Principles that Guide Understanding of Communication

1. Communication is transactional; it consists of interrelated components that influence one another, thus
communication becomes a dynamic process.

2. Communication has content and relational dimensions.The content dimension involves the ideas being openly
talked about, while the relational dimension expresses your behavior towards the other person.

3. Communication can be intentional or unintentional because all words and actions have meanings and communicative
use.

4. Communication is irreversible; to “unreceive” a message is unlikely, as words and actions, once said or done, cannot
be unsaid or undone.

5. Communication is unrepeatable because the same words and actions have different meanings when used or
expressed at different times and on diverse occasions.

Ethical Communication Etymologically, the word ethics comes from the Greek term ethos which can pertain to
customs and habits.

As a branch of knowledge, ethics deals with a structure of moral principles. Ethics guides an individual’s behavior –
his words and actions – and the way he or she communicates with others.Ethics is defined as a code of moral standards
of conduct for what is “good” and “right” as opposed to what is “bad” and “wrong”. It deals with values with
human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the
motives and ends of such actions.

Communication is ethical when it is utilized to enhance the way people interact with one another to improve society’s
moral life. On the other hand, communication is unethical when it is used to damage human relations or encourage
societal decadence. Some common examples of unethical communication are inappropriate jokes, coercive,
threatening and intimidating statements, misleading words, lying, meddling with something overheard, telephone
tapping, betraying or backstabbing somebody, and spreading fake news.

Communication ethics varies by culture and context and involves the negotiation of and reflection on our actions
regarding what we think is right and wrong or good and bad.

Ethical Standards of Communication

1. Truthfulness and honesty mean refraining from lying, cheating, stealing and deception.

2. Integrity means maintaining a consistency of belief and action.

3. Fairness means achieving the right balance of interest without regard to one’s own feelings and without
showing favor to any side in a conflict.

4. Respect means showing regard or consideration for others and their ideas, even if we don’t agree with them.

5. Responsibility means being accountable for one’s actions and what one says.
Principles of Ethical Communication

According to Ruth Mayhew (2018), ethical communication has several guiding elements.

1. Fact-based messages should be communicated with honesty and accuracy. Ethics in communication is shown by
observing freedom of expression, accepting differences in opinion and tolerating dissimilarities in beliefs and behaviors.
Ethical communication should be direct and honest. It should maintain tactfulness and discourage unpleasant remarks
or confrontational behavior.

2. Resources and facts from which the message is generated should be accessible. For example, if you are providing
information about academic standing of students, you are ought to give your audience the written output,
performance output and major examination results.

3. Message should be made accessible. If you are conveying information to a diverse audience, make certain that
you give consideration to their communication preferences. They may have different languages and listening styles, thus
there is a need to deliver your message in view of these differences. This way, your content reaches your whole
audience.

4. Basic human needs should be given careful consideration. Communication is a basic human need and should be
used to satisfy other human needs. Ethical communication gives premium to the need of people to connect with
one another with high regard despite cultural diversity

COMMUNICATION AND GLOBALIZATION

Global Communication

At its root, global communication can be defined just as any communication can: a message is sent from one
person or group to another anywhere in the world, which can be described as a five-step process:

(1) A person or an organization in one country sends a message.

Examples

• A person in one country types a message and clicks the send button. The message is then encoded into
packets which are sent across the internet to the recipient. In another country, the receiver logs in and
decodes the message by opening the email, and retrieves the message.
• When someone from another country reads your company’s web page, this too is an example of
global communication. The message is written and encoded in HTML, uploaded to a server, which is
then accessed across the internet and decoded by a web browser – and perhaps a translation plugin –
before the recipient reads it.
• While most Americans, for example, associate the word “cheers” with drinking, someone from the
UK may informally use the word as a way of saying thank you, or goodbye.
• In Quebec, Canada, a car is often called “un char,” which most translation services decode as a “chariot”
or a “tank.”

In both of these examples, noise can distort the message or make it undecipherable.

In electronic communication, noise can include anything from typos that change the context of a sentence, to a failed
internet connection, which could make it appear that you are not communicating anything at all.

With global communication, encoding and decoding the message can be more complicated than when you are
communicating with someone in your own country due to differences in language and culture. If either the sender
or receiver isn’t proficient in the language being used to send the message, translation issues can add noise,
distorting the message. Even small cultural differences can add noise.

Language Barriers in Global Business Communication

Whenever you are communicating with someone in their language, it is your responsibility to ensure that
the words you use are correct. This includes advertising and marketing. Over the past several decades there
have been many large and successful companies that have made mistakes when translating what they wanted to say
to a different language, often with offensive, or even hilarious, results.

Here are a few examples of some translation misfires:

• Germany: Clairol marketed a new curling iron named “Mist Stick.” In German, mist means manure.t
• China: Coca-Cola’s name was mistranslated when it began selling its product to the Chinese, who were
told to “bite the wax tadpole.”
• Ethiopia: When Gerber began selling its baby food here, they used the same label design as in other countries,
featuring a cute infant. In Ethiopia, however, where not everyone was literate, the custom was that images on a
label only depicted the jar’s contents.
• Mexico: When Parker Pen began marketing its pens to this Spanish country, its motto, “It won’t leak in your
pocket and embarrass you” was translated to, “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
• Thailand: Ikea entered this market using the same Swedish names for its products that it used all over the world.
However, many of these names in Thai mean “sex,” or have sexual implications, like “getting to third base.”
 Benefits of Global Communication

As the world has continued to become more tightly connected and communication technologies have
continued to evolve, the benefits as a whole can be illustrated by the market penetration of these new
technologies themselves. The more globally connected the world has become, the faster people have adopted
new global communication technologies.

• The telephone, which was the greatest global communication technology of its time, replacing the
telegraph, took 71 years to reach a market penetration of 50 percent of homes.
• Electricity took 52 years to reach the same penetration.
• Radios followed, taking 28 years.
• Color televisions took 18 years.
• Personal computers took only 19 years.
• Cellphones took 14 years, while internet access took only 10 years to reach 50 percent of all homes in the U.S.

Because a growing number of companies are already competing on a global level, any business that wants to
compete with them must also open its channels to communicate effectively with the entire world.