CHAPTER ONE

COMMUNICATION-AN OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
As we know managers have three basic jobs: to collect and convey information, to make decision and
to promote interpersonal unity. To put it in short, managers are expected to work together to achieve
organizational goals. All of these jobs happen through communication. Effective managers are able to use
a wide variety of media & strategies to communicate.
1.1 Meaning of Communication
Different writers define communication in different ways. Some define communication as “the process
of transferring ideas from one person to another”.
 Hamilton and Parker (1987), define communication as” the process of people sharing
thoughts, ideas, and feelings with each other in commonly understandable ways.”
 Bovee and Thill (2000) defined communication as the process of sending and receiving
messages.They distinguished communication and effective communication.
 According to Bovee and Thill,, effective communication occurs when individuals achieve a
shared understanding, stimulate others to take actions, and encourage people to think in new
ways.

The term communication is derived from the Latin work “Communis”, which means common. Literally,
to communicate means to tell, show, spread and inform.
As communication is a much more complex factor in our present world, not surprisingly, the problem of
defining it as a subject of study has also become increasingly difficult.
Communication is the process through which participants create and share information with one another
as they move toward reaching mutual understanding (Rogers, 1999)
For our purposes, however, we can define communication as: The process by which people attempt to
share meaning (ideas, feeling, thought, experience, knowledge, skill, etc) for some purpose through the
transmission of symbolic messages. Our working definition of communication calls attention to the
following five essential points.
1. Communication is a process
Communication refers to a series of activities to be accomplished in a sequence; it does not refer to
incidental events and transactions among people.
2. Communication is purposeful
When senders - receivers communicate the sender originally should have an objective to be checked at
the end of the communication process. Communication is not just the transfer of messages but purposeful

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transfer of messages between senders and receivers. Thus it does not refer to incidental transactions
between people.
3. Communication involves people
Communication shows the degree of understanding among senders-receivers and how they relate to each
other. Therefore, it refers to communication among people only and the exchange of interpersonal
behaviors among them.
4. Communication involves shared meaning
This suggests that in order for people to communicate, they must agree on the definitions of the terms and
symbols they are using. The symbols used by the sender should be similarly interpreted by the receiver in
order to ensure equal or similar understanding between them.
5. Communication is symbolic
In communication symbols such as, letters, numbers, words, gestures, sound, etc can only represent or
approximate the ideas they are meant to communicate. In other words symbols are not perfect
representations of our ideas. Thus we have to take care in selecting symbols that best approximate the
sender’s ideas.
Communication is vital to human existence. It is how we pass on to others our thoughts and feelings, tell
them what we want them to do, ask them to help us, share with them our knowledge and experience.
Without communication we would each live as if alone in the world.
1.2 Nature/Characteristics of Communication
As articulated by Gerald Miller, communication has three basic characteristics: dynamism, uniqueness
and transactional nature.
1) Dynamism: Communication changes continuously. Every communication event stems from a series
of past events and triggers a series of new ones.
Communication is affected by prior attitudes, planned thoughts and people to whom the message is
addressed. It is thus a dynamic phenomenon without beginning, without end, continually responding, and
continually changing.
2) Uniqueness: Evolving naturally from the notion of dynamism is the concept of uniqueness. No two
communication events are a like because of the change in the sender, the audience, delivery, time
situation etc.
3)Transactional Nature: Communication scholars Weinberg and Wilmot mentioned that in
communication all persons are engaged in sending (encoding) and receiving (decoding) messages
simultaneously. Each person is affecting the other. Each communication transaction involves reciprocal
exchanges of feelings, meanings, ideas and responses.

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 1.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION

In order to show the importance of communication to organization it is better to define what

organization is. An organization is a group of people associated for business, political, professional,
religious, athletic, social, or other purposes. Its activities require human beings to interact, react-
communicate. They exchange information, ideas, plans, make decisions, rules, proposals, contracts
and various agreements which all of them cannot happen without communication. Communication is
the life blood of every organization. Whether an organization is large or small, the sharing of
information among the parts of an organization, as well as between the organization and the outside
world, is the glue that binds the organization together. As a member of an organization, be it formal
or informal organization, you are a link in the communication chain. Whether you are a top manager
or an entry level employee, you have information that others need to perform their jobs. At the same
time, others have information that is crucial to you. Communication skills are important because it is
through communication that you gain the information you need to make successful decisions at work.
The success of an organization depends on communication skills of its employees. Researches indicate
that communication skills were rated “extremely important” relative to other kinds of abilities by the
surveyed organization. Researchers conducted on business organizations also show that “inability to
communicate” and “poor communication skills” were the most frequently mentioned reasons for not
hiring a job applicant. From this you can see that communication affects even your personal life.
To be specific communication serves the following three purposes in personal or individual life.
i. Job Success: The two dimensions of management most often cited as the keys to individual and
organizational success are technical ability and understanding of people. Effective communication skills
to listen, speak, and write complement these two dimensions. Therefore enhance ones job success, a
person learn the art of human relations to effectively communicate her/his ideas, experiences, thoughts,
skills and feelings.
ii. Personal Satisfaction: Mastery on a certain area goes beyond vocational success or promotion, i.e.
personal satisfaction. Thus, communication skill can be a source of personal satisfaction, particularly in
the areas of art such as writing, painting, etc.
iii. Meeting Social and Ethical obligations
A person may be in conflict with him/herself, with other people, and/or with the community at large.
With the help of communication people continue adjusting profitably to themselves, to other people, to
the environment in which they live and work. It is a means of winning respect and confidence from other
people or from the community at large.

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As you attempt to fulfill yourself in business and in the private aspect of your life, your brain enables you
to identify, classify, relate and solve issues. But in responding to your environment, you generate both
emotions and ideas. You feel as well as think. Through such experiences you continue adjusting
profitably to yourself to other people, to the environment in which you and they live, cooperate and
compete. In brief, effective communication is a key to success in personal life and in business career.
Importance of Communication at Organization level

Planning Organizing Staffing Direction Controlling

Communication

External environment

 Customers
 Supplies
 Government
 Community
 Others

As a student or an employee, whatever you academic classification or job title may be, you participate in
the coordination of resources and objectives. In doing, so you participate in management, the continuing
process of achieving order efficiently through intelligent decisions that govern an organization.
Simultaneously, you participate in communication, the reciprocal process of sharing information through
symbols, principally words. Communication is essential to sound management; your success as a
manager- a person who is in charge of coordinating the human and non-human resources of an
organization- greatly depends upon your ability to communicate effectively.

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  Communication is essential to each of the five basic functions of management. In order to plan,
organize, staff, direct and control, managers must be able to communicate with other persons- and
communicate well.
 Information from others helps formulate plans.
 Information provided to others defines job assignments and helps organize work.
 Information on standards, progress and personal factors fulfills the directing function.
 While information in the form of written and oral progress reports is a fundamental element in
controlling. Communication is a linking process that enables each of the basic functions of
management to be carried. Effective communication is therefore the “life blood” of every
organization.
We already have made the claim that communication is vital to the very existence of an organization.
To understand the validity of that claim, one must understand the role communication plays in an
organization’s life. The following figure tries to illustrate specific elements of that role.

Role of communication in an organization

Directives Communication Employees Employees’ Productivity

Motivation job Quality
Ability Perception performance Quantity
Personnel
Resource Attitudes Non personnel
Related costs

To the right of the figure are the elements comprising an organization’s productivity: the quality of the
work done in the organization, the quantity of the work done, the personnel related costs involved in
getting the work done (such as turnover or absenteeism among employees), and the non-personnel related
costs of getting work done (such as wasted materials, scrap, and so on). Naturally, organizations want to
improve productivity by maximizing the quality and quantity of work completed and minimizing the
personnel and non-personnel costs involved in work performance. Just to the left is the primary factor
that determines productivity in organizations the employee’s job performance. What employees do in the
workplace determines how much work gets done and how well it is done, how costly their own behaviors
are and to a large extent, how much is spent on materials and equipment.
At the far left are the four major factors that ultimately shape an employee’s performance.
1. The employee’s motivation to do the job.
2. The directions the employee receives concerning what to do and how to do it.

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3. The ability of the employee to do the job.
4. The resources with which the employee is provided to do the job.
What must occur then is the translation of these four factors into employee job performance. The key
elements translating motivation, direction, ability and resources into job performance are in the middle of
the figure: perceptions and attitudes. In short, what employees do at work is determined largely by how
they perceive the work environment and how they feel about work.
Often employees misunderstand instructions given to them, and errors in their job performance are the
predictable result. Just as often, the organization fails to communicate expectations clearly to employees.
Those employees in turn perform as they think the organization wants them to relying on their
perceptions (or just plain luck) to guide their efforts. Finally, employees have attitudes toward all
elements of their work lives their jobs, their working conditions, their supervisors their coworkers, their
promotional opportunities their pay and benefits, and so on. Those attitudes influence their willingness to
work effectively and their commitment to the organization’s goals and objectives. For example,
employees who feel they are not being paid a competitive wage may not work very hard and employees
who actively dislike their immediate supervisors may even do things destructive to the company, such as
sabotaging equipment or stealing supplies. Employees’ job performances therefore stem directly from
their attitudes and perceptions.
Where do those attitudes and perceptions come from? Communication, in the form of the things
employees hear from management, supervisors and their coworkers, the things employees hear about
their organization from outside sources, the written and oral guidelines with which employees are
provided; the instructions that employees receive. All this and more comprises the communication in
which employees participate every day. By shaping employee’s attitudes and perceptions communication
serves to convert external communication from the work environment into internal thoughts and feelings
that in turn, control, employee’s behaviors.

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