ABSTRACT
This chapter details the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that have appeared at the appropriate points in the discussion of other issues, presents the remaining pieces, and provides a comprehensive picture of symbolic behavior. It explores verbal and nonverbal communications, as the delivery mechanisms for symbolic behaviour. The chapter examines the concept of performance as it relates to organizations. The symbolic behavior perspective argues that organizational reality is socially constructed through communication. Symbolic behavior refers to a person's capacity to respond to or use a system of significant symbols. The issues, which are examined as propositions, are intertwined with symbolic behavior: complexity, uncertainty, cultural creation and maintenance, interpersonal reality, group behavior, leadership, and the management of incongruences. Communication is the "symbolic behavior that occurs as a transactional process among people, in which all the parties are continually and simultaneously sending and receiving information to develop a sense of shared meaning".
