ASSIGNMENTS- MBA Semester I Subject code: MB0023 Set 2 Marks 60

Subject Name: Business Communication

Q 1. Describe three specific situations at the workplace where positive non verbal communication could be used effectively to enhance verbal communication. (10 Marks).

Answer:

Situation 1:

When you are showing a presentation or demonstration of a project to the employee's or clients you need to use a positive intonation which would be a nonverbal way to boost the audience. The tone should be bold and portray confidence so the audience feels that you are sure of what you are speaking. Try to maintain eye contact with the audience as and when possible which helps them to feel comfortable and allows them to interact with you with questions and feedback when required.Also make broad hand and arm gestures instead of tight, close-to-the-body gesture which shows your self confidence. Wear formal and neat clothes which would give a more professional and confident look to you. All these non-verbal gestures indirectly are responsible for a successful presentation at work.

Situation 2:

When you are attending meetings i.e. when you act a listener you need to be very careful with your non-verbal communication. Lean towards the communicator showing him/her that you are interested in the

communication. Maintaining eye contact also implies that you are listening to the conversation. Nod as and when needed to portray that you are with the listener and giving him a non-verbal feedback that you have understand what is being communicated to you. Take care to avoid speeding up your nods. Rapid head nods may communicate that you are impatient with the communication. These small gestures show that you are interested and involved in the communication and help you in proving that you are a good listener to your managers.

Situation 3:

Time language is an important non-verbal communication. Punctuality is considered to be important in professional environment. Arriving late to work regularly sends negative impression about your character to your immediate managers. Sometimes there are dependency issues in office and others have to wait for your arrival to resolve those issues, in such scenarios it creates a wrong impression on you. Also when you arrive late to business meetings it may not be excusable in most of the US based companies. We convey messages to others through the time we spend on a work related activity or by the importance that we give to time. Arriving early at work shows interest, involvement and seriousness. Spending time with an employee and giving him suggestions on how to improve his performance shows interest and involvement in his career growth.

Q. 2) Lateral or horizontal communication is more important today than vertical communication. Do you agree or disagree? Justify your answer. (10 Marks).

Answer

Vertical and Horizontal Communications

Communication can be characterized as vertical or horizontal. Initially greater emphasis was directed at vertical organizational communication as compared to lateral communication but that is no longer the case.

Vertical Communication:

Vertical communication occurs between hierarchically positioned persons and can involve both downward and upward communication flows. Downward communication is more prevalent than upward communication. Larkin and Larkin (1994) suggest that downward communication is most effective if top managers communicate directly with immediate supervisors and immediate supervisors communicate with their staff. A wealth of evidence shows that increasing the power of immediate supervisors increases both satisfaction and performance among employees. This was first discovered by Donald Pelz (1952) and is commonly referred to as the Pelz effect. Pelz was attempting to find out what types of leadership styles led to employee satisfaction (informal/formal, autocratic/participative, management oriented/front line-oriented). He found that what matters most is not the supervisor’s leadership style but whether the supervisor has power. One way to give supervisors power is to communicate directly with them and to have them provide input to decisions. Ensuring that supervisors are informed about

organizational issues/changes before staff in general, and then allowing them to communicate these issues/changes to their staff, helps reinforce their position of power. When the supervisor is perceived as having power, employees have greater trust in the supervisor, greater desire for communication with the supervisor, and are more likely to believe that the information coming from the supervisor is accurate (Roberts and O’Reilly 1974). Jablin (1980), after reviewing almost 30 years of research, pronounced the Pelz effect to be “one of the most widely accepted propositions about organizational communication.”

Downward Communication:

Downward Communication is more than passing on information to subordinates. It may involve effectively managing the tone of the message, as well as showing skill in delegation to ensure the job is done effectively by the right person. Although the content priorities of downward communication have not been definitively demonstrated, there is some level of certainty with respect to the best approach to downward communication (Jablin 1980), i.e.,

Top managers should communicate directly with immediate supervisors

Immediate supervisors should communicate with their direct reports On issues of importance, top managers should then follow-up by

communicating with employees directly

Perhaps the most tried and true rule of effective downward communication is to: Communicate orally, and then follow up in writing (Gibson and Hodgetts 1991).

Upward Communication:

Even less is known about upward communication. One consistent finding is that employee satisfaction with upward communication tends to be lower than their satisfaction with downward communication (Gibson 1985; Gibson and Hodgetts 1991:221-22). Larkin and Larkin (1994) found low levels of satisfaction with all the strategies commonly used to enhance upward communication, including employee surveys, suggestion programs, employee grievance programs, and employee participation programs such as quality circles and team meetings. Gibson and Hodgetts (1991:268-69) note several management-based reasons for this lack of satisfaction, particularly that these strategies often do not involve two-way communication, are not packaged well, are poorly timed, and are apt to trigger defensiveness on the part of managers. In addition, McCelland (1988) found a number of employee-based reasons why upward communication tends to be poor, including:

Fears of reprisal – people are afraid to speak their minds

Filters – employees feel their ideas/concerns are modified as they get transmitted upward

Time – managers give the impression that they don’t have the time to listen to employees

Lateral Communication:

Lateral communication involves communication among persons who do not stand in hierarchical relation to one another. While recent trends to flatten organizations have enhanced the importance of lateral communications, studies on lateral communication still lag behind those on vertical communication. One fairly limited study found rather high levels of satisfaction (85 percent) with lateral communication among human resource managers (Frank1984), but lateral communication across managers of dissimilar functional divisions, while often cited as a major

source of organization dysfunction, has not been subject to much empirical research. It has been assumed that lateral communication at the worker level is less problematic, at least within a functional area. However, with the greater importance of teams, more attention is now being directed at communication between team members. Lateral communications between workers in different functional areas is also becoming a bigger concern as greater attention is being directed at increasing the speed of production through simultaneous, as opposed to sequential, work processes. And there is greater emphasis on communication across distributed workers and geographically separated work groups doing similar kinds of work in an attempt to promote learning and the sharing of expertise, best practices, and lessons learned.

Q 3. Imagine that you have to make an oral presentation on the features of the EduNext portal to new students of the SMU MBA program. Prepare an outline of the presentation and specify the following – a) Purpose of the presentation b) Key idea c) Audience analysis d) Delivery style. (10 Marks)

Answer:

Purpose of the Presentation:

Purpose of the Presentation is to inform the new students about the various features, information, news and announcements available in the website. To convince and comfort them that all the information and guidance is available and updated frequently in the site, this would make their learning more easy and interactive.

Key Idea:

As the Main idea of the presentation is to inform the students about the various features of the EduNext portal. The Key ideas would be to explain all the features in detail.

1. The site has Assignment guidance, model question papers, chapter wise objective type quizzes, project guidance, case studies of chapters. The model question papers and quizzes would be helpful as the self assessment after reading each chapter. Project guidance would be of help

while doing the final semester projects

2. Interactive sessions are the key highlight of this site. There are chat sessions with faculty, mentors, certified faculty and other experienced people who could give more information on various topics and clear any clarifications and queries of students.

3. Another aspect to mention is the live updates of examination, project completion and assignment completion dates, news, announcements of the university, blogs, opinion polls, testimonials which gives the feeling that the students know all what is happening in the university and that they are kept updated time to time. I spite of this entire if they still have clarifications they could ask the faculties online.

Audience Analysis:

Job Designations and Areas of Expertise:The audience would be newly joined MBA students hence they are new to the SMU university; hence we should not use jargon's associated neither to the university nor with course. The presentation should be simple giving them whole idea of the university and the course.

Preferred style of Presentation:

Students would like a more informal presentation rather than a formal talk which would be more of serious nature. The talk needs to be more interactive and include a lot of humor in it as and when possible to make it lighter.

Demographic characteristics of the audience:

Being a younger audience majorly with age group between 21 to 25 they,

would have lots of dreams and aspirations after joining the course, so the talk should be able to satisfy their expectations and answer their queries and give them an enthusiasm to get into the course in a positive manner.

Size of the Audience:

The audience size could be very huge as the admissions are completely full for the current year, hence the TV screen should be big enough to see the presentation slides and speakers should be high enough to have enough audibility.

The Level of Knowledge on the Subject:

As the crowds are new students they wouldn't have much knowledge on the course and the university. Also many would be doing the course online for the first time hence lot of information needs to describe from scratch, keeping in mind that the audiences have no background knowledge. The talk should be kept simple and without the use of much technical words.

Attitude of the audience:

Attitude of the audience would be very energetic and enthusiastic so the talk needs to match up with the audience by being more interactive and information up to the mark to keep the focus of the students alive, if loose talks or unwanted information's are given we might lose the focus of the audience. So in other words the presentation needs to be power packed.

Delivery Style:

Extemporary type of speaking would be the best style for this kind of presentation which involves young audience. The speech should be

prepared well so that we could answer all the queries and clarifications of the students, and also be more confident to help keep them focused. If the speech is not well prepared they might not have confidence on the speaker which could eventually lose the focus on the speaker. Notes or memorizing would make the speech feel more boring and would not help the speaker have proper eye contact with the audience and this would lead to less interaction with the audience. So the style suiting this type of presentation should be a well prepared speech or otherwise known as extemporary speaking.

Q 4) Write a letter to your distributor, conveying the bad news of one of your product lines being phased out or discontinued, offering some form of compensation in return. (10 Marks)

Answer

December 14th 2009

Mr. John Keaths,Director of Sales and Distribution,Tibble keaths Worldwide Distributors,Jurong Street,New Delhi 500789.

Dear Mr. John Keaths,

We had released star mobile model number T56 to your distributors on June 2nd. I truly understand that the models have been distributed from your end to your customers. Actually we had received several calls from our customer care engineers that the mobile has few very serious hardware faults. Many customers have had issues that the mobile switches off on its own and has to be restarted every time. Also the phone gets heated up very soon. Due to these issues we had to stop the further production of the T56 model. We would fix all the issues in this model and come up with the new T57 model on January 6th.

I truly apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. I understand that your customers would come back to you with the defects and demand an explanation, hence I request you to forward them to our customer care centers where we could replace their old phones with the new model phone free of cost in case the phone is used for less than 2 months else we could give them a 15% discount on the new phone's cost.

Also if you as a distributor would want to return a bulk set of old phones which we supplied you, we could replace them with a 25% discount on the new phone. In case the package seal is not yet open us would replace the whole set for free.

We would try our best to help you satisfy your clients, as they are indirectly our customers too.We would make sure your customers are taken care of and help them retain their trust on you. Thanks for understanding. I will make sure this doesn't happen again.

In case of any issues or clarifications on this please feel free to call me directly to my cell Ph. 9820020012.

Sincerely, Managing director of Sales Star GroupLaxmani

Q 5. As a Sales Manager, prepare a one page report in memo format addressed to the VP Marketing, providing sales updates for a newly launched FMCG product? (10 Marks)

Answer:

Yummy potato chips are a newly launched FMCG product by Indigo group of companies. Below is the report for its sales update in a memo format.

TO : The VP Marketing

FROM : Sales Manager

DATE : December 14th, 2009

SUBJECT: Detailed Sales report of the newly launched Yummy Potato chips. I have summarized below the sales details in the last 6 six months after the release of this product in major metro cities.

Release of product in four metro cities:

The sales in Chennai and Bangalore were considerably higher than in the

other two metros i.e., in Delhi and Calcutta. Chennai showed a Net income of 5 million which is the highest among the four cities, followed by Bangalore 4.5 million, Calcutta 3.5 million and Delhi with 3million in the last 6 months. The net come has increased a total of over 4% as compared to sale in the first three months. The promotional program “Taste and buy yummy chips “which was initiated last month helped in picking up the market income by 1%. On a whole the yummy chips brand seems to be a promising product in the metro cities.

Share value of the Product:

The share value started with an opening value of 3.5 in June and now has moved in a fluctuating way showing various ups and downs in the graph. In the past 6 months it has moved to 7.5. Analysts expected to earn 0.005 per share but the expectations fell short. Unit volume decline was most pronounced in august due to rise in product price but increased slowly last month after the promotional offer was introduced.

Sales Projection for next quarter and plans opted:

Sales projected for next quarter as per analysts is a 5% increase in the sale in the metro cities. Plans to launch the product in other cities like Kerala, Mangalore, Mumbai, Gujarat in the mid of April is expected to increase the revenue by another 6%. Promotional products will be launched before every festival to attract customers. Two more flavors of yummy chips will be launched end of next month. This is expected to increase the sale volume by another 0.05.

The per unit price of the product will be increased if there is an increase in the total volume sale in the next quarter.

Q 6. Case Study (10 Marks)

Problems with Email communication

StratAssemble, leading developer of web-based project and detail management services that improve communication and increase productivity, has released a white paper chronicling the growing problems associated with email--"Can Your Business Survive Email?"

The paper recounts the history of email, its changing role in business, and the emergence of new Web 2.0 collaboration tools, such as StratAssemble's PlanDone, that offer new and better ways for companies to manage their workflow.

Email usage drains workplace resources and hinders the timely completion of projects of all types. Given today's fast pace of business, communication in real-time and keeping staff on the same page are crucial to staying ahead. Yet delays caused by using email to coordinate business-critical data between individuals, departments, and remote locations actually slow productivity.

Top 10 critical email problems:

1. Lack of security

2. Attachment problems

3. Reliability problems

4. Spam clutter

5. Document version confusion

6. Scattered data

7. Unclear project direction

8. Project status confusion

9. Next step priority uncertainty

10. Lack of accountability

"Email has become a barrier to effective communication and productivity. StratAssemble's Plan Done encourages participation from everyone involved with a project's outcome and is available anytime and anywhere," said StratAssemble founder AJ Wacaser. "As email problems escalate, the Plan Done solution will become the method of choice for managing day-to-day operations of companies everywhere."

Transferring project and task functions from email to PlanDone's interactive platform helps teams build on each other's work. Ideas and opinions are shared, documented, and refined in constructive ways. Two powerful tools--priority ranking and deadline analysis--help staff focus precisely on first things first each day, ensuring last-minute changes and course corrections don't turn into unmanageable business fires. Unlike most other software, PlanDone supports individual styles and team methods rather than forcing everyone to conform to one rigid system.

StratAssemble's motto is "Work smarter. Live happier!" We believe in team creativity and sharing ideas, and are passionate about the collaborative process. Our purpose is to enable and inspire our customers to better manage their knowledgebase and workforces by providing a

simple, open platform where every staff member can assemble, participate and contribute--revolutionizing corporate communications and strategic planning.

Questions

1. Evaluate email communication as a tool for internal communication, based on the facts mentioned in the case.

2. How will you adapt email communication to overcome some of the problems mentioned in this case?

Answers

1. Evaluate email communication as a tool for internal communication, based on the facts mentioned in the case.

Email communication has help eliminate paper work in most of the organizations.

It has help organizations manage their work flow in a better way. In today's fast pace business communication email helps in keeping the staff informed about the various activities going on in the project which helps meeting deadlines.

The communication here is not only to the staff but also helps in keeping in touch with other departments and people at remote locations to increase their productivity speed.

It helps in maintaining the day to day activities in the companies.

Transferring project and task functions from email helps teams build on each other's work.

Ideas and opinions are shared, documented, and refined in constructive ways. Two powerful tools--priority ranking and deadline analysis-help staff focus precisely on first things first each day, ensuring last-minute changes and course corrections don't turn into unmanageable business fires.

These are the various advantages mentioned in the case which strongly prove that email is a tool for business communication.

2. How will you adapt email communication to overcome some of the problems mentioned in this case?

The main problems faced by email communication are mentioned below along with their solutions to overcome them:

1. Spam Clutter:

To overcome the spam problem avoid sending emails to known addresses ,check spam folder frequently and empty the spam folder, In case a email is received from an unknown sender do not open the email just report it as spam. If you repeatedly get spam messages report to your companies email department and ask them to look into the source of such spam messages. Regular practice of the above will help your email become spam free.

2. Scattered Data:

Try to group emails of similar discussion less than one folder so that you could get them easily when you need those emails. Create as many as separate folders needed for storing the mails. Try to set various labels to the emails for easier search. Also periodically delete emails not needed to

keep your mail box clean. You could also set priority to the emails received. In trying these steps you could keep your email box data in an orderly manner.

3. Attachment problems:

Scan documents before attaching them to the email. Also check if the contents are properly present after it is attached to the mail. Name the attachment properly so that the receiver knows the contents by seeing the name of the attachment.

4. Document version confusion:

When same documents are sent several times with new changes in it every time, it may lead to confusions ,so each time a document is sent it should be named followed by the version number so that it is not misleading for the receiver and the sender.

5. Project status confusion:

Similar to Document version confusion there would always be Project status confusion when mails are sent one after the other each day about the project status. The process the project, its status, priority and criticality should be sent mentioned with the date. So that when the employee's review the status they get, the up-to-date details of the bugs and issues present and not get mixed up with the past bug status. This would help them to work on the priority task and complete them before the dead line. Hence the status of the project should be very clear with the dates.