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A situational theory of the behavior of organizational publics is expanded conceptually to explain the occurrence of cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral effects of communication behavior as well as the occurrence of communication behavior itself. The expanded theory explains when publics in an organization's environment will become active and interpenetrate the organization. The theory also provides a situational, teleological explanation of the attitude-behavior relationship. In this study, the theory is used to identify publics that arise from corporate "public affairs" issues. Publics are found that are consistent with those found in other studies of publics.

Results of series of exercises suggest that interaction of three dimensions—problem recognition, existence of constraints and level of involvement—explain behavior.

A unified theory of organizational communication is presented which explains the variety of communication behaviors with which organizations must deal, including internal communication, internal-external communication, and interorganizational communication. The theory is developed from the concepts of system openness, structural constraints, and synchronic and diachronic communication. Application of the theory is demonstrated with data from five separate studies of employee communications, communication with consumers, organization-clientele communication in a community development agency, total organizational communication, and communication between organized interest groups.

Style of story found to be less important than whether content is perceived as relevant in determining whether or not reader would stop to think about it.