Is there sufficient evidence to support the claims that 'business communication is a critical success factor for any organization' (Misiura, 1996, p. 6) or that 'good management depends on effective communication' (Bovee and Thill, 1995, p. 15). After a couple of months, they had an "upset customer" - the organization was receiving more complaint letters from the public than before.
Preface
The purpose of this book is to show the complexity of communication and how it can be improved. This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students who need a textbook on business communication.
Acknowledgements
Hartley (1999) Interpersonal Communication, 2nd edn, London, Routledge; Figure 1.3 courtesy of Delta Consultancy, Pretoria; Table 2.1 from N. Baron (1999) Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where it's Heading, London, Routledge; Figure 5.1 from B.
Introduction
So we are not focusing on what has become known as "corporate communication", where the main responsibilities for managers include strategic planning, managing the company's identity and public relations (Varey, 1997). Among the secretaries we hear a request for help which can be refused: 'Sorry, I'm busy, you'll have to find him.' This would be accepted as a reasonable answer in the second case, but what about the first case.
Communication fundamentals
Our understanding of what communication 'is' affects how we act and affects how we analyze situations. This chapter looks at how we define communication and how we can understand how communication 'works'.
Analysing communication
You know little about the company and especially the policies and procedures in the department. Our colleague, as the 'emissary' of the head, inadvertently placed himself in the firing line.
Communication codes and meaning
For example, it is often suggested that non-verbal cues communicate our emotions better than words. See Chapters 8 and 9 in particular for further analysis of the relationship between language and nonverbal communication.
Intercultural communication
For example, they will exaggerate the value of their efforts compared to those of the other group. What are the common stereotypes of different cultural groups in the workforce in your region? One of the main problems in intercultural communication is that people take norms in the sense of 1 above as norms in the sense of 2.
One of the most cited studies of cultural differences suggests that culture varies along four main dimensions (Hofstede, 1994). We can highlight some of the main problems by looking at how the English language is used. Within industrial relations, there is thus a need to adapt the systems to the organisation's corporate culture.
Communication and
Can we also apply similar ideas if we treat an organization as a 'site' of culture. Although sociologists have used this kind of approach for many years, the idea of organizational culture only became prominent in the management literature in the 1980s, possibly as a response to models of organizations that were considered 'over-rational'. or 'over-mechanical'. This chapter compares definitions of organizational culture and shows how we can define culture by examining everyday practices such as storytelling.
First, we can show that culture is expressed through communication, often in very subtle ways. Research into the way we communicate in organizations therefore inevitably raises questions about cultural and subcultural differences. Second, we can look at the content of communication to see how it reflects certain cultural values.
Organizational culture and communication
For example, there is probably an annual business plan with set goals for each part of the organization. There are also likely to be clear procedures limiting the organization's responsibilities. Unfortunately for this analysis, some of the organizations that were labeled as successful were struggling in the 1990s.
For example, Deal and Kennedy suggested that banks were typical examples of process culture. In other cultures, organizational members may have different ways of expressing themselves through stories. In theory, the core of organizational culture should be the organizational vision or mission.
Information and
In this chapter we will briefly look at how 'computers' have been transformed into 'information technology' (IT) and then into 'information and communications technology' (ICT). We believe this is a fundamental shift in terms of what the technology can do, although we should not ignore social and political influences on how the technology is applied (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999). We outline some of these and suggest that they can have a profound impact on the way we communicate.
But we should also maintain a healthy skepticism about some of the claims currently being made about the.
5 Computers and communication systems combine to form computer networks – the basis of tomorrow's information infrastructures – which in turn are the basis of the Information Market. A commercial example of how data can be integrated is how supermarkets can develop a customer profile, as we see later. Another example of how IT can integrate functions is how it helped transform the British national newspaper industry in the 1980s - see Box 5.4.
In the 1970s, all the national newspapers used mechanical technology that had not changed substantially since the turn of the century. The advent of the 'The Virtual Office The move to networks for Internet and Web in 1994 (the global market)' organizations of all sizes. Another indicator of the growth of business over the Internet is the growth in advertising through the Web.
Organizational structure and communication
Hosking and Morley make a similar point when they argue that "the entitativity approach has dominated organization studies" (1991, p. 41). Differences between employment and representative roles. The people may be the same, but the systems are different. Gary Kreps (1990, p. 208) defines the grapevine as "communication that develops among organizational members and is not necessarily prescribed by the formal structure and hierarchy of the organization, but rather grows out of organizational members' curiosity, interpersonal attraction, and companionship."
They must become more 'organic'; the clear distinctions between roles that characterize formal organization charts will blur as people collaborate to accomplish necessary tasks. Consider the following quotes from Don Tapscott (1996, p. 12): 'the new business is a network of distributed teams acting as clients and servers to each other' and 'businesses need fundamentally new strategies for the new economy. Another implication of these changes is that many organizations are revising their concept of the 'office', and we give some examples of this in Box 6.4.
Written communication in organizations
For example, the book, which describes itself as 'the most widely used writing course in the English-speaking world', starts by emphasizing that good business writers must write so that readers get a clear and precise impression of the writer's message. We comment on principles like this in the next chapter, but we think all writers should start by taking a step back to reflect on their approach to writing and the way they organize information. Our starting point is represented in the following quote from well-known British communication researchers and consultants: 'the real effort in writing lies in the thought required for planning and preparation, in the judgment required to organize and design, and in the constant need for sensitivity in the encoding of ideas in words and phrases' (Turk and Kirkman, 1989, p. 126).
A document can be beautifully written, but if it does not have clear objectives and does not meet the needs or expectations of its readers, then it is not an effective business document. We highlight the way the structure of a document influences our perception and show that the way it is organized influences the way readers respond to it. Accordingly, it is important that the document writer has clear objectives and we suggest ways in which these can be prepared and formulated.
Business writing
Many books on business writing begin with advice on the most appropriate business style. It then moves immediately to five principles of clear writing, with principle 1 “favoring clear, familiar words” (Joseph, 1998, p. 12). Here Turk and Kirkman identify three crucial steps that we discuss in this book: planning; organizing the material; and choose the best way to express yourself.
Finally, we discuss various methods and techniques for planning the structure of documents, and provide examples to show how certain structures can support certain objectives.
Planning and organizing
How the information is structured, which is the focus of the rest of this chapter. Many times we are not aware of the amount or extent of this processing. Once again, this is an objective which then provides the main structure of the argument.
You must show that the weight of the evidence favors certain conclusions and that those conclusions point to certain actions. You can see in Figure 7.3 that you can use these ideas to build the second layer of the pyramid. This breaks the coherence of the paragraph: the new sentence (3) comments on the concept of the paragraph before that concept has been fully developed (sentence 4 in the original paragraph).
Effective writing style
For example, instead of 'The temperature was measured by an optical pyrometer', you can say 'An optical pyrometer measured the temperature'. This places emphasis on the measurement method. The statement could include a concrete example, such as "Inflation is impacting our administration costs – printing and stationery costs have increased by approximately 7 percent per year over the past three years. The company is in financial difficulty" is more formal, while " The company is going bankrupt' is more informal.
Technical jargon refers to jargon terms used in technical conversations: expressions such as 'the bottom line'. The most common structure is to start the sentence with the subject, as in 'The company increased its profits by 25 percent compared to the last fiscal year.'. In example 2, the clause is non-restrictive, because the fact that Nigel gave me the book is simply added as additional information – the clause is not used to identify which book we are talking about.
