Modelling Corporate Communications System †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Modelling Corporate Communications System. Answer: Introduction Communication is not just a process. It is an art of first reading or listening the information, understanding it, processing it and then transferring it (Gibson and Hodgetts, 2010). There is a big amount of efforts which goes into communication. Spoken language, body language, voice modulation and gesticulations are few of the significant communication features. If the other person is unable to understand any of these communication factors, then the process of communication fails. Communication means transferring information from a sender to a receiver, with the information that a receiver can understand. The process of communication starts with the sender to encode an idea which is sent in visual, writer, oral or some other form to the receiver. Decoding of message is done by the receiver and receiver tries to understand the message sent by the sender. Hence, in turn consequence in some change or action. However the process of communication could be interrupted by noise that is som ething which hinders communication (Zaumane, 2016). Communication comprises the sharing of information and idea. Whereas several individuals believe that communication is mainly in the oral or written form, communication is actually much more. A knowing look or a gentle touch could also communicate a message clear and loud, as can an angry slap or hard push. So, communication is an interaction amongst two individuals in which something is exchanged (Pincus, 1986). Information: Management is able to keep the employees well informed about the organizations programmes and plans. Effective communication is needed to communicate information to the staff. By sharing information, management is able to build loyalty amongst the workers. Social Interaction: Communication a chief source of social interactions. It assists individuals to express their emotions and feelings. Communication of emptions and moods assists to understand the members of the organization and hence the objectives of the organization and group could be effectively attained (D'Aprix, 2006). Improved performance: Effective communication eases clear information to the personnel. Hence, the personnel are able to better understand their job and feel more involved in them. This inspires better job satisfaction and performance (Ivancevich, Lorenzi and Crosby, 2014). Clarification: With the help of effective communication, management is able to clarify certain issues or matters with the employees. Sometimes, employees might ask queries on policies and plans of the organization. By communicating effectively, management can answer such queries. The management is also able to clarify the doubts/queries of the outsiders like suppliers, customers, etc. (Byrne and LeMay, 2006). Training and development: Communication is important for development and training of the employees. Trainers must be effective communicators. Excellent communication from the trainers side assists the trainees to understand easily the concept and other issues. Greater efficiency: There is a requirement of effective communication to attain greater efficiency in the company. At all levels managers need to communicate well, so that personnel attain greater returns at lesser cost (Berko, Wolvin and Curtis, 2014). Influence of Effective Decoding and Coding The model of communication process proposes that effectiveness of communication relies on the ability of the receiver and sender to accurately and efficiently decode and encode information. There are 4 factors identified by experts to impact the effectiveness of the decoding-encoding process. The first aspect is that receivers and senders capability and motivation to communicate the channel of communication (Rehmeyer, 2007). Few individuals better communicate via face-to-face conversation and prefer using this channel of communication. Others feel awkward communicating face to face; however feel comfortable via text messages and other instant messaging applications. Usually, the process of encoding-decoding is more effective when both the parties are expert at using the opted channel of communication and like using that communication medium (Cass, 2011). The second aspect is the degree to which both the parties have alike code books (dictionary of idioms, gestures, language, symbol and other tools used to communicate message) with the code books similar to this, the communication participants are capable of encoding and decoding more correctly since they both have the similar or alike meaning. The efficiency of communication is able improved since there is a fewer requirement for redundancy (like saying the same things in different methods) and lesser requirement for confirming feedback (so, are you saying this?) (Al-Ghamdi, Roy and Ahmed, 2007). The third factor which impacts the effectiveness of the process of encoding-deciding is the degree to which mental models are shared by both the parties regarding the context of the message. Metal models are the internal depictions amongst those features. When coder and decoder have shared common models, they have a mutual environmental understanding concerning to the information, so lesser communication is essential to clarify meaning about the situation. Notice that sharing of same mental models varies from sharing the same code book of the topic context. Mental models are knowledge structures of topics setting whereas codebooks consist of symbols used to communicate content of the message (Quirke, 2008). The fourth factor inducing the effectiveness of the process of encoding-decoding is the experience of sender to communicate the message. As individuals turns to be more acquainted with the subject matter, they build more colourful or efficient language to define the subject. In simple sentence, they turn out to be more capable at using the symbols codebook to communicate the message (Chia, 2011). This is comparable to the effect of sport practice or job training. The more experiences and practices attained at communicating a subject, the more individuals learn how to transmit efficiently others with that information. The two major kinds of communication channels are non-verbal and verbal. Several forms of Web-based communication are commonly used in organization, email or electronic mail is one amongst the most popular. Even though email is one of the proficient and a beneficial cabinet, however it is comparatively poor at communication emotions; it inclined to diminish the respect and politeness; it is an ineffective mode for communicating in novel, complex and ambiguous circumstances; and it contributes to overload of information. Websites like virtual reality platforms, Facebook, wikis and other social media forms are becoming popular in the organization. Social media comprises of web-based tools (applications, websites, etc.) which permit the users to produce and exchange information. They serve various functions, comprising of presentation of the identity of a person, empowering conversations, information sharing, sensing others presence in the virtual space, relationship maintenance, reveal ing status or reputation. Non-verbal communication comprises of physical distance, voice intonation, facial gestures and silence as well. Unlike verbal communication, non-verbal communication is less bound to rules and is usually non-conscious and automatic. Few non-verbal communications are automatic by a process known as emotional contagion (Chen, Silverthorne and Hung, 2006). The 2 important factors to be considered while choosing an appropriate channel for communication in a specific situation are: Social Acceptance and Media Richness. Social Acceptance: It denotes to how well the medium of communication is supported and proved by an individual, team and the company (Daft and Lengel, 2014). The first aspect in social acceptance is the teams and organizations norms concerning the usage of definite channels of communication. Norms partially describe why discussions over telephone are more common amongst the employees in few organizations, while instant messaging or email is the medium of choice in other companies. Few companies believe meeting the personnel face-to-face, while similar conversations and emails are erratic events somewhere else. Norms also form the use of media of communication for individuals in particular role. For example, employees in the frontline are less expected to personally visit the CEO of the organization, whereas, most of them are expected to write an email. The second factor for social acceptance is the preference of an individual for particular channel of communication. Sometimes it is e xplored that a co-worker prefers to send an e-mail instead of voice-mail, or desire to meet is personnel instead of other thinking its necessity. Such preferences are because of personality traits, an also due to previous experience and reinforcement with specific channels. The thirds factor of social acceptance is to deliberate symbolic meaning of channel. Some channels of communication are reviewed as impersonal while rest are quite personal; few are reflected professionals and rest are casual; few are not cool and other are (Bovee and Thill, 2012). Media Richness: Accompanied with social acceptance, individuals select media to communication grounded on their media richness. It is defined as the capacity of the medium to carry the data, the variety and volume of information which could be transmitted during a particular time (Daft and Lengel, 2014). The below diagram demonstrated various channels of communication organized in a richness hierarchy, with lean data and face to face interaction- merely reports at the end. A channel of communication has high richness when it is capable of conveying multiple cues (like non-verbal and verbal information), permits timely feedback to sender from receiver, permits the sender to customize message to the receiver and utilizes complex symbols (like phrases and words with multiple meaning). In media richness hierarchy, communication is at the top of the media, since it permits communicating both non-verbally and verbally at the same time, to obtain feedback almost instantly from the receiver, to spontaneously modify the style and message, and to use complex language like idioms and metaphors (Wzi?tek, 2016). Barriers to Effective Communication Despite of the best intentions of the receiver and sender to communicate, numerous barriers known as noise hinder the effective information exchange (Burnett and Dollar, 2009). The first obstacle in the communication is the imperfect perceptual process of both receiver and sender. Receivers doesnt listen properly and sender assumes that information has been properly understood. Expectations and needs impacts the signals noticed and ignored. The people are not even better as sender. According to the studies people face difficulty stepping out of their own perceptions and stepping into others perspective, so people end up overestimating that how well others understand the message communicated by us (Larkin and Larkin, 2014). The second barrier is that occasionally messages get filtered on their way down or up the organizational hierarchy. Filtering might cause delaying or deleting the negative information or using works which are less harsh, so the message sounds to be more favourable. Sometimes crucial information is also filtered which may change the complete meaning of the message to be delivered causing miscommunication (Welch and Jackson, 2007). The third barrier is the language difference, even when two individuals speak the same language, the meaning for both of them are different for a specific phrase and word. For instance, a French employee may call an event a catastrophe as a casual exaggeration, whereas somebody in Germany typically interprets this word literally as an earth-shaking event. It doesnt matter how well a person knows a language, phrases and words have enough ambiguity to generate confusion (Goldhaber, Porter, Yates and Lesniak, 2013). As the cultural diversity and globalization are increasing, there are high chances that issues of cross cultural communication may arise and its the fourth barrier to effective communication. Cultures could be differentiated on the grounds of whether they are low-context and use direct style of speech or are high context and use indirect style of speech. In cultures having high context, in order to understand the message a close observation in the context in which it takes place is required, whereas in the low context cultures, speech is more direct and can be considered at the face value (Downs and Hazen, 2012). In cross culture communication, language is also a most obvious challenge. In verbal communication sometimes words might be easily misunderstood in verbal communication by the receiver. Non-verbal communication also signifies other potential areas of misunderstanding across cultures because many non-conscious gestures have the similar denotation round the globe, however deli berate gestures have diverse meanings (Wieseke, Ahearne and Dick, 2009). The sixth barrier to the communication is the Gender stereotypes; it establishes strong expectations regarding how women and men communicate. Men are expected to converse in an assertive way, whereas women are expected to be more relationship-oriented in the style of their communication. Violation of these stereotypes creates problems for women, and can prompt reaction; they are less powerful when they are communicating in an assertive way and their performance is negatively assessed (Hargie and Tourish, 2009). Communicating the Message Effectively Getting the message across to the receiver, the communication happens effectively when a receiver is capable of receiving and understanding the message. In order to complete this challenging task, the sender should learn to emphasize with the receiver, repeat the message, chose the suitable time for the discussion and instead of being evaluative it should be descriptive (Littlejohn and Foss, 2008). Active listening is the process of sensing actively the signals of the sender, assessing them correctly and responding suitably (Poster, 2014). There are 3 elements of active listening i.e. sensing, evaluating and responding. Sensing is the process of receiving signals from the sender and paying attention to sender. Evaluating component comprises of understanding the significance of the message and remembering it. The third component of active listening is responding, it is a feedback given by the receiver to sender, which directs and inspires the speaker for communicating (Tourish and Hargie, 2009). In earlier times, personnel used to receive the official news by hard copy magazines and newsletters. Though this means of communication is still been used by few companies to communicate, however most of the companies have swapped it with web-based information sources. The organization magazines are now published on web pages or circulated in PDF format. The benefit of this e-zines is that organization news are now been distributed and prepared speedily (Clampitt, 2009). Direct communication with the top management Senior executives can better understand if they are able to meet directly with employees and other stakeholders. The strategies such as town hall meetings are followed by the top management to interact with their colleagues. Some companies conduct personnel roundtable forums to listen to the options from a small set of staff regarding various problems. Following such direct strategies of communication possibly minimise the filtering, as management listens directly to employees. In the similar way it assists the management in understanding the organizational problems thoroughly and quickly. Also, employees would have more responsiveness for the decisions taken by the management because the situation was discussed with them before taking the decision (Malmelin, 2007). It does not matter how much the leaders of the organization tries to have communication via wikis, e-zines and other methods, personnel will still depend on the oldest channel of communication, i.e. corporate grapevine. The grapevine is an informal and unstructured informal network established on social relationships instead of job descriptions or organisational charts (Bennett, Owers and Tucker, 2010). Some eras ago, according to the research conducted, stated that the grapevine transmits information very quickly throughout the organizations, in all the directions. The classic pattern is a cluster chain, whereby a few individual vigorously transmit rumours to several others (TowersWatson, 2010). The grapevine works with the help of informal social networks, so it is more active where personnel have alike backgrounds and are capable of communicating easily. Several rumours appear to have at least a seed of truth, probably since they are communicated through media-rich communication channels (example face to face) and personnel gets motivation to effectively communicate. However, the grapevine misrepresents information by erasing fine details and amplifying main points of the story (Akkirman and Harris, 2005). Few of these features may be still stand correct, however other characteristics of the grapevine almost definitely have transformed as blogs, social networking sites and emails have swapped the traditional water cooler discussion as gossip sources. For instance, numerous Facebook sites are themed about particular organizations, permitting customers and workforces to vent their grievances regarding specific companies. Along with modifying the network and speed of corporate grapevines, information technologies have stretched these networks not just around the next cubicle but around the globe (Wright and Noe, 2011). Conclusion For a business organization communication is its life blood. No organization will be able to progress or attain success, develop reputation, and win customers and friends without effective skills of communication. Organizations will continue to operate well by leaving the employees to do their jobs and let internal communication take care of itself. Communication can improve the organizational effectiveness. The more information individuals have, more promptly they get it, and the better connections they have with other people in the company, and this will lead to better work of the organization, which in turn helps the people to feel better about their jobs and about the company. The ultimate beneficiaries of all this are the organization, community and the target population, which finds itself with community respect, satisfied participants and efficient and committed staff members. In an organization the communication becomes effective and successful when the communication process is implemented. Employees will be able to develop their skills of communication when theyll be following the communication process and are staying away from various barriers. 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