Get to Know Your Faculty Paper

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Abstract
This paper notes a summary of an investigation of a faculty member’s area of research. The faculty member chosen for this paper is Associate Professor John W. Haas. Professor Haas teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. His areas of specialization include research methods, organizational, and interpersonal communication. Distinguished journals such as Journalism Quarterly, Management Communication Quarterly, and American Behavioral Scientist have published his works. Besides teaching and writing, Haas has also undertaken other duties related to investigation. As an investigator, he has served several US agencies such as the departments of Agriculture and Energy in several capacities. He has also served in a broad range of professional associations as the chairpersons. He holds a doctorial, masters, and bachelor’s degree in organizational communication. The bulk of the paper delineates Dr. Haas’ identified paradigm, research interests, primary research methodology and a summary of some of the interesting findings from his research. The analysis is based on two research articles by John W. Haas.
Keywords: Faculty member, findings, research, paradigm, methodology
Get to Know Your Faculty Paper
Identified Faculty Member: Associate Professor: John W. Haas
Faculty Member’s Identified Paradigm: John W. Haas subscribes to the positivist paradigm. It is imperative to note that this paradigm holds that an objective reality is determinable only through empirical processes.

Researchers who use this paradigm incorporate variables and quantitative data in their studies. As noted in Dr. Haas’ literary work, he mainly uses quantitative approaches to test variables presented in pertinent research questions. He also uses empirical data analysis methods such as ANOVA, which confirms his interest in evaluating an objective reality through empirical means.
Research Methodology Commonly Used: Dr. Haas primarily uses the quantitative research methodology as noted in both articles analyzed to constitute this paper. Both articles present studies in which survey questionnaires were used. However, the study on whether shared goals make a difference incorporated interviews which are part of the qualitative research methodology (Haas, Sypher, and Sypher 167). Dr. Haas also conducts data analyses quantitatively using computerized frameworks and other statistical methods. For instance, the study on the role of listening made use of frequency distributions and coding procedures when analyzing data (Haas and Arnold 124). Therefore, Dr. Haas primarily uses quantitative measures when constituting and analyzing research data.
Main Research Interests
Organizational communication effectiveness
Public communication effectiveness
Communication in education and society
Interesting Research Findings: Foremost, the finding that the extent to which goals are shared tends to be independent of the sources or methods in which they are communicated is quite intriguing. In the study, workers reported that they learn about organizational goals from various sources including meetings and interactions with their supervisors (Haas, Sypher, and Sypher 168). In this case, the employees do not rely on one information source, they get goal-related information using a wide range of approaches. Therefore, according to the study, organizations associated with a relatively higher degree of goal consensus can enact a wide range of methods to communicate relevant goals as no single method can be regarded as being better than the others.
Another notable finding is that the manner in which workers perceive shared goals is not expressively related to the degree to which the members of the organization can articulate pertinent goals. The study notes that this finding is not out of the ordinary; perceptual measures and actual response measures often do not show any correlation (Haas, Sypher, and Sypher 168). Additionally, the fact that the workplace environment is associated with multiple goals prompts workers to focus on objectives with direct implications on their specific job descriptions. Therefore, these workers are likely to report disparate goals despite perceiving a common set of shared goals. Goal sharedness is a critical aspect for organizational success (Haas, Sypher, and Sypher 168). Nonetheless, institutions must consider methods for the communication of these goals before their implementation.
Listening plays an instrumental role in the constitution of communication competence among co-workers (Haas and Arnold 125). The fact that the study gives a perception of specific listening elements that organization members consider important also forms an interesting finding. To some extent, the listening characteristics noted in the study were consistent with findings from existing studies on communication competence. Arguably, the consistency tends to confirm the accuracy of the study’s findings and their relevance to existing and future research.
Works Cited
Haas, John and Christa Arnold. An examination of the role of listening in judgments of communication competence in co-workers. The Journal of Business Communication 1995, 32(2), 123-139.
Haas, John, Beverly Sypher, and Howard Sypher. Do shared goals really make a difference? Management Communication Quarterly, 1992, 6(2), 166-179.