Summary of the book: 'Organizational Behaviour' (8th Edition, same as 9th Edition) - Andrzej Huczynski and David Buchanan. Chapters: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 21 and 22.
Chapter 7: Communication
Key terms:
§ Social intelligence § Non-verbal communication
§ Communication process § Power tells
§ Coding § High context culture
§ Decoding § Low context culture
§ Perceptual filters § Impression management
§ Noise § Emotional intelligence
§ Feedback § Communication climate
Communication is central to understanding organizational behaviour for several reasons:
§ Communication affects organizational performance and individual career prospects.
§ Very few people work alone, and the job of most managers involves interacting with other
people, often more than 90 per cent of their time.
§ Communication is seen as a problem in many organizations.
§ In an increasingly diverse multicultural society, sensitivity to the norms and expectations of
other cultures is vital to effective cross-cultural communication.
§ New technology is radically changing our patterns of communication.
Henry Mintzberg (2009) emphasizes the need for managers to have ‘information competencies’, or a
range of communication skills. John Kotter (1999) found that general managers spend most of their
time talking to others, often on topics not related to the business, but central to maintaining networks
and relationships, and to developing goals and action plans.
Social intelligence: the ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others and to manage our
relationships accordingly.
Daniel Goleman (2006) argues that social intelligence is a special set of capabilities, including social
awareness (what we sense about others) and social facility (how we act on that awareness). Each of
these dimensions has four ingredients.
Social awareness Primal empathy ‘reading’ others’ emotions intuitively from small clues (such as brief
facial expression)
Attunement Understanding the other person through complete and sustained
attention and careful listening
Empathic accuracy Explicit understanding, through observation and inference, of what
someone feels and thinks
Social cognition Knowing how the social world works and what is expected; reading the
social signals
Social facility Synchrony Harmoniously orchestrating our interactions with the right gestures
(smiles, nods, posture, timing)
Self-preservation Ability in interactions to trigger desired emotional responses in others;
charisma
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, Influence Shaping the outcomes of interactions with tact and control, tuning
actions to fit the circumstances
Concern Capacity for compassion, sharing others’ emotions of elation or
distress
Communication process: the transmission of information, and the exchange of meaning, between at
least two people.
Interpersonal communication = one-to-one = F2F
The process of exchange is illustrated in this figure. It shows the main elements of interpersonal
communication. It’s based on the work of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (1949).
Coding is the stage in the interpersonal
communication process in which the
transmitter chooses how to express a
message for transmission to someone else.
Decoding is the stage in this process in
which the recipient interprets a message
transmitted to them by someone else. We
each have our own perceptual filters which
can interface with accurate decoding.
Perceptual filters are individual
characteristics, predispositions, and
preoccupations that interfere with the effective
transmission and receipt of messages. To be
successful, transmitters and receivers need to
share a common ‘codebook’.
Our motives, emotions and health can constitute noise. This means that factors outside the
communication process interfere with or distract attention from the transmission and reception of the
intended meaning. Coding and decoding are affected by anxiety, pressure, stress and our levels of
enthusiasm and excitement.
Feedback processes through which the transmitter of a message detects whether and how that
message has been received and decoded. When we communicate face-to-face, we get instant
feedback from what others say and how they say it. This rich feedback loop helps us to exchange
information more effectively.
Communication is central to organizational effectiveness, but this claim has practical implications. We
assume that organizations function better where:
§ Communications are open.
§ Relationships are based on mutual understanding and trust.
§ Interactions are based on cooperation rather than competition.
§ People work together in teams.
§ Decisions are reached in a participative way.
These features, however, are not universal, and do not feature in all countries or cultures. The main
barriers to effective organizational communication are:
§ Power differences: research consistently shows that employees distort upward
communication, and that superiors often have a limited understanding of subordinates’ roles,
experiences and problems.
§ Gender differences: men and women use different conversational styles which can lead to
misunderstanding; men tend to talk more and give information while women tend to listen and
reflect more.
§ Physical surroundings: room size and layout influence our ability to see others and our
readiness to participate in conversations and discussions.
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, § Language: even within one country, variations in accent and dialect can make communication
difficult.
§ Cultural diversity: different cultures have different norms and expectations concerning formal
and informal conversations; lack of awareness of those norms creates misunderstanding.
Maureen Guirdham (2002) offers this advice for improving our communications:
§ Face-to-face: constantly check the feedback and correct mistakes and misunderstanding.
§ Reality checks: do not assume that others decode messages in the wat we intended, check
the way the messages have been interpreted.
§ Place and time: choose the time and place with sensitivity and care.
§ Empathetic listening: see things from the other person’s point of view.
The word verbal also causes decoding problems. Verbal means ‘in words’, which can be either
spoken or written. Verbal agreement and verbal warning can thus refer either to oral or to written
conversation, and both are contrasted with non-verbal communication.
To get the information we want, we use
a range of questioning techniques (on
the left).
We also control our conversations
through a range of conscious and
unconscious verbal and non-verbal
signals which tell the parties to a
conversation. These signals reveal
emotions which in turn shape the
further response of the listener. The
four main conversation control signals
are explained in the next table.
Non-verbal communication (popularly known as body language) is the process of coding meaning
through behaviours such as facial expressions, limb gestures, and body postures. Maureen Guirdham
(2002) lists 136 non-verbal communication behaviours, in nine categories:
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, 1. Occulesics: eye behaviours
2. Kinesics: body and limb movements
3. Proxemics: the use of space
4. Paralanguage: tone and pitch of voice
5. Facial expressions
6. Posture
7. Chromatics: the use of colour
8. Chronemics: the use of time
9. Haptics: bodily contacts
When verbal and non-verbal messages contradict each other, it is the non-verbal message which is
believed. Guirdham describes non-verbal communication as a ‘relationship-language’. This is how we
communicate trust, boredom, submission, dislike and friendship without stating our feelings directly.
Some interpretations of gesture clusters are shown in the next table:
We often use preening gestures: smoothing our clothes, stroking our hair, straightening our posture.
Posture mirroring is when friends are standing, sitting and even holding cups or glasses in almost
identical manner. Friendship groups also copy each others’’ gestures, this is knows as gesture
mirroring. In also use non-verbal communication to show how important we are with power tells. The
power tells that dominant people display incule using open postures and invasive hand gestures,
smiling less, looking away while speaking, speaking first and dominating the conversation and
interrupting others.
Edward Hall (1976, 1989) distinguished between high context culture (a culture whose members rely
heavily on a range of social and non-verbal clues when communicating with others and interpreting
their messages) and low context culture (a culture whose members focus on the written and spoken
word when communicating with others and interpreting their messages).
High context culture Low context culture
Establish relationship first Get down to business first
Value personal relations and goodwill Value expertise and performance
Agreement based on trust Agreement based on legal contract
Slow and ritualistic negotiations Fast and efficient negotiations
It is easy to see how misunderstanding can arise when high and low context cultures meet, unless
those communicating are sensitive to their respective differences. You can reduce these
misunderstandings with the following four rules (Robbins et al., 2010):
1. Assume that others are different.
2. Use description and avoid evaluation.
3. Practice empathy
4. Treat interpretations as working hypotheses.
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