The importance of communication for the successful development of projects, particularly within the R \& D setting, has been stressed in recent years. However researches on organizational communication in corporate industrial design group have been seldom founded. This study aims to identify the nature of organizational communication in corporate design groups in order to contribute toward the establishment of a body of knowledge on design management. A survey of 21 industrial design teams at six major Korean corporations have been conducted in connection with a communication processing model built in the study. A set of selected 30 factors, including organizational vitalization, sentimental interaction, project patterns, centralization, participation, motivation...., have been thoroughly analyzed by correlation and regression and analysis.
Major findings of the study can be summarized into three categories as follows: 1) sentimental interaction and project patterns, motivation are positive correlation with the organizational vitalization and satisfaction of communication. 2) communication gap is significantly associated with both participation of decision-making and organizational vitalization, to compare with other factors. The tendency is more obvious in the group of senior desiners. 3) organizational vitalization and satisfaction of communication can get attained with vital information and sentimental interaction to minimize hierarchy of authority.
In line with this, two implications can be made. First, the job of designers has to be redesigned the newsness and creativity of design. Second, the harmony of management and design to provide designers with maximum degree of freedom would be a strong predictor of the organizational vitalization and satisfaction of communication in a design group.
