Organizational Change: Creating Change Through Strategic Communication

7

Antecedents to Strategies, Assessments, and Interactions

Every action must be due to one or the other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite

Aristotle

Habits are at first cobwebs; at last, chains

Unknown

We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it

Charles Dudley Warner

Pressures, constraints, habits, mimicry, norms, goals, values, and situational analyses all play important roles in triggering initial and ongoing communication choices, interactions, and assessments of various communicators during change. This chapter explores antecedents to strategies, assessments, and interactions during change. Communication scholars have conducted a good deal of research into factors that predict individuals' choices of communication approaches (David and Baker, 1994; Hellweg, Geist, Jorgensen, and White-Mills, 1990; Morrison, 2002), messages (Greene, 1997; O'Keefe, 1988), and media (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Timmerman, 2003; Timmerman and Madhavapeddi, 2008). Explanations for choices include individual difference characteristics, e.g., gender, cultural background, communication apprehension (cf. Cai, Wilson, and Drake, 2000; Drake, 2001; Oetzel and Ting-Toomey, 2003), communication styles (cf. Ting-Toomey, Oetzel, and Yee-Jung, 2001; Weider-Hatfield and Hatfield, 1995; Wheeless and Reichel, 1990), emphasis on various communication goals (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1978; Kellerman 2004; Lakey and Canary, 2002), and the impact ...