This study used Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II, Form C to examine the preference for conflict management styles among Saudi and American faculty members. Additionally, the study examined the relationships between conflict management styles and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and propensity to leave the job. A random sample that consisted of (N = 300) faculty members was drawn evenly from Al-Baha University (BU) and Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to examine whether or not there are differences between American and Saudi faculty members in their conflict management styles. Nationality was used as the factor, and the five conflict management styles (Integrating, Obliging, Dominating, Avoiding, and Compromising) were entered as dependent variables. The level of significance was 0.05. Additionally, Pearson's correlation was used to determine if a statistically significant relationship exists between the five conflict management styles and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and propensity to leave the job. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Findings indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in conflict management styles between Saudi and American faculty members. Furthermore there were no significant correlations between any of the conflict management styles and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and propensity to leave the job. Results were discussed in light of literature review. Practical implications, limitations of the study, and recommendations were provided. / by Mohammed Alzahrani. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

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A contextual analysis investigation of related communication acts is concerned with the multidimensional nature of human interdependence. The communication strategy is a category of relational communication acts that can be viewed as one of the ways in which interactants promote or maintain a working consensus and enhance interpersonal discovery. Strategy use is motivated by the nature of the relationship rather than by the speaker's conscious attempts to direct outcomes.

This investigation explored the dialectic of communication competence from an historical prospective and successfully identified seven common threads in competence theory. Communication skills and skills classifications were linked to competency issues. A content analysis of the 452 page leading national skills level communication text identified 185 skills behaviors along with their associated communication competencies. Skills were described in twelve categories; however, no consistent definition or treatment of communication skills was in evidence. Implications of the findings were discussed.

When attempting to communicate with another person, the success or failure that a communicator perceives, he or she interprets as understanding or misunderstanding. Research has shown that "perceived understanding" or the "feeling of being understood" is important in self-concept development. However, for some time researchers have focused on the listener's needs and the speaker's needs have been given less attention. Yet, the listener's role in meeting the speaker's needs, particularly in providing feedback to the speaker, is of utmost importance if the speaker is to have the "feeling of being understood." This research examined the concept of the "feeling of being listened to," as it relates to the "feeling of being understood." Eye contact, vocalics, and head nods were examined as listener behaviors that affect "perceived listening." Alone, in a private room, each subject viewed a randomly-assigned videotape, imagining him- or herself as the speaker, thus, taking the speaker's perspective. The videotape showed the listener, who responded to the speaker with none, one, or all three nonverbal behaviors being tested. Immediately after viewing the videotape, subjects completed two instruments that identified the probability of eye contact, vocalics, and head nods, as pre-conditions of "perceived listening" and "perceived listening" as a pre-condition of "perceived understanding." Tests of the first four hypotheses about the relationship between nonverbal behaviors and perceived listening were non-significant. The test of the fifth hypothesis about the correlation between perceived listening and perceived understanding was significant, but there was some indication that these two concepts may be redundant. A post-hoc analysis of the relationship between nonverbal behaviors and perceived understanding yielded nonsignificant results, supporting the concern that perceived listening and perceived understanding may be redundant concepts.

The confidence to communicate orally with others is the first requisite for verbal interaction. Anxiety which occurs in anticipation of speaking with others or while engaged in speaking hinders interaction, and is referred to as communication apprehension. This study examines levels of communication apprehension among a sample primary school population and the possible relationship between such levels and frequencies of nonverbal behaviors called self-adaptors that may be associated with the anxiety. Greater awareness of communication apprehension in children is justified in light of research that suggests it is negatively related to academic achievement in elementary school students. A four-month field~study was conducted in a Northwestern suburban elementary school by the researcher who had taught in the school for the previous seven years. The hypothesis tested was that a positive correlation exists between levels of communication apprehension and displayed self-adaptor behaviors. The study employed methodological triangulation, using both quantitative and qualitative data. An established self-report measure (MECA) consisting of a 20-item questionnaire suggesting various communication situations was administered to 42 third grade students and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Students scoring one standard deviation above the mean were identified as communication apprehensive (CA). Nervous behaviors called self-adaptors were tallied using a researcher developed measurement tool (UBSSF), and the frequencies of these behaviors correlated with the results of the self-report measure to find the predicted association. The hypothesis was not supported in this study. Complementary qualitative information also provided substantial data. This included classroom observations and videotapings of students in small group work sessions, individual recorded interviews of the CA students using film elicitation and interviews with their classroom teachers, field notes (general notations, oral data from teaching specialists, and additional demographic information), and continuing information from the apprehensive students following the conduct of the study. All qualitative data was examined for cross-situational consistency thought to be associated with communication apprehension. Significant evidence for a correlation between levels of communication apprehension and frequency of self-adaptor behaviors was not found. However, this study contributed to a greater understanding of CA by challenging currently held views on communication apprehension. Also, through the use of method triangulation, quantitative and qualitative forms of self report provided some evidence for the crosssituational consistency of CA. Communication apprehensive students were found to be aware of their anxieties and able to verbally address their fears. The phenomenological interpretation of CA student and teacher interview texts facilitated the reconstruction of the participants' perspectives. Finally, suggestions by the researcher addressed the training of teachers to raise their awareness of communication apprehension and to provide needed accommodation of CA students in the classroom.

The study of self-disclosure has been developed and elaborated mainly in the United States, and only a few studies have directly examined self-disclosure in the Japanese cultural context. This study was designed to extend the study of self-disclosure to Japanese culture, and using the concept of ingroup and outgroup relationships, examine the relationship between the level of self-disclosure and perceived social attraction in initial interaction between Japanese strangers. Based on the literature on self-disclosure and features of Japanese culture and communication, two hypotheses were constructed: Hl: For the ingroup members, the high discloser will be perceived to be more socially attractive than the low discloser. H2: For the outgroup members, the low discloser will be perceived to be more socially attractive than the high discloser. As respondents, a total of 328 Japanese college graduate and undergraduate students living in the Kansai area in Japan participated in the research. The data collection instrument consisted of McCroskey and McCain's (1974) social attraction scale and a culture-specific scale of social attraction constructed by the researcher. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and ~ tests were used to test the two hypotheses and interaction between the two variables. In addition, to test gender effects, the data were analyzed by using three, three-way ANOVAs. The results of the data analyses revealed that in initial interaction between Japanese strangers, the level of self-disclosure was a main factor in determining the stranger's perceived social attraction. Low self-disclosure led to positive evaluation of perceived social attraction, and high self-disclosure led to negative evaluation of perceived social attraction. The results also suggested that the stranger's group identification mediated the relationship between the stranger's level of self-disclosure and perceived social attraction. Ingroup membership produced greater perceived social attraction than did outgroup membership. Thus, the highest perceived social attraction was produced by the low disclosing stranger identified as being an ingroup member. Further, Japanese subjects distinguished ingroup and outgroup membership for low self-disclosure, but not for high self-disclosure. No significant effects due to gender were found in this study.

Electronic mail has become a widely used medium of communication in academia, government, and business. It is unique as a communication medium because it makes conversations across time, space, and organizational levels possible. The ability of electronic mail to "forward" a message allows for the creation of chains that preserve the entire conversation for each participant. This appears to be a new linguistic form in which the interactive features of spoken conversation are realized using electronically transmitted text. The purpose of the present study was to determine the extent of the similarities and differences between spoken conversation and electronic mail exchanges. The research questions addressed were 1) What techniques that occur in spoken conversations also occur in electronic mail exchanges?, and 2) How are the techniques used in spoken conversations modified or different in electronic mail exchanges? The data used in this study consisted of electronic mail text collected by the author in the course of her daily work in the data processing division of a large financial institution. The authors were computer technicians and middle managers with a wide diversity of educational backgrounds. Sixteen samples of message "chains" that contained at least three individual messages were selected for in-depth analysis. These samples were analyzed for conversational openings and closings, tum-taking mechanisms, adjacency pairs, and repetition. Of the structural features studied, repetition was used in ways most similar to its uses in spoken conversation. The feature having the most differences from spoken interaction was the tum-taking system. In the electronic mail exchanges there was more variation in the sender's selection of the next sender, including the option for multiple simultaneous replies. Openings and closings took many forms, some of them the same as in spoken conversation. Among the forms that differed were openings that resembled the salutation in a letter and closings that followed each individual message in a "chain." Adjacency pairs such as questions and closings were paired as in spoken conversation, while openings, thanks, and apologies occurred as single utterances.

Approximately 7.5 million people in the U.S. subscribe to a vegan diet and thus don't consume any animal products such as meat, fish, dairy, or eggs. Despite the considerable growth of veganism in the last decade, little is known about how people communicate about such a seemingly restrictive diet and what implications this might have for communication theory and the growing field of food studies. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how vegans communicatively negotiate their identity through the lens of Hecht's (1993) communication theory of identity (CTI). I conducted phone interviews with forty vegans residing across the U.S. and completed thematic analysis to qualitatively analyze interviews. Four themes emerged to describe the ways vegans enact their identity (Facilitating Smooth Interactions, Wearing Symbols of Veganism, Vegan Food Preparation and Consumption, Education and Community Engagement), and three themes emerged to illustrate the relational identities that vegans co-construct with members of their social network (Accepted and Supported, Inconvenience to the Family, Happiest with a Vegan (Friendly) Partner). Vegans explained that they engage in a variety of communication strategies (e.g., focusing on the positive) to thoughtfully craft an identity that will be well-received by others. Additionally, participants explained that they are not only supported by members of their social network, but that this support is an integral part of their relational identity. Lastly, I analyzed participant accounts to see if any discrepancies (i.e., identity gaps; Jung & Hecht, 2004) emerged between the ways vegans negotiate their identity. Results indicate that some vegans experience or create up to four different identity gaps between different layers of identity (Personal-Enacted Gap, Relational-Enacted Gap, Enacted-Enacted Gap, Community-Personal Gap). Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The program of research reported here was concerned with what makes difficult face-to-face communication in work settings difficult. A framework for analysing this problem was developed by bringing together the disparate literatures of communications theory and cognitive appraisal theory. The framework identified the outcome of an instance of face-to-face communication at work as a function of features of the situation, the appraisal that the worker makes in the situation, and the response strategies selected for dealing with the situation. The research program was directed to operationalising these constructs and studying their interrelationship. The first two studies reported in the thesis (Studies 1 and 2) revealed the types of communication encounters that are most difficult to manage at work, and offered insight into why these situations are difficult. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered and the quantitative data analysed using multidimensional scaling techniques. The results provided a taxonomy of difficult communication situations in the workplace. The next two studies (Studies 3 and 4) focused on the development of measures of primary and secondary appraisal, and on a taxonomy of response strategies applicable to work settings. A new measure of primary appraisal was developed from qualitative data pertaining specifically to the domain of difficult communication contexts. Principal components analysis was used in the development of the response strategies instrument. Study 5, the final study, reported the results of the application of cognitive appraisal theory to the context of difficult communication at work. In this study, the theory was applied to four difficult communication situations identified in Study 1, and the relationships among appraisal, response strategy, and outcome were investigated using principal components analysis and, subsequently, hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicated that, as the appraisal of the context varies, so too does the choice of response strategy, lending support to the transactional model. Appraisal contributes significantly to response strategy choice and to the outcome of the situation over and above that offered by response strategies alone. In addition, the findings revealed that appraisal of the situation differ across situations and according to the status of the other person in the encounter. The findings of the series of studies reported here point to the value of viewing difficult communication situations in the workplace in terms of the interrelated constructs of situations, appraisals, strategies rather than, as more commonly, in terms of characteristics of ‘difficult’ persons. Some situations are inherently more difficult than others, appraisals alter the difficulty level of situations, and the availability of response strategies influence outcome. Appraisal is, however, a construct of central importance, in much the same way it is in the research context from which it was appropriated, viz stress research. Appraisal contributes significantly to choice of response strategy and directly to outcome over an above the contribution of response strategy. The research program was not without its shortcomings, among them the reliance on retrospective reports of participants about their behaviour, and these need to be addressed in future research. The findings as they stand do, however, point to more useful ways of conceptualising difficult situations at work and devising methods of intervention that will ensure better outcomes, in a significant area of life in the modern workplace.