Managerial Communication: Evaluating the Right Dose

The metaphor of dosage offers us a rich organizing principle for managers. It focuses our efforts on such fundamental, pragmatic communication issues as: amount, frequency, delivery system, sequencing, interaction with what other agents, and contraindications. It suggests compelling new answers to fundamental problems that all managers must face, with an appreciation of basic issues beyond our conscious awareness. In our day-to-day lives - whether we are discussing things with our housing contractor, our cable repair man, with our doctor - we must constantly decide how much communication we should engage in to pursue our projects.

This work focuses on the dosage metaphor as a way of confronting this question - what level of communication, both in terms of amount and of depth, is really necessary to accomplish particular purposes? Most communication theories implicitly paint a picture of the prevalence and paramount importance of communication, with a 'communication metamyth' that more is necessarily better. This book provides the first truly comprehensive treatment of dosage. It also focuses on perhaps the most contemporaneously interesting issues of change and of productivity. While fundamental to any practitioner of communication, in modern communication theory these issues receive only cursory attention.

In the final chapter I analyze the dosage metaphor in broad sweep and suggest a countervailing minimalist approach to communication before turning to broader practice issues raised by application of the metaphor of dosage.