Situational Effects on the Accuracy of Self-Reported Organizational Communication Behavior

Debate about the appropriateness of using self-reported communication as a proxy for observable communication in studies of organizational communication networks has created a paradox for network researchers that diverges along classic lines of individualism and collectivism. The inability of either to resolve fundamental theoretical challenges of the other suggests need for an alternative approach. Working from a situationalist perspective, this laboratory study looked to two important characteristics of the collective context to explain divergences of self-reported from observed communication behavior. Members' perceived relationship to the group explained 59% of the variance in the average size of their commission errors, and the collective communication load on members explained 61% of the variance in their number of omission errors. A revised model of the relationship between the perceived network and observable communication is proposed. It includes social-cognitive processes that govern the perception of links and social activation processes that connect perceptions to concrete situations where messages are exchanged.