COMMUNICATION STRUCTURE, CLIMATE, AND JOB SATISFACTION: A CAUSAL MODEL

Recently, researchers have made considerable progress in conceptualizing and measuring structural characteristics of social networks. Network analysis is a method for identifying the communication structure in a system. It identifies cliques in a system and certain specialized communication roles. Also, mathematical structural indices can be calculated in order to characterize different positions in a network.;Network and perceptional data were gathered by the modified version of the International Communication Association Communication Audit. Respondents were asked to report their task-related communication with all other members in the organization. For measuring the communication structure, the NEGOPY network analysis program was used (Richards & Rice, 1981). For the communication climate and job satisfaction variables, respondents were asked about their perceptions of those organizational aspects.;This study found that the causal influence of communication structural variables on information source accessibility are not as profound as their overall relationships. Although, the results reveal structural variables are strongly related to information source accessibility with the hypothesized directions, decompositions of the variable relationships indicate that those are, mostly, joint associations.;Information source accessibility is found to be the significant predictor of receiving amount of information and job satisfaction. The data do not statistically support the expected relationship between information source accessibility and uncertainty. The direction of the relationship is negative. Receiving amount of information shows a strong negative impact on uncertainty, and a positive significant influence job satisfaction. The intervening role of uncertainty is not as pronounced as expected in the model. In sum, the "intervention" of communication climate variables between structure variables and job satisfaction increases the model's explanatory power.;The present study is an attempt to predict job satisfaction from task-related communication activities in a formal organization. It suggests that the informational environment of an organization is critical for members' perceptions about their jobs and the organization. Since one's position in the communication network is hypothesized to determine members' perceptions of various aspects of an organization, the present study postulates that those structural variables influence job satisfaction. A causal model tests the relationships among the variables. In the model, communication climate is hypothesized as a mediating variable between communication structure and job satisfaction.