Lecture Notes1

Chapter 11

COMMUNICATION

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Describe the functions and process of communication.

2. Contrast downward, upward, and lateral communication through smallgroup
networks and the grapevine.
3. Contrast oral, written, and nonverbal communication.
4. Describe how channel richness underlies the choice of communication method.
5. Differentiate between automatic and controlled processing of persuasive
messages.
6. Identify common barriers to effective communication.
7. Discuss how to overcome the potential problems of cross-cultural communication.

1. FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
Communication serves five major functions within a group or organization:
1) Management
• When employees follow their job descriptions or comply with company
policies, communication performs a management function.
• Informal communication controls behavior too. When work groups tease or
harass a member who produces too much they are informally
communicating, and managing, the member’s behavior.
2) Feedback
• Communication creates feedback by clarifying to employees what they
must do, how well they are doing it, and how they can improve their
performance.
3) Emotional sharing
• Communication within the group is a fundamental mechanism by which
members show satisfaction and frustration.
• Communication provides for the emotional sharing of feelings and fulfillment
of social needs.
4) Persuasion
• Persuasion can benefit or harm an organization depending on if, say, a
leader is trying to persuade a work group to believe in the organization’s
commitment to corporate social responsibility.
• Conversely, leader to persuade the work group to break the law to meet an
organizational goal.

1 Adapted from: Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2020). Organizational behavior (18th ed.). Pearson
© Deske W. Mandagi, UNKLAB Business School, 2021.
 5) Information exchange
• Communication provides the information that individuals and groups need to
make decisions by transmitting the data needed to identify and evaluate
choices.

2. COMMUNICATION PROCESS
• Communication process refers to the steps between a source and a receiver
that result in the transfer and understanding of meaning.
• The key parts of the communication process are:
1. The sender. The sender initiates a communication by conveying a message.
2. Encoding. The sender translates a thought into a message.
3. The message. The message is the actual physical product of the sender’s
encoding. When we speak, the speech is the message. When we write, the
writing is the message. When we gesture, the movements of our arms and the
expressions on our faces are the message.
4. The channel. The channel is the medium through which the message travels.
The sender selects it, determining whether to use a formal or informal
channel.
5. Decoding. The receiver translates the symbols into understandable form.
6. The receiver. The receiver is the person(s) to whom the message is directed.
7. Noise. represents communication barriers that distort the clarity of the
message, such as perceptual problems, information overload, semantic
difficulties, or cultural differences.
8. Feedback. is the check on how successful we have been in transferring our
messages as originally intended. It determines whether understanding has
been achieved.

Formal Vs Informal Communication

The sender selects whether to use a formal or informal channel:
• Formal Channel
Communication channels established by an organization to transmit messages
related to the professional activities of members.
• Informal Channel
Communication channels that are created spontaneously and that emerge as
responses to individual choices.

3. DIRECTION OF COMMUNICATION
Downward Communication
• Communication that flows from one level of a group or organization to a lower
level.
 • Group leaders and managers use downward communication to:
• assign goals
• provide job instructions
• explain policies and procedures
• point out problems that need attention
• offer feedback.
• In downward communication, managers must explain the reasons behind their
downward communications.
• Downward communication is its one-way nature; generally, managers inform
employees but rarely solicit their advice or opinions.
• In downward communication, the delivery mode and the context of the
information exchange are of high importance.

Upward Communication
• Upward communication flows to a higher level in the group or organization. It’s
used to provide feedback to higher-ups, inform them of progress toward goals,
and relay current problems.
• Upward communication keeps managers aware of how employees feel about
their jobs, coworkers, and the organization in general.
• Managers also rely on upward communication for ideas on how conditions can
be improved.

Lateral Communication
• When communication occurs between members of the same work group,
members at the same level in separate work groups, or any other horizontally
equivalent workers, we describe it as lateral communication.
• Lateral communication saves time and facilitates coordination. Some lateral
relationships are formally sanctioned.
• More often, they are informally created to short-circuit the vertical hierarchy and
expedite action.

Formal Small-Group Networks

• Formal organizational networks can be complicated, including hundreds of
people and a half-dozen or more hierarchical levels.
• The all-channel network permits group members to actively communicate with
each other; it’s most often characterized by selfmanaged teams, in which group
members are free to contribute and no single person takes on a leadership role.

The Grapevine
• The informal communication network in a group or organization is called the
grapevine.
• Although rumors and gossip transmitted through the grapevine may be informal,
it’s still an important source of information for employees and job applicants.
• Grapevine or word-of-mouth information from peers about a company has
important effects on whether job applicants join an organization.
 • It serves employees’ needs: Small talk creates a sense of closeness and friendship
among those who share information.
• It also gives managers a feel for the morale of their organization, identifies issues
employees consider important, and helps them tap into employee anxieties.

4. MODES OF COMMUNICATION
Oral Communication
• A primary means of conveying messages is oral communication.
• The advantages of oral communication are:
- Immediate Feedback: provides immediate feedback to both the sender and
the receiver
- Time Saving: fast and saves the time involved in writing the message and
delivering it through a channel.
- Economical: saves the money spent on stationery and the channel of
communication.
- Personal Touch: builds up a healthy climate in the organization by bringing
superiors and subordinates closer
- Flexibility: provides an opportunity to the speaker to correct himself and
make himself clear.
- Secrecy: can be more easily kept confidential than written messages.
- Effectiveness: the message transfer is more effective
• Face-to-face communication on a consistent basis is still the best way to get
information to and from employees.
• Researchers indicate that we are prone to “listener burnout,” in which we tune
the other person out and rush to offer advice.
• Active listening—in which we remove distractions, lean in, make eye contact,
paraphrase, and encourage the talker to continue.
• One major disadvantage of oral communication surfaces whenever a message
has to pass through a number of people: the more people, the greater the
potential distortion.
• Each person interprets the message in his or her own way. The message’s
content, when it reaches its destination, is often very different from the original,
even when we think the message is simple and straightforward.

Meetings
• Meetings can be formal or informal, include two or more people, and take
place in almost any venue.
• Good interpersonal communication is key to making meetings effective.

Videoconferencing and Conference Calling

• Videoconferencing permits employees and clients to conduct real-time
meetings with people at different locations.
 • Conference calling is generally limited to telephone exchanges where some
people may gather around one speaker phone, and others call in through a
secure line.
• To address the pitfalls of videoconferencing and conference calls, experts
offer the following suggestions:
1. Set more explicit agendas and firmer rules than for face-to-face meetings.
2. Have callers begin by introducing themselves, their roles in the project,
and what they are looking for in the meeting.
3. Leaders should talk 40 percent of the time and listen 60 percent of the
time.
4. Distribute discussion questions before the meeting, and note the responses
of each participant during the meeting.
5. Assign a moderator for the meeting (not the leader) and a secretary
(again, not the leader).
6. Understand people’s preferences for videoconferencing versus
conference calling before the meeting and make sure everyone
understands the technology.

Written Communication
Letters
• Of all the forms of written communication, letter writing is the oldest— and the
most enduring.
• Letter writing can be used to great effect in business, adding a personal
touch to a communication or, alternately, creating a lasting document to
signal an official communication.
PowerPoint
• PowerPoint and other slide formats can be an excellent mode of
communication because slide-generating software combines words with
visual elements to engage the reader and help explain complex ideas.

E-Mail
• The business benefits of e-mail messages are obvious: they can be written,
edited, sent, and stored quickly and cheaply.
• How to make a proper email?
• Don’t skip the subject line, but make it short and topic-related.
• Give a greeting/salutation. “Dear” and “hello” or “hi” are good starting
points.
• Keep sentences, paragraphs, and thoughts short.
• However, don’t be curt. “No one can see your facial expressions or hear
your tone of voice, so the only way they’re gauging your emotions is the
tone that you use in that e-mail.
 • Don’t use text language. Remember that a lot of your clients may be
baby boomers. It’s important for you to stay professional.
• Check your spelling. Check it again.
• When people write back, reply within 24 hours. “Even if you don’t have an
answer for someone, reply anyway”
Instant Messaging
• There are distinct pros and cons to IM, but there are mostly negatives for
business interactions.
Text Messaging
• Text messaging may be a little bit better than IM but has many of the same
pitfalls in business usage.
• The guidelines for the business use of texting are still evolving, but experts
continually caution that business text language should be as formal as any
other business communication.
Social Media
• Social networking has become a tool for prospective employees, hiring
managers, employees, and human resources divisions.
• Privacy remains a high concern for many Facebook users, and some regions
of the world do not have access to it.
• Unlike many social media venues, LinkedIn was created as an online business
network and User profiles on the site are like virtual résumés.
Apps
• Apps are most popular in regions where mobile phone usage is primary.
• Asia has the world’s largest number of social media users, and apps play a
large role in that part of the world through Line (Japan), WeChat (China),
and Kakao (South Korea).
Blogs
• Experts see blogging as a business necessity for organizations, so it should not
be overlooked as a vital form of communication to employees and
customers, who can post feedback if they choose.

Nonverbal Communication
• Every time we deliver a verbal message, we also impart an unspoken
message.
• Sometimes the nonverbal component may stand alone as a powerful
message of our business communication.
• Nonverbal communication includes body movements, the intonations or
emphasis we give to words, facial expressions, and the physical distance
between the sender and receiver.
• Body language can convey status, level of engagement, and emotional
state. For example, we smile to project trustworthiness, uncross our arms to
appear approachable, and stand to signal authority.
5. CHOICE OF COMMUNICATION
Channel Richness
• Channel richness is the amount of information that can be transmitted during
a communication episode.
• Face-to-face conversation scores highest in channel richness because:
• It transmits the most information per communication episode—multiple
information cues (words, postures, facial expressions, gestures, intonations)
• Immediate feedback (both verbal and nonverbal)
• The personal touch of being present

Choosing Communication Methods

• The choice of channel depends on whether the message is routine or
nonroutine:
• Routine messages tend to be straightforward and have minimal ambiguity
• Nonroutine communications are likely to be complicated and have the
potential for misunderstanding. Managers can communicate them
effectively only by selecting rich channels.
• Your communication choice is worth a moment’s thought:
• Whenever you need to gauge the receiver’s receptivity, oral
communication is usually the better choice. For example, the marketing
plan for a new product, for instance, may need to be worked out with
clients in person, so you can see their reactions to each idea you propose.
• Consider the receiver’s preferred mode of communication; some
individuals focus on content better in written form and others prefer
discussion. For example, if your manager requests a meeting with you, you
may not want to ask for an e-mail exchange instead.
• The pace of your work environment matters, too. A fast-paced workplace
may thrive on pop-by meetings, while a deadline-heavy team project
may progress faster with scheduled Skype videoconferences.
• Consider your speaking skills when choosing your communication
method.

Information Security
• Security is a huge concern for nearly all organizations with private or
proprietary information about clients, customers, and employees.
• Most companies actively monitor employee Internet use and e-mail records,
and some even use video surveillance and record phone conversations.
• An organization can relieve employee concerns by engaging them in the
creation of information-security policies and giving them some control over
how their personal information is used.
6. PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION
We’ve discussed a number of methods for communication up to this point. Now we
turn our attention to one of the functions of communication— persuasion.

Automatic Processing
• A relatively superficial consideration of evidence and information making use
of heuristics.
• For example, when we buy a soda drink based on ads and catchy slogans
that influences our choices as consumers.
• Automatic processing takes little time and low effort, so it makes sense to use
it for processing persuasive messages related to topics you don’t care much
about.

Controlled Processing
• A detailed consideration of evidence and information relying on facts,
figures, and logic.
• Controlled processing requires effort and energy, but it’s harder to fool
someone who has taken the time and effort to engage in it.

How might we determine what types of processing an audience will use?

• Interest Level. Interest levels reflect the impact a decision will have on your
life. When people are very interested in the outcome of a decision, they’re
more likely to process information carefully.
• Prior Knowledge. People who are well informed about a subject area are
more likely to use controlled processing strategies.
• Personality. Those who are lower in their need for cognition are more likely to
use automatic processing strategies, relying on intuition and emotion to guide
their evaluation of persuasive messages.
• Message Characteristics. Messages provided through relatively lean
communication channels, with little opportunity for users to interact with the
content of the message, encourage automatic processing.
• Choosing the Message. When audience members are not interested in a
persuasive message topic, when they are poorly informed, when they are low
in need for cognition, and when information is transmitted through relatively
lean channels, they’ll be more likely to use automatic processing.

7. BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

Several barriers can slow or distort effective communication, barriers that we need
to recognize and reduce which include:

Filtering
• Filtering refers to a sender’s purposely manipulating information so the
receiver will see it more favorably.
 • A manager who tells his boss what he feels the boss wants to hear is filtering
information.
• The more vertical levels in the organization’s hierarchy, the more
opportunities there are for filtering.
• Factors such as fear of conveying bad news and the desire to please the
boss often lead employees to tell their superiors what they think they want to
hear, thus distorting upward communications.

Selective Perception
• Selective perception is important because the receivers in the
communication process selectively see and hear based on their needs,
motivations, experience, backgrounds, and other personal characteristics.
• Receivers also project their interests and expectations into communications
as they decode them. For example, an employment interviewer who expects
a female job applicant to put her family ahead of her career is likely to see
that characteristic in all female applicants, regardless of whether any of the
women actually feel that way.

Information Overload
• When the information we have to work with exceeds our processing
capacity, the result is information overload.

Emotions
• You may interpret the same message differently when you’re angry or
distraught than when you’re happy. For example, individuals in positive
moods are more confident about their opinions after reading a persuasive
message.

Language
• Even when we’re communicating in the same language, words mean
different things to different people.
• Age and context are two of the biggest factors that influence such
differences.

Silence
• Silence itself can be the message to communicate noninterest or the inability
to deal with a topic.
• Silence can also be a simple outcome of information overload or a delaying
period for considering a response.

Communication Apprehension
• Communication apprehension refers to undue tension and anxiety about oral
communication, written communication, or both.
Lying
• The final barrier to effective communication is outright misrepresentation of
information, or lying.
• Evidence shows people are more comfortable lying over the phone than
face-to-face, and they are more comfortable lying in e-mails than when they
have to write with pen and paper.
• The frequency of lying and the difficulty in detecting liars makes this an
especially strong barrier to effective communication.

8. CULTURAL FACTORS
• Cross-cultural factors clearly create the potential for increased
communication problems.
• A gesture that is well understood and acceptable in one culture can be
meaningless or lewd in another.

Cultural Barriers
• Several problems are related to language difficulties in cross-cultural
communications:
1. Barriers caused by semantics
- Words mean different things to different people, particularly people
from different national cultures.
- For example, capitalists in Russia may have difficulty communicating
with British or Canadian counterparts because English terms such as
efficiency, free market, and regulation have no direct Russian
equivalents.
2. Barriers caused by word connotations
- Words imply different things in different languages.
- For example: negotiations between U.S. and Japanese executives
can be difficult because the Japanese word hai translates as “yes,”
but its connotation is “Yes, I’m listening” rather than “Yes, I agree.
3. Barriers caused by tone differences
- In some cultures, the tone changes depending on the context:
People speak differently at home, in social situations, and at work.
- Using a personal, informal style when a more formal style is expected
can be inappropriate.
4. Differences in tolerance for conflict and methods for resolving conflicts.
- People from individualist cultures tend to be more comfortable with
direct conflict and will make the source of their disagreements overt.
- Collectivists are more likely to acknowledge conflict only implicitly
and avoid emotionally charged disputes.

Cultural Context
• In high-context cultures such as China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, people
rely heavily on nonverbal and subtle situational cues in communicating with
others, and a person’s official status, place in society, and reputation carry
 considerable weight. What is not said may be more significant than what is
said.
• In contrast, people from Europe and North America reflect their low-context
cultures. They rely essentially on spoken and written words to convey
meaning; body language and formal titles are secondary.

A Cultural Guide
• When communicating with people from a different culture, what can you do
to reduce misinterpretations?
1. Know yourself. Recognizing your own cultural identity and biases is critical
to understanding the unique viewpoints of other people.
2. Foster a climate of mutual respect, fairness, and democracy. Clearly
establish an environment of equality and mutual concern.
3. State facts, not your interpretation. If you state only facts, you will have the
opportunity to benefit from the other person’s interpretation. Delay
judgment until you’ve had sufficient time to observe and interpret the
situation from the differing perspectives of all concerned.
4. Consider the other person’s viewpoint. Before sending a message, put
yourself in the recipient’s shoes. What are his or her values, experiences,
and frames of reference? What do you know about his or her education,
upbringing, and background that can give you added insight?
5. Proactively maintain the identity of the group. Like any culture, the
establishment of a common-ground “third culture” for effective
intercultural communication takes time and nurturing. Remind members
of the group of your common goals, mutual respect, and need to adapt
to individual communication preferences.