As social behavior moves increasingly online, the study of social behavior has followed. Online traces of social systems, whether to study online behavior directly or the online traces of offline activity, have made possible previously unavailable empirical analyses of people, groups and organizations. However, practically observing any social…

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is Nigeria's only university dedicated to providing education through the use of distance instructional methods. So far, however, the lack of availability and poor distribution of course materials, which underpin instructional delivery at NOUN, continue to be hindrances to achieving the university's…

This fall, the nine states that finished as runners up in last year's groundbreaking Race to the Top competition will have an opportunity to reapply for a grant. The winners will receive a combined $200 million to help implement the bold education reform plans they developed last year. Many of the eligible states already have clear roadmaps toward…

Published studies have reported that Information System (IS) projects succeed or fail based on how effectively the organizational issues were understood and addressed in the specification, development and implementation stages of the project. This is particularly true in the design and delivery of Inter-Organizational Systems (IOS) that can affect…

Discusses process information sharing among participating organizations in a virtual enterprise and proposes a federated process framework and system architecture that provide a conceptual design for effective implementation of process information sharing supporting the autonomy and agility of the organizations. Develops the framework using an…

Suggests that investigating the play of texts in the organizations where professionals do their work should further knowledge about professional communication. Examines the development of communicative practices at a national production company that relied on texts to mediate its organizational activities across geographically dispersed locations…

Offers two illustrations of how newspapers can plan and organize a systems approach to streamline their circulation departments. (RL)

To explore communication patterns within organizations, a network analysis was conducted of a large New York financial institution with 98 departments and 66 branches. Functional analysis revealed that departments had more and stronger communication linkages than did branches. Departments were also closer in communication distances than branches.…

Divided into five major sections, this paper describes a new algorithm which has been implemented in an extended FORTRAN program which runs on a CDC 6500 computer. The first section of the paper briefly outlines the goals of network analysis and presents the context in which these goals must be met. Section 2 describes the algorithm and the…

In this paper, an information processing model of social systems is developed with particular concern for large complex organizations. In explicating the sixteen assumptions and propositions of the model, the literature on environmental uncertainty, interorganizational communication, technology, and their effects on internal organizational…

This study is concerned with the integration, cohesiveness, and satisfaction of communication processes within a large, complex organization. Since smaller, less complex organizations are considered to have a higher degree of integrativeness, the increased size and complexity of an organization diminishes the integration of communication processes…

Establishing evaluation objectives requires formal, frequent, and extensive interaction among program evaluators and administrators to obtain from administrators the information necessary to make the most effective choices in planning and carrying out evaluations. Three techniques are described that can be used to ensure that this interaction is…

It is argued that the structural and process models of human communication systems can be derived from the same data, and that communication systems can be described in terms of certain basic parameters; these parameters, in turn, provide a taxonomy of system types. The applicable empirical research data is reviewed to make statements about the…

The two words, "communication"--defined as the sharing of experience--and "process"--referred to as the movement of interrelated events or actions toward an identifiable goal--may be usefully viewed together as the goal-oriented combination of variables designed to produce at least a single communicative event. In an organizational setting, the…

This paper focuses on the environmental influences of change in the communication structure of organizations and argues that structural changes in communication networks are increasingly externally induced. The unit of analysis selected for discussion in this paper is the individual organization. A communication network among organizations is…