Interpersonal Communication Skills

INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT ENHANCE ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT
Mary Bambacas and Margaret Patrickson
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to investigate the interpersonal communication skills that human resource (HR) managers expect managers in supervisory positions possess. Second, to identify which of these skills HR managers expect managers use to engender subordinate commitment to the organisation. Third, the paper aims to investigate what interpersonal communication skills that enhance employee commitment to the organisation are most lacking in managers in supervisory positions.

Keyword(s): Interpersonal communications; Interpersonal skills; Job satisfaction.
Introduction
Over the last three decades, studies on how to encourage organisational commitment have been of interest to researchers in the area of organisational communication (Buchanan, 1974; DeCotiis and Summers, 1987; Putti et al., 1990; Reichers, 1985; McGee Wanguri, 1995; Gaertner and Nollen, 1989). Researchers and professionals assume and investigations have confirmed that the way managers convey information to their staff has consequences on the attitudes they develop towards the organisation.
Overwhelmingly, research espouses the positive organisational outcomes that committed employees bring to organisations. Committed employees are believed to be more productive and less likely to quit (Arnold and Mackenzie Davey, 1999; Arthur, 1994; Cohen and Hudecek, 1993; Somers and Bimbaum, 2000; Tett and Meyer, 1993), more dependable (Angle and Lawson, 1994), perform better (Suliman and Iles, 2000), produce more (Tjosvold et al., 1998) and are more involved (Brett and Stroh, 1997). The evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that employee commitment is enhanced by general aspects of communication such as satisfaction (Varona, 1996), climate (Guzley, 1992; Van den Hooff and de Ridder, 2004), organisational information provision (Ng et al., 2006), relationships with

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