ABSTRACT
THEORETICALLY a system is viewed as a set of interacting units or events that depend on the exchange of information for their adaptation to environmental demands (Miller, 1971, 1972; Buckley, 1967). The exchange process is as vital to the adaptation of an individual (Rubenstein, 1980; Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967) as it is to the adaptation of a social system such as a health care organization (Georgopoulos & Mann, 1962; Costello & Pettegrew, 1979). At the cell level, failures in communication are evidenced as disease (Rubenstein, 1980); at the interactional level, ineffective communication may appear as psychological maladjustment; in a health care organization, the effects may be reflected in poor patient care or in the ineffectiveness of treatment (Georgopoulos & Mann, 1962; Costello & Pettegrew, 1979). Therefore, a careful examination of the communication process is prerequisite to understanding and/or improving the adaptive potential of any system since the nature of the communication process is so intricately involved in the systems success and survival
