Developing a Scale of Organizational Listening (2020)

The concept of organizational listening prompted so many questions. For example, “Listen to your customers” seems like a commonsense part of good business practice, yet what does it look like? Does it mean bringing back a beloved but discontinued product? Does it mean responding to tweets and posts on social media? Should a company be sending personalized email responses? Similarly, as a customer, what makes you feel heard? Are there things organizations do that make you feel like they understand your issue and are sympathetic? Have you ever been in a situation where the organization’s response made you angrier than before? This study is based on two seminal works on organizational listening. The first, the “Organizational Listening Scale,” was developed by Cooper and Husband and used for interpersonal evaluation of managerial listening skills. The second is a book, “Organization Listening: The Missing Essential in Public Communication” by Jim Macnamara, from which we have drawn on his seven canons of listening.