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Examples of Grapevine Network of Communication

1. Suppose the profit amount of a company is known. Rumor is spread that this much profit is there and on thatbasis bonus is declared.

2. CEO may be in relation to the Production Manager. They may have friendly relations with each other.

Pros and Cons of Grapevine Communication

Advantages of Grapevine Communication

1. Grapevine channels carry information rapidly. As soon as an employee gets to know some confidentialinformation, he becomes inquisitive and passes the details then to his closest friend who in turn passes it toother. Thus, it spreads hastily.

2. The managers get to know the reactions of their subordinates on their policies. Thus, the feedback obtainedis quick compared to formal channel of communication.

3. The grapevine creates a sense of unity among the employees who share and discuss their views with eachother. Thus, grapevine helps in developing group cohesiveness.

4. The grapevine serves as an emotional supportive value.5. The grapevine is a supplement in those cases where formal communication does not work.

Disadvantages of Grapevine Communication

1. The grapevine carries partial information at times as it is more based on rumors. Thus, it does not clearlysdepict the complete state of affairs.

2. The grapevine is not trustworthy always as it does not follows official path of communication and is spreadmore by gossips and unconfirmed report.

3. The productivity of employees may be hampered as they spend more time talking rather than working.4. The grapevine leads to making hostility against the executives.5. The grapevine may hamper the goodwill of the organization as it may carry false negative information about

the high level people of the organization.

A smart manager should take care of all the disadvantages of the grapevine and try to minimize them. At the sametime, he should make best possible use of advantages of grapevine.

Three Characteristics of the Grapevine

First, the grapevine is not controlled by management. The grapevine is mainly controlled by the employees

themselves. As employees control the grapevine information, sometimes the information may be accurate and

sometimes the information may be inaccurate.

Secondly, most employees perceive and believe that the grapevine contains more reliable information than the

information received from upper management. What employees may or may not realize is that many times the

grapevine contains false information.

rapevine is an informal channel of business communication. It is called so because it stretches throughout the organization in all directionsrespective of the authority levels. Man as we know is a social animal. Despite existence of formal channels in an organization, the informalhannels tend to develop when he interacts with other people in organization. It exists more at lower levels of organization.

rapevine generally develops due to various reasons. One of them is that when an organization is facing recession, the employees sensencertainty. Also, at times employees do not have self-confidence due to which they form unions. Sometimes the managers show preferentiaeatment and favor some employees giving a segregated feeling to other employees. Thus, when employees sense a need to exchange theews, they go for grapevine network as they cannot use the formal channel of communication in that case. Generally during breaks in cafetee subordinates talk about their superiors attitude and behavior and exchange views with their peers. They discuss rumors about promotionansfer of other employees. Thus, grapevine spreads like fire and it is not easy to trace the cause of such communication at times.

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Lastly, the grapevine may be largely available to simply serve the interests of the people it involves. Many times,

employees use the grapevine to begin rumors that serve their own interests, with little regard to the people they

affect.

Characteristics:

Accurate or Inaccurate The inaccuracy of the grapevine has more to do with the message input than with the

output. For example, the grapevine is noted as a carrier of rumor, primarily because it carries informal messages. If

the input is rumor, and nothing more, the output obviously will be inaccurate. But the output may be an accurate

description of the original rumor.

Incomplete Oral communication is the source of incomplete communication. It travels through innumerable persons.

Every person may add to it something of his own or cut it short. As a result the news gets distorted. Nobody is

prepared to own responsibility of rumors. Most of the people deny their oral communication. Consequently, grapevine

communication has no reliability.

Incomplete communication can sometimes prove damaging to the organization. Incorrect and confusing

communication may create difficulties for the employees and the managers. As a result, many baseless things maybe said about the organization.

Influential - the grapevine is influential, both favorably and unfavorably. The grapevine accomplishes so much

positively and so much negatively that it is difficult to determine whether its net effects are positive or negative.