This resource guide is designed to assist members of the Massachusetts university community in handling sexual harassment complaints. The guide outlines what constitutes sexual harassment, suggests responses to sexual harassment, and lists resources. The scope of the guide includes faculty/student harassment, employer/employee harassment, and peer…

This guide presents ideas for staff development for managers who work with young or entry-level workers in small businesses. The guide is designed to help managers (1) get new workers to do their jobs well consistently; (2) devise a plan of action that will broaden the worker's job skills; and (3) evaluate the worker's progress to spot problems…

Focusing on perceived sex differences in organizational settings, a study examined mutual evaluations of communicative competence in superior-subordinate relationships. Subjects, 86 superior-subordinate pairs from 23 organizations, completed the Communication Competency Assessment Instrument measuring competencies in communication codes, oral…

The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) approach to leadership emphasizes the interactive nature of the superior-subordinate relationship, asserting that an individual's role in an organization is defined through a series of episodes with the supervisor. Because work-related values are potentially important subordinate characteristics in LMX development,…

Defining small talk as "superficial talk about matters of little concern," a study examined the role of small talk in the work place. Subjects, 51 white collar workers and clerical employees at three corporations, an Eastern state university, and two small businesses completed a questionnaire concerning the following questions: (1) What…

A study examined how age and the period of adolescence affect communication satisfaction and other organizational variables. Psychological and sociological profiles suggest that there should be differences between three age groups: "Traditionalist," individuals whose adolescence took place during the late 1950s; "New Breed,"…

A study investigated relationships between subordinate perceptions of the communication competence of self and supervisor, and subordinate perceptions of supervisor and work satisfaction. The hypotheses were the following: (1) subordinates' satisfaction with their supervisors will vary as a function of their perceptions of their supervisors'…

In studying the history of the American press, little attention has been given to printing networks and the apprenticeship system, factors which permitted the press not only to survive but to grow. Essential to press growth was the apprenticeship system, vocational education which replenished and augmented the craft's practitioners. Apprentices…

A special survey on employer child-care practices conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the summer of 1987 sampled 10,345 establishments with 10 or more employees selected from the BLS establishment universe file and classified by industry and size. The survey showed that over the last decade, the number of mothers in the labor…

This guide is intended to answer employers' questions on how to hire and manage workers who have an intellectual impairment. Following an introductory description and definition of intellectual impairment, the guide addresses relevant issues through a series of responses to questions: (1) Do individuals with an intellectual impairment make good…

To determine the most effective communication style for women in management, a study examined which of three power/gender speech strategies--stereotypical feminine (powerless), stereotypical masculine (powerful), and mixed stereotypical masculine/stereotypical feminine--was perceived most effective for a male or female when communicating with a…

Although research in goal setting has demonstrated that specific, difficult goals lead to better performance, more refined research on the affect of participative decision making and supportive leadership on goal setting has produced ambiguous results. To investigate the relative importance of goal setting, leader supportiveness, and task…

Experience indicates that school boards have an inadequate understanding of labor relations, for they tend to relinquish too much of their authority to teachers' associations. A survey of 11 articles pertaining to labor relations from the "American School Board Journal," 1970-82, reveals the following consensus on areas unsuitable for inclusion in…

Focusing upon the interactive work-group communication patterns of employees classified as "managers," this paper compares such communication observed in Japanese and United States business and industrial organizations. The paper first describes several models of decision making within American and Japanese organizations, highlighting…

A study examined the relationship between dyadic and normative accessibility of work supervisors and task characteristics of autonomy, variety, and identity (whether the task is part of a process or results in a finished product). Dyadic accessibility refers to workers' estimates of their supervisors' accessibility. Normative accessibility is the…