The Predominant Research Methodologies in Organizational Communication

Abstract

Started in the early 1930’s, Organizational Communication (OrCom) is among the relatively new fields of communication. More popularly known as OrCom, it has been defined as a “process,” “a communication event in an organization," “the flow and direction of communication in a complex setting," "an exchange of information in an organization,” and an "interdependent system of communication" <Goldhaber; Goldhaber 14, citing Dance & Zelko 1965, Katz & Khan 1966, Lesikar 1972, Redding & Sanborn 1964, Thayer 1968, & Witkin & Stephens 1972; Hawkins & Preston 22; Miller 1). Research in OrCom has been prevalent in the West as evidenced in the works of Goldhaber (1990) and Miller (1999) among others, but in the Philippines the only researches in OrCom are the undergraduate theses from OrCom programs such as that of the University of the Philippines Manila. Hence, this research which is a content analysis of the undergraduate theses from 1988 to 2005 in UP Manila primarily sought to determine the predominant research methodologies employed in studying them. Specifically, it tried to determine the profile of the BA OrCom program in UP Manila; identify the most frequently selected topics of the OrCom theses from 1988 to 2005; and determine the research types and methods used in them and how they have changed over the years. Using content analysis and the framework of latent and manifest coding by Lawrence Neumann (1999), the researcher was able to gather the following information from each thesis: the author’s name; the year it was submitted; the research title; the research design; the research methodology; the research tools used; the sampling technique followed; the method of analysis; and the OrCom category under which each thesis belongs. Employing census, the researcher was able to recover and analyze 495 theses submitted to the Department of Arts and Communication. From the data, it was found that the OrCom program in the University of the Philippines Manila was the first of its kind in the country that aimed to enable students in acquiring integrated skills in written and oral communication. Moreover, the research revealed that the topics of the OrCOm theses from the years 1988 to 2005 fall under nine categories: 1) the behavior of organizations; 2) development of organizational theories; 3) human relations and human resource development theories; 4) the process of communication/ communication theory for OrCom; 5) interpersonal communication in organizations/ intrapersonal communication, 6) communication and leadership in organizations; 7) interaction formats of OrCom/decision-making teams and groups (group discussion); 8) public communication (public relations); and 9) emerging processes, trends and styles/making OrCom changes. Furthermore it was found that varied research methods employed in them were content analysis, focus group discussion, interview, non-participant observation, participant observation, and survey. Lastly and during the early period of OrCom studies, researches were mostly quantitative; this pattern however changed from the middle period onwards with the increased number of researches using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. This strongly suggests that there is a veering away from the purely quantitative methodology in studying OrCom towards mixed methods. Based on the above findings, it is concluded that in studying the nine OrCom research categories, the methods employed were predominantly quantitative at the start but has evolved into a combination of quantitative and qualitative of the triangulation type.