Organisational, Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication

Organisational communication encompasses the processes by which information, decisions and meaning circulate within and between formal structures. It includes the channels—written, oral and digital—through which leaders, teams and stakeholders coordinate activity, resolve conflict and build shared purpose. Interpersonal communication focuses on dyadic and small-group exchanges that rely on verbal and non-verbal cues—tone, gesture, facial expression and active listening—to establish rapport, manage emotions and sustain relationships. Intercultural communication examines how individuals from different linguistic, social and ethnic backgrounds negotiate understanding, mediate power asymmetries and co-construct shared realities across cultural boundaries. Together these fields illuminate the social architectures of modern organisations: how messages are encoded and decoded, how trust is built or eroded, and how globalisation and digitalisation transform both routine interactions and large-scale collaborations. Research spans ethnographic, process-based and computational methods, demonstrating practical applications in leadership development, conflict management, inclusion initiatives and virtual teamwork across diverse contexts.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Studies of multimodal repair have revealed that participants in face-to-face interaction routinely coordinate speech and gesture to resolve misunderstandings with minimal joint effort. Analyses of video-recorded repair sequences show that speakers and listeners optimise both verbal and gestural contributions to sustain conversational flow and preserve social rapport.

Experimental work on conversational facial signals demonstrates that combinations of non-verbal cues—such as eyebrow raises, smiles and gaze shifts—systematically shape interlocutors’ predictions of upcoming responses. These findings provide evidence for compositional, Gestalt-like perception of multimodal utterances in question–answer exchanges.

A multimodal conversation study in press-conference settings highlights the concept of interpreter visibility. It shows how speakers’ verbal references and coordinated gestures can render sign-language interpreters active co-participants, reshaping audience perceptions of the interpreter’s role in mediated discourse.

Organisational, Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in organisational, interpersonal and intercultural communication across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Organisational communication: The set of formal and informal processes through which information, decisions and meaning are created, transmitted and interpreted within and between organisational units.

Interpersonal communication: The exchange of messages between individuals that relies on verbal content and non-verbal cues—such as eye contact, gesture and vocal tone—to establish mutual understanding and rapport.

Intercultural communication: The interaction between people of different cultural backgrounds, examining how linguistic, social and power differences affect message encoding, decoding and the co-construction of shared meanings.

Multimodal communication: The integrated use of multiple semiotic channels—speech, gesture, gaze, facial expression and written text—that jointly convey meaning in social interaction.

Interpreter visibility: The degree to which an interpreter’s presence, role and communicative contributions are acknowledged and co-ordinated by speakers and audiences in mediated settings, affecting perceptions of co-participation.

References

1. The multimodal nature of communicative efficiency in social interaction. Scientific Reports (2022).
2. Conversational facial signals combine into compositional meanings that change the interpretation of speaker intentions. Scientific Reports (2024).
3. Interpreter visibility in press conferences: a multimodal conversation analysis of speaker–interpreter interactions. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023).
4. Communication in organizations: An overview and provocations. International Journal of Management Reviews (2024).
5. A Meta-analytic Systematic Review and Theory of the Effects of Perceived Listening on Work Outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology (2023).