Communicating in the 21st Century Workplace: A Theory of Communication Nexus

The workplace is evolving into the communication nexus; a central connection point for messages among workers. Naturalistic observations of 69 workers in four U.S. high-tech firms identified three themes: (1) frequency of communication, (2) availability and use of multiple communication channels, and (3) need for instantaneous communication. A new theory of the organizational workplace as a communication nexus is presented here to explain new organizational communication phenomena and predict organizational communication in the contemporary workplace.