Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 017
Each response changes the next
Meaning and relationships develop through simultaneous cues, context, and recursive response rather than isolated transmissions
Premise
A linear model can test whether information moved from source to receiver. It cannot adequately explain an executive conversation in which tone, silence, anticipation, status, and visible reactions continuously alter what each participant can do next. The transactional perspective changes the unit of analysis from the individual message to the unfolding interaction.
This is not one universally authored diagram. Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, and Don Jackson’s 1967 work supplied a systemic interactional account; Dean C. Barnlund explicitly published “A Transactional Model of Communication” in 1970. Contemporary diagrams often combine these traditions with later teaching conventions. Historical precision protects the model from becoming an empty synonym for “two-way.”
What the model is: Transactional Model of Communication in Knowledge →
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- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
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- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryTheories & Explanatory Models
- DomainMeaning & Clarity
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Theories & Explanatory Models
Explains how or why a communication process works by relating mechanisms, conditions or variables. Its value is an account that can guide inquiry into what produces an outcome, rather than a name for the outcome alone.
- KnowledgeTransactional Model of Communication