ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER 11

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Types of Organizational Communication
1. Upward communication
2. Downward communication
3. Business communication
4. Informal communication

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1. Upward Communication
Upward communication is communication of subordinates to superiors or of employees
to managers.

■ Serial communication- the message is relayed from an employee to her supervisor,

who relays it to her supervisor, who, in turn, relays it to her supervisor, and so on
until the message reaches the top. Suffers several various drawbacks:
– Content and tone of the message change
– MUM (minimize unpleasant messages) effect
– less effective the farther away two people are from one another

■ Attitude surveys- a survey is conducted to determine employee attitudes about an

organization.

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■ Focus groups and Exit interviews
Focus groups- an outside consultant meets with groups of current employees to get
their opinions and suggestions.

■ Suggestion or Complaints Boxes - allow employees to immediately communicate

their feelings in an anonymous fashion.

■ Third Party Facilitators

Liaison- a person who acts an intermediary between employees and management, or
the type of employee who both sends and receive grapevine information.
Ombudsperson- a person who investigates employee’s complaints and solves problems.

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2. Downward Communication
Downward communication is that of superior to subordinate or management to
employees.

■ Bulletin Boards- main use is to communicate non-work related opportunities.

Electronic Bulletin boards (also called in house message networks)

■ Policy Manuals- Two types:

Policy manual: very specific and lengthy, containing all of the rules and policies under
which the organization operates.
Employee handbook: much shorter and contains only the most essential policies and
rules, as well as general summaries of less important rules.

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■ Newsletters- designed to bolster employee morale by discussing happy or innocuous
events such as the three B’s (babies, birthdays, and ballgame scores).

■ Intranets- organization-wide versions of the Internet.

Advantages: speed at which the company can survey employees about new ideas,
employee self-service, convenience and 24-hour support, and reduced paper, printing,
and postage costs.

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3. Business Communication
Business communication is the transmission of business-related information among
employees, management, and customers.

■ Memos
■ Telephone calls
■ Email and voice mail
■ Business meetings
■ Office design- “open” or “landscaped” design

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4. Informal Communication
Grapevine
– single-strand grapevine
– gossip grapevine
– probability grapevine
– cluster grapevine
■ Gossip- primarily about individuals and the content of the message lacks
significance to the people gossiping
■ Rumor- contains information that is significant to the lives of those
communicating the message, and can be about individuals or other topics

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Grapevine Patterns
Single-strand
Jones Smith Brown Tinker Evers

Gossip

Tinker
Brown Evers Frey
Smith Chance Martin
Austin
Jones

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 Probability

Brown Alston Evers Chance Frey

Martin
Smith Jones Tinker

Cluster
Brown

Smith Frey Alston Martin

Tinker Evers Chance

Jones

• Isolates - employees who received less than half of the information.

• Dead-enders- those who heard most of the information but seldom passed it on to other employees.

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INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

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Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication involves the exchange of a message across a
communication channel from one person to another.

Three problem areas

– Intended message versus message sent
– Message sent versus message received
– Message received versus message interpreted
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Problem Area 1:
Intended Message Versus Message Sent

■ Think about what you want to communicate

■ Practice what you want to communicate
■ Learn better communication skills

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Problem Area 2:
Message Sent Versus Message Received
■ Actual words used
■ Communication channel
■ Noise
■ Nonverbal cues
■ Paralanguage
■ Artifacts
■ Amount of information

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Communication Channels
■ Oral
– in-person
– word-of-mouth
– answering machine
■ Nonverbal
■ Written
– personal letter/memo
– general letter/memo
– email

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Noise
■ Actual auditory noise
■ Appropriateness of the channel
■ Feelings about the person communicating
■ Mood

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Nonverbal Cues
■ Are ambiguous
■ Those that are not are called emblems
■ Gender and cultural differences occur in the use of nonverbal
cues
■ Nonverbal cues are thought to be 80% of the message received

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Body language
■ Eye contact
■ Expressions
■ Micro-expressions
■ Posture
■ Arm and leg use
■ Motion
■ Touching

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Use of Space
Four major spatial distance zones (Hall, 1963)
■ Intimacy zone
– 0 to 18 inches
– close relationships
■ Personal distance zone
– 18 inches to 4 feet
– friends and acquaintances
■ Social distance zone
– 4 to 12 feet
– business contacts and strangers
■ Public distance zone
– 12 to 25 feet

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Use of Time
■ Being late
■ Leaving a meeting early
■ Setting aside time for a meeting
■ Multi-tasking (working while talking)

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Paralanguage
■ Rate of speech
■ Loudness
■ Intonation
■ Amount of talking
■ Voice pitch
■ Pauses

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Artifacts
This concerns the objects, or artifacts, that a person wears
or with which she surrounds herself (clothing, accessories,
hairstyles, tattoos)

■ Office characteristics
– Open desk arrangement- faces a desk against a wall so that a
visitor can sit next to the person who sits behind the desk
– Close desk arrangement- places a desk so that a visitor must
sit across from the person behind the desk.

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The Amount of Information
■ Level
When you level some of the information, unimportant details are removed.

■ Sharpen
When you sharpen the information, interesting and unusual information is
kept.

■ Assimilate
When you assimilate the information, it is modified to fit your existing beliefs
and knowledge

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Reactions to Information Overload

■ Omission- a conscious decision not to process certain types of information.

■ Error- error type of response
■ Queuing- placing the work into a queue, or waiting line
■ Escape- type of response usually through absenteeism and resignation
■ Use of a gatekeeper- Receptionists and secretaries
■ Use of multiple channels- an organization reduces the amount of
communication going to one person by directing some of it to another.

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Problem Area 3:
Message Received Versus Message Interpreted

Meaning can change depending on the way in which the receiver interprets the message.

Factors affecting the message received versus the message interpreted

■ Listening Skills
■ Listening Style
■ Emotional State
■ Cognitive Ability
■ Bias

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Listening Skills
Listening is probably the most important communication skill that a supervisor should master.

Tips for effective listening:

■ Stop talking and listen ■ Keep an open mind

■ Show the speaker you want to listen
■ Empathize with the speaker
■ Don’t ask excessive questions
■ Remove distractions
■ Use appropriate nonverbal cues
■ Let the other person finish
speaking
■ Try to understand what the
other person means

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Listening Styles
Geier and Downey (1980) have developed a test, the Attitudinal Listening Profile, to measure
an employee’s listening style. Their theory postulates six main styles of listening:

■ Leisure- cares about only interesting information

■ Inclusive- cares only about the main points of a communication
■ Stylistic – pays attention mainly to the way in which words are spoken
■ Technical- only cares about facts and details.
■ Empathic- cares primarily about the feelings of the speaker
■ Nonconforming- cares only about the information that is consistent with his or her way of
thinking

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Emotional state
– Anger
– Fear
– Anxiety
– Excitement
– Love

Cognitive Ability
Bias

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Written Communication Skills
Two approaches for improving the quality of written communication:

1. Improving the writer’s skills

2. Making material easier to read

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Improving Writing
Broadbent (1997) suggests that writing can be improved when writers:
■ value what they write,
■ set personal standards and goals (e.g., vocabulary usage at a twelfth grade reading level,
no grammar errors, each document proofread twice)
■ spend considerable time doing their own editing as well as getting others to edit the
document.

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Writing is easiest to read when it:
■ has short sentences
■ uses simple rather than complicated words
■ uses common rather than unusual words

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Readability Scales
■ Fry Readability Graph (Fry, 1977)
uses the average number of syllables per word and the average length of sentences to determine
readability.

■ Flesch Index (Flesch, 1948)

uses the average sentence length and number of syllables per 100 words

■ FOG Index (Gunning, 1964)

uses the number of words per sentence and the number of three-syllable words per 100

■ Dale-Chall Index (Dale & Chall, 1948)

uses the number of words that are not included in a list of words known by 80% of fourth graders.

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Comparison of Readability Scales
Readability Index
Method Fry Flesch FOG Dale-Chall

Average number of syllables X X

per word
Average sentence length X X

Average number of words X

per sentence
Average number of 3- X
syllable words
Number of unusual words X

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