This paper (1) reviews the growing recognition of uncertainty as a central concern in social
science and administrative disciplines, (2) proposes a definition of uncertainty useful in
organizational communication, and (3) demonstrates the applicability of this concept to
managing communication problems in a manufacturing firm. Uncertainty is defined herein
as the perceived lack of information, knowledge, beliefs, and feelings necessary for
accomplishing organizational tasks . The goal of communicators is to reduce andlor manage
their own and their audience's uncertainties through language. By analyzing corporate,
departmental, and individual uncertainties, writers can interpret communication problems,
design documents, and manage formal and informal communication systems efficiently and
effectively.
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References
1.
This observation is virtually a commonplace. For example, see John Naisbitt, Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (New York: Warner Books, 1982).
2.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, The Changemasters (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 34; Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies ( New York: Harper & Row, Inc., 1982), p. 39 and all of Chapter 2, "Man Waiting for Motivation"; William G.Ouchi summarizes the outlook: "Involved workers are the key to increased productivity," in Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1981).
3.
This definition of uncertainty is offered by Anthony Downs in An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper's, 1957).
4.
We recommend Paul Montagna's comprehensive review, "Uncertainty as a Scientific Concept and Its Application to the Study of Occupations and Organizations ," in Uncertainty: Behavioral and Social Dimensions, ed. Seymour Fiddle (New York: Praeger, 1981), pp. 9-42. Montagna sees Weber's claim that the social sciences are probabilistic in nature (The Methodology of the Social Sciences, 1949) and Norbert Weiner's theoretical/philosophical support (that in a few instances, notably among groups of order-creating human beings, entropy actually decreases) as the primary rationale for the study of uncertainty in the social sciences.
5.
John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern encapsulate individual attitudes toward risk in a mathematical representation or "utility function," Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1953).
6.
See a thorough review in John D. Hey, Uncertainty in Microeconomics (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979).
7.
Herbert A.Simon, Models of Man (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1957).
8.
Enid Mumford and Andrew Pettigrew feel that top managers and staff specialists fail to anticipate obstacles because they see planning only as a technical problem, Implementing Strategic Change (London: Tavistock Publications, 1975).
9.
Fiddle, ref. 4, "General Introduction," pp. 3-8.
10.
T. Burns and G.M. Stalker, The Management of Innovation (London: Tavistock Publications, 1961); Joan Woodward, Industrial Organizations: Theory and Practice (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); Paul R. Lawrence and Jay W Lorsch, Organization and Environment (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1967). For an historical review, see Henry Mintzberg, The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979).
11.
Linda Putnam, "The Interpretive Perspective: An Alternative to Functional-ism," Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach, ed. Linda Putnam and Michael Pacanowsky (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1983), pp. 31-54.
12.
Publication in 1938 of Chester Bernard's The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) marked the beginning of the general shift from discussions of compliance and obedience to "communication." Mary Parker Follett's lectures on business problems (1925-1932) had attacked the myth of absolute power and the fallacy of assuming that all expressed orders were understood. Her views—similar to Barnard's but not as well known—are cogently summarized in "The Giving of Orders," in Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, ed. H. C. Metcalfand L. Urwick ( London: Pitman, 1964), pp. 16-33.
13.
Many research projects are studying what writers actually do in communicating on the job. Paul V Anderson summarizes the survey research in "What Survey Research Tells Us About Writing at Work," Writing in Non-Academic Settings, ed. Lee Odell and Dixie Goswami ( New York: Guilford Press, 1986), forthcoming. Also see Lee Odell, Dixie Goswami, Anne Herrington, and Doris Quick, "Studying Writing in Non-Academic Settings," New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication: Research, Theory, and Practice, ed. Paul V Anderson, R. John Brockmann, and Carolyn R. Miller, Baywood's Technical Communication Series 2 (Farmingdale, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 17-40.
14.
For a discussion of the shortcomings of the readability indexes see Janice C. Redish, "Readability," Document Design: A Review of the Relevant Research, ed. Daniel B. Felker (Washington : American Institutes for Research1980), pp. 69-93; also, Janice C Redish and Jack Selzer, "The Place of Readability Formulas in Technical Communication," Technical Communication , 32, no. 4 (1985), pp. 46-52.
15.
A seminal discussion of the invented reader is by Walter Ong, "The Audience Is Always a Fiction," PMLA, 90 (1975), pp. 9-21; for a highly significant theory of the reader's importance, see the works of Chaim Perelman: The New Rhetoric, A Treatise on Argumentation (with L. Olbrechts-Tyteca) (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), and The Realm of Rhetoric (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982). For a comprehensive review of theories of audience, see Lisa Ede, "Audience: An Introduction to Research," College Composition and Communication, 35, no. 2 (May, 1984 ), pp. 140-154.
16.
Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford, "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy," College Composition and Communication, 35, no. 2 (May, 1984), pp. 155-171.
17.
For example, see C. Glenn Pearce, Ross Figgins, and Steven P.Golen, Principles of Business Communication: Theory, Application, and Technology ( New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1984 ), p. 17.
18.
The lists are similar to the "management principles" formulated early in the century and expanded from less than a dozen to over seventy by theorists in the 1950's. The situation in business communication is similar to the one in management theory Herbert Simon described in "The Proverbs of Administration," Public Administration Review, 6 (Winter 1946), pp. 53-67.
19.
J.C. Mathes and Dwight W Stevenson , Designing Technical Reports: Writing for Audiences in Organizations (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1976). For examples of their influence on business communication texts, see Marya W Holcombe and Judith K. Stein, Writing for Decision Makers (Belmont, CA: Lifetime Learning Publications, 1981), and Dan H. Swenson, Business Reporting: A Management Tool (Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1983).
20.
Gerald M. Goldhaber , Harry S. Dennis, III, Gary M. Richetto, and Osmo A. Wiio, Information Strategies: New Pathways to Corporate Power (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979). Karl S. Weick, The Social Psychology of Organizing (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1969), p. 29. Some recent texts do include the concept of uncertainty, but only in a minor way: see Michele T. Myers and Gail E. Myers, Managing by Communication ( New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982), pp. 14-15; and Carol McFarland Baxter, Business Report Writing: A Practical Approach (Boston: Kent Publishing Company, 1983), p. 5.
21.
Jay Galbraith , Organization Design (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1977), pp. 36-37.
22.
R.M. Cyert and J. March say that firms typically try to avoid uncertainty altogether, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963); but Japanese practice shows that ambiguity may be useful to managers, R.T. Pascale and A.G. Athos, The Art of Japanese Management (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981); also Eric M. Eisenberg, "Ambiguity as Strategy in Organizational Communication," Communication Monographs, 51 (September 1984), pp. 227-242. Michael Crozier asserts that organizations seek uncertainty and that groups in the organization compete to control uncertainties in The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).
23.
Such unwritten rules are not uncommon, as witness Texas Instruments' refusal to use parts made by competitors. See J. Nocera, "Death of a Computer ," Texas Monthly, (April 1984), pp. 136-140ff.
24.
For a review of the necessity to improve a company's "fit" with its environment through strategic planning, see Duane Windsor and George Greanias, "Long Range Planning in a Politicized Environment," Long Range Planning , 16, no. 3 (1983), pp. 82-91; Ian C. MacMillan, Strategy Formulation: Political Concepts (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company, 1978); Charles W Hofer and Dan Schendel, Strategy Formulation: Analytical Concepts (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company, 1978).
25.
Managers' views correlate reasonably well with both objective analyses (say, fluctuating market shares) and the perceptions of expert outsiders , according to Neil H. Snyder and William F. Glueck, "Can Environmental Volatility Be Measured Objectively?" Academy of Management Journal, 25, no. 1 (1982), p. 190. But see an opposing view which claims that management's view of uncertainty is often inaccurate in Henry Mintzberg, ref. 10, pp. 224 and 270.
26.
F.A.M.J. Fass , "How to Solve Communication Problems on the R&D Interface,"Journal of Management Studies, 22, no. 1 (January 1985 ), pp. 83-102.
27.
Lawrence and Lorsch, ref. 10, p. 6.
28.
Jay W Lorsch and John J. Morse, Organizations and Their Members: A Contingency Approach ( New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 87-95.
29.
In the early days of business communication, this "grapevine" was considered a peripheral, unreliable channel, used only when the formal system failed or functioned inadequately. Phillip V Lewis, Organizational Communication, The Essence of Effective Management, 2nd ed. (Columbus, OH: Grid Publishing, Inc., 1980), p. 69. Keith Davis, "Management Communication and the Grapevine," Harvard Business Review, 31 (Sept-Oct 1953 ), pp. 43-49. Terrence E. Deal and Allan A.Kennedy claim that the informal cultural network "is actually the primary means of communication within the organization; it ties together all parts of the company without respect to positions or titles" in Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1982), p. 85.
30.
Document samples are direct transcriptions except for deleted names and dates.
31.
Because of space limitations, we focus this discussion on writing; the guideline is adaptable to oral communication as well.
32.
It is true that a writer who has a fundamentally false conception of his audiences may use this technique and err in imagining their uncertainties. However, the act of imagining what uncertainties may exist for specific types and groups of readers in most cases should be much more helpful than harmful, and a writer who regularly looks for audience uncertainties will often become more sensitive to the factors that cause them.
