IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v31y1985i3p301-311.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Uncertainty and Technical Communication Patterns

Author

Listed:
  • James W. Brown

    (School of Journalism, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202)

  • James M. Utterback

    (School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between research and development peoples' perceptions of uncertainty in their firm's competitive environment and their patterns of technical communication. Measures of both these attributes of six R&D groups, two in each of three industries, are reported and analyzed here. Technical people who saw the world (competitors, suppliers, customers, technology and regulations) outside their firm as more uncertain also were found to seek greater contact with sources of information outside their firms. The gatekeeper phenomenon was found to be more pronounced, but less formal and less well defined in these firms. Gatekeepers in general were found to perceive a higher level of uncertainty than others in all six firms.

Suggested Citation

  • James W. Brown & James M. Utterback, 1985. "Uncertainty and Technical Communication Patterns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 301-311, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:31:y:1985:i:3:p:301-311
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.31.3.301
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.31.3.301
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.31.3.301?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Scott A. Shane & Karl T. Ulrich, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: Technological Innovation, Product Development, and Entrepreneurship in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 133-144, February.
    2. Lissoni, Francesco, 2010. "Academic inventors as brokers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 843-857, September.
    3. Walsh, John N., 2015. "Developing new categories of knowledge acquisition, translation and dissemination by technological gatekeepers," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 594-605.
    4. Guo, Bin, 2011. "The scope of external information-seeking under uncertainty: An individual-level study," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 137-148.
    5. Jonathon N. Cummings, 2004. "Work Groups, Structural Diversity, and Knowledge Sharing in a Global Organization," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 352-364, March.
    6. Kumar, Rahul & Deb, Soumya Guha & Mukherjee, Shubhadeep, 2020. "Do words reveal the latent truth? Identifying communication patterns of corporate losers," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    7. Dirk Clercq & Narongsak Thongpapanl & Maxim Voronov, 2018. "Sustainability in the Face of Institutional Adversity: Market Turbulence, Network Embeddedness, and Innovative Orientation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 437-455, March.
    8. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13553 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Ancona, Deborah G. (Deborah Gladstein). & Caldwell, David F., 1991. "Demography and design : predictors of new product team performance," Working papers 3236-91., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    10. Ancona, Deborah G. (Deborah Gladstein). & Caldwell, David E., 1989. "Demography and design : predictors of new product team performance," Working papers 3078-89., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:31:y:1985:i:3:p:301-311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.