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In this study, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in New Zealand were surveyed to explore influences on adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). We sought to extend existing research by considering ''institutional'' influences alongside organizational and environmental features and by examining how institutional forces affect optimal use of ICTs. Findings suggest that NPOs adopting and using ICTs tended to be self-perceived leaders or those who scanned the environment and emulated leaders and tended to have organizational decisionmakers with the expertise to enable adoption and use.Furthermore, optimal fit of ICTs tended to be spurred by institutional forces if accompanied by self-perceived leadership and appropriate organizational resources. Implications for practice and theory are explored.

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This article explores older New Zealanders’ perceptions of the barriers to, benefits and negative consequences of computer-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) through the analysis of focus group discussions involving 98 respondents. Older people engage with computers in a context constituted by discourses positioning them as declining in the ability to learn skills such as computing, but creating a burden on society if they do not. In this paradoxical context, participants identified emotional and material barriers, as well as benefits and negative consequences to computer use that are shaped by age and gender. Significant gaps between the New Zealand Government’s identification of the benefits of computing for older people and the benefits identified by older people themselves are highlighted. The article argues for the need for a more balanced approach acknowledging potential negative consequences, promoting the ‘people-centred’ benefits of computer use over and above the national economic benefits emphasized in the government’s drive to encourage older people’s uptake of computer-based ICTs.

This study explored how sales managers and sales people construct and perform motivational communication. Sullivan's (1988) Motivational Language Theory (MLT) was used as a starting point. This theory is critiqued and reinterpreted within a framework emphasizing multiple communication goals and multiple levels of communication competence. Participants included 24 sales managers and sales representatives from University Directories, a major publishing company of campus telephone directories. A thematic analysis was conducted on interview notes and transcripts, from which three major and four minor themes emerged. The experiences of three sales teams are explored to contextualize the themes, to illustrate deficiencies in MLT, and to highlight the potential of the alternative theoretical framework for explaining motivational communication. Findings demonstrate that motivational communication acts often address multiple communication goals and are open to multiple interpretations. Motivational communication considered competent by employees typically addresses multiple goals (instrumental, identity, and relational) by strategies of integration or separation and fits employees' beliefs about what constitutes competent communication. Managers therefore must pay attention to the multiple implications and interpretations of their motivational attempts and must adapt their communication strategically to employees' beliefs and values.

While there is extensive research on emotion in the workplace and on information and communication technology (ICT) implementation, largely ignored is the emotionality of ICT implementation and change management more generally, even though the emotional experience of such processes is critical to their success. The current paper integrates insights from research on emotion at work and the social construction of technology to demonstrate the role of emotion in ICT‐based organisational change through a case study of a not‐for‐profit organisation’s implementation of a Webbased case management system. In particular, it is argued that emotions and new ICT systems are experienced as ambiguous phenomena, which makes people susceptible to influence through interaction. Furthermore, such interaction to negotiate meanings for the emotional experience of ICT implementation is critical to its success.

This article reports the results from a four-year investigation of the relationships among four measures of social cognitive and communication abilities-cognitive differentiation, self-monitoring, perspective-taking, and persuasive ability-and the relationships of these measures to job leveland upward mobility in a large &st Coast insurance company. The data revealed significant relationships among all combinations of the communication-related abilities. Each was signijkantly related to job level, and three of the four were significontry related to upward mobility.Stepwise multiple-regression analyses revealed that, of the four communication-related abilities, cognitive differentiation accountedfor the most variance inpredicting job level and upward mobility. The findings suggest that communication abilities are important to the success of individuals in organizations. Persons with more developed abilities tended to be found at higher levels in the organizational hierarchy and tended to be promoted more often than persons with less developed abilities.There is little disagreement about the importance of communication in work situations. Indeed, without communication there would be no organization. Communication is the vehicle through which a new employee becomes socialized, a subordinate takes instructions, a supervisor gives instructions, a salesperson completes a transaction with a customer, or an employee interacts with other employees in social situations. Roles are defined, enacted, and coordinated through the Beverly Davenport Sypher (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 198 I) is assistant professor in the

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