Organizational

Communication
Dr. Md. Nasim Adnan
Types of Organizational Communication
• To be an effective employee, manager, client, or consultant, it is
essential to communicate effectively with others.
• Having ideas, knowledge, or opinions is useless unless you can
communicate those concepts to others.
• Most communication in organizations can be classified into four
types:
• upward communication,
• downward communication
• business communication
• informal communication.
Upward Communication
• Upward communication is communication of subordinates to superiors
or of employees to managers.
• Of course, in ideal upward communication, employees speak directly to
management in an environment with an “open door” policy.
• Such a policy, however, is often not practical for several reasons—
perhaps the most important being the potential volume of
communication if every employee communicated with a specific
manager.
• Direct upward communication also may not be workable because
employees often feel threatened by managers and may not be willing to
openly communicate bad news or complaints.
Upward Communication
• To minimize the number of different people communicating with the top
executive, many organizations use serial communication.
• With 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.
• Although this type of upward communication relieves the top executive
of excessive demands, it suffers several serious drawbacks.
• The first is that the content and tone of the message change as it moves from
person to person.
• The second drawback to serial communication is that bad news and complaints
are seldom relayed, in part due to the stress associated with delivering bad news
• Serial communication’s third drawback is that a supervisor is more likely to pass
along a message to another supervisor if the two are in close physical proximity
Downward Communication
• Downward communication is that of superior to subordinate or
management to employees.
• Originally, downward communication involved newsletters designed
to bolster employee morale by discussing happy events such as the
“three B’s”—babies, birthdays, and ballgame scores.
• Now, however, downward communication is considered a key method
not only of keeping employees informed but of communicating vital
information needed by employees to perform their jobs.
• Such communication can be accomplished in many ways, including
bulletin boards, policy manuals, newsletters, and intranets.
Business Communication
• Business communication is the transmission of business-related
information among employees, management, and customers.
Business communication methods include memos, telephone calls,
and email and voice mail.
Informal Communication
• An interesting type of organizational communication is informal
communication.
• Often, informal information is transmitted through the grapevine, a
term that can be traced back to the Civil War, when loosely hung
telegraph wires resembled grapevines.
• Because unofficial employee communication is also thought to be
distorted, the term has become synonymous with an informal
communication network.
• Not surprisingly, the increased use of email has increased the
importance of the grapevine.
How Informal Communication can be
Facilitated
• Organized Company Tours
• Organized Company Conferences
• Get Togethers
• Etc.