Organizational communication is a process through which people construct, manage, and interpret behaviors and symbols (whether verbal or nonverbal), both intentionally and unintentionally, through interaction (mediated or direct), within and across particular organizational contexts.

An October 2000 search for publications that included "organiz-"and "communicat-" yielded more than 2,000 books or journals in the online Library of Congress catalog and more than 630 doctoral dissertations in the Dissertations Abstract database. ABI/Inform, the online business and organizations database, included nearly 1,300 articles that were indexed with either "organizational" and "communication" as subject words and nearly 200 articles with the two words in the article title. Furthermore, many surveys show that managers rank communication among the most valuable skills new, and veteran, employees should have.

Organizational communication can occur at a variety of levels, involving interpersonal and dyadic interaction, small groups or teams, large meetings, and within or across organizational departments or...