Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-2015

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Communication and Information

Major Professor

John W. Haas

Committee Members

Virginia Kupritz, Laura Miller, Anne Smith

Abstract

This study explored how employees proactively responded to perceived communication problems and what employees considered when proactively responding. The study utilized semi-structured interviews to gather data, resulting in 15 interviews. The interviews were transcribed yielding 130 single-spaced pages of data. Template analysis was used to code the data for themes. This analysis was chosen because it allowed the researcher to utilize previously established literature to develop a codebook, which could then be modified on the data.

The findings demonstrate that employees will enact many types of proactive behavior to correct perceived communication problems in an organization. Findings also demonstrated that participants often involved co-workers in their proactive behaviors. Altogether, findings support the notion that several factors may influence the proactive process.

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