Brent D Ruben

• PhD
• Distinguished Professor/Senior Fellow Organizational Leadership at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

This case history provides a snapshot of the leadership and organizational context that supported a bold and collaborative decision-making process at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, highlighting the importance of a disciplined approach to information and communication that takes full advantage of internal resources and expertise. Rutge...

Purpose Leadership scholars, practitioners and educators find themselves at a very opportune time, when their subject matter-expertise is of increasing interest across sectors, settings and levels of analysis, as leadership is hailed as both a pressing problem and a promising solution. It is also a challenging time for leadership study—a point in t...

The challenges facing academic health and medicine are abundant and require effective leadership across institutions. This article highlights the design of a collaborative leadership development program for faculty administrators that seeks to address many of these leadership challenges. The article begins with an overview of existing research to s...

The Baldrige Excellence Framework is one of the most prominent and well‐regarded instruments for integrating organizational assessment, planning, and improvement. Although it is potentially applicable to academic as well as business environments, the language and approach of the standard Baldrige model may impede its use within colleges and univers...

In response to both the lack of formal leadership training and the challenges facing leaders across higher education, a number of programs are being planned and initiated at colleges and universities. This application brief highlights the conceptual foundations, structural components, and operational considerations of one such program, the Rutgers...

The following article analyses the crisis involving racial tensions at the University of Missouri in 2015 that ultimately contributed to the departure of the university president and chancellor. This case amplifies the importance of organizational vulnerabilities from both an historical context and a national-issue context. As supported through thi...

A series of incidents in 2015 escalated racial tensions at the University of Missouri that ultimately contributed to the departure of the university president and chancellor. This case highlights the importance of focusing attention on competent leadership communication, which includes the development and maintenance of strong relationships with ke...

Leadership is widely accepted as a critical factor to the success, mediocrity, or failure of an organization (Collins, 2001; March & Weil, 2005; Northouse, 2015). This is no less the case in higher education, where the impact of leaders and leadership is critical to academic and administrative effectiveness. This is especially true given the myriad...

Much has been written about the nature of leadership communication; however, the linkage often is limited to a view of communication as a strategic mechanism—or technique—to be employed by leaders in efforts to achieve specific purposes. This limited conceptualization of leadership communication does not fully capture the pervasive role of communic...

Updated Version of Cross-Cultural Behavioral Observation Guides. Adapted in 2015 from: Ruben, B. D., Assessing Communication Competency for Intercultural Adaptation, Group and Organization Management,1(3), 1976, 334-354; and Ruben, B. D., and D. J. Kealey, Behavioral Assessment of Communication Competency and the Prediction of Cross-Cultural Adapta...

Communication is a topic frequently linked to leadership; however, the linkage often is limited to a view of communication as a tool to be employed by leaders in efforts to achieve particular purposes. The aim of this article is to provide a more expansive view of the communication process and its current and potential contributions to an understan...

Updated version of Communication Behavior Observation Guides

Standard doctoral preparation includes formal training in a specific academic discipline. In some instances, this training includes experience serving on departmental and university-wide committees. Structured leadership education, however, is most often a peripheral concern of the graduate school experience. For a significant number of doctoral st...

Just before graduation day, a student and his family gathered eagerly around the dining-room table to open a letter from the university that the student attended. The student began to read to all assembled what they hoped would be a note of congratulations from the dean. The letter read: "Dear Student, Your diploma will be withheld because of an ou...

This article considers one of the most fundamental concerns of health communication scholars, educators, and professionals-the relationship between communication theory and health communication practice. Assertions about the important role of communication in health care-as both problem and potential solution-have become increasingly common, as hav...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to summarize a series of studies conducted by the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership at Rutgers University from 2003‐2005. Motivating these studies is the recognition that organizational self‐assessment programs such as the Malcolm Baldrige program have achieved prominence and popularity. The p...

The Baldrige quality criteria generate a number of questions that can make accreditation self-studies more productive.

The 2004 recipient of NCA's Gerald M. Phillips Award for Distinguish Applied Scholarship, Brent Ruben's professional record spans more than three decades and has focused in four major areas: organizational development, communication/information systems, medical/health communication, and intercultural communication. His publication record and profes...

The article presents information on the core programs of the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership (ODL) at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. ODL was created for the development of a more welcoming environment in colleges and universities, criticized broadly for their inefficiency, indifference to external constituenci...

Technology, communication, leadership, and work processes are inextricably linked in contemporary organizations. An understanding of these topics and an ability to apply these understandings in the workplace is becoming increasingly critical for workers in all sectors. In this chapter, we discuss some of the competencies that are vital for success...

Technology, communication, leadership, and work processes are inextricably linked in contemporary organizations. An understanding of these topics and an ability to apply these understandings in the workplace is becoming increasingly critical for workers in all sectors. In this chapter, we discuss some of the competencies that are vital for success...

Leadership development is a fundamental responsibility of colleges and universities. In this article, the authors present the theoretical foundation of an innovative initiative, as well as criteria for assessing leadership development programs in higher education. They use the Student Leadership Development Institute at Rutgers University as a case...

This chapter presents an overview of benchmarking as well as dashboard indicators for higher education.

Describes efforts of the National Consortium for Continuous Improvement (NCCI), which seeks to function as a catalyst for higher education institutions to come together in search of best practices. The organization presents an annual meeting and several workshops a year, hosts a Web site, distributes electronic bulletins, and is starting an interns...

This article provides an overview of the evolution of experiential instruction theory and practice from its popular emergence in the late 1960s through the present period. Simulations, games, and other experience-based instructional methods have had a substantial impact on teaching concepts and applications during this period. They have also helped...

Incl. bibl.

This study reports on a survey of 3,868 patients at six health care institutions. I addressed the following questions: How do patients conceptualize, represent, and evaluate health care encounters? What themes from health care encounters are salient to patients? What role do communication factors play in patients' conceptualizations, representation...

There is a growing recognition that information and communication are interrelated in very fundamental ways. The disciplines of Communication and Information/Library Studies have a long tradition of common interests and concepts—a tradition that has provided what might be termed a “scholarly push” toward increasing interdisciplinary linkages betwee...

This article explores the communication-information relationship from a system-theoretic perspective. Two basic systems principles and six propositions are presented to provide the foundation for a consideration of this relationship. The authors propose three distinct, yet mutually defining conceptions of information: Informatione, environmental in...

VIOLENCE AND TERROR IN THE MASS MEDIA: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY compiled by Nancy Signorielli and George Gerbner (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988—$39.95) COMMUNICATION AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR by Brent D. Ruben (New York: Macmillan, 1988 price not given, paper) MASS COMMUNICATION IN A NEW AGE: A MEDIA SURVEY by Linda J. Busby (Glenview, ILL: Scott,...

Increasing emphasis in recent years has been placed on health promotion, prevention, and the self-management of health care. These strategies presume the public has sufficient levels of relevant health information, as well as necessary attitudes and skills for the effective use of this information in the management of their own health care. This st...

This article reviews a framework for the assessment of instructional simulations and games advanced by Ruben and Lederman and applies it specifically to communication games and simulations. The article specifies the common components of simulations and games (roles, interactions, rules, goals, outcomes) and the three criteria (validity, reliability...

Outlines a research framework, in which emphasis is placed upon validity, reliability, and utility, for the systematic evaluation of simulation and gaming instruments and suggests how this framework can be employed in the selection and use of instructional simulations and games. Three tables accompany the text. (Author/JL)

Scholarly work is diffused among members of a discipline through a process which is essentially communicative in nature. As such, that process serves both content and relational functions, and has unintended as well as intended consequences. Beyond the transmission of scientific and scholarly information within a field, communication dynamics shape...

This study explores the relationship between interpersonal and social behaviors and patterns of success and failure in cross-cultural adaptation. Seven interpersonal communication skills often mentioned as being important to cross-cultural adaptation were studied: empathy, respect, role behavior flexibility, orientation to knowledge, interaction po...

The nature and functions of conflict, its role with regard to fundamental individual and social life processes, and its theoretical relationship to communication are explored from a system‐theoretic perspective. Based upon this framework, a distinction between conflict and para‐conflict is indicated, and it is suggested that the latter is character...

Among cross-cultural trainers and researchers, considerable attention has been fo cused on problems individuals encounter in adapting to new cultures or subcul tures. For the many volunteers and professionals who live and work in a cross- cultural setting, the question of how to effectively transfer knowledge and skills to persons of different cult...

Presents a generic model of experiential instruction methods that aims to (a) enumerate broadly the forms of experiential activities and their relationship to one another, (b) provide a classification scheme for examining the structural components and interactional dynamics of experiential activities, (c) suggest the relationship between structures...

One of the recurrent problems associated with interpersonal, group, organizational, and intercultural training in communication is the as sessment of outcomes. An approach is suggested for the evaluation of training and selection of programs utilizing behavioral assessment of participants' communication competence. The method involves the sys temat...

Both popular and academic perceptions of conflict have been historically negative. Conflict, however, or the discrepancy between the demands of the environment and the demands of a living system, is common to individuals, groups, organizations and societies, and is part of the communication process by which living things interact with their environ...

Role of experience in education is emphasized. 29 refs.

This anthology of essays approaches human communication from the points of view of: anthropology, art biology, economics, encounter groups, semantics, general system theory, history, information theory, international behavior, journalism, linguistics, mass media, neurophysiology, nonverbal behavior, organizational behavior, philosophy, political sc...