| The shift toward more horizontal and distributed organizations has presented communication challenges to the growing numbers of individuals and institutions who are physically separated from one another. The role of informal talk has been largely ignored as it relates to these new organizational structures. To address this gap, ninety-seven remote employees from a variety of companies were asked about their informal communication with co-workers, specifically their casual talk activities, experiences with messages of inclusion and exclusion, and frequency of social support. The remote employees also assessed their relationships with co-workers, as well as their felt inclusion, organizational identification, organizational commitment and job satisfaction.; Two types of casual talk activities emerged from analyses: common ground talk was positively associated with organizational identification, while a second cluster of casual talk activities served an out-grouping function, and correlated negatively with commitment and job satisfaction. Satisfaction with informal communication was associated with all three organizational outcomes.; The remote employees also provided recalled experiences of messages that helped them feel included and excluded from their companies, which were coded with two systems developed for the study. A high level of expressed inclusion was positively associated with identification and commitment, as was general social support; expressed exclusion was negatively associated with identification and commitment.; In regression analyses, common ground, out-group talk, informal communication satisfaction, liking for co-workers and felt inclusion accounted for 31%, 30% and 16% of the variance, respectively, in organizational identification, commitment, and job satisfaction. Expressed inclusion, exclusion and liking accounted for 37% and 36% of the variance in organizational identification and commitment. Social support, liking and felt inclusion accounted for 27% and 23% of the variance in organizational identification and commitment.; Other regressions showed that felt inclusion moderated the effects of common ground talk on organizational identification. Mediation tests showed that co-worker liking and felt inclusion mediated the effects of common ground, general support, expressed inclusion, and informal communication satisfaction on organizational identification and commitment.; The results provide evidence of specific links between the informal communication practices of remote employees and their levels of organizational identification, commitment and job satisfaction. |
