ABSTRACT
This chapter features information as a variable in organizational communication. Members create, sort, interpret, select, transmit, store, trade, negotiate, and retrieve information. Members’ effectiveness depends on their ability to obtain, create, interpret, and convey information regarding their company’s environment and performance, as well as their own. From a systems perspective, information can be used to explain how organizational members learn what they need to know to be able to coordinate their activities with one another. A crucial part of the lives of organizational members is the definition and negotiation of interpretations of information—what information is and what it means for them as members of a company and for the company itself. Information about goals and mission becomes important to the standards of quality employees seek and affects their efforts to achieve those standards.
