Study of Feedback Communication in a Technical Organizational Compliance System
Abstract
Corporations and other organizations have dedicated considerable funds to developing and maintaining complex systems to ensure their regulatory and contractual compliance. This is especially true in highly regulated technical industries. Because of the large number of potentially relevant and changing regulations, maintaining regulatory compliance is an iterative process that requires effective communication between employers and employees. In order to have effective communication, voluntary feedback communication from employees is required. This study gathered and analyzed data about employees’ willingness to voluntarily communicate with compliance officers in their organization by examining the employee’s situational communication apprehension. Specifically, the study measured each employee’s Situational Communication Apprehension Measure (SCAM) when communicating with these officers and compared that to their perceptions of the compliance officer’s credibility (Competence, Caring/Goodwill, and Trustworthiness), other perceptions, work environment factors and demographic information.
Using multivariate statistical analysis, the study found evidence of a statistically significant relationship between changes in SCAM and changes in Caring/Goodwill, Trustworthiness and the employee’s perception of the compliance officer’s ability to do their job. The results showed that there is a largely negative relationship between SCAM and Caring/Goodwill, which shows an increase in willingness to communicate as the perception of the compliance officer’s Caring/Goodwill increases. SCAM was maximized when Trustworthiness was in a middle range and reduced as Trustworthiness increased or decreased. This showed that employees are least apprehensive about communicating with a compliance officer they absolutely do not trust or trust wholeheartedly. The ability of the compliance officer to do the employee’s job had a positive relationship with SCAM, showing that employees were least willing to communicate with compliance officers they absolutely believed could do their job. This study found no statistically significant relationship between the compliance officer’s perceived Competence and the employee’s willingness to engage in communication.
There were five other predictive factors that were related to marginally statistically significant changes in SCAM: 1. how adversarial is the working relationship; 2. communication frequency; 3. whether the employee and compliance officer are the same gender; 4. perception of position purpose; and 5.years working at the organization. These five factors warrant additional study.
Subject
compliancecommunication apprehension
situational communication apprehension
SCAM
credibility
compliance system
engineering management
caring
competence
trust
trustworthiness
goodwill
task specific competence
compliance unit
law
perception
communication
legal control unit
control
association control unit
organizational control unit
government regulations
regulations
contractual regulations
legal regulations
system's engineering
Citation
Wickliff, Cortlan James (2016). Study of Feedback Communication in a Technical Organizational Compliance System. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /158033.