Chapter 11: Organizational Communication

PSY 3204 - INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Types of Organizational Communication

1. Upward communication
- Communication of subordinates to superior or of employee to manager
- Employee speaks directly with an “open door” policy - such policy is often not practical because employees
feel threatened by managers and may not willing to communicate bad news

Types of Upward Communication

A. Serial communication
- minimize the number of diff people communicating with the top executive
- message relay to the supervisor and then to the other supervisor until it reached the top management
- relieves the top executive of the demands
- Several drawbacks:
a. Content and tone of the message changes as it moves from one person to another; are seldom
received the way they were sent
b. Bad news and complaints are seldom relayed, in part due to stress associated with delivering bad
news; reluctance to relay bad news leads to minimize unpleasant messages effect (MUM); for
employee MUM effect is an excellent survival strategy
c. It is less effective the farther two people are from one another - proximity matters

B. Attitude survey
- asking employees to rate opinion in such factors as satisfaction with pay, working conditions and
supervisors and list complaints or suggestion
- to increase trust - share the results

C. Focus group and exit interview

- Focus group - outside consultant meets with the group of current employees to get their opinions and
suggestions
- Exit interview - organization can learn much by listening to the “real” reason that an employee is
leaving the organization

D. Suggestion boxes
- the use of 1-800-number or suggestion or complaints box
- for employee to relay feelings in an anonymous manner - provide safe voice for subordinates and
consumers
- to be effective - management should respond timely

E. Third-party facilitators
- Liaison - taking employees complaints and suggestion and personally working with the management
- Ombudsperson - same to liaison but is neutral and works for a solution that is acceptable to both
employees and management.

2. Downward communication
- superior to subordinate or management to employees
Types of Downward Communication
A. Bulletin boards
- main use is to communicate non-work related opportunities such as scholarship, optional meetings and
items for sale
- important info is seldom seen because it is not appropriate place to post a change of policy or
procedure
- Advantage: low cost and wide exposure to employees and visitors

B. Policy manual
- place for posting important changes in policy or procedures
- contains all rules under which employee must operate
- written in a highly technical language and should be written in a less technical style to encourage easier
understanding
- To reduce length problems of company manual:
a. Policy manual - very specific and lengthy, containing all rules and policies under which the
organization operates
b. Employee handbook - much shorter and contains only most essential policies and rules, general
summaries of less important rules

C. Newsletters
- designed to bolster employee morale by discussing happy or innocuous events such as the three B’s
(babies, birthday and ball game scores)
- contains info for celebrating employees successes, provide feedback on how well the organization is
doing, introducing new employee and providing reminders about org changes
- trend is to send them electronically; email or an intranet - allows for faster info dissemination and
greater flexibility for making changes and updates

D. Intranet
- organization-wide version of the internet
- useful aspect is the speed to survey employees about new ideas
- Advantage: self-service, convenience and 24-hour support and reduce paper, printing and postage costs

3. Business communication
- transmission of business-related info among employees, management and customers

Types of Business Communication

a. Memorandum/Memos
o most common method
o Advantage: providing detailed info to a large number of people for a short time
o Disadvantage: not often read

b. Telephone calls
o in the past, this is appropriate when the message was short and when a few people is needed to
receive this
o with the conference call - number of people can be reached increased
 o Limitations: nonverbal cues are not available and conversations are not documented

c. Email
o advantage: easily documented, communication to employee at one time, quick response, instant
messaging
o drawbacks: misinterpretation due to the absence of paralanguage, too informal, expressing
negative emotions (flaming), not proof read messages

d. Voicemail - sophisticated phone-answering system), similar disadvantage to email

e. Business meeting

f. Office design
o mostly used “open” or “landscape” office design or “cube farm”; behind the design is that
employees will communicate between without physical barrier of walls
o Common design:
 Freestanding design/bullpen design - all desks are placed in a large area that is completely
open
 Uniform plans - desks are placed at uniform distance and are separated by panels into
cubicle areas
 Free-form workstations - combination of designs so that the diff needs of each worker can
be accommodated
o Trends in office design:
 Boulevard - wide hallway that runs through several departments - allow space for
impromptu employee communication, encourages interaction
 Portable offices - contains employee’s computer, files, and supplies that can be wheeled into
a walled office or cubicle when privacy is needed.

3. Informal communication
- info transmitted through the grapevine - they provide employees with info, power and entertainment
- Four grapevine:
o `Single strand grapevine - passes message in a single way manner
o Gossip grapevine - passes the message to only selected group people and only one person passes;
not everyone has the chance to receive or will receive it
o Probability grapevine - tells the message to a few other employees, and they in turn randomly pass
the message along to other employees
o Cluster - tells only a few selected employees who in turn tell a few selected others.
- Receiver category in the grapevine
o Isolated - received less than half the info
o Liaison - both received most of the info and passed in to others
o Dead-enders - heard most of the info but seldom passed it
- Two types of info in the grapevines: - contain poor substantial info
o Gossip - primarily about the individual and the content of the message lacks significance to the
people gossiping
o Rumor - contains info that is significant to the lives of those communicating the message - about an
individual or topic
 these info can relieve stress and anxiety, respond to perceived org wrongs in a non-aggressive
way, maintain sense of control and increase their power
- Common topics - personnel changes, job security, external reputation of the company

4. Interpersonal communication
- exchange of a message across a communication channel from one person to another
- begins with a sender encoding and transmitting a message across the channel and ends with another
person or the receiver
- Three main problems:
A. Problem Area 1
- Intended message versus message sent
- sender must know what she wants to say and how she wants to say it, problem occur when
the message the person send is not the message she intended
- three solutions:
o Thinking about what you want to communication
o Practice what you want to communication
o Learn better communication skills

B. Problem Area 2
- Message sent versus message received
- many factors affect how the message is received:
o Actual word used - particular word may mean one thing in one situation but
something else in another; it may also mean one thing to one person and something
different to another; word or phrases that are vague can also cause problem; gender
is another factor related to the used of words

o Communication channel - through which the message is transmitted - can be orally,

non-verbally, through second party, written medium; transmitting a message through
an inappropriate channel interferes with the messages’ meaning and accurate
interpretation

o Noise - surrounding a transmission channel; can be defined as any interference that

affects roper reception of a message.

o Nonverbal cues - five categories:

 Body language - how we move and position our body
 Paralanguage - tone, tempo, volume, number and duration of pauses, rate of
speech
 Use of space - major spatial distance zone
1. Intimacy z - physical contact to 18 inch
2. Personal distance z - 18 inch to 4 feet
3. Social distance z - 4 ft to 12 ft
4. Public distance z - 12 ft to 25 ft
 Use of time - early bird, late - tardy - it reveals attitude

o Artifacts - objects that a person wears or with which she surround herself
  Arrangement:
o Open desk arrangement - visitor can sit next to the other person who
sits behind the desk
o Close desk arrangement - visitor must sit across from the person
behind the desk
 Office characteristics:
o Messy office - active and busy
o Organized offices - active and achievement oriented
o Clean office - organized and introvert
 Office characteristics with personalities:
a. Dominant, achievement-oriented managers - do not decorate the
office with anything other than standard furniture
b. Outgoing managers - photographs of vacation and travel
c. Introverted managers - plants and paintings to remind them of home
d. Organized manager - had cartoons to show that even though they were
neat and compulsive, they also had sense of humour

o Amount of information - message contains more info that we can hold in memory:
- Leveled - unimportant details are removed
- Sharpened - interesting and unusual info is kept
- Assimilated - modified to fit your existing beliefs and knowledge
- Reactions to communication overload - employees receives more
communication he can handle
- to reduce the stress:
1. Omission - conscious decision not to process certain types of info
2. Error - employee attempts to deal with every message she receives
but in so doing, each processed messages including reception error -
not intentional; message can be redundant
3. Queuing - placing the work into queue or waiting line - deal based on
importance, timeliness or the sender itself
4. Escape - usually through absenteeism and ultimately through
resignation - response often not beneficial to org but beneficial to
employee
5. Using gatekeeper - person who screens potential communication and
allows only most important to go through - receptionist and
secretaries
6. Using multiple channels - organization reduced the amount of info
going to one person by directing some to others - hire others to deal
with matters (finance - bookkeeper)and vendors (assistant manager)

C. Problem Area 3
- Message received versus message interpreted - meaning can change depending on the way which
the receiver interprets the message
- Affected by various factors:
a. Listening skills - managers spend more time listening that doing activity - we need to develop
listening effectiveness
 b. Styles of listening - recognize that everyone has a particular “listening style”
- In Geier and Downey Attitudinal Listening Profile (ALP), 6 main listening style: LISTEN
i. Leisure - “good-time” people who listen only for word that indicate pleasure
ii. Inclusive - listen to main ideas
iii. Stylistic - listen to the way the communication is presented
iv. Technical - “just the facts, maam” listening - hears and retains large amount of details, but
does not understand the meaning
v. Emphatic - tunes in to the feelings of the speaker, most likely to pay attention to nonverbal
cues;
vi. Nonconforming - attends only to info that is consistent with her way of thinking
a) Emotional state - emotion affect how we receive the info
b) Cognitive ability - not bright enough to understand it
c) Personal biases/bias

Improving employee communication skills

- org looks for employee with excellent comm skills
- Communication skills:
A. Interpersonal communication skills - one of the most common method to increase this is the training
workshop - often bring short-term improvement in skills
B. Written communication skills - to improve this, approaches:
a) Improving writing skills - teaching employees the most important concepts of writing
b) Readability (by making material easier to read) - comm is effective if employees can understand what
is written