ABSTRACT
PROBABLY without question, communication scholars would agree at the theoretical level that communication is a dynamic, ongoing process (for example, see Berlo, 1960). Yet few of us, in researching human communication, regardless of the setting, study it as a process. Rather, most investigations are typified by one-shot, static research designs. This is particularly true of organizational communication research, despite the fact that we frequently admonish one another for failing to consider time as a major independent variable (Dennis, Goldhaber, & Yates, 1978; Richetto, 1977). As Dennis et al. (1978, p. 264) observe, there is an obvious and immediate need to “replace the historical emphasis on the oneshot case study and/or the single measurement of variables undifferentiated in terms of their time-bound or time-free properties” and replace them with longitudinal and time-series research.
