Comprehensive Measures of Organizational Communication
Organizational Communication Profile (OCP)
R. Wayne Pace & Brent D. Peterson

Doing business as Organizational Associates, R. Wayne Pace and Brent D. Peterson outlined specific procedure for analyzing organizational communication that have been used extensively.

The authors subsequently developed the Organizational Communication Profile (OCP) which gathers data on eight features of organizational communication and provides a comprehensive overview of the status of communication in an organization.  The eight key variables are (1) organizational satisfaction, (2) communication climate, (3) information accessibility, (4) information load, (5) message fidelity, (6) information dispersion, (7) media quality, and (8) organizational culture.  

Unlike most of the comprehensive measures of organizational communication studied in CJ 459, the Organizational Communication Profile has been used primarily for consulting rather than research.  The OCP is copyrighted, so those who wish to use it--even for academic research--will need permission from Organizational Associates R. Wayne Pace or Brent D. Peterson.    

In 1998 a team of UWEC CJ 459 students contacted Dr. Pace and obtained permission to utilize the OCP in their analysis of organizational communication at a Wal-Mart store (not the Eau Claire store); they found the OCP to be very effective.  

The OCP begins by using the Szalay Associative Group Analysis Technique to help determine cultural meanings.  In this section respondents are asked to spend one full minute listing all the words which come to mind when he or she thinks of the organization. 

The second section of the OCP consists of 51 Likert-type items used to assess  each of the eight aforementioned dimensions.  

Twelve of the 51 items deal with "Communication Climate;" those items are also the 12 items in Pace and Peterson's Communication Climate Inventory.  The 12 items are designed to assess six elements of communication climate: trust, participative decision making, supportiveness, openness, listening, and concern for high performance. 

The last section of the OCP consists of an ECCO analysis.  One bit of organizational information and asks respondents whether they were aware of it or not, and asks them how they received that information.

Key Source of Information

Mills, G. E.; Pace, R. W.; & Peterson, B.D. (1988).  ANALYSIS in human resource training & organization development.  Addison-Wesley: Reading MA. The Organizational Communication Profile is reproduced as the Appendix in this book, with basic information and instructions for scoring the OCP reported in Chapter Nine.