Chapter 8

Communication
and Decision
making

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2011 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Learning Objectives
 Relate the perspective, historical background,
and meaning of the communication process in
organizations.
 Identify the dimensions of nonverbal
communication.
 Discuss the specific dimensions of interpersonal
and interactive communication processes.

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 Learning Objectives (Continued)
 Describe the decision-making process and
behavioral decision making.
 Present the styles and techniques of decision
making.
 Explore the creative process.

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Figure 8.2 - Managerial Communication Model:
How Managers Communicate

Source: Fred Luthans and Janet K. Larsen, “How Managers Really Communicate,” Human Relations, Vol. 39, No. 2, 1986, p. 175.

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 The Definition of Communication
 Communication is a personal process that
involves the exchange of behaviors, and
information.
 The communicative exchanges between people
provide the sole method by which influence or
effects can be achieved.

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Figure 8.3 - The Continuum of Communication
in Organizational Behavior

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 Nonverbal Communication
 Can be defined as nonword human responses and
the perceived characteristics of the environment
through which the human verbal and nonverbal
messages are transmitted.
 There are many forms of nonverbal
communication; the most widely recognized is
body language.

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 Nonverbal Communication (Continued)
 Body movements convey meanings and
messages.
 Paralanguage include things such as voice
quality, tone, volume, speech rate, pitch,
nonfluencies (saying “ah,” “um,” or “uh”),
laughing, and yawning.

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 Improving Nonverbal Effectiveness
 Look at what is happening in the situation.
 Consider the discrepancies between the
nonverbal behavior and the verbal statements.
 Watch for subtleties in the nonverbal behavior.
 Recognize cultural differences.

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 Interpersonal Communication
 The major emphasis is on transferring
information from one person to another.
 Listening sensitivity and nonverbal
communications are closely associated with
interpersonal communication.
 Knowing how to talk to others can be very
useful.

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 Interpersonal Communication (Continued)
 Is highly dependent on feedback.
 Variables, such as trust, expectations, values,
status, and compatibility, greatly influence the
interpersonal aspects of communication.

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 Interpersonal Communication (Continued)
 Feedback
 Improves communication, and leads to more effective
manager and organizational performance.
 Multisource 360-degree feedback has received
increasing attention as a process to communicate to a
target manager about strengths and weaknesses.
 It provides managers with an external source of information
designed to increase their self-awareness.

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Table 8.1 - Luthans and Martinko’s
Characteristics of Feedback

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Interactive Communication in Organizations
 Four of the most important purposes of
interactive communication:
 Task coordination
 Problem solving
 Information sharing
 Conflict resolution

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Interactive Communication in Organizations
(Continued)
 Informal contacts with others on the same level
are a primary means of interactive
communication.
 The informal system of communication:
 Can spread false rumors and destructive information.
 Can effectively supplement the formal channels of
communication.
 Is personally based and directed, and is much faster
than the formal downward system of information
flow.
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 The Decision-Making Process
 Decision making is almost universally defined as
choosing between alternatives.
 Is a dynamic, personal process.
 It has both strategic and behavioral implications
for organizations.

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Figure 8.4 - Mintzberg’s Empirically Based
Phases of Decision Making in Organizations

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 Behavioral Decision Making
 Decision rationality:
 Is a means to an end.
 It is very difficult to separate means from ends
because an apparent end may be only a means for
some future end (means-ends chain).
 May have inaccurate conclusions.
 Can be clarified by attaching appropriate qualifying
adverbs to the various types of rationality.
 The concept is obsolete.

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Figure 8.5 - Decision-making
Styles

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 Participative Decision-Making Techniques
 Participation involves individuals or groups in the
process.
 It can be formal or informal, and entails
intellectual and emotional as well as physical
involvement.
 The degree of participation will be determined by
factors such as the experience of the person or
group and the nature of the task.

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 Participative Decision-Making Techniques
(Continued)

 In individual participation techniques, an

employee somehow affects the decision making
of a manager.
 Group participation utilizes:
 Consultative participation, where managers ask for
and receive involvement from their employees, but
maintain the right to make the decision.
 Democratic form, where there is total participation,
and the group makes the final decision by consensus
or majority vote.

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 Creativity
 Creativity involves combining responses or ideas
of individuals or groups in novel ways.
 It draws on observation, experience, knowledge,
and the indefinable ability each person has to
arrange common elements into new patterns.

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 Creativity (Continued)
 Dimensions that can help explain the creative
process:
 Divergent thinking, which refers to a person’s ability
to generate novel, but still appropriate, responses to
questions and problems.
 Cognitive complexity, which refers to a person’s use
of and preference for elaborate, intricate, and
complex stimuli and thinking patterns.

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 Creativity (Continued)
 Some creativity techniques for management
decision making:
 Guided imagery
 Self-hypnosis
 Journal keeping
 Lateral styles of thinking
 Empathic design

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 Group Decision Making
 Social decision schemes that can predict the final
outcome of group decision making on the basis
of the individual members’ initial positions:
 The majority-wins scheme
 The truth-wins scheme
 The two-thirds majority scheme
 The first-shift rule

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 Group Decision Making (Continued)
 The following can help reduce and combat the
status quo tendency and make more effective
group decisions:
 Vigilance in examining alternatives.
 Have separate groups monitor the environment,
develop new technologies, and generate new ideas.
 Solicit worst-case scenarios as well as forecasts that
include long-term costs.
 Build checkpoints and limits into any plan.

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 Group Decision Making (Continued)
 Have an outside, independent, or separate review of
the current plan.
 Judge people on the way they make decisions and not
only on outcomes.
 Shift emphasis to the quality of the decision process.
 Establish goals, incentives, and support systems that
encourage experimenting and taking risks.

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Questions

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