Organisational Communications

Organisational Communications

Successful organizational change requires the use of effective change processes. Communication is a key component of such processes because organizational change relies on changing employees' behavior. Ineffective communication hampers organizational success. Ineffective communication results when the managers are not in regular touch with their employees. There may be miscommunication taking place. Lack of 3 C's (Clarity, completion, conciseness) also leads to ineffective communication. Often the managers are surrounded with a pool of information. In such case, they tend to ignore the messages or communication of the subordinates. At times, wrong perception also hampers communication, i.e., the employees might perceive the message in different meaning which was not intended by the manager. Thus, there can be a problem in encoding and decoding of message.

Organizational structure can also result in communication being ineffective. The more complex the organizational structure is, i.e., the more are the number of hierarchical levels in an organization, the greater are chances of loss or misinterpretation of messages. Grapevines tend to develop in such an organization which obstructs effective communication. In absence of healthy open door policy, communication may be misunderstood. (Baum, 2009)

Poor listening (i.e. when the receiver is not focused to what the sender of message is saying) also leads to ineffective communication. Emotions like anger and stress may also lead to communication breakdown as messages may be interpreted in wrong manner when a person is angry and frustrated than when he is relaxed. Sometimes, the messages are not carefully planned (For example, the medium of transmission of message and the time of message delivery are not chosen rightfully). This again makes communication ineffective. Linguistic differences are a great obstacle in effective communication. This is perhaps due to ambiguity of language. Managers should try to overcome all the causes for ineffective communication so as to ensure organizational success.

Communication is a process beginning with a sender who encodes the message and passes it through some channel to the receiver who decodes the message. Communication is fruitful if and only if the messages sent by the sender is interpreted with same meaning by the receiver. If any kind of disturbance blocks any step of communication, the message will be destroyed. Due to such disturbances, managers in an organization face severe problems. Thus the managers must locate such barriers and take steps to get rid of them.

There are several barriers that affects the flow of communication in an organization. These barriers interrupt the flow of communication from the sender to the reciever, thus making communication ineffective. It is essential for managers to overcome these barriers. The main barriers of communication are summarized below.

Perceptual and Language Differences

Perception is generally how each individual interprets the world around him. All generally want to receive messages which are significant to them. But any message which is against their values is not accepted. A same event may be taken differently by different individuals. For example : A person is on leave for a month due to personal reasons (family member being ...