Anxiety and Uncertainty Management in Multinational Organizations

1
Anxiety and Uncertainty Management in
Multinational Organizations

• -- Application of AUM to Organization-public
  Relationship

2
Purpose

• To expand the scope of AUM by
• incorporating outcome variables
• examining it in organizational setting
• To apply the theory to O-P R by
• examining the mechanism of internal communication
  
• explaining whether, how, and why some maintenance
  strategies of relationship will lead to certain
  outcomes of relationship

3
Conceptualization

• AUM (Gudykunst, 1985, 1993, 1995)
• superficial causes ? uncertainty/anxiety ?
  effective communication
• Organization-public Relationship (Broom, et al.
  1997, J. Grunig Huang, 2000, Huang, 1997)
• Antecedents ? maintenance strategies ?
  consequences
• Model based on their linkage
• maintenance strategies (access, positivity,
  openness, assurance of legitimacy, networking,
  sharing of tasks)
• A/U
• effective communication
• consequences of relationship (control mutuality,
  trust, satisfaction, commitment)

4
Hypotheses

• H1 Access to organizations decision-making
  process ?? attributional confidence ?and anxiety
  ?
• H2 positivity of organizations ?? attributional
  confidence ?and anxiety ?
• H3 openness and disclosure of organizations
  decision-making process ?? attributional
  confidence ?and anxiety ?
• H4 assurance of legitimacy to the employees ??
  anxiety ?
• H5 shared network with employees ??
  attributional confidence ?and anxiety ?
• H6 sharing tasks with employees ?? attributional
  confidence ?and anxiety ?
• H7 employees ability to manage anxiety and
  uncertainty ?? effectiveness of internal
  communication ?
• H8 Effective internal communication control
  mutuality ?, trust ?, satisfaction ?, and
  commitment ?

5
Method

• Participants employees in multinational
  organizations
• Measurement
• Access quality (Islam Hewstone, 1993) and
  quantity of contact (Gudykunst Nishida,2001)
• Positivity positive expectation (Gudykunst
  Shapiros (1996)
• Openness self-disclosure (Hammer et al.,1998)
• Assurance of legitimacy moral inclusion (Opotow,
  1990)
• Networking shared network (Parks Adelman,
  1983)
• Sharing of tasks cooperative structure of tasks
  (Stafford Canary, 1991)
• Uncertainty attributional confidence (Gudykunst
  Nishida, 1986)
• Anxiety Stephan and Stephan (1985)
• Effective communication Gudykunst and Nishida
  (2001)
• Quality of relationship four indicators (Huang,
  1997)