put in more effort with tough customers. The studies have found that the performance of industrial salespeople is more strongly related to what salespeople do rather than how hard they work.

This article focuses on an electronic bulletin board system for the dales profession. This article briefly discusses the nature of contemporary personal computer communications on bulletin board systems (BBS). In the spirit of professional development in personal selling and sales management, it is recommended that a national BBS be created and sponsored by Pi Sigma Epsilon and the Direct Selling Education Foundation to enhance professional communications between the sales representative (SR) and others interested in sales. The article also briefly identifies several communications programs and operating systems appropriate for BBS use and catalogues numerous opportunities to apply computer communications to the sales field. When one considers information exchange in an organization, we usually think in terms of person-to-person, telephone, and memo. One seldom considers the company bulletin board except for legal notices, internal job postings, and personal notices. For information exchange, bulletin boards have the advantages of being very inexpensive, relatively simple to use, and particularly useful when one does not know which organizational members might be interested in the information and does not want to transmit the information via memo to all members.

The article discusses the sales manager's role. A body of knowledge known as role theory provides a theoretical framework to examine the pressures on someone like a sales manager for whom communication and integration are essential ingredients for effective performance. These communications activities fall under the rubric of boundary spanning. Boundary spanners are people who operate at the periphery or boundary of an organization and perform tasks which relate the organization with elements outside it. Boundaries represent invisible barriers which the sales manager must penetrate to properly manage communication bottlenecks or other problems which may lead to reduced sales. Sales managers are often thrust into a setting whereby they must serve two masters each with conflicting objectives. The sales manager is the focal point for the flow of information. Through the sales-force the manager must compile, evaluate, and act on the information which is received. One's effectiveness as a sales manager depends upon how well this is done.

A global virtual team is an example of a boundaryless network organization form where a temporary team is assembled on an as-needed basis for the duration of a task and staffed by members from different countries. In such teams, coordination is accomplished via trust and shared communication systems. The focus of the reported study was to explore the antecedents of trust in a global virtual-team setting. Seventy-five teams, consisting of four to six members residing in different countries, interacted and worked together for eight weeks. The two-week trust-building exercises did have a significant effect on the team members' perceptions of the other members' ability, integrity, and benevolence. In the early phases of teamwork, team trust was predicted strongest by perceptions of other team members' integrity, and weakest by perceptions of their benevolence. The effect of other members' perceived ability on trust decreased over time. The members' own propensity to trust had a significant, though unchanging, effect on trust. A qualitative analysis of six teams' electronic mail messages explored strategies that were used by the three highest trust teams, but were used infrequently or not at all by the three lowest trust teams. The strategies suggest the presence of "swift" trust. The paper advances a research model for explaining trust in global virtual teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to develop and test an integrated conceptual model of microcomputer usage. This study used the technology acceptance model and sought to extend it by investigating the impact of the external factors (i.e., individual, organizational, and system characteristics) on the user acceptance of microcomputer technology. The paper reports the results of a field study investigating the determinants of microcomputer usage. The analyses of the measurement model confirm the existence of two distinct constructs of (1) beliefs-perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; (2) organizational support-management support and end-user computing (EUC) support; and (3) microcomputer usage-perceived usage and variety of use. The tested conceptual model confirms the effects of individual, organizational, and system characteristics on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. The model also confirms the influence of perceived ease of use on perceived usefulness, and the effects of perceived usefulness on perceived usage and variety of use. Results confirm several previously proposed notions, including the effects of individual, organizational, and system characteristics on ease of use and usefulness; the influence of ease of use on usefulness, and the effects of perceived usefulness on usage and variety of use. The results demonstrate the utility of investigating factors contributing to microcomputer usage and the external factors affecting endogenous variables such as system usefulness. The importance of EUC support and management support is corroborated, as well as the need for designing mechanisms such as training programs and newsletters to improve user perceptions of microcomputers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Career research in the information systems (IS) field has primarily focused on external motivators associated with organizational factors and material incentives. IS empirical research investigating the internalized career orientations of practitioners is necessary to match individual expectations with corporate human resource planning. This study identifies several career anchors or orientations maintained by IS personnel. By administering the Career Orientations Inventory to 321 IS personnel, Managerial and Technical Competence, Identity, Service, Organizational Stability, and Variety career orientations are distinguished. These internal anchors significantly influence how IS and human resource management should (1) plan corporate IS career paths, (2) nurture IS employees during their careers, and (3) encourage appropriate communication about career advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the importance of communication in dealing with nuclear hazards, risks, and accidents. Officials need to know what they're talking about--and how to listen. During the accident at the Three Mile Island reactor, communications broke down completely. At one point, Pennsylvania Governor Richard Thornburgh tried to confirm that a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) official had advised an immediate evacuation--but the official had acted on his own, and the advisory was canceled. Neither the NRC commissioners nor their staff could get reliable information from the plant about how bad the accident was or what was happening. And the press, converging on Harrisburg, found no spokesman for the state or the NRC until Harold Denton, the NRC's director of nuclear reactor regulation, arrived the next day. Later, TMI and government officials claimed the press had failed to communicate accurately to the public.

Despite the increasing use of electronically mediated methods for team communications, research continues to underline the importance of face-to-face (F2F) communication for the successful accomplishment of complex, high-tech team tasks. Although a crucial aspect of F2F communication is the physical proximity of team members, studies that have explored the relationship between the design of the physical workplace and F2F communication have produced conflicting findings. This paper reports the results of a field study conducted at two R&D sites of a large U.S. high technology and life sciences company; the results suggest that the typical space planning solution of simply moving people from closed offices to open cubicles does not in and of itself increase F2F communication. Rather, the level of F2F communication depends on the location of team members' workstations within the overall configuration of the space and the amount of space provided to support collaboration opportunities, including both formal and informal spaces. Based on the results of the study, we offer suggestions for the layout and design of R&D workstations to foster productive F2F encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on different research streams about the nature of knowledge transfers, this paper proposes a conceptual model for understanding knowledge transfer success among recipient companies in a sourcing relationship. Specifically, the role of potential and realized absorptive capacity is emphasized. These two learning components are discussed from two levels of analysis—potential absorptive capacity is discussed at the interorganizational level, and realized absorptive capacity at the intraorganizational level. Antecedents to potential absorptive capacity include three types of interorganizational contexts—knowledge, relational, and institutional. At the intraorganizational level, knowledge-based views of the firm stress how patterns of interaction and relationships among individuals facilitate knowledge integration within the organization. Two types of social context are emphasized—the extent of social embeddedness and closeness of interfunctional coupling. Implications for managerial practice are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between U.S. public institutions of higher education and state governments with regard to communication, accountability, and finance. The author examines the actions required to compensate for "information asymmetries" in communication between education and government. He notes that governance of public colleges and universities requires a blend of organizational components and explains that this study is based on assumptions from the principal-agent theory within a conceptual framework acknowledging the various external oversight agents. He explains effects of factors including delegation among administrators, students' political activities, and multi-campus systems.

Most research into the early telephone system has focused on telephone providers rather than users, and this article begins to address that imbalance. The telephone was initially used to improve internal communications within firms, by connecting offices with warehouses, or by enabling staff working away from the office to report back. With the expansion of exchange networks, the commercial, intermediary and brokering sectors became heavy users of the technology for routine information transfer within business districts. Business elites continued to favour face-to-face contact for strategic business negotiations, however, and delegated telephone use to their employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term program performance has taken on a new priority and focuses the attention on what programs deliver. Changing management culture to promote the use of program data when making changes to improve program design and delivery or to reallocate resources is recognized as a challenging reform goal. Managerial decision making is certainly affected by many factors. Ongoing communication and fruitful dialogue among program managers, evaluators, and oversight officials on what performance data demonstrate about the viability and success of programs enhance management in government. Learning how to use performance measurement effectively to promote collective learning will evolve slowly and probably not in every public policy arena. In a fragmented service delivery system involving many players, efforts to improve communication and coordination are clearly beneficial, and conceptual learning is a very likely outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding why critical incidents emerge and interpreting their importance in cross-cultural interactions requires novel constructs of culture. Therefore, we suggest cultural standards as a new tool for research. With reference to the Parsons and Shils' theory of action, we reflect on the interrelations of cultural standards with cultural dimensions and personality traits, which constitute those constructs that are most widely used in the English-language literature. Finally, in the context of management, we develop a model of cross-cultural learning and adjustment, triggered by critical incidents and performance achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses that more and more firms face the need to access a critical resource for new product development--people who are dispersed around the world. Not only are these new-product developers separated by time and distance but they are separated by cultural and language differences as well. The challenge for their leaders is to integrate and coordinate these individuals and their activities by forming global teams of nationals from a variety of countries. Like other types of product development teams, global teams experience the challenge of getting a diverse group of individuals from different functional areas to work together effectively for a finite period of time to accomplish specific project objectives. INSET: How the Study Was Conducted.

Explores how research and development (R&D) organizations conduct post-project reviews. Description of the post-project review; Findings of a study on the practice of post-project reviews in R&D; Methods used for the dissemination of information between projects; Barriers to learning from post-project reviews; Steps to project review performance. INSETS: How the Study Was Conducted;How to Conduct Post-Project Reviews.

Presents a conceptual link between those who are concerned with communication in scientific disciplines and those who are concerned with communication from social scientific paradigms that would redefine communication focusing on dialogic processes that lead to self-organization. Redefinition of communication in complexity terms; Contributions of communication scholars.

Offers ideas on how to promote innovation in industry. Importance of hiring individuals who are achievers in their fields; Need to change the traditional way of recruiting employees; Significance of improving cross-communication within enterprise.

Focuses on the importance of dialogue in managerial practice. Nature of goal-driven communications; Characteristics of the constituents of dialogue; Paradigmatic and pragmatic concept of dialogue; Importance of balance between silence and proximity in a dialogue; Factors affecting a dialogue process; Relationship of dialogue with deconstructionism.

This article explains the structure and content of the roles of international managers. Insights into the structure of managerial roles in cross-cultural settings might increase awareness among companies of various ethnocentric pitfalls. Such insights might, moreover, call for explicit consideration of what is really a question of nationality in terms of needs for control, coordination, and organizational know-how in connection with each particular overseas assignment. Companies should realize the general importance of cross-cultural communication skills among actual and potential managers of all nationalities relevant to the firm. Equally important should be the level of competence with regard to such organizational norms as are considered relevant for managerial posts in operations abroad.

The article discusses the power structure in business enterprises of China. The different states and cultures of the world are more and more in contact with each other because of better communication, traffic, and growing trade, and because of worldwide mutual dependence in important economic matters. The article presents a comparison between China as a socialist country that has a different cultural tradition and Western capitalist countries. The management of enterprises in capitalist and socialist countries differs especially in the relations between the macro- and the micro-structures, or in the extent to which the state controls enterprises. In capitalist and socialist systems, the power structure does not differ only with respect to the distribution of power: the kind of power used is also different. It is possible to find many different bases of power. When analyzing the behavior of individuals and organizations and taking into account their effects at both the macro- and the micro- level, it seems appropriate to divide them into basic and instrumental power, according to their basis. Basic power represents relatively enduring resources, whereas the kind of instrumental power used can be changed by a basic power to another kind of instrument for seeking a definite goal.

Examines the articles published in the 1981 issue of the "The Journal of Business Communication." Topics of the articles published in the journal; Importance of the journal in composition writing; Assessment of the kind of research reported in the journal.

The author presents insights on selecting and developing research/technology leaders. He cites that a leader should be the one who is followed by his/her subordinates. Different types of leaders are needed by technology companies including strategic, operation and networking leaders. He mentions that leaders must articulate a meaningful business purpose. He states that leadership training should emphasize self-presentation in order to communicate effectively.

This article presents an abstract of the article "The Use of Communication to Motivate College Sales Teams," by Theodore E. Zorn and Sarah E. Ruccio, which appeared in the October 1998 issue of the "Journal of Business Communication." Sales managers often are expected to provide motivation to their salespeople, and organizations spend millions every year to train managers in the skills needed to motivate employees. The article presents extensive examples of and analysis of the communication between managers and salespeople, and suggests an alternative theoretical framework for explaining motivational communication. Managers must be aware that any communicative act potentially has multiple functions, multiple implications, and multiple interpretations.

Focuses on interactive dialogue as a management tool for corporations. Description of the interactive process; Resolving differences.

The article introduces this periodical's column "Reality Check," which presents the author's perspective on innovation management, with an assertion that the readerhip's teams are not good enough. A discussion of the limits of teamwork in the context of Brooks's Law which says adding more people to a project slows it down is presented. Topics include the inefficiency of communication as the size of a team expands, the speed of change in business, and talent management. The idea of using crowdsourcing to solve a problem is noted.

Focuses on the implication of trust on the effectiveness of any organization. Discussion on trust management problem; Importance of interactive communication to trust in management; Features of a required course for electrical engineering and computer science students taught by C. Dianne Martin at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Addresses the issue of the lack of communication between marketing operations and research and development (R&D) teams. Actions taken by company executives to solve the problem; Information on the control system concept which was formulated to address the problem; Details of establishing relationship between marketing executives and R&D teams.

Provides guidelines to research executives who wish to play a role in the merger and acquisition process which may have a positive impact on shareholder value. Importance of the formation of transition teams; Employee management through retention and rationalization; How to develop a communications strategy; Management of intellectual asset portfolio.

Discusses the importance of communication in a company. Principal source of fear, uncertainty and lost productivity during a corporate merger; Need for a research and development management to develop a reliable internal communications infrastructure; Recommendation on marketing the merger.