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Learning objectivesAfter studying this chapter, you should be able to:

� Describe the four main functions of communication and differentiatebetween different kinds of communications networks.

� Discuss the steps in the communications process and the requirements forsuccessful communication to take place.

� Differentiate between the main kinds of barriers to communication andexplain how they can reduce the effectiveness of communication.

� Identify the main kinds of communication media and explain how theyvary along the dimension of information richness.

� Appreciate the importance of persuasive communication and describehow to create persuasive messages to influence others.

COMMUNICATINGEFFECTIVELY INORGANIZATIONS

CHAPTER

Overview

What Is Communication?

The Communication Process

Barriers to Effective Communication

Selecting an Appropriate Communication Medium

Persuasive Communication

Summary

Exercises in Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior

1414P A R T 2

Group and Team Processes


In the past, Chrysler (part of DaimlerChrysler’s global empire) was oftencriticized for its failure to adequately communicate current problems

and future plans to employees and the trade unions that represent manyof them. Its “ivory tower approach” led top decision makers to remainisolated from what was going on in its car plants; and employees often

felt they were kept in the dark as announcements about theircompany came from trained spokespeople reading carefullyprepared script. This communication approach led to a widegulf between Chrysler managers and employees—it contributedto the company’s deteriorating performance during the 1990s.

Chrysler has taken many steps to remedy this communicationproblem in the 2000s in order to bring managers and employees,at all levels of the company, closer together to deal with themajor problems it faces. Chrysler’s top executives recognized thatonly intense cooperation between employees and managers couldproduce the efforts needed to turnaround its performance andmanage global competition. One step Chrysler took to encouragecooperation was to promote managers who understand theconcerns and problems facing its workforce—and how to talk to employees. And who better could speak to workers thanmanagers whose parents worked in Chrysler plants and who wereraised in homes where events at the company were a major topicof conversation?

One of these managers is Tom LaSorda, whose father wasthe United Auto Workers (UAW) president of one of Chrysler’sCanadian auto plants, and whose grandfather was also a unionleader at that company. With his union roots, LaSorda has first-hand knowledge of what concerns auto workers at a time whenthousands of them are losing their jobs because of intenseglobal competition.1 LaSorda remembers from his childhood

when his father was laid off for six months when the economy collapsed;he also knows what it is to live from paycheck to paycheck, which mostAmerican families do.

Dieter Zetsche, the German-born former CEO of Chrysler, who engineeredits recent turnaround, recognized LaSorda’s unique skills—the background andexperience that enables him to effectively communicate with employees, as wellas his proven management skills. Zetsche is an extravert and showman, but heappreciated that down-to-earth LaSorda is at his best when interacting withordinary people—like the employees in Chrysler’s plants. Zetsche mentoredLaSorda, and when his own success resulted in his being promoted to CEO ofthe whole of DaimlerChrysler, he decided LaSorda was the best choice asChrysler’s next CEO.2

How have LaSorda’s skills in talking and relating to union employees andofficials paid off? Analysts say that Chrysler has enjoyed more conciliatorydealings with employees and the UAW than GM or Ford. LaSorda has helpedthe UAW recognize the reality of global competition and that it is necessary

Opening CaseCHRYSLER’S TOM LASORDA KNOWS HOW TO TALK TO EMPLOYEESWhy is communication so important?

Tom LaSorda, CEO of Chrysler has first-handknowledge of the concerns of auto workerstoday: his father and grandfather were bothmembers of the United Auto Workers Union.


CHAPTER 14 • COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY IN ORGANIZATIONS 461

to take a long-term view to help Chrysler and its employees prosper—despite the pain this will cause employees in the short run. So far, not onlyhas the UAW agreed to a painful 24,000 layoffs in the last five years; it alsohas agreed to change work practices that resulted in high operating costs;and, it is working with the company to find ways to lower healthcare costs.These are all major factors hurting the competitiveness of Chrysler and theBig Three U. S. carmakers.

In return, LaSorda worked to improve the future prospects of those laid-off workers. Chrysler has provided major funding to allow new companies toopen up car-parts operations near Chrysler’s plants to provide new jobs; itprovided new training, education, and severance benefits to laid-offemployees; and it has behaved fairly to current employees. LaSorda hasspent considerable time walking around Chrysler’s plants talking withworkers, meeting with UAW executives, and addressing union members attheir annual meeting—the first Chrysler CEO ever to do so. As he says,“When you’re running a business, you do what’s best for all,” and he hopesthat in the long run this will translate into thousands of new well-payingauto jobs.3 This will happen if Chrysler’s innovative new cars (it will introduceten new models in 2006) are popular, and U. S. car buyers once againbecome loyal Chrysler customers.4

OverviewAs the work of Tom LaSorda at Chrysler suggests, communication is one of the mostimportant processes that takes place in organizations; it has a major impact on individ-ual, group, and organizational performance.5 High-performing organizations havemastered the communication process; their members have the information they needwhen they need it to achieve the organization’s goals. In contrast, the poor performanceof many organizations is often the result of communication problems within theorganization.

Given the sheer impact that communication has on individual, group, and organiza-tional effectiveness, this chapter appropriately focuses on its nature.6 First, we define com-munication, outline its implications for organizational behavior, and describe the functionsthat communication serves in organizations. Second, we examine common patterns ofcommunication in organizations. Third, we describe a model of the communicationprocess and discuss common communication problems and ways to avoid them. We thenexplore one of the key components of the communication process—the communicationmedium or method—in depth. Finally, we discuss the steps involved in persuasive com-munication. By the end of this chapter, you will understand why effective communicationis so important in organizations.

What Is Communication?One of the defining features of communication is the sharing of information with otherpeople.7 An accountant for Ernst & Young communicates with his boss by informing himabout how quickly a large auditing project is going, when he asks to take his vacation at thebeginning of June, and when he requests that his boss purchase a new software package tohelp in the preparation of complicated income tax forms.

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462 PART 2 • GROUP AND TEAM PROCESSES

The simple sharing of information is not enough for communication to take place,however. The second defining feature of communication is the reaching of a commonunderstanding.8 The sharing of information does not accomplish much in organizationsunless people concur on what this information means. For example, suppose the accoun-tant at Ernst & Young informs his supervisor that he has run into some problems on theauditing project and it will take longer to complete than was originally thought. The super-visor might assume that the audit is simply more complicated and time consuming thanmost others. The accountant, however, might suspect that the top-management team at thecompany it is auditing is trying to hide questionable, and perhaps illegal, accounting prac-tices. In this situation, effective communication has not taken place. The supervisor doesnot understand the source and magnitude of the problems the auditor has encountered. Inother words, a common understanding has not been reached. This reduces the effectivenessof both the auditor and the supervisor. The auditor doesn’t get the supervisor’s advice andhelp in handling the tricky situation, and the supervisor isn’t living up to an importantresponsibility—namely, working closely with his employees on an unusual or especiallydifficult auditing project.

In this case, communication—the sharing of information between two or moreindividuals or groups to reach a common understanding—hasn’t occurred. Reaching acommon understanding does not mean that people have to agree with each other. Whatit does mean is that people must have a relatively accurate idea of what a person orgroup is trying to tell them.9 Communication is good or effective when members of anorganization share information with each other and all parties involved are relativelyclear about what this information means. Communication is ineffective when peopleeither do not receive the information they need or are not quite sure what the informa-tion they do receive means.10

The Functions Of CommunicationEffective communication is important in organizations because it affects practicallyevery aspect of organizational behavior.11 For example, members of an organization arelikely to come to understand each other’s personalities, attitudes, and values only whenthey communicate effectively with one another. Likewise, employees are motivated toperform at a high level when someone communicates clearly what is expected of themand expresses confidence in their ability to perform. Finally, leaders can influence andpersuade their followers only when effective communication takes place.

When organizations experience problems such as unmotivated employees or exces-sively high turnover, poor communication is often partially to blame. A secretary mayhave low motivation to develop new bookkeeping skills or to take on the additionalresponsibility of planning conferences because he thinks he is in a dead-end job. In real-ity, no one has bothered to communicate to him that secretaries do have opportunities toadvance in the company. Similarly, a software company that announces that a larger rivalhas purchased it may see its turnover rate triple, even though no layoffs and few internalchanges will result from the change in ownership. The reason for the exodus is that its topmanagers have not clearly communicated to employees that their jobs are not at risk.Expecting the worst, the best performers (who have the most opportunities available tothem elsewhere) will find other jobs.

Good communication prevents many problems like these from occurring and servesseveral other important functions in organizations: providing knowledge, motivating theorganization’s members, controlling and coordinating group activities, and expressingfeelings and emotions (see Exhibit 14.1).

Providing knowledge. A basic function of communication is to give members of theorganization the information they need to do their jobs effectively.12 By providingknowledge about, for example, ways to perform tasks, and the decisions that have beenmade, an organization makes sure its members have the information they need to performat high levels.

COMMUNICATIONThe sharing of informationbetween two or more individualsor groups to reach a commonunderstanding.



The importance of communication is most apparent when an employee has just starteda new job. As you learned in Chapter 10, individuals starting new jobs face considerableuncertainty about what they are supposed to do, how they should go about doing it, andwhat the acceptable standards are. Communication from coworkers, supervisors, cus-tomers, clients, and others helps reduce this uncertainty and provides newcomers with theknowledge they need to perform their jobs effectively.

Communication is essential for the socialization of newcomers at all levels in an orga-nization. When Mickey Drexler, the man who made Gap Inc. famous, became CEO ofstruggling clothes retailer J. Crew, he spent his first weeks on the job communicating withas many employees as he could to learn about the troubled company he was hired to helpturn around. Drexler instituted a series of “town hall” meetings and talked to employees atall levels about J. Crew’s problems.

The knowledge function also is important for even the most experienced members ofan organization because things change. Just as the products or services an organizationprovides change in response to customers’ desires, so does the nature of an employee’s jobresponsibilities. Clearly communicating the new tasks, responsibilities, and policiesrequired helps ensure that the members of the organization will continue to understandwhat needs to be done so it will achieve its goals.

The vast amount of information and knowledge available on the World Wide Web(WWW) today allows employees to access all kinds of data to help them perform their jobsand solve problems. On the other hand, employees can also plan vacations, shop forclothes, sell antiques, and make stock trades through the Internet on company time, whichhas raised ethical dilemmas for many organizations, as the following Managing Ethicallysuggests.

Motivating organizational members. As you learned in Chapters 6 and 7, motivationis a key determinant of performance in organizations, and communication plays a central role

Providing knowledgeabout company goals, howto perform a job, standardsfor acceptable behavior,needed changes, and so on

Motivating organizationalmembers—for example, by determining valences, raising expectancies and instrumentalities, assigning specific and difficult goals,and giving feedback

Expressing feeling and emotions such as positiveand negative moods, excitiement, and anger

Controlling and coordinatinggroup activities—for exampleby reducing social loafing;communicating roles, rules, and norms; and avoiding duplication of effort

Funtionof

Communication

EXHIBIT 14.1

Functions of Communication



in motivating members of an organization to achieve their goals. Expectancy theory (seeChapter 6) proposes, for example, that managers do the following:

� Determine what outcomes subordinates are trying to obtain from their jobs—that is,the valences of various outcomes.

� Make sure that employees perceive that obtaining these outcomes is contingent onperforming at a high level—that is, make sure that instrumentalities are high.

� Make sure that employees believe that they can perform at a high level—that is,make sure that expectancies are high.

The only way that a manager can determine the valences of different outcomes for anygiven employee is by talking and listening to the employee to find out what the employee

Managing Ethically

What’s the Right Way to Use the WWW?

A growing problem for more and more organizations is employee web surfing at work.13

According to Dr. David Greenfield, who runs the Center for Internet Addiction based inWest Hartford, Connecticut, pornographic websites are among the most common, non-work-related sites employees visit while they are supposed to be working.14 The majorityof the visits to pornographic websites occur during the normal workday. Similarly, themajority of stock trades made using online broker Charles Schwab are made from theworkplace. It has been estimated that web surfing results in significant losses in produc-tivity, with total costs tallying in the billions of dollars.15

This trend creates a number of ethical dilemmas for organizations. On the one hand,employees value their privacy, and access to the Internet is considered a perk on some jobs.

On the other hand, when employees surf the WWWon company time, their job performances might suf-fer. Moreover, companies expose themselves topotential legal conundrums ranging from copyrightinfringement to hostile work environment charges,and sexual harassment allegations.16

The combined productivity losses and legal riskshave led more organizations to actively monitortheir employees’ Internet activities and email mes-sages.17 According to an American ManagementAssociation survey of medium-to-large organiza-tions in the United States, almost 75 percent of thecompanies surveyed indicated that they engage insome monitoring of employees’ activities and com-munications.18 Some organizations also install fire-walls that prevent employees from accessing partic-ular websites on the job. And when employeesviolate their organizations’ Internet use policies,negative consequences often ensue. Thousands ofcompanies have fired employees for visiting porno-graphic websites on the job. Hence, employees maywant to think twice before they surf the WWW oncompany time.

It has been estimated that web surfingat work, at retail, stockbroking, andpornographic websites results insignificant losses in employeeproductivity that cost companiesbillions of dollars.



wants. Likewise, managers need to communicate with employees to assure them they arecapable of performing at high levels and will be rewarded for doing so.

As another example of the role of communication in motivating employees, considergoal-setting theory (examined in Chapter 7). It suggests that employees will perform at ahigh level when they have specific and difficult goals and are given feedback concerninghow they are doing. Managers use communication to let employees know what goals theyshould be striving for and how they are progressing in their efforts to achieve those goals.

Controlling and coordinating group activities. As you learned in Chapters 10and 11, it is essential for groups to control their members’ behaviors so that they performtheir jobs in an acceptable fashion. Recall, for example, that a key challenge for self-managed work teams is to reduce social loafing—the tendency of people to exert lesseffort when working in groups than when working on their own. When a member of agroup engages in social loafing, one of the primary ways that other members of thegroup can reduce it is by communicating to the loafer that his or her behavior has beenobserved and is not going to be tolerated. Groups and organizations exert control overtheir members by regularly communicating information about roles, rules, and norms tothem. Similarly, as the interdependence between group members increases, the need forcommunication to coordinate their efforts in order to achieve group goals alsoincreases.19 For example, communication can help to eliminate duplication of effort in ateam and to prevent one poorly performing member from keeping the other membersfrom achieving the group’s goals.

Expressing feelings and emotions. One of the most important functions ofcommunication is to allow people to express their feelings and emotions.20 These feelingsand emotions can be general or specific and can originate from inside or outside theworkplace.

Recall from Chapter 3 that work moods are the feelings people experience on a day-to-day basis as they perform their jobs. Often, individuals and groups can better achieve theirgoals if they can communicate their moods to others. The moods employees experience onthe job influence their perceptions and evaluations of people and situations as well as theirbehavior.21

For example, when the manager of an electronics store snapped at a subordinate whowas proposing an innovative way to increase customer traffic through the store and thusincrease sales, the hurt look on the subordinate’s face made the manager realize that suchimpatience was out of line. The manager decided to communicate his feelings to the sub-ordinate, and he frankly told him that he was in a lousy mood and that they should waituntil the next day to discuss what sounded like a promising proposal. This simple commu-nication of feelings helped to prevent a minor incident from turning into a major problem.

Emotions such as excitement or anger are often stirred by specific events at work or athome, so it is often useful for individuals to communicate their emotions to others in theorganization. An employee who has just learned she has received a promotion may be soelated she can’t think straight enough to have an in-depth discussion with her supervisorabout finding and training her successor. Simply communicating this fact to the supervisorand postponing the conversation for a while is the sensible thing to do. Similarly, as youlearned in Chapter 9, an employee who is upset and angry about his spouse’s terminal ill-ness may feel a little bit better when he communicates his emotions to others and receivestheir social support.22 Moreover, supervisors, co-employees, and subordinates will bemore understanding of the employee’s lack of enthusiasm or recent tendency to be overlycritical when they realize the tremendous strain he is under. Communication of moods andemotions helps organizational members understand each other, and when people under-stand each other, they are better able to work together to perform well and achieve theirgoals.

In summary, communication is vital to ensure subordinates have all the informationthey need to perform their jobs and achieve their goals. Effective communication also letssubordinates know a leader is confident they can perform at high levels and that they will



benefit from performing well. Communication is also vital to help subordinates under-stand the goals they should strive for and give them clear feedback about how they areperforming.

Employees can also be encouraged to communicate effectively with each other tocoordinate their activities, avoid duplication of effort, and limit social loafing. Finally, toavoid misunderstandings, managers use communication to express their own feelings andemotions to others, and should encourage their subordinates to do the same.

Communication Networks in OrganizationsCommunication in an organization—both between employees at different levels in thehierarchy, and between employees in different functions and departments—tends to occurin certain recurring patterns. The set of pathways through which information flows withina group or organization is called a communication network. Communication networksare found at both group and organizational levels.

Group communication networks. As we discussed in Chapters 10 and 11, self-managed work teams, top-management teams, and other work groups play importantroles in most organizations. Among the communication networks that can develop insuch groups are the wheel, the chain, the circle, and the all-channel network (seeExhibit 14.2).

In a wheel network, most information travels through one central member of thegroup. This central member receives information from all other group members and isthe sole sender of information to them; the other members of the group do not commu-nicate directly with each other. Wheel networks are most common when there is pooledtask interdependence—that is, when group members work independently and group per-formance is determined by summing up the performances of the members of the group.Examples of such groups are typing pools and groups of sales reps covering different

COMMUNICATION NETWORK

The set of pathways throughwhich information flows withina group or organization.

Wheel

Group member

Circle All Channel

Chain

Task force member Top managementteam member

Assembly-line worker

Group leader

EXHIBIT 14.2

Group CommunicationNetworks



geographic regions—their members have little need to communicate directly with eachother. Most communication flows to and from either the formal or the informal leader ofthe group. For these kinds of group tasks, the wheel is an effective communication path-way because it is fast and efficient.

In a chain network, communication flows in a predetermined sequence from onegroup member to the next. Chain networks are common when there is sequential taskinterdependence, and members are required to perform specific behaviors in a predeter-mined order. Examples of groups like this include all types of assembly-line work, wherethe finished product is the result of the sequential inputs of the group’s members. Whileworking on an assembly line, individuals are able to communicate only with others whoare adjacent to them on the line. Chain networks also characterize communication up anddown the hierarchy.

The circle network occurs in groups whose members communicate with others whoare similar to them on some dimension ranging from experience, interests, or area ofexpertise to the location of their offices or even who they sit next to when the group meets.Employees tend to communicate with group members whose offices are located next totheirs, for example. Similarly, when groups sit at a round table, members tend to talk tothose on either side of them.

In an all-channel network, every group member communicates with every other groupmember. All-channel networks are prevalent when there is reciprocal task interdependence—that is, when the activities of work-group members depend on one another. Each groupmember’s behavior influences the behavior of every other member of the group. Examples ofgroups that use an all-channel communication network because of the complex nature of thework they perform include high-tech research and development teams, top-managementteams, emergency room personnel, and surgical teams.

Organizational communication networks. Organization charts that summarize theformal reporting relationships in an organization reflect one type of organizationalcommunication network. Formal reporting relationships emerge from the chain ofcommand established by an organization’s hierarchy. The hierarchy determines whichsubordinates report to a given supervisor, to whom that supervisor reports, and so on, upand down the chain of command. A simple organization chart is provided in Exhibit 14.3.When an organizational communication network is accurately described by anorganization chart, communication flows up and down the hierarchy of the organizationfrom subordinates to superiors and vice versa.

Newcomers to an organization may not see an organization chart until they have beenon the job for several months. But when they see the chart, they are often surprised becausethe communication patterns that they have been observing bear little resemblance to thecommunication patterns specified by the chart. Lack of congruence between actual

Manager ManagerManager

Subordinates SubordinatesSubordinates

CEO

EXHIBIT 14.3

A Simple Organization Chart



communication patterns and those specified in an organization chart is common.Communication in organizations often flows around issues, goals, projects, and problemsrather than upward and downward from one formal reporting relationship to another. Theroundabout flow ensures that members of the organization have access to the informationthey need to perform their jobs.

Actual communication patterns in an organization may look more like the informalnetwork shown in Exhibit 14.4 than like the formal organization chart in Exhibit 14.3.Although the relationships shown on an organization chart are somewhat stable, actualcommunication patterns like in the network shown in Exhibit 14.4 are likely to change asconditions in the organization change. Members of an organization develop new patternsof communication as the type of information they need changes.23

Communication experts David Krackhardt and Jeffrey Hanson suggest that thereare at least three informal communication networks in organizations: the advice net-work, the trust network, and the communication network. The advice network providespaths of communication for obtaining technical information. Examples might includedetermining the countries abroad that offer the lowest manufacturing costs and solvingproblems like how to fix a complicated machine when it breaks down. The trust net-work provides paths of communication for delicate information, such as informationpertaining to conflicts, disagreements, and power struggles, as well as the handling ofpotential and actual crisis situations such as a product recall. The communication net-work provides paths of communication that are used on a day-to-day basis for ordinarywork-related matters such as a change in accounting procedures or the upcoming com-pany picnic.24

The Communication ProcessRegardless of the nature of the communication network, effective communication involvesa series of distinct steps shown in the model of the communication process presented inExhibit 14.5 and described in the following paragraphs.25 The model is cyclical sinceeffective communication is a continually repeated process. However, the sender initiatesthe communication process, so we start by discussing the sender and the message.

The Sender and the MessageThe sender is the individual, group, or organization that wants or needs to share informa-tion with some other individual, group, or organization to accomplish one or more of thefour functions of communication described previously. The receiver is the individual,

CEO

Manager Subordinate

Manager

Subordinate Subordinate

Manager

Subordinate

Subordinate

Subordinate

Subordinate Subordinate

Subordinate

Subordinate

Subordinate

Subordinate

EXHIBIT 14.4

An Example of ActualCommunicationPatterns in anOrganization

RECEIVERThe individual, group, or organization for which information is intended.

SENDERThe individual, group, or organization that needs or wantsto share information with someother individual, group, or organization.



group, or organization for which the information is intended. For example, a supervisormay wish to send information to a subordinate about his or her performance, a task forceon diversity may need to communicate to top management its assessment of the promo-tion barriers facing minorities, or the organization may need to communicate to theEnvironmental Protection Agency about what it’s doing to comply with new waste dis-posal regulations.

The message is the information that the sender needs or wants to share with other peo-ple. Effective communication depends on messages that are as clear and complete as pos-sible. Clarity is important regardless of the content of the message, whether it relates toperformance feedback, task-force findings and conclusions, or an organization’s responseto new government regulations. A message is clear when it contains information that iseasily interpreted or understood. A message is complete when it contains all the informa-tion necessary to achieve a common understanding between the sender and the receiver.Sometimes, problems in the communication process crop up because the sender is vagueor unsure about what the message should be. A supervisor, for example, might give vaguefeedback to a subordinate about performance on a recent assignment because the supervi-sor gave too little thought to how the subordinate actually performed or how his or her per-formance could improve in the future.

EncodingOnce the sender has decided what the message is, the next step in the process is encoding,or translating the message into symbols or language the receiver can understand. A super-visor who puts ideas about how a subordinate is performing and ways that performancecan be improved into words, a task force that summarizes the results of its investigationsand weekly meetings into words and statistics such as the number of African Americansand women in top-management positions, and a member of an organization who shows agovernment inspector the organization’s waste disposal operations—all of these are exam-ples of the encoding of messages.

Although encoding ideas by putting them into words seems simple enough, someorganizations are finding that their employees lack the basic writing and oral communica-tion skills needed to do this and are taking action to improve encoding. First Bank SystemsInc., in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example, helps employees ranging from clerks tomanagers improve their grammar through skills-upgrading classes. Smith CoronaCorporation, located in New Canaan, Connecticut, teaches employees how to answer tele-phone calls.26

For communication to be effective, the sender must translate the message into a formthat the receiver can understand. When ideas are translated into words, for example, the

Message

Receiver

Encoding Medium Decoding by receiver

Sender

Decoding by sender(now receiver)

Initial transmission Feedback loop

MessageMedium Encoding

Noise

EXHIBIT 14.5

The Communication Process

MESSAGEThe information that a senderneeds or wants to share with otherpeople.

ENCODINGTranslating a message into symbols or language that areceiver can understand.



sender must take care to use words the receiver understands. Have you ever listened to acomputer expert explain the workings of a new software package using terminology thatmeant nothing to you? His or her failure to communicate probably added to your confusioninstead of providing you with the knowledge you needed. A visit to a doctor can also be anexercise in frustration if the doctor describes your problem and its treatment in words youcan’t understand.

Jargon. In both of those examples, a breakdown in communication occurs because ofthe use of jargon, specialized terminology or language that members of a profession,occupation, or other group develop to improve communication among themselves.Computer experts have their own jargon, as do physicians, lawyers, and people pursuingmost occupations or professions. Jargon facilitates communication within an occupationbecause it simplifies encoding. Rather than having to describe a complex array ofsymptoms and their likely causes, a nurse can use a single medical term such asgastroenteritis, and other health care providers will know the ailment the nurse isreferring to.

Messages encoded with jargon can lead to effective communication when sendersand receivers are members of the same occupation or profession. Jargon becomesa problem only when the receiver of a jargon-laden message is outside the sender’sprofession or occupational group. In this case, the use of jargon leads to ineffectivecommunication.

Sometimes even individual companies have their own jargon. For example, at thebrewery Coors, newly developed beers are called “the liquid.” At Microsoft, an employee’sknowledge and ability are referred to as his or her “bandwidth.” At Wal-Mart, training newemployees to smile and offer a high level of customer service is known as being “Wal-Martized.” And Intel executives “Intellize” new businesses they are trying to enter andcompete in, such as telecommunications.27

The MediumOnce a message is encoded, it is transmitted to the receiver through some medium. Themedium is the pathway through which an encoded message is transmitted to a receiver.(Media is the plural form.)

Verbal communication. Verbal communication is the sharing of information bymeans of words, either spoken or written. For messages that are encoded into words, themedia can include face-to-face oral communication, oral communication over thetelephone, and written communication through the use of memos, letters, and reports thatmay also be electronically transmitted via email or fax machines.

Each medium of verbal communication has advantages and disadvantages. Althoughthere are no clear-cut rules about when to use one rather than another, there are two guide-lines for selecting a medium.

One guideline is to select a medium that the receiver monitors—a medium that thereceiver pays attention to, in other words. People differ in their preferences for commu-nication media. Mickey Drexler, CEO of J. Crew, prefers to use oral face-to-face com-munication. Ron Shaich, president of the Boston-based, fast-food chain Au Bon Pain,likes to see things in writing. The most effective forms of communication for peoplelike Shaich are written memos, reports, and letters.28 A sender who ignores receivers’individual preferences for media is asking for trouble. A receiver may not realize theimportance of a message delivered in casual conversation over lunch if he or sheexpects the message to be delivered via a formal report. A receiver who is inundatedwith memos and letters and more accustomed to having important messages deliveredorally might toss a letter containing an important message into the trash without everreading it.

The second guideline to follow in selecting a medium is to try to select one that isappropriate to the message you are trying to convey and to use multiple media when

JARGONSpecialized terminology or language that members of a groupdevelop to aid communicationamong themselves.

MEDIUMThe pathway through which anencoded message is transmittedto a receiver.

VERBAL COMMUNICATIONThe sharing of information bymeans of words, either spoken orwritten.



necessary. Common sense suggests that if you are communicating a personal andimportant message to an individual (such as information about being fired, beingpromoted, receiving a raise, or being transferred to another unit), oral communication iscalled for, preferably face to face. Alternatively, if the message you are trying tocommunicate is involved and complex, such as a proposal to open a new factory inSingapore, written communication is appropriate. If the message is important, youmight want to back up the written communication with oral communication as well.

Nonverbal communication. Words are not the only way people communicate. It isalso important to realize that communication not only has a verbal component, it has anonverbal component as well. Nonverbal communication is the sharing of informationby means of facial expressions (smiles and grimaces), body language (posture andgestures), and even mode of dress (elegant business attire versus jeans and a T-shirt).29

Research has shown that the receiver pays great attention to the way a message is deliveredby the sender, to his or her tone of voice, stance, facial expressions, apparent moods andemotions, and so on. All these factors are used to help interpret the meaning in themessage—and the meaning behind it. Thus a superior might simply say to a subordinate“please complete the assignment by five o’clock,” but the nonverbal cues tell thesubordinate the assignment should have already have been completed, the boss is mad, andunless the report is done by five o’clock there is going to be big trouble. Similarly, yourcoworker slamming his door in your face after a recent argument and the uniform worn bya police officer standing next to your illegally parked car all transmit encoded messagesto you.

Indeed, an important nonverbal cue that affects the way a message is receivedincludes the style of dress adopted by people in an organization or the way a particularperson dresses. Some organizations, for example, insist on white button-down shirtsand blouses, blue suits, and black shoes—something that often signifies a formal, hier-archical work setting. Increasingly, today many organizations encourage “businesscasual” dress or have informal dress days to communicate that employees and man-agers are partners who should trust one another. The way a particular person dressescan also signal much about the type of person he or she is, as the following OB inAction suggests.

In general, because people tend to have less control over their nonverbal than overtheir verbal communication, their facial expressions or body language often give themaway when they wish to withhold some information. A sender who compliments some-one he dislikes but fails to look the receiver in the eye, for example, is not concealinghis insincerity. Nonverbal communication also can be useful for communicating sup-port, acceptance, and a sense of camaraderie. Researchers have long noted the value ofhugs as a form of communication. Hugs help reduce stress, raise self-confidence, andmake people feel connected with those around them. Studies of newborns, the elderly,and children in orphanages have shown that touch is necessary for psychological well-being. Sometimes, a good hug at the right time can express powerful feelings and emo-tions. This was the case when retiring Supreme Court Justice William Brennan greetedhis successor David Souter after Souter’s confirmation hearings. According toSouter, “He hugged me and he hugged me, and he went on hugging me for a very, verylong time.”30

We have covered just some of the issues involved in selecting a communicationmedium. Given the importance of choosing the right medium and the difficulty of makingthe right choice, we focus on additional aspects of this step in the communication processlater in this chapter, in the sections on information richness and the impact of technologi-cal advances on organizational communication.

The Receiver: Decoding and the Feedback LoopJust as senders have to translate their ideas or messages into a form that can be sent to thereceiver, receivers have to make sense of the messages they receive. Decoding is interpreting

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

The sharing of information bymeans of facial expressions, bodylanguage, and mode of dress.

DECODINGInterpreting or trying to makesense of a sender’s message.



or trying to make sense of a sender’s message. For messages that are relatively clear-cut, suchas information about a raise or about a specific goal, decoding can be straightforward. Somemessages, however, are ambiguous. For example, what caused your boss’s look of disgustwhen you told him your sales promotion was a flop? Was the look due to his displeasure withyour performance or his concern over the dwindling sales of the product involved? Or was itjust the result of one more piece of bad news that day? During decoding, the receiver tries todetermine which interpretation of the message, of all the possible interpretations, is accurate.

When messages are ambiguous, the receiver may have difficulty with decoding ormay think that the message means something other than what the sender intended. Whenmessages are ambiguous, the likelihood increases that the receivers’ own beliefs, attitudes,values, moods, perceptual biases, and so on will influence decoding.

OB in Action

Dressing for Leadership Success

If you joined a new organization and on your first day entered a room full of employees,how would you tell which person was the leader? Increasingly, people who specializein recruiting and selecting new CEOs and other top executives for major companiesare coming to the conclusion that the old adage “the clothes maketh the man,” and inbusiness today, “the women as well,” is a particularly good nonverbal clue as to who

is in charge. Somehow,the leader is the personwho always seems towear the smartest, best-tailored suit that flattershis or her physique, orthe nicest shirt or blouse,or the shiniest shoes, andbest-looking briefcase.31

Leaders have style, orat least they have learntthe importance of payingpersonal assistants (PAs)whose job it is to seekout and buy the clotheswhose style makes theboss look best. Top exec-utives such as OracleCEO Larry Ellison, eBay’s

Meg Whitman, and of course Donald Trump who admits that he learnt the hardway the importance of wearing the right clothes, all employ PAs.32 Of course goodclothes cost more money, sometimes a lot more money; however, they keep theirgood looks for a longer time, they crease less, they clean better, and they can oftenlast for years. And, the ultimate payoff is that when you look like a leader many peo-ple often will treat you like you are one and so over time this increases your chancesof promotion.

An important nonverbal cue that affects the way a message is receivedis the style of dress adopted by a particular person or group of peoplein an organization. CEOs often dress for success, but members ofroyal families have for centuries understood the advantages of beingthe most well-dressed of all.



You may be tempted to think that communication is largely complete once decod-ing has taken place. As indicated in Exhibit 14.5, however, only about half of the com-munication process has occurred up to this point—the initial-transmission half. Recallthat communication is the sharing of information to reach a common understanding. Upuntil and including the point at which the receiver decodes the message, the communi-cation process has largely been one of sharing information. Members of an organizationknow they have reached a common understanding and have communicated effec-tively by completing the feedback loop, the second half of the process illustrated inExhibit 14.5.

After decoding the message, the receiver has to respond to it and start the feedbackloop. The receiver must first decide what message to pass on to the original sender.Sometimes, the receiver’s message is as simple as “I got your memo and agree that weneed to meet to discuss this issue.” At other times, the receiver may provide, in a long anddetailed message, the information that the sender requested. Or, the receiver’s responsemight be that he or she did not understand the message.

Once the receiver decides on a response, he or she encodes the message and trans-mits it, using a medium that the original sender monitors. The original sender decodesthe response. If the original sender is confident that the receiver properly interpreted theinitial message and a common understanding has been reached, the communicationprocess is complete. However, if during decoding the original sender realizes that thereceiver did not properly interpret or decode the message, the whole communicationprocess needs to continue until both parties are confident that they have reached a com-mon understanding.

The feedback loop in the communication process can be just as important as the initialtransmission of the message because it confirms that the message has been received andproperly understood. Thus, effective communicators do whatever they can to make surethey receive feedback. For example, an advertising executive hoping to convince a carcompany to use her firm to promote a new model may send a detailed proposal to the man-ager at the car company who will make the decision. In the letter accompanying the pro-posal, the advertising executive makes sure she will receive feedback by telling the man-ager that she will be calling him in two or three weeks to answer any questions he mighthave. During the phone conversation, the advertising executive makes sure that the man-ager has understood the key components of the proposal.

Barriers to Effective CommunicationNoise is anything that interferes with the communication process. Noise can include theuse of jargon, poor handwriting, a broken answering machine, a heavy workload thatprevents a receiver from reading a written report, a receiver’s bad mood resulting in themisinterpretation of a message, or the operation of perceptual biases (see Chapter 4).One of the key challenges for managers is to eliminate as much noise as possible.

Noise is a general term, but there are specific communication problems that result inineffective communication. Here, we examine six important potential communicationproblems in organizations and ways to overcome them so that individuals, groups, andorganizations can communicate effectively and thus better achieve their goals: filtering andinformation distortion, poor listening, lack of or inappropriate feedback, rumors, work-force diversity, and differences in cross-cultural linguistic styles.

Filtering and Information DistortionFiltering occurs when senders withhold part of a message because they think the receiverdoes not need the information or will not want to receive it. Nobody wants to be the bearerof bad news, and subordinates are particularly loath to pass negative information on totheir bosses. However, if subordinates withhold negative information or filter it out of theirmessages, a supervisor may not even be aware of a problem until it’s almost too late toresolve it. What was once a minor problem that could have been easily fixed now becomes

NOISEAnything that interferes with thecommunication process.

FILTERINGA sender’s withholding part of amessage because the senderthinks the receiver does not needor will not want to receive theinformation.



a potential disaster. Supervisors also sometimes filter information in their communicationswith subordinates. As a result, subordinates may have more negative attitudes, be lesseffective, or experience more stress. Sometimes when an organization is making majorchanges, such as downsizing, supervisors fail to give their subordinates information aboutthe changes, and the result is high levels of stress as subordinates become uncertain abouttheir futures with the organization.

The magnitude of the filtering problem is underscored by the fact that subordinatesare sometimes reluctant to convey negative information to their superiors even in crisissituations. A tragic example of this problem was the Air Florida plane that crashed into abridge over the Potomac River after taking off from National Airport in Washington, D.C.Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators determined that the crash resulted inpart from the copilot’s failure to tell the pilot about problems with engine power readingsthat were caused by ice on the engine sensors. Because of this and other instances of poorcommunication and filtering, the FAA now has mandatory assertiveness and sensitivitytraining for airline crew members to make sure that they communicate effectively and donot engage in filtering.33

Related to the problem of filtering is information distortion, the change in meaningthat occurs when a message travels through a series of different senders to a receiver.Experiments (and the children’s game “Telephone”) have shown, for example, that a mes-sage that starts at one end of a chain of people is likely to become something quite differ-ent by the time it reaches the last receiver at the other end of the chain. In addition, sendersmay deliberately alter or distort a message to serve their own interests—to make them-selves look good or to advance their own individual or group goals at the expense of orga-nizational goals.

Filtering and information distortion can be avoided by establishing trust in an organi-zation, as discussed earlier. One aspect of trust is the policy of not blaming the sender forbad news. When subordinates trust their supervisors, supervisors trust their subordinates,and coworkers trust each other, and when all members of an organization are confident thatthey will not be blamed for problems out of their control, filtering and distortion are muchless likely to occur.

Poor ListeningMany people enjoy talking more than they enjoy listening to others. So, not surpris-ingly, poor listening is responsible for many communication problems in organizations.Consistent with this observation are findings from a recent study that suggests that

INFORMATION DISTORTION

The change in meaning that occurswhen a message travels through aseries of different senders to areceiver.

Filtering and information distortion

Poorlistening

Lack of orinappropriatefeedback

Rumorsand thegrapevine

Workforcediversity

Differences incross-culturallinguistic styles

Barriers to Effective

Communication

EXHIBIT 14.6

Barriers to EffectiveCommunication



managers think the voice mail they send is more important than the voice mail theyreceive and that senders generally think their messages are more important, urgent, andhelpful than do the receivers.34 In addition, people sometimes listen only to the part ofa message they want to hear.

Members of an organization can do several things to become better listeners orreceivers of messages. Being a good listener entails giving a sender your undividedattention, looking him or her in the eye, and not interrupting. Rather than thinking aboutwhat they are going to say next, good listeners focus on trying to understand what theyare hearing and how the sender feels about it. Being a good listener also means askingquestions and rephrasing key points to make sure you understand their meaning, avoid-ing distracting the sender (by glancing at the clock or tapping a pencil, for example), andaccepting what the sender is telling you, even if it is not what you want to hear. It is espe-cially important for supervisors to be good listeners when their subordinates are trying tocommunicating with them and avoid the natural tendency to pay more attention to theinformation coming from their superiors. The FAA’s mandatory sensitivity training forairline crews, for example, may help pilots become better listeners. An interesting exam-ple of a manager who learned the importance of being a good listener is profiled in thefollowing OB Today.

OB Today

The Consequences of Poor Listening Skills

In 1997, Marc Brownstein decided to return to his native city, Philadelphia, and assumethe position of president of the small ad agency his father Bernie had founded—theBrownstein Group.35 Months later, Marc Brownstein was confident that he had made theright decision and was leading the agency effectively because the Brownstein Group’s

Someone with notoriously poorlistening skills is DonaldTrump, pictured here withLarry King who seems to belistening carefully as Trumprelates his ambition to becomePresident of the United Statesin a show televised in 1999.

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Lack of or Inappropriate FeedbackSometimes communication breaks down because receivers either fail to provide feed-back or provide feedback in an inappropriate manner. This barrier to effective commu-nication is especially likely to occur when feedback is negative because negativefeedback makes people feel uncomfortable. A manager at a bank, for example, may bereluctant to let one of her subordinates know that a loan application the subordinateworked closely on with a customer is going to be turned down. He or she may avoidbroaching the issue, putting the subordinate in an embarrassing position if the bad newsis divulged by the customer whose loan has been rejected. By developing good feed-back skills, managers and employees at all levels in an organization will be more likelyto respond in an appropriate manner to messages they receive, whether they’re positiveor negative.

Good feedback concentrates on the message being responded to, not on the sender’spersonality, attitudes, capabilities, or more general performance levels. Good feedback isspecific and focuses on things the sender controls. When giving feedback, the receivershould try to put himself or herself in the original sender’s shoes, understand how thesender feels, and relay the feedback in a manner that conveys the right message withoutunnecessarily hurting the sender’s feelings.

Rumors and the GrapevineA rumor is unofficial information on topics that are important or interesting to anorganization’s members. Rumors usually spread quickly and uncontrollably around

revenues were up, it was gaining clients, and garnering more industry recognition.36

Seeking to further enhance his leadership skills, Brownstein decided to enroll in a shortexecutive-development course. One of his assignments for the course was to have hismanagers complete an anonymous questionnaire rating his job performance as presidentof the agency.37

Brownstein was shocked to learn that his managers did not think that he was aneffective leader. While they thought that he meant well, managers complained about abreakdown in communication at the agency. They claimed that Brownstein failed tokeep them informed about important matters like how the agency was doing andwho its new clients were, and that he also often failed to give them feedback abouthow they were performing. Moreover, they claimed that Brownstein didn’t seem toconsider his subordinates’ preferences when handing out assignments and thathe was generally a poor listener. For example, when a manager would meet with himin his office, Brownstein would often interrupt him or her several times to takephone calls.38

Brownstein realized that he had to make some major changes quickly or he wouldlose talented employees. Turnover at the agency was already surprisingly high, and nowhe knew why. So he decided to change his communication style and schedule regularmeetings with everyone on staff to open up the lines of communication. Any topic wasfair game at these meetings, and Brownstein made a point of really listening to his man-agers. He focused his attention solely on what the person he was talking to was sayingand put his phone calls on hold. His employees immediately sensed the change in hisleadership style. Believing their contributions were now being appreciated, they moreactively suggested ways to improve the agency’s operations, including how it managedits clients39 With the lines of communication opening up, Brownstein also began tounderstand what was really going on in his employees’ minds. Above all, he learnedthat leaders need to pay attention to and listen to what their subordinates have to say—that the feedback they provide is just as important as the feedback their superiors giveto them!40

RUMORUnofficial information on topicsthat are important or interestingto an organization’s members.



communication networks and, once started, are often hard to stop. They are especiallylikely to spread when members of the organization are not informed about matters thathave the potential to affect them personally, like perhaps a takeover attempt by anothercompany, impending layoffs, or a scandal involving a top manager. Sensational rumorssometimes help relieve the everyday boredom of organizational life. These rumorsoften entail gossip about the personal lives and habits of the organization’s variousmembers.

How can companies halt the spread of inaccurate and sometimes damaging rumorsand also provide employees with up-to-date, accurate information on issues that are impor-tant to them? One way is with an IT network consisting of computer monitors and/or tele-vision screens linked to the Internet, or via a company-owned satellite system that canbeam information to employees working in many places. Wal-Mart, for example, has astate-of-the-art IT system that allows for the rapid communication of information to itsthousands of stores.41

According to the Atlanta consulting firm KJH Communications, companies can usethese systems to control the spread of rumors, communicate accurate information tolarge numbers of employees, and coordinate emergency efforts.42 For example, whenJeff Imellt took over as CEO of GE, he appeared on GE’s company-wide Intranet sev-eral times during his first months on the job to communicate to employees that they hadno need to worry about the future of their jobs and organization. And when heavy fog inMemphis, Tennessee, halted delivery of thousands of Federal Express’s overnight pack-ages and letters, the company used its Intranet to keep employees informed and instructthem on what to do. Federal Express also uses its Intranet to communicate accurateinformation and halt the spread of unfounded rumors, such as those that sprang upwhen the company stopped making deliveries between European countries and laid off4,000 European employees. American employees learned of these changes on FederalExpress’s computer monitors and were reassured that their own jobs were secure. TheEuropean employees who were actually let go were informed of the layoff face to face.

Rumors are often spread through the grapevine, a set of informal communicationpathways through which unofficial information flows in an organization.43 In anygroup, department, or division of an organization, some individuals seem to knoweverything about everyone and everything and pass along large quantities of unofficialinformation to others. Rumors that spread through the grapevine can be about the pri-vate or work lives of key members in the organization, the organization itself, or thefuture of the organization and its members. Although rumors that are spread throughthe grapevine are often inaccurate, sometimes information transmitted through thegrapevine is accurate. For example, Mike O’Connell, a marketing manager in an airlinecompany, told one of his co-employees over lunch that he was quitting his job, hadgiven his supervisor two weeks’ advance notice, and would be joining British Airwaysin London. By the end of the same work day, everyone in O’Connell’s departmentknew of his plans even though he hadn’t mentioned them to anyone else (nor had hissupervisor).

Workforce DiversityIncreasing diversity might also become a barrier to effective communication when themembers of a group or organization don’t see eye to eye or fail to respect and appreci-ate each other’s points of view. To counter this effect, many organizations are institut-ing diversity training programs so their employees can learn to communicate and workwell together. For example, Federal Express has a voluntary four-and-a-half-day diver-sity training program available to its 5,500 managers to help them learn to understandand appreciate each others’ points of view. Similarly, Pacific Gas & Electric has amandatory four-hour diversity training for its 12,000 employees. Employees must findthe training valuable because the classes often run long, sometimes up to six or eighthours.44

GRAPEVINEA set of informal communicationpathways through which unofficialinformation flows.



What goes on in a diversity training program? The training can be approachedseveral different ways. One approach involves having a panel of minority members inthe organization describe and share with their coworkers their own experiences anddifficulties.

Another approach involves having members of an organization work for a period oftime with people who are different from themselves. New recruits to the San Diego PoliceDepartment, for example, are assigned a one-week tour of duty working with citizens whoare very different from them. A white woman might be sent to work with an all-maleHispanic teenage gang to gain some understanding of how these youths view society andlearn how to communicate with them and other people who are very different from her.Regardless of how it is done, helping diverse groups and members in an organization getalong so that they communicate effectively and work together to achieve their goals isimperative—especially as diversity within the workforce (and the world) continues toincrease.

Differences in Crosscultural Linguistic StylesWhen people from different cultures interact, communication difficulties sometimearise because of differences in linguistic styles. Linguistic style is a person’s charac-teristic way of speaking including tone of voice, volume, speed, use of pauses, direct-ness or indirectness, choice of words, use of questions and jokes, and willingness totake credit for ideas.45 Within a culture, linguistic styles can vary between, for exam-ple, different regions of a country or between men and women. Across cultures, how-ever, linguistic style differences are typically much greater, and this can lead to manymisunderstandings.

In Japan, for example, employees tend to communicate more formally and be moredeferential toward their bosses than employees are in the United States. On the one hand,Japanese employees don’t mind lengthy pauses in a conversation while they are thinkingabout something under discussion. On the other hand, American employees often findlengthy pauses in conversations uncomfortable and feel the need to fill the void by talking.Americans are also more likely to take individual credit for ideas and accomplishments inconversations, whereas Japan’s more group-oriented culture makes individual credit-taking less likely.46

These cross-cultural differences can result in many communication difficulties. Forinstance, U.S. employees’ tendencies to take credit for their ideas and accomplishmentsmay cause Japanese employees to think they are being boastful when this is not the case.Lengthy pauses on the part of Japanese communicators may cause U.S. employees to feelthat the Japanese aren’t interested in the discussion. On the other hand, U.S. employees’tendencies to fill these pauses may cause the Japanese to think they are being pushy andnot giving them a chance to think. Neither of these scenarios may be correct, but aremerely products of different linguistic styles.

Cultures also differ in terms of the physical distance between speakers and listenersdeemed appropriate for conversations at work.47 For example, people in Brazil andSaudi Arabia favor closer physical distances than do people in the United States.Americans may feel uncomfortable when Brazilians stand “too” close to them during aconversation, while Brazilians may be wondering why Americans keep backing up andseem so standoffish.

Cross-cultural communication difficulties such as these can be overcome by under-standing cross-cultural differences in linguistic styles. Before interacting with people froma different culture, members of an organization should try to learn as much as possibleabout the linguistic style of that culture. Expatriate managers who have lived in the coun-try in question can often be a good source of information about its linguistic style becausethey have first-hand experience interacting with the culture’s members. Learning aboutmore general, cross-cultural differences is also often helpful because these differences areoften linked to differences in linguistic styles.

LINGUISTIC STYLEA person’s characteristic way ofspeaking.



Selecting an Appropriate Communication MediumThe communication difficulties that many companies experience demonstrate that shar-ing information to reach a common understanding is often more difficult than it appearsto be. Choosing the right communication medium for any given message can helpensure that a message is received and properly understood, but selecting a mediuminvolves trade-offs for both the sender and the receiver. One way to examine thesetrade-offs is by exploring the information richness of various media, their demands onthe receiver’s and the sender’s time, and the paper trail they leave. In this section, weexplore these issues and the implications of advances in information technology forcommunication in organizations.

Information RichnessCommunication media differ in their information richness—that is, the amount of infor-mation they can carry and the extent to which they enable senders and receivers to reach acommon understanding.48 Media that are high in information richness are capable of trans-mitting more information and are more likely to generate a common understanding thanare media that are low in richness. The various media available to organizational memberscan be categorized into four general groups based on their information richness (seeExhibit 14.7).49

Face-to-face communication. Face-to-face communication is the medium highestin information richness for at least two reasons. The first is that it provides the receivernot only with a verbal message but also with a nonverbal message conveyed bythe sender’s body language and facial expressions.50 The nonverbal part of thecommunication gives receivers additional information they can use to decode themessages. When Joan Schmitt, an engineer for a construction firm, met with hersupervisor Fred Johnston to discuss the plans for a Brazilian project the company wasbidding on, Johnston got up from behind his desk to sit in a chair next to Schmitt’s asshe described her proposal. His action provided Schmitt with information: He respectedher and wanted her to feel that they were on equal footing in their discussion of thebidding. Similarly, when Johnston mentioned that the newly hired and inexperiencedson of the owner of the firm was to be a member of the team preparing the bid, hisfailure to look her in the eye and his pursed lips conveyed that he was not pleased withthis situation.

The second reason why face-to-face communication is highest in information rich-ness is that it allows receivers to give senders instant feedback. Senders can clarifyambiguous information immediately, and the communication process can be cycledthrough as many times as needed until a common understanding is reached.51 At theengineering firm, Fred Johnston was quite familiar with the Brazilian clients for whomthe bid was being prepared and thought it best they be more involved in the biddingprocess than was normally the case. He suggested, for example, that the clients have

Face-to-facecommunication

Verbalcommunicationelectronicallytransmitted

Personallyaddressedwrittencommunication

Impersonalwrittencommunication

High LowModerate

Information richnessEXHIBIT 14.7

The InformationRichness ofCommunication Media

INFORMATION RICHNESSThe amount of information amedium of communication cancarry and the extent to which itenables senders and receivers toreach a common understanding.



more input into materials specifications and quality parameters than was usual. JoanSchmitt was taken aback by Johnston’s suggestion. She wasn’t sure why it was impor-tant and how to carry it out. After a 20-minute discussion, however, Schmitt realized thatwhat Johnston was suggesting was not unreasonable or difficult and that it made sensegiven the clients’ desire to have more input into the details of the building’s constructionthan was customary.

Verbal communication electronically transmitted. Verbal communication thatis electronically transmitted over telephone lines is the communication medium nexthighest in information richness. Telephone conversations do not provide the receiverwith nonverbal information from body language and facial expressions, but they stillare a rich source of information. The receiver can hear the message, interpret the tone ofvoice in which it is delivered, hear clearly which parts of the message the senderemphasizes, and get a sense of the sender’s general demeanor while communicating.Because this type of verbal communication is personally addressed to the receiver,the receiver is likely to pay attention to it. When Johnston was talking on the telephonewith the Brazilian clients about the building they wanted, for example, he couldsense their enthusiasm and was pleased that they sounded comfortable talkingwith him.

Telephone conversations also allow for instant feedback so misunderstandings can becleared up quickly. Although not commonly used, video telephones allow callers to see theperson they are talking to. As the use of broadband increases, computers are likely to serveas video telephones in the future.52 Visual images add to the information richness of thismedium.

Also in this category of electronic verbal media is communication using voice mailand answering machines, both of which allow receivers to gather information from thesender’s tone of voice and inflections in the sender’s verbal communication, but they donot permit immediate feedback. When using this medium to communicate with a receiver,the sender needs to make sure that the receiver monitors this medium by calling in fre-quently to receive messages.

Personally addressed written communication. Written communications (likeletters and memos) addressed personally to the receiver are next in information richness.Personally addressing the communication helps to ensure the receiver will pay attention toit, and writing for one person allows the sender to tailor the message in such a way that thereceiver is most likely to understand it. Feedback is not instantaneous, but this may notalways be a disadvantage. In some situations, it is important for receivers to have time toreflect on a message and then formulate a response. E-mail is also included in this categoryof media. However, for communication to be effective receivers have to check periodicallyto see whether they have any electronic messages.

Impersonal written communication. Lowest in information richness is writtencommunication that is not addressed to a particular receiver. This form ofcommunication is used when a sender needs to communicate with a large number ofreceivers simultaneously, like when a company president wants to dispel rumors of animpending layoff. Because this type of medium is impersonal, receiving feedback isunlikely. For this reason, it is especially important for the sender to use language thatall receivers will be able to interpret correctly, so that a common understanding will bereached.

This kind of medium is also useful when a large amount of information needs to becommunicated, such as the monthly sales of a company’s products by state, enrollment ina large state university by college and major, or the instructions for running a complicatedprinting press. When information is complicated (like the printing press instructions),some form of written communication is a necessity so that receivers can go back andreview the information as needed.



Trade-Offs in the Choice of MediaIn choosing a medium, one of the most significant trade-offs is between information rich-ness and the amount of time it takes to communicate the message by using the medium.Oral, face-to-face communication, for example, has high information richness but can bevery time consuming. When messages are important, and the sender is not certain that awritten message will be understood, then taking the time to communicate orally is usuallyworthwhile. However, when a message is clear-cut and easy to understand, such as anannouncement that a company will close at noon on the Friday before Memorial Dayweekend, a written memo or letter may be most expedient.

Another trade-off that needs to be taken into account is the trade-off betweeninformation richness and the need for a paper or electronic trail—written documentationof a message, in other words. When messages are complicated and need to be referred tolater, like those containing operating instructions or elaborate procedures, a paper or elec-tronic trail is a clear advantage. Similarly, written communication is advantageous when asender requires proof that a message was sent. A patient who is denied medical insurancecoverage for a particular procedure and appeals the insurance company’s decision wants tobe able to prove that the insurance company was notified about the procedure andapproved it.

Using New Information TechnologyRecent advances in information technology (IT) have given members of organizations notonly new ways to communicate with each other but also timely access to more informationthan ever before.53 An organization must be careful not to overwhelm its employees withso much information that they spend more time reading e-mail and bulletin boards thandoing their jobs.54 Most employees in corporate America who use e-mail receive around30 messages per day and spend about two hours a day responding and completing tasksrelated to the messages, according to Ferris Research based in San Francisco, and thesefigures are expected to increase significantly over the next few years.55 Joseph Galli, whoused to receive around 150 e-mails a day when he was president of Amazon.com suggeststhat e-mail should be used only for those tasks it is most suited for, such as sending data,memos, summaries, or relevant information. Other kinds of messages are more efficientlyand effectively handled on the phone or in person. Also, Galli suggests that when it isimportant to express feelings such as congratulations for a job well done or motivateemployees to excel, voice mail is superior to e-mail since feelings as well as words can becommunicated.56

Despite these problems, IT has the potential to significantly reduce the costs of com-municating information.57 For example, at Aetna Life & Casualty Company, most trainingmanuals, rate books, and other insurance documents (which used to be on paper) are nowon computer. Aetna estimates that this change from paper to electronic communicationsaves about $6 million annually due to, for example, the elimination of costly storage feesfor extra manuals and binders (around $2,000 a month) and the 4.5-cents-per-page cost ofupdating and changing employees’ manuals when procedures are altered (often involvingmillions of pages).

Intranets. Communication information technology advances like the Internet have alsodramatically altered the nature of communication in almost all organizations.58 The UnitedStates has the most Internet users, but other countries in Europe and Asia also have highnumbers of Internet users.59 Many organizations, using the same technology that theInternet is based on, have created their own company-wide computer networks, calledintranets, which use software to facilitate real-time online communication within anorganization. Intranets contain a wide variety of information ranging from directories,manuals, and product specifications to delivery schedules, minutes of meetings, andcurrent financial performance. They can be accessed by all members of the organization.Organizations use intranets to efficiently communicate information to their members as

INTRANETA company-wide computer network.



well as give them easy access to the information they need to do their jobs, when they needit, as discussed in the OB in Action.63

As the Alteon example suggests, Intranets enable employees to work together elec-tronically to facilitate joint problem solving.64 In real time, all of the members ofone group, and even those of others, can see the messages being relayed back and forth

OB in Action

Intranets Are Good for Business

Founded in 1996, Alteon Websystems quickly became a leading maker of the advancedhardware and software necessary to manage websites and e-businesses. It achieved itsdominant position because of the way its managers developed one of the most effectivesystems of communication to speed up new product innovation in the Internet industry.60

From the beginning, demand for Alteon’s products was so great that its managerswere confronted with problems that required solutions that changed from week to week.Sales projections for its products were doubling on a monthly basis. How could the com-pany find a way to allow its employees—both at different levels in the hierarchy and in itsdifferent departments—to communicate quickly and effectively to respond to such rapidand unpredictable changes? How could the communication process be changed so thatAlteon’s software engineers could communicate with manufacturing managers todevelop and produce new products quickly and reliably?

Alteon’s answer was to develop an in-house, web-based software platform, orIntranet, making it possible for its work groups, teams, and subunits like production, engi-neering, and sales to communicate quickly and effectively. For companies that rely mainlyon written communication, it can take considerable time and many phone calls ande-mails before managers can agree on what to do. Using its state-of-the-art Intranet,however, all Alteon’s salespeople could communicate with each other electronically andwork together in real time on an ongoing basis to discuss the changing nature of cus-tomer needs.

When salespeople have decided what those needs are, they then use the Intranet tocommunicate them to the company’s engineers, who then work together online to decidehow to change the design of the company’s hardware to meet those needs. Not only doesthis speed new product design, but also, because manufacturing managers are connectedto the web-based Intranet, they knew about all the information and knowledge beingdeveloped in other parts of the organization. Using the company’s Intranet they alsooffered their own inputs into the product-development process. The combined result ofits improved communication was rapid, high-quality decision making that made Alteon amarket leader.61

Interestingly enough, however, Alteon still recognized the need to encourage face-to-face, oral communication. Every Friday afternoon, its 240 employees gathered togetherfor informal give-and-take sessions in which employees asked managers tough questionsand then broke into groups to confront specific problems.62 Any decisions and plansmade in these groups were then inputted into the company’s intranet and this informa-tion was communicated to all the company’s employees everywhere. Today, an Intranetlike the one Alteon developed is used by most companies seeking to keep abreast of fast-changing technology.



via the Intranet and technology like instant messaging. The use of teleconferencing,which is relatively high in information richness because group members can see, aswell as talk to, each other face-to-face in real time, has also grown in popularity as theuse of broadband Internet connections has exploded.65 The Japanese companyHitachi Limited, for example, uses teleconferencing to facilitate communicationbetween its 29 research laboratories in Japan. Scientists and engineers in the differentlaboratories use teleconferencing to share knowledge and cooperate on joint researchprojects. Teleconferencing is also a good choice of medium when members of agroup or organization are located in different countries.66 HP and IBM are among themany companies that use teleconferencing to facilitate communication between man-agers in its foreign and domestic divisions. Nevertheless, when it comes to solvingthorny problems, face-to-face communication is still often necessary because it is infor-mation rich.

In summary, research suggests that face-to-face communication works best when amessage is important and there is a good chance that the receiver will have difficultyunderstanding it. Moreover, when messages are important and complex it is best to usemultiple communication media such as face-to-face communication and writtenreports. On the other hand, written communication is appropriate when it is necessaryto document that a message has been transmitted and when the message needs to bereferred to more than once. Finally, in some situations, electronically transmitted oralor written communication is just as effective as face-to-face communication and cansave time.

You’re the Management Expert

How to Speed Product Development?

You have been called in by the top managers of a small, high-tech startup company toadvise them how to solve a major communication problem. The company makes flatpanel LCD displays that function both as computer monitors and as TV screens. The mar-ket is growing rapidly, and there is increasing demand for a wider variety of sizes ofscreens, and for screens with brighter displays that also offer a clearer picture whenviewed at an angle. You have different teams of engineers working on the design of thedifferent-sized screens, and even more teams working to design brighter displays that canbe viewed from wider angles.

Recently, members of many of these teams have been complaining that they arenot learning quickly enough about the technical advances being made by other teams.This is slowing down their progress, and many teams are falling behind the scheduleyou have set for launching your new displays in the marketplace. Currently, topmanagers are responsible for monitoring the progress of the various teams and dis-seminating new information to them. The managers hold regular meetings with theteam leaders, and together they summarize any new information into technical e-mailsthat are sent to all team members. However, these methods of communication areobviously not sufficient.

Using the material in the chapter, design a new communications system for this com-pany that will allow the teams to better share information and coordinate their actions tospeed the product-development process.



Persuasive CommunicationIn organizations, one person’s ability to understand another is not the only objective ofcommunication. Often a person wants to persuade and influence other people. Persuasivecommunication is an attempt by one person or group to transmit and share informationwith another person or group in order to get them to accept, agree with, follow, or other-wise achieve the objectives the communicator desires. When it comes to persuasive com-munication, not only is the accurate transfer of information necessary but also how it’s“framed” or “packaged” so as to influence other people.

Persuasive communication is important in many different kinds of situations. We dis-cussed in Chapter 12 how leaders attempt to influence and persuade their employees, butemployees also attempt to influence their leaders. Some of the most important situations inwhich there is a need to communicate persuasively occur when one party lacks the powerto direct the other party as he or she wishes. In this case, persuasion must be used. Forexample, managers in one functional department or group are often in a situation wherethey need to influence managers from other functional departments or groups. Since thesemanagers have no power over one another, they have to influence and persuade their coun-terparts to follow or adopt their goals or objectives. Also, employees who work in a groupoften wish to influence their coworkers to follow their ideas. Since they have no legitimatepower over their coworkers, they’ll need to persuade them. Even employees who do haveexpert or referent power need to know how to persuade their coworkers to successfullyinfluence them.

In each instance, communication becomes the vehicle through which attempts toinfluence and persuade others are made. Some studies have found that managers spendmost of their time in meetings and committees where their primary goal is to provideaccurate information about their plans and goals and elicit support for them. Smallwonder then that people in organizations need to develop a competence in persuasivecommunication.

A Model of Persuasive CommunicationTo examine how persuasive communication competence is developed, we follow the stepsin the communications model outlined previously but focus on how persuasive communi-cation works. Recall that the two main parties involved in communication are known as thesender and the receiver. The sender’s task is to influence the receiver’s response to the mes-sage—that is, to persuade the receiver to agree with and act on the message. Five factorsdetermine how persuasive a message will be: the characteristics of the sender, active lis-tening, the content of the message, the medium or channel through which it is sent, andfinally the characteristics of the receiver.

Characteristics of the sender. As you might expect, messages are always morepersuasive when they are sent from those people who are credible, meaning that thereceiver believes that the sender is in a position to know what is the appropriate objective.Leaders, of course, are credible because they have legitimate power they can use to gainthe compliance of their employees. In addition, leaders who have expert and referentpower are also credible and can use these qualities to secure the commitment ofemployees. Other factors that promote credibility are moral integrity and emotionalintelligence. If the receiver believes the sender is an honest, trustworthy person, he or sheis more likely to believe that the information he or she is receiving is true and shouldtherefore be acted upon. People who have empathy—those who can understand and appealto the feelings and emotions of others—can use empathy to gain credibility and influenceothers. Emotional intelligence can be used to good effect, but it can also be harmful, say,when a con artist takes advantage of his or her personal appeal to deliberately trick ordeceive others.

People who are able to persuade others also often possess good speaking and listeningskills. As speakers, they know how to use every word to effect. They don’t speak tooquickly, they marshal their arguments logically, and subtly come back to the same point

PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION

The attempt by one person orgroup to transmit and shareinformation with another personor group to get them to accept,agree with, follow, and seek toachieve the formers’ goals andobjectives.



again and again to make sure the key facts are being not only communicated but empha-sized. Good speakers invite listeners to ask questions to clarify issues and generate feed-back, interest, and support for their ideas. They use personal qualities such as their referentpower or emotional intelligence to “emotionally charge” their words to convince others theyknow what they are doing, that their approach is the right one, and that it will succeed.

Active listening. The content of the message, that is, the information and arguments itcontains, is also a crucial ingredient in the communication process. The receiver of themessage, especially if he or she is an active listener, is always evaluating the meaning andimplications of the information being given, looking for the theme behind it, andambiguities or inconsistencies in the arguments.

A competent sender knows this and is careful not to offer the receiver a one-sided orincomplete account of why some issue is important. To gain credibility, the sender knowshe or she needs to present all sides of an argument—even those contrary to his or her posi-tion. The sender can always later shift back to the major theme being communicated, usinga few strong arguments to persuade and win over the receiver.

As you might expect, the content of a message can be greatly augmented by framingthe argument with an emotional appeal that “it’s in the best interests of everyone in ourdepartment and vital to the future of our company.” In other words, the content of a mes-sage can be made much more persuasive when it appeals to the receiver’s feelings andemotions as well as to his or her intellect.

Method of communication. In general, face-to-face communication and telephoneconversations offer the greatest facility for persuasive communication, while formalwritten letters and memos and email are most suited for conveying factual, detailedinformation, which requires time and effort to digest and act upon. In practice, theseelectronic methods of communication might be used at the beginning of an “influenceattempt” when managers and employees are collecting information to work out how torespond to some new development, such as a change in the work setting. The sender andreceiver share such information and try to persuade the other as to the best course ofaction to pursue. In the hours or days before the final decision is made, the sender andreceiver are likely to resort to a more persuasive approach. The exchange of emailsdeclines and they start to use the telephone. Depending on the level of disagreement orcomplexity of the issue they are dealing with, face–to-face meetings then become thecommunication method of choice. These face-to-face meetings allow them to processthe most information, both logically and emotionally, to arrive at the best decision.

Face-to-face communication ishighest in information richness.Pictured is a shift meeting at aMexican maquiladora plant thatmanufactures radios for Delcoand GM. The supervisor andteam members are exchangingmessages to reach a commonunderstanding of the day’s workperformance.



OB Today

A Failure in Communication

One day before the breakup and crash of the space shuttle Columbia in the Spring of2003, senior NASA engineers worried that the shuttle’s left wing might burn off andcause the deaths of its crew. But they never sent their warnings to NASA’s top managers.After intense debate via phone and e-mail, the engineers, supervisors, and the head ofthe space agency’s Langley research facility in Hampton, Virginia, decided against taking

the matter to top NASAmanagers.67

The engineers sug-gested they should ask theU.S. Strategic Commandto use its sophisticatedground-based imagingequipment to inspect theshuttle for damage thatmight have been causedby debris striking theleft wing during launch.However, after asking forsuch help, a senior space

agency official later withdrew the request before the NASA engineers had completed theiranalysis of how serious the tile damage problems might be. Once again, all this communica-tion was handled by phone calls and e-mail.

President Lyndon Johnson was a master at persuasivecommunication. He knew whento call Senators to gain theirsupport, when to knock on theirdoors, or even when to cajole or threaten them.

People who are competent, persuasive communicators have a good understanding ofhow these different methods of communication should be used. They know when andwhen not to send an email, when it is time to make a phone call, and when it is vital toknock on the other person’s door. Former President Lyndon Johnson was a master at thisapproach. To persuade senators to vote for his bills he would first send his aids to talk tothem and give them written information. Later, he would call them on the telephone to dis-cuss the issues and further his case. Then, in the days and hours before the final vote on abill he would charge down to congress, locate the “swing-vote” senators, and literally pushthem against the wall into a corner. There he would put his hands on their shoulders,squeeze their arms, put his face close to theirs, and either cajole or threaten them until theyagreed to do what he wanted. This physical approach is very common among powerfulpeople, or people who know how to get their way. Failing to communicate persuasivelycan sometimes prove catastrophic, as the following OB Today on the space shuttleColumbia illustrates.

Characteristics of the receiver. What about the receiver? Because in any influenceattempt, a receiver upon replying becomes a sender, much of the previous informationapplies to receivers, too. Receivers, for example, can learn to enhance their credibility, usetheir emotional intelligence, and select the best method to transmit a message back to thesender. However, there are certain characteristics of the receiver that come into play whenpersuasive communication takes place.



First, receivers who are themselves highly competent and have high self-esteem areless likely to be “taken in,” or swayed, by logical or emotional arguments they believe areflawed. They are more likely to be able to “cut through the chaff” to determine if thesender is acting out of personal interest or in a way that will benefit others. Then, they candecide how to react to what the sender has said.

People with high self-esteem are very useful to have around because they are frequentlythe ones who will challenge the ideas or suggestions of a leader, or more senior manager,when they sense they are flawed. They act as what is known as the devil’s advocate—aperson willing to stand up and question the beliefs of more powerful people, resist influenceattempts, and convince others that the planned actions are flawed. At this level, the issueof self-interest and the intent to persuade to personally benefit does come into play. Now,persuasive communication extends into the realm of organizational politics, a topic wediscussed in the previous chapter.

In summary, the goal of persuasive communication is to sway and influence others bythe kind of messages that are sent. Effective leaders, either managers, supervisors, or infor-mal group leaders, understand the issues involved in persuasive communication and usethem to promote individual, group, and organization goals.

Communication in Crisis SituationsEarlier we mentioned that communication in crisis or disaster situations poses particu-lar problems for the organizational hierarchy. When a crisis arises, the unexpectednature of the emergency requires that managers have the ability to respond rapidly to it.And this typically involves working intensively with other managers in teams to findsolutions to the problems that have arisen. In crisis situations then, the need to quicklyset up teams often becomes the foundation of the communication network, and indeed,advance contingency planning for crisis situations often typically involves the priorselection of team members and decisions about where to locate them. Top-managementteam members must work together to make policy decisions and then communicatethese decisions quickly to their subordinates, and so on down the organizationalhierarchy so that information cascades out and all employees can develop the appropri-ate response.

Later, NASA top administrator Sean O’Keefe commented that he probably shouldhave taken part in the decision to cancel the survey, but he had not been askeddirectly, face-to-face to participate, so he had just followed the debate through e-mail.Moreover, he said he had not known for most of the mission about the shuttle’sproblems.68

All these events point to the choice of the wrong method of persuasive communi-cation. All the people involved in the investigation were communicating by e-mailand phone calls. NASA engineers knew all about the problems and risks involved andhad reported them through e-mails. However, at no point had they asked for a face-to-face meeting with top managers where all the issues could be laid out on the table.Thus, even though a few NASA engineers knew there was the possibility of a potentialdisaster and had communicated this to middle managers electronically, this method didnot persuade others, and the survey of the craft was not conducted.69 Managers at alllevels failed to request face-to-face meetings in which the engineers with first-handknowledge could have been present to communicate their fears. The tragic eventdemonstrates the importance of managers knowing how to engage in and choose theright methods to communicate persuasively.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATEA person willing to stand up andquestion the beliefs of morepowerful people, resist influenceattempts, and convince othersthat a planned course of action isflawed.



Obviously, face-to-face communication provides the most effective communicationchannel in this situation because it provides for the transmission of rich information.However, this must be supplemented by getting experts into the crisis situation so they canrapidly evaluate the situation and transmit back accurate and relevant information to thetop management team. Obviously, the quality of the team’s decisions can only be as goodas the quality of the information it receives.

Gathering accurate and timely information is especially important when two ormore different organizations must cooperate to deliver a rapid response. The communi-cation problem here, as we will discuss in depth in Chapter 16, is that a top managerfrom one organization has no authority over managers in a second organization—evenlower-level managers. Thus, a rapid response is only possible if managers in differentorganizations can quickly agree on or arrive at a common definition of the situation.All too often, however, when confronted with major disasters such as the one that facedNASA and the response of U.S. government agencies to the devastation causedby Hurricane Katrina, there is a failure of communication. There are several reasonsfor this.

First, as we discussed in the last chapter managers often come into conflict whenthere are complex task interdependencies or when there are unclear reporting relation-ships, both of which are likely to emerge in crisis situations. Second, when confrontedwith the need to make crucial decisions many managers are inclined to “pass the buck”and leave the final decision to someone above them in the hierarchy. In this way theycan avoid blame if something goes awry. Third, collecting good information simplytakes time, and unless there has been effective advance planning, often involving dryruns and emergency simulations, it takes much longer for managers to diagnose andrespond to the crisis or disaster. Some of these factors also seem to have played a role atNASA, and in the delayed response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) to Hurricane Katrina. In the FEMA case, the head of FEMA waited 48 hoursto mobilize the huge relief effort, in large part because he wanted the green lightfrom the White House. In addition to both the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor ofNew Orleans, however, people in the field also failed to signal the level of emergency.Indeed, later reports suggested that one reason for Governor Kathleen Blanco’sslow response was that she was inundated with e-mails from around the world fromcountry leaders and others offering help, and from people whose relatives were trapped

The former head of the federalEmergency ManagementAssociation (FEMA) waited 48hours to mobilize the huge reliefeffort for New Orleans, in largepart because he wanted the greenlight from his bosses at theWhite House.



in New Orleans. She was also engaged in political battles with other governmentagencies.70

SummaryCommunication is one of the most important processes that takes place in organizations.Effective communication allows individuals, groups, and organizations to achieve theirgoals and perform at high levels, and it affects virtually every aspect of organizationalbehavior. In this chapter, we made the following major points:

1. Communication is the sharing of information between two or more individuals orgroups in an organization to reach a common understanding. Communication servesfour major functions in organizations: providing knowledge, motivating organiza-tional members, controlling and coordinating individual efforts, and expressing feel-ings and emotions.

2. Four types of work-group communication networks are the wheel, the chain, thecircle, and the all-channel. As the level of task interdependence increases in agroup, so too does the need for communication between group members. When agroup’s task is characterized by pooled interdependence, the wheel network islikely to be used. When a group’s task is characterized by sequential interdepen-dence, a chain network is likely to be used. When a group’s task is characterizedby reciprocal interdependence, an all-channel network is likely to be used. Anorganization’s actual communication network is seldom accurately depicted in itsformal organization chart. Networks change as communication needs changewithin the organization or group.

3. The communication process entails a number of steps including the sender’s encod-ing of the message, selection of a medium, decoding of the message by the receiver,and completing the feedback loop. Jargon (specialized language used by members ofa group) facilitates communication within the group and hinders communication out-side the group.

4. Filtering and information distortion, poor listening, lack of or inappropriatefeedback, rumors, and cross-cultural differences in linguistic styles can all lead to ineffective communication in organizations. Communication can beimproved by establishing trust and encouraging open communication, improvinglistening skills, developing good feedback skills, using company TVs to spreadaccurate information, and understanding cross-cultural differences in linguisticstyles.

5. Communication media vary in information richness (the amount of informationthey can carry and the potential they have for enabling senders and receivers toreach a common understanding). Face-to-face communication is the medium high-est in information richness. It is followed by verbal communication electronicallytransmitted, personally addressed written communication, and impersonal writtencommunication. Other factors that affect the selection of a medium include howmuch of the sender’s and receiver’s time it takes and whether it leaves a paper orelectronic trail.

6. Advances in information technology such as global computer networks like theInternet generally tend to contribute most to the knowledge function of communica-tion. Given the vast array of information currently available to organizational mem-bers, organizations have to be careful that their members are not overloaded withinformation. Using electronic communication to replace face-to-face communicationin work groups has certain disadvantages that tend to increase as the level of taskinterdependence between group members increases.

7. Persuasive communication is the use of information and messages to influence othersto act in the way desired by the sender.



Exercises in Understanding andManaging Organizational Behavior

1. Why is reaching a common understanding a nec-essary condition for communication to have takenplace?

2. Why are members of an organization sometimesreluctant to express their feelings and emotions?

3. Why is feedback a necessary component of thecommunication process?

4. What jargon have you encountered? How did ithamper or help your understanding of messagesbeing communicated to you?

5. Is filtering always dysfunctional? Why or why not?6. Why do almost all organizations have grapevines?

7. Why are some people annoyed by the increasinguse of voice mail in many organizations (insteadof having secretaries and assistants take messagesfor people who are away from their desks)?

8. Is using a medium high in information richnessalways desirable? Why or why not?

9. How have advances in technology changed theways that you communicate with other people on aday-to-day basis?

10. Should organizations have organization charts?If not, why not? If so, what should they beused for?

Questions for Review

Effective and Ineffective CommunicationThink of two communication experiences you had in thelast six months—one in which you felt that you commu-nicated especially effectively with another individual orgroup (call it Communication Experience 1, or CE1) andone in which you felt that you had particularly poor com-munication with another individual or group (call itCommunication Experience 2, or CE2). If you are cur-rently employed, try to pick experiences that occurred atwork. Describe both experiences, and then answer thesequestions:

1. Which of the functions of communication wereserved in CE1 and CE2? Which of the functions ofcommunication should have been served in CE2but were not?

2. Which parts of the communication process workedespecially well in CE1? Which parts of the com-munication process failed in CE2?

3. Was any jargon used in either CE1 or CE2? If not,why not? If so, did the use of jargon lead to effec-tive or ineffective communication?

4. Did any filtering take place in CE1 or CE2? Whyor why not?

5. Were rumors or the grapevine involved in CE1 orCE2?

6. Describe the information richness of the communi-cation media that were involved in CE1 and CE2.

7. Did either CE1 or CE2 involve the use of anyadvances in information technology? If so, how didthese advances aid or hinder good communication?

OB: Increasing Self-Awareness


A Question of Ethics

Communication is often used to influence other people and to persuade them to behave inways that help an organization achieve its goals. Sometimes, however, influence and persua-sion can be used for unethical purposes. Managers, for example, might persuade employees toovercharge customers for products such as legal or accounting services, or encourage employ-ees to sell expensive products to customers who obviously cannot afford to buy them. On theother hand, employees might try to persuade their managers they are doing a good job by onlycommunicating information that makes them look good and “hiding” the rest.

1. How can managers decide if their attempts to influence employees are ethical orunethical?

2. How can employees decide if their attempts to influence their managers orcoworkers are ethical or unethical?

3. What kind of rules could be created in an organization to ensure attempts to influ-ence and persuade others never become unethical?

Small Group Break-Out Exercise

Implementing IT in a Medical ClinicAfter reading the following scenario, break up into groups of three or four people and dis-cuss the issues involved. Be prepared to discuss your thinking with the rest of the class.

You have been called in by the doctors in a large medical clinic to advise them how totake advantage of their new information technology to improve organizational communi-cation. Although the clinic does have an e-mail system, and doctors are connected into alocal area network (LAN) that allows them to post information on bulletin boards andaccess shared patient records, in practice they rarely use them. Most communication takesplace face-to-face when they meet each other in the coffee rooms or by playing telephonetag as they meet their busy schedules. As a communications expert your job is to get thedoctors to appreciate the potential of their new IT.

1. What kinds of advantages can you tell the doctors they will obtain when they usethe new IT?

2. How could you use persuasive communication to convince the doctors to use thenew IT? Create an action plan to help the doctors learn how to use and appreciatethe new IT.

Topic for Debate

Good communication is central to the functioning and effectiveness of all organizations.Now that you have a good understanding of communication in organizations, debate thefollowing issue.

Team A. Advances in IT can make it easier for members of an organization to commu-nicate with each other.

Team B. Advances in IT can make it more difficult for members of an organization tocommunicate with each other.

Experiential Exercise

Troubling Communication

Objective

Your objective is to gain experience in communicating effectively in a troublesome situation.



Procedure

The class divides into groups of three to five people and each group appoints one mem-ber as spokesperson to present the group’s conclusions to the whole class. Here is thescenario.

One group member assumes the role of David Jimenez, the supervisor of a group ofchemical engineers. Another group member assumes the role of Stuart Kippling, oneof the chemical engineers. The remaining members of the group are observers. OnceJimenez and Kippling assume their roles, the observers take notes on the verbal andnonverbal communication they observe as well as instances of effective and ineffectivecommunication between the two.

For the past several months, Kippling has been designing a prototype of a new waste-control processing device. He has just discovered that his device does not conform to a newEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation that will go into effect in one year. Thisis a major setback. Although some of the design work can be salvaged, at least severalweeks of work will be lost. Jimenez and Kippling are meeting in Jimenez’s office to discussthe problem, why it occurred, and how it can be avoided in the future. Jimenez’s position isthat extrapolating from recent EPA regulations, requirements, and deliberations, Kipplingshould have been able to anticipate EPA’s most recent ruling and take it into account in hisdesign work, or at least he should have drawn up a contingency plan in case such a rulingwas put into effect. Kippling’s position is that there is no way he could have known whatEPA was going to do.

1. Jimenez and Kippling assume their roles. They are meeting to discuss the problem, why it occurred, and how it can be avoided in the future. Jimenez isto meet with his boss in fifteen minutes to discuss the problem, so he andKippling have only fifteen minutes to come to some kind of resolution of this matter.

2. When Jimenez and Kippling’s meeting is finished, the observers should discussthe verbal and nonverbal communication they observed as well as what was par-ticularly effective and ineffective.

3. The entire group determines which instances of communication between Jimenezand Kippling were especially effective and why and which instances of communi-cation were especially ineffective and why.

When the group has finished those activities, the spokesperson will present thegroup’s conclusions to the whole class.


RIGHT or wrong, it has somehow becomeconventional wisdom: Wal-Mart is bad forsmall businesses, outspending, outmaneu-vering and outgrowing lesser rivalsuntil they change their strategy or closetheir doors.

But for Sparky Electronics, a family-owned store in California that sells hard-

to-find watch batteries and record-playerneedles, Wal-Mart is more ally thanenemy, more lifeline than threat.

The 43-year-old store, which has aloyal customer base of handymen andcontractors, wanted a Web site to reachconsumers beyond its home in Fresno.But the big technology companies wanted

up to $1,000 for a simple site, far morethan the owner, Cheryl Cook, was willingto pay.

Then there was Wal-Mart. For $100,the retailer helped create sparkyelectron-ics.com, complete with the icon that sitsabove its store, an oversize electrifiedcartoon character. “The nice thing was

“Guess Who’s Got His Back”Michael Barbaro, NYT, May 1, 2006, p. F1.

New York Times Cases in the News



that it did not cost us an arm and a leg,”Ms. Cook said.

For thousands of independently ownedconvenience stores, restaurants and hairsalons, the nation’s largest—and mostfeared—retailer also happens to be abusiness partner. Through its Sam’s Clubdivision, a chain of 570 club stores, Wal-Mart helps them process credit-cardtransactions, build Web sites, pay employ-ees and take out loans, all at bargainprices.

In that sense, Sam’s Club is an oasiswithin the harsh climate of Wal-Mart. AtSam’s, the very qualities that make Wal-Mart such a formidable competitor—itssize and hard-nosed negotiating tacticswith suppliers—have been unleashed onbehalf of small businesses.

At Wal-Mart’s request, for example,the health insurance company ExtendBenefits Group waived a $500 fee forSam’s Club members who signed up forits plans. And the financial services com-pany First Data, which processes credit-card payments, set aside 50 executives towork with Sam’s members.

At a time when Wal-Mart is underassault by critics for, among other things,driving mom-and-pop stores out of busi-ness, Sam’s looms as a relatively untappedpublic relations success story.

But that may be about to change. Wal-Mart’s unusual plan to offer training tosmall businesses in urban areas where itwants to build stores, announced lastmonth, will rely on the expertise ofSam’s Club, which has provided suchsupport to its members for two decades,executives said.

And Wal-Mart says marketing forSam’s Club, which has traditionallyfocused on its low prices and the goodworks of its blue-smocked employees,will soon focus on its relationship withsmall businesses.

It is a relationship that the companyhas invested heavily in. Sam’s Club hasexclusive hours for small businesses(7 a.m. to 10 a.m., five days a week), a

designated online ordering system forsmall businesses (order by 5 p.m., pickup anytime the next day) and a team ofsales representatives who even makehouse calls to small businesses.

Analysts estimate that small-businessowners generate half of the $40 billion inannual sales at Sam’s Club, though thecompany will not disclose such figures.Most businesses that use Sam’s Clubdepend on it for routine purchases—cleaning supplies, hamburger patties, filefolders, ink cartridges. Increasingly,however, they rely on Sam’s Club forbasic services that the retailer gets througha growing network of outside companies.Sam’s Club’s involvement in theseservices is limited. It negotiates the prices,but companies like Extend Benefitsadminister them, with Sam’s Club closelymonitoring customer service. Sam’s Clubgenerally derives little or no direct profitfrom its role. Rather, services like credit-card processing and health insurancegenerate good will for Sam’s, and createan incentive to renew an annualmembership.

Internal research shows that servicesincrease loyalty to the retailer becausemembers cannot secure the same dis-counts on their own. Customer SynergySolutions, a consulting firm in Houston,was staggering under the weight of$2,600 in monthly health insurancepremiums, partly because of back-to-back surgeries for one of its twoemployees. By switching to an ExtendBenefits plan through Sam’s Club, onewith a Health Savings Account and ahigh deductible, rather than a smallgroup plan, the company cut its premi-ums by $2,200 a month. The owners ofK.C.’s County Store, in Nacogdoches,Tex., needed to process credit-cardand debit-card payments in their two-month-old store. After researching fivecompeting services, they chose FirstData, another Sam’s partner, because itcharged the lowest rates. Some peoplejoin Sam’s only for these services. Brett

Hutton, the owner of Windoworks Etc.,a residential window-washing companyin Washington State, joined Sam’s Clubnot for its cheap cleaning solution butto develop a cheap Web site, eastsidewindowcleaning.com, which wouldgive his business more legitimacy.

“My office is my pickup and cellphoneand laptop,” he said. “There is nothingconcrete, no storefront. The Web sitebecomes your storefront.” The discountsthat Sam’s secures are, in many cases,considerable. First Data does not chargeSam’s Club members its regular monthlyservice fee, which amounts to $60 a year,and gives them a free debit PIN pad—linked to a cash register—valued at $150.Extend Benefits not only eliminated a$500 administrative fee for Sam’s Clubmembers, it reduced a separate monthlyfee for processing medical reimburse-ments from $5 to $2.50, or $30 a year.Brian Tenner, senior vice president forsales at Extend Benefits, said that Sam’sClub was a tough negotiator. “That is whatthey are good at,” he said, “They pushback.”

Every month, Wal-Mart’s technologyoffice produces a new list of businessesthat have moved into the commercial areanear a Sam’s Club store, a list gleanedfrom public records like change-of-address forms. Two sales representatives,assigned to each club store, fan out torecruit those new businesses every week,knocking on doors rather than leavingtelephone messages. Stores hold break-fasts for small-business members severaltimes a year, often inviting one localcompany to make a presentation. Andevery manager at the company, fromstore managers to the chief executive, isrequired to work at a small business oneday a year to better understand its needs.“There really is a small-town feel to it,”said Judi Brenstein of Customer Synergy.She said she was on a first-name basiswith the manager of her local Sam’sClub, who has told her to call him,personally, if she needs anything.

Questions for Discussion1. What kind of message is Sam’s sending to small-business customers?2. What are the main ways in which Sam’s is communicating to business customers?3. What has been their response and why has Sam’s been successful?



A consultant to the Guidant Corporationtold the company last year that hebelieved it had a clear ethical obligationto tell physicians about heart devicedefects, and urged the company tooverhaul its practices, newly releasedcourt records show. In two lengthymemos written just before Guidant wasswamped by controversy, the consul-tant, Dr. Richard N. Fogoros, also toldcompany executives that their decisionto withhold such data, while statisticallydefensible, was questionable. Guidantexecutives have said they did notpublicize defibrillator flaws becausethey believed that patients faced greaterrisks from replacement surgery thanfrom the units. But Dr. Fogoros wrote inone memo that Guidant, while believingit was acting in the patients’ bestinterest, had violated a “sacred obli-gation” it had to doctors by interposingits medical judgment for theirs. He alsonoted that Guidant had a clear conflictof interest that would naturally lead it todisclose product failures only when“absolutely necessary.”

“This conflict is not tacit; it is obviousfor all to see,” Dr. Fogoros wrote in a memodated May 18, 2005, adding: “This meansthat when a tragedy occurs, our decisionswill be viewed in the harshest lightpossible, without any objectiveconsideration of the statistical nicetiessupporting our actions.” The memoswritten by Dr. Fogoros are the latestinternal Guidant records to emerge from aproduct liability lawsuit filed in a Texasstate court by patients who receivedGuidant defibrillators. But the records mayprove especially damaging to Guidantbecause they show a paid companyconsultant challenging the device maker’sarguments. The documents are coming tolight as the Senate Judiciary Committeeplans a hearing tomorrow on possiblenew legislation that would make it afederal crime for a corporate executive toknowingly ship a defective product. AMinneapolis physician, Dr. Barry J. Maron,whose patient died after a defective

Guidant defibrillator failed, is among thosescheduled to testify.

Steven Tragash, a spokesman forGuidant, which is based in Indianapolis,said that the documents show “how seri-ously Guidant takes the very complexissue of how and when to communicatepotential device risks to physicians—an issue that is being discussedand debated not only within Guidantbut also throughout the industry.”Dr. Fogoros, reached at his homeyesterday, said that he had been askednot to comment on the documentsbecause of active litigation. His memos,which make reference to Dr. Maron,were written last May, just after Guidanttold the Minneapolis physician that hispatient had had a type of Guidantdefibrillator that had repeatedly short-circuited because of an electrical flaw.At that time, Dr. Maron and a colleague,Dr. Robert G. Hauser, urged Guidant toalert physicians about the device defect;the company had known about thedefect for three years. When thecompany failed to do so, Dr. Maron andDr. Hauser contacted other physiciansand The New York Times, which pub-lished an article in late May about thedevice.

Since then, Guidant has recalledmore than 100,000 implantable heartdevices, including three models ofdefibrillators with similar electricalflaws that are tied to at least sevenpatient deaths. The company, which isbased in Indianapolis, is also underinvestigation by the Justice Departmentand the Food and Drug Administration.A defibrillator is a device that useselectricity to disrupt a potentially fatalheart rhythm. Last May, soon after TheTimes article appeared, Dr. Fogoros, acardiologist in Pittsburgh, vigorouslydefended Guidant’s actions in aninterview published on an Internet Website, Medscape. “This data’s been outthere in public the whole time,” he wasquoted as saying about the device. Butin internal memos written just two

weeks earlier Dr. Fogoros took a criticalview of Guidant’s policies when it cameto data disclosure, court records show.Those memos also predict, with an eerieaccuracy, the crisis Guidant soon facedfor failing to inform doctors aboutpotentially life-threatening productfailures.

In essence, Dr. Fogoros wrote thatGuidant was caught between two con-flicting impulses, doing what it thoughtwas right for patients or allowing doctorsto make that decision. He concluded thatthe company, by withholding data fromdoctors, was violating its basic ethicalduty to be forthright with physicians.“Neither the doctor nor the patientconsider themselves to have signed up tohave Guidant dictate any treatmentplans,” he wrote in his May 18 memo.

Dr. Fogoros, who is still a companyconsultant, sent his memos to the chiefmedical officer of Guidant’s heartdevice unit, Dr. Joseph M. Smith,records show. Guidant executives likeDr. Smith have defended their decisionnot to alert doctors earlier about heartdevice problems by saying that doing sowould have led to unnecessary removal,exposing patients to surgical compli-cations like infections. Implanted heartdevices like defibrillators are normallyreplaced about every five years whentheir batteries wear out. A doctor’s deci-sion about whether to replace a problemdevice earlier is typically determined byhow dependent an individual patient ison that unit. Dr. Fogoros wrote that hebelieved the device used by Dr. Maron’spatient was highly reliable and thatGuidant executives could defend theiractions with statistics. But he added thatit was in Guidant’s best interest tooverhaul its disclosure practices by“exposing our dirty laundry as well asour clean.” He also predicted that thecompany’s use of statistics to justify itsactions would be met “with bitterderision towards our protests that wewere only acting with the patients’ bestinterests at heart.”

“Guidant Consultant Advised Company to Release Data on Defects.”Barry Meier, NYT, March 9, 2006, p. C3.



Questions for Discussion1. Why should Guidant have communicated knowledge about its defective heart devices to

doctors and patients?2. What reasons did Guidant give to defend its decisions to withhold information?3. What criteria can be used to decide when withholding information that is important to

other people or groups is unethical?

A manufacturer allowed its productengineers to keep faulty cardiac deviceson the market without considering themedical impact and failed to alertdoctors and patients when the devicesstarted to malfunction. That is the damn-ing conclusion of experts who evaluatedhow the company, the Guidant Corpora-tion, reacted to evidence that some ofits implanted defibrillators had short-circuited when they were supposed tostabilize the chaotic heartbeats of pati-ents. At least seven patients died whentheir defibrillators failed to work.

The Guidant devices came under acloud last May when The Times revealedthat a college student had died when hisdefibrillator short-circuited and that thecompany had known about the flaw for

three years but had never told doctors orpatients. The company subsequentlydisclosed defects in other devices aswell, recalled tens of thousands of flawedunits and was hit with a barrage oflawsuits and investigations.

Now a panel of experts commissionedby the company has issued an independentverdict on the fiasco. It finds that Guidant’sdevices are generally reliable and amongthe best in the industry, but it faults thecompany’s failure to protect patients fromrare but life-threatening malfunctions.Indeed, it is astonishing how cavalier thecompany was. It left key decisions in thehands of low-level product performanceengineers who were content if failure ratesremained within predicted limits, regard-less of the consequences for hapless pati-

ents. Its chief medical officer paid littleattention to patient safety and learned aboutthe failure problem late and inadvertently.Even after an improved version of theflawed defibrillator was developed, thecompany allowed some 4,000 of the olderdevices to be implanted in patients whoweren’t informed of the risks.

Guidant is now scrambling to putpatient safety high in the decision-makingprocess. Nobody knows how the companycompares with others in the industry whenit comes to handling defects. But it seemslikely that all device manufacturers couldbenefit from the panel’s advice that com-panies be far more forthcoming aboutpublicizing defects and that a high prioritybe placed on preventing deaths from evenrare malfunctions.

“Anatomy of a Flawed Company”Editorial, NYT, April 1, 2006, p. A14.


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