Solved Assignment-5002-Buisness Communication-M.LIS-Buisness Communication

Solved Assignment-5002-Buisness Communication-M.LIS-Buisness Communication
Q. 1 Describe Communication Process Model with appropriate examples.
ANS: Communication is a complex process, and it is difficult to determine where or with whom a communication encounter starts and ends. Models of communication simplify the process by providing a visual representation of the various aspects of a communication encounter. Some models explain communication in more detail than others, but even the most complex model still doesn’t recreate what we experience in even a moment of a communication encounter. Models still serve a valuable purpose for students of communication because they allow us to see specific concepts and steps within the process of communication, define communication, and apply communication concepts. When you become aware of how communication functions, you can think more deliberately through your communication encounters, which can help you better prepare for future communication and learn from your previous communication. The three models of communication we will discuss are the transmission, interaction, and transaction models.
Although these models of communication differ, they contain some common elements. The first two models we will discuss, the transmission model and the interaction model, include the following parts: participants, messages, encoding, decoding, and channels. In communication models, the participants are the senders and/or receivers of messages in a communication encounter. The message is the verbal or nonverbal content being conveyed from sender to receiver. For example, when you say “Hello!” to your friend, you are sending a message of greeting that will be received by your friend.
The internal cognitive process that allows participants to send, receive, and understand messages is the encoding and decoding process. Encoding is the process of turning thoughts into communication. As we will learn later, the level of conscious thought that goes into encoding messages varies. Decoding is the process of turning communication into thoughts. For example, you may realize you’re hungry and encode the following message to send to your roommate: “I’m hungry. Do you want to get pizza tonight?” As your roommate receives the message, he decodes your communication and turns it back into thoughts in order to make meaning out of it. Of course, we don’t just communicate verbally—we have various options, or channels for communication. Encoded messages are sent through a channel, or a sensory route on which a message travels, to the receiver for decoding. While communication can be sent and received using any sensory route (sight, smell, touch, taste, or sound), most communication occurs through visual (sight) and/or auditory (sound) channels. If your roommate has headphones on and is engrossed in a video game, you may need to get his attention by waving your hands before you can ask him about dinner.
Transmission Model of Communication
The transmission model of communication describes communication as a linear, one-way process in which a sender intentionally transmits a message to a receiver (Ellis & McClintock, 1990). This model focuses on the sender and message within a communication encounter. Although the receiver is included in the model, this role is viewed as more of a target or end point rather than part of an ongoing process. We are left to presume that the receiver either successfully receives and understands the message or does not. The scholars who designed this model extended on a linear model proposed by Aristotle centuries before that included a speaker, message, and hearer. They were also influenced by the advent and spread of new communication technologies of the time such as telegraphy and radio, and you can probably see these technical influences within the model (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). Think of how a radio message is sent from a person in the radio studio to you listening in your car. The sender is the radio announcer who encodes a verbal message that is transmitted by a radio tower through electromagnetic waves (the channel) and eventually reaches your (the receiver’s) ears via an antenna and speakers in order to be decoded. The radio announcer doesn’t really know if you receive his or her message or not, but if the equipment is working and the channel is free of static, then there is a good chance that the message was successfully received.
Since this model is sender and message focused, responsibility is put on the sender to help ensure the message is successfully conveyed. This model emphasizes clarity and effectiveness, but it also acknowledges that there are barriers to effective communication. Noise is anything that interferes with a message being sent between participants in a communication encounter. Even if a speaker sends a clear message, noise may interfere with a message being accurately received and decoded. The transmission model of communication accounts for environmental and semantic noise. Environmental noise is any physical noise present in a communication encounter. Other people talking in a crowded diner could interfere with your ability to transmit a message and have it successfully decoded. While environmental noise interferes with the transmission of the message, semantic noise refers to noise that occurs in the encoding and decoding process when participants do not understand a symbol. To use a technical example, FM antennae can’t decode AM radio signals and vice versa. Likewise, most
French speakers can’t decode Swedish and vice versa. Semantic noise can also interfere in communication between people speaking the same language because many words have multiple or unfamiliar meanings.
Although the transmission model may seem simple or even underdeveloped to us today, the creation of this model allowed scholars to examine the communication process in new ways, which eventually led to more complex models and theories of communication that we will discuss more later. This model is not quite rich enough to capture dynamic face-to- face interactions, but there are instances in which communication is one-way and linear, especially computer-mediated communication (CMC). As the following “Getting Plugged In” box explains, CMC is integrated into many aspects of our lives now and has opened up new ways of communicating and brought some new challenges. Think of text messaging for example. The transmission model of communication is well suited for describing the act of text messaging since the sender isn’t sure that the meaning was effectively conveyed or that the message was received at all. Noise can also interfere with the transmission of a text. If you use an abbreviation the receiver doesn’t know or the phone autocorrects to something completely different than you meant, then semantic noise has interfered with the message transmission. I enjoy bargain hunting at thrift stores, so I just recently sent a text to a friend asking if she wanted to go thrifting over the weekend. After she replied with “What?!?” I reviewed my text and saw that my “smart” phone had autocorrected thrifting to thrusting! You have likely experienced similar problems with text messaging, and a quick Google search for examples of text messages made funny or embarrassing by the autocorrect feature proves that many others do, too.
Interaction Model of Communication
The interaction model of communication describes communication as a process in which participants alternate positions as sender and receiver and generate meaning by sending messages and receiving feedback within physical and psychological contexts (Schramm, 1997). Rather than illustrating communication as a linear, one-way process, the interaction model incorporates feedback, which makes communication a more interactive, two-way process. Feedback includes messages sent in response to other messages. For example, your instructor may respond to a point you raise during class discussion or you may point to the sofa when your roommate asks you where the remote control is. The inclusion of a feedback loop also leads to a more complex understanding of the roles of participants in a communication encounter. Rather than having one sender, one message, and one receiver, this model has two sender-receivers who exchange messages. Each participant alternates roles as sender and receiver in order to keep a communication encounter going. Although this seems like a perceptible and deliberate process, we alternate between the roles of sender and receiver very quickly and often without conscious thought.
The interaction model is also less message focused and more interaction focused. While the transmission model focused on how a message was transmitted and whether or not it was received, the interaction model is more concerned with the communication process itself. In fact, this model acknowledges that there are so many messages being sent at one time that many of them may not even be received. Some messages are also unintentionally sent. Therefore, communication isn’t judged effective or ineffective in this model based on whether or not a single message was successfully transmitted and received.
Q. 2 Why effective communication is important for organizational performance, discuss with arguments.
ANS: The importance of communication in an organization can be summarized as follows:
1. Communication promotes motivation by informing and clarifying the employees about the task to be done, the manner they are performing the task, and how to improve their performance if it is not up to the mark.
2. Communication is a source of information to the organizational members for decision-making process as it helps identifying and assessing alternative course of actions.
3. Communication also plays a crucial role in altering individual’s attitudes, i.e., a well informed individual will have better attitude than a less-informed individual. Organizational magazines, journals, meetings and various other forms of oral and written communication help in moulding employee’s attitudes.
4. Communication also helps in socializing. In todays life the only presence of another individual fosters communication. It is also said that one cannot survive without communication.
5. As discussed earlier, communication also assists in controlling process. It helps controlling organizational member’s behaviour in various ways. There are various levels of hierarchy and certain principles and guidelines that employees must follow in an organization. They must comply with organizational policies, perform their job role efficiently and communicate any work problem and grievance to their superiors. Thus, communication helps in controlling function of management.
An effective and efficient communication system requires managerial proficiency in delivering and receiving messages. A manager must discover various barriers to communication, analyze the reasons for their occurrence and take preventive steps to avoid those barriers. Thus, the primary responsibility of a manager is to develop and maintain an effective communication system in the organization.
Communication Flows in an Organization
In an organization, communication flows in 5 main directions-
1. Downward
2. Upward
3. Lateral
4. Diagonal
5. External
1. Downward Flow of Communication: Communication that flows from a higher level in an organization to a lower level is a downward communication. In other words, communication from superiors to subordinates in a chain of command is a downward communication. This communication flow is used by the managers to transmit work-related information to the employees at lower levels. Employees require this information for performing their jobs and for meeting the expectations of their managers. Downward communication is used by the managers for the following purposes -
Providing feedback on employees performance
2. Upward Flow of Communication: Communication that flows to a higher level in an organization is called upward communication. It provides feedback on how well the organization is functioning. The subordinates use upward communication to convey their problems and performances to their superiors.
The subordinates also use upward communication to tell how well they have understood the downward communication. It can also be used by the employees to share their views and ideas and to participate in the decision-making process.
Upward communication leads to a more committed and loyal workforce in an organization because the employees are given a chance to raise and speak dissatisfaction issues to the higher levels. The managers get to know about the employees feelings towards their jobs, peers, supervisor and organization in general. Managers can thus accordingly take actions for improving things.
Grievance Redressal System, Complaint and Suggestion Box, Job Satisfaction surveys etc all help in improving upward communication. Other examples of Upward Communication are -performance reports made by low level management for reviewing by higher level management, employee attitude surveys, letters from employees, employee-manager discussions etc.
3. Lateral / Horizontal Communication: Communication that takes place at same levels of hierarchy in an organization is called lateral communication, i.e., communication between peers, between managers at same levels or between any horizontally equivalent organizational member. The advantages of horizontal communication are as follows:
It is time saving.
It facilitates co-ordination of the task.
It facilitates co-operation among team members.
It provides emotional and social assistance to the organizational members.
It helps in solving various organizational problems.
It is a means of information sharing
It can also be used for resolving conflicts of a department with other department or conflicts within a department.
4. Diagonal Communication: Communication that takes place between a manager and employees of other workgroups is called diagonal communication. It generally does not appear on organizational chart. For instance - To design a training module a training manager interacts with an Operations personnel to enquire about the way they perform their task.
5. External Communication: Communication that takes place between a manager and external groups such as - suppliers, vendors, banks, financial institutes etc. For instance - To raise capital the Managing director would interact with the Bank Manager.
Q. 3 Challenges of business communication in the 21st century, discuss with arguments.
ANS: 1. Although it began with the failure of subprime loans and mortgage-backed
securities, the most recent financial crisis has touched every aspect of our society and called into question many of the basic assumptions by which we have lived for the last fifty years. It has been the ultimate interdisciplinary dilemma, implicating technological innovation as much as financial innovation, scholarly theory as much as global realpolitik. The essays collected in this volume reflect the range of causes and examine many of the consequences. But this volume does not merely rehearse the well-documented errors, failures, and misfortune that resulted in the panic of Fall 2008. Instead, it seeks a way forward. In December 2009, with guidance from Jay W. Lorsch and Rakesh Khurana, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and New York University School of Law convened a group of distinguished scholars and business leaders to help consider what we have learned from the recent economic crisis. (A list of conference attendees is included at the end of this volume.) The discussions and essays resulting from this meeting are presented here. Since its founding, the Academy has studied the American business enterprise. At a meeting in 1781, Academy Fellows resolved to “attend to the subject of the Commerce of America, to enquire into the principles on which it has been heretofore conducted and the effect of those principles as the balance of trade, to investigate the most advantageous sources of future trade both in a commercial and political view and particularly to consider the subject of money the medium of trade.” Recent examinations include the 1988 study “The U.S. Business Corporation: An Institution in Transition” and a project on “Corporate Responsibility,” led by Martin Lipton, Jay Lorsch, and Larry Sonsini. The latter brought together leading scholars and practitioners to reflect on the corporate scandals of the early 2000s. The first publication of the project, Restoring Trust in American Business (MIT Press, 2005), featured essays by eighteen prominent scholars and business leaders, including John Reed, Felix Rohatyn, and John Biggs, who examine the failure of “gatekeepers” to stand between corporate misconduct and the public interest. In that volume, Mark Roe predicted that the failure of Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, and other giants in the early 2000s would not be the last of the major corporate cascades. “If we’re lucky,” Roe commented, “someone will anticipate the problem and fix it up beforehand. If not, we’ll muddle through once again.” The articles in this present volume offer more than one way out of the most recent muddle.
The ability of a business to communicate is crucial to its success. From effectively communicating policies to staff to reaching out to clients and customers, communication is a huge factor in business operations. There are challenges inherent to business communication, however, not least that every method of communication requires a slightly different approach.
Listening to Learn, Not Just To Respond
Possibly the most important aspect of communication is listening. However, it may be very difficult for people to develop this skill. Because of the innate pressures of maintaining success in the business, there may not be time to sit and listen to the needs of the employees and the customers. Without truly taking the time to listen and finding a way to understand others point of view, managerial staff may never fully understand or be aware of the needs, wants, frustrations and hardships of company staff and customers.
Hiding Behind Technology
It is easy for businesses to rely too heavily upon technology for communication purposes. Email, texting, voice mail and instant messaging can be quite effective for the quick transfer of factual, direct information. However, the reliance upon this technology to communicate emotion can lead to drama and dissent in the workplace. Businesses may find that communication through technology saves time, energy, and money, but face-to-face communication, especially when emotion is involved, is a much better channel of communication. Tone, posture, facial expression and eye contact cannot be expressed effectively using technology.
Meetings: Essential or a Waste of Time?
Many businesses are moving away from meetings as tools of communication in order to save time and to promote efficiency. Employees often see meetings as time-wasters. No matter how challenging it is to use meetings effectively, meetings are an important part of doing business. Meetings can build teamwork, making employees feel a part of something - ideally, the company. Meetings are avenues for workers can provide input and share their opinions. The simple challenge of using meetings in your business communication is creating meetings that are concise, informative, participatory and positive.
Symptoms of Communication Issues
If a business is having challenges with communication, warning signs appear that should trigger action by the managerial staff. Some indicators are lack of cooperation, unreached goals, high level of mistakes, casting blame, low motivation, low productivity, unsatisfied customers, arguments, high employee turnover and loss of clients. All of these can be symptoms of poor or problematic communication.
Solving the Problems
It is possible to take steps to improve communication to overcome the challenges that abound in business communication. As mentioned, listening is high on this list. Use tools like surveys and comment boxes to encourage healthy and confidential feedback. Avoid pointing the finger at one person; instead work on an issue with an entire group of people by using appropriate training or counseling. Those in leadership roles should have great communication skills, be empathetic and natural problem solvers.
If troubles persist, a business might outsource the problem to a neutral negotiator to resolve the situation in an unbiased manner.
Q. 4 Discuss barriers to effective communication in organizations with examples.
ANS: Barriers to Effective Communication
Communicating can be more of a challenge than you think, when you realize the many things that can stand in the way of effective communication. These include filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotional disconnects, lack of source familiarity or credibility, workplace gossip, semantics, gender differences, differences in meaning between Sender and Receiver, and biased language. Let’s examine each of these barriers.
Filtering
Filtering is the distortion or withholding of information to manage a person’s reactions. Some examples of filtering include a manager who keeps her division’s poor sales figures from her boss, the vice president, fearing that the bad news will make him angry. The old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger!” illustrates the tendency of Receivers (in this case, the vice president) to vent their negative response to unwanted Messages on the Sender. A gatekeeper (the vice president’s assistant, perhaps) who doesn’t pass along a complete
Message is also filtering. The vice president may delete the e-mail announcing the quarter’s sales figures before reading it, blocking the Message before it arrives.
As you can see, filtering prevents members of an organization from getting a complete picture of the way things are. To maximize your chances of sending and receiving effective communications, it’s helpful to deliver a Message in multiple ways and to seek information from multiple sources. In this way, the effect of any one person’s filtering the Message will be diminished.
Since people tend to filter bad news more during upward communication, it is also helpful to remember that those below you in an organization may be wary of sharing bad news. One way to defuse the tendency to filter is to reward employees who clearly convey information upward, regardless of whether the news is good and bad.
Here are some of the criteria that individuals may use when deciding whether to filter a Message or pass it on:
• Past experience: Was the Sender rewarded for passing along news of this kind in the past, or was she criticized?
• Knowledge, perception of the speaker: Has the Receiver’s direct superior made it clear that “no news is good news?”
• Emotional state, involvement with the topic, level of attention: Does the Sender’s fear of failure or criticism prevent him from conveying the Message? Is the topic within his realm of expertise, increasing his confidence in his ability to decode it, or is he out of his comfort zone when it comes to evaluating the Message’s significance? Are personal concerns impacting his ability to judge the Message’s value?
Once again, filtering can lead to miscommunications in business. Each listener translates the Message into his or her own words, creating his or her own version of what was said (Alessandra, 1993).
Selective Perception
Selective perception refers to filtering what we see and hear to suit our own needs. This process is often unconscious. Small things can command our attention when we’re visiting a new place—a new city or a new company. Over time, however, we begin to make assumptions about the way things are on the basis of our past experience. Often, much of this process is unconscious. “We simply are bombarded with too much stimuli every day to pay equal attention to everything so we pick and choose according to our own needs (Pope, 2008).” Selective perception is a time-saver, a necessary tool in a complex culture. But it can also lead to mistakes.
 Think back to the earlier example conversation between Bill, who was asked to order more toner cartridges, and his boss. Since Bill found his boss’s to-do list to be unreasonably demanding, he assumed the request could wait. (How else could he do everything else on the list?) The boss, assuming that Bill had heard the urgency in her request, assumed that Bill would place the order before returning to the other tasks on her list.
Both members of this organization were using selective perception to evaluate the communication. Bill’s perception was that the task of ordering could wait. The boss’s perception was that her time frame was clear, though unstated. When two selective perceptions collide, a misunderstanding occurs.
Information Overload
Information overload can be defined as “occurring when the information processing demands on an individual’s time to perform interactions and internal calculations exceed the supply or capacity of time available for such processing (Schick, et. al., 1990).” Messages reach us in countless ways every day. Some are societal—advertisements that we may hear or see in the course of our day. Others are professional—e-mails, and memos, voice mails, and conversations from our colleagues. Others are personal— messages and conversations from our loved ones and friends.
Add these together and it’s easy to see how we may be receiving more information than we can take in. This state of imbalance is known as information overload. Experts note that information overload is “A symptom of the high-tech age, which is too much information for one human being to absorb in an expanding world of people and technology. It comes from all sources including TV, newspapers, and magazines as well as wanted and unwanted regular mail, e-mail and faxes. It has been exacerbated enormously because of the formidable number of results obtained from Web search engines (PC Magazine, 2008).” Other research shows that working in such fragmented fashion has a significant negative effect on efficiency, creativity, and mental acuity (Overholt, 2001).
Going back to our example of Bill. Let’s say he’s in his cubicle on the phone with a supplier. While he’s talking, he hears the chime of e-mail alerting him to an important message from his boss. He’s scanning through it quickly, while still on the phone, when a coworker pokes his head around the cubicle corner to remind Bill that he’s late for a staff meeting. The supplier on the other end of the phone line has just given Bill a choice among the products and delivery dates he requested. Bill realizes he missed hearing the first two options, but he doesn’t have time to ask the supplier to repeat them all or to try reconnecting to place the order at a later time. He chooses the third option—at least he heard that one, he reasons, and it seemed fair. How good was Bill’s decision amid all the information he was processing at the same time?
Emotional disconnects
Emotional disconnects happen when the Sender or the Receiver is upset, whether about the subject at hand or about some unrelated incident that may have happened earlier. An effective communication requires a Sender and a Receiver who are open to speaking and listening to one another, despite possible differences in opinion or personality. One or both parties may have to put their emotions aside to achieve the goal of communicating clearly. A Receiver who is emotionally upset tends to ignore or distort what the Sender is saying. A Sender who is emotionally upset may be unable to present ideas or feelings effectively.
Lack of Source Credibility
Lack of source familiarity or credibility can derail communications, especially when humor is involved. Have you ever told a joke that fell flat? You and the Receiver lacked the common context that could have made it funny. (Or yes, it could have just been a lousy joke.) Sarcasm and irony are subtle, and potentially hurtful, commodities in business. It’s best to keep these types of communications out of the workplace as their benefits are limited, and their potential dangers are great. Lack of familiarity with the Sender can lead to misinterpreting humor, especially in less-rich information channels like e-mail. For example, an e-mail from Jill that ends with, “Men, like hens, should boil in vats of oil,” could be interpreted as antimale if the Receiver didn’t know that Jill has a penchant for rhyme and likes to entertain coworkers by making up amusing sayings.
Similarly, if the Sender lacks credibility or is untrustworthy, the Message will not get through. Receivers may be suspicious of the Sender’s motivations (“Why am I being told this?”). Likewise, if the Sender has communicated erroneous information in the past, or has created false emergencies, his current Message may be filtered.
Workplace gossip, also known as the grapevine, is a lifeline for many employees seeking information about their company (Kurland & Pelled, 2000). Researchers agree that the grapevine is an inevitable part of organizational life. Research finds that 70% of all organizational communication occurs at the grapevine level (Crampton, 1998).
Employees trust their peers as a source of Messages, but the grapevine’s informal structure can be a barrier to effective communication from the managerial point of view. Its grassroots structure gives it greater credibility in the minds of employees than information delivered through official channels, even when that information is false.
Some downsides of the office grapevine are that gossip offers politically minded insiders a powerful tool for disseminating communication (and self-promoting miscommunications) within an organization. In addition, the grapevine lacks a specific Sender, which can create a sense of distrust among employees—who is at the root of the gossip network?
 When the news is volatile, suspicions may arise as to the person or persons behind the Message. Managers who understand the grapevine’s power can use it to send and receive Messages of their own. They also decrease the grapevine’s power by sending official Messages quickly and accurately, should big news arise.
Q. 5 Discuss components of communication with examples from various organizations.
ANS: Business Communication & Its Components
effective communication produces a meeting of the minds where everyone involved shares the same information. In business, this serves a practical purpose. Communication establishes order and unity, enables people to act and promotes wise decisions. Effective communication powers a successful business, as it’s the only way to share a company’s goals and coordinate the work that achieves those goals. All communication has the same components, and knowing how these components apply to a business can help an owner enhance communication within the organization.
Sender
Senders initiate the process of communication. To ensure a successful communication, the sender must consider the context of the message, who will receive it and what the message should accomplish. This enables the sender to properly shape and deliver the message.
Receiver
The receiver of a business message may be a supervisor, subordinate, peer, group, customer or supplier. Additionally, more than one audience might receive the communication. For instance, a subordinate can send a proposal to a supervisor -- the primary recipient -- who can forward it to his own manager -- the secondary recipient -­to solicit feedback. Considering the message’s audience affects choices such as language and tone.
Context
Every communication occurs within a context, which helps shape the message. Business context includes urgency, timing, company culture and the setting in which the message will be received. A presentation to a group that will use the information for a brainstorming session in a creative environment calls for a different approach than delivering news to a supervisor about a drop in sales.
Message
The message component contains the actual information a sender needs to supply. Effective messages keep the point of the communication at the forefront. The sender also should consider the results of the message -- what the communication needs to accomplish or what action it should spur. Written communications require giving thought to visual appeal. Messages should be easy to read and navigate; fonts, white space and headings can help or hinder the communication process. Including a visual element such as a chart might get across difficult information more effectively than words.
Medium
The medium is the means by which a sender transmits a message. At a workplace, messages can be oral or written. Aside from spoken words, oral communications carry non-verbal messages. Tone, facial expression and a relaxed or agitated demeanor provide supplemental information to the receiver. Written messages include email, faxes, reports and memos. A small business owner might want certain types of communications -- or instance, resource requests or evaluations -- to always be in written form.
Feedback
Receivers supply feedback when they respond to messages. Feedback lets the sender know whether the receiver correctly interpreted the message and encourages further interaction. For an owner fielding employee requests or complaints, a handy approach to providing feedback is to summarize the message. As the authors of “Management: Meeting and Exceeding Expectations” point out, if a receiver can’t restate a message, it’s a sure sign the message wasn’t understood.