Communication Channel in Organizational Communication
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This article discusses communication channels in organizational communication, including formal and informal channels, and how to establish and manage communication effectively.
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Running head: COMMUNICATION CHANNEL COMMUNICATION CHANNEL Name of the student: Name of the University: Author's Note:
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1COMMUNICATION CHANNEL 2.1. Communication channels: In organizational communication, the channel refers to the sharing of information for the senders to the recipients. For efficient communication, proper determination of most appropriate channel and medium is quite difficult. In the organization, the information flows backward, forwards and sideways and the communication channels refer to the ways that the information will flow. In this communication web, the managers become the primary link. This is due to that fact the decisions and directions flow upwards, sideways and backwards already depends upon the position of the managers in the communication web. The reports from the lower level floe upwards, the higher-level managers share information to the employees through downwards communication and the communication among the employees of same level mainly allows the sideways or horizontal communication channels. General communication channels include oral and written means. The oral channels include the direct communication, telephone calls and presentations. Written on the other hand includes reports, emails and memos (Georgescu & Popescul 2015, p. 280). This communication channel differs from rich to lean between which the communicators select one mode and utilize them properly to profit the organization. The rich channels are more interactive and gives the communicators a both way communication opportunity. This also allow both the receivers and speaker to read even the non-verbal messages. The lean channels on the contrary, present information without allowing for immediate interaction by only presenting the facts. These rich and lean channels have categories according to their effectiveness. The richest channels include face to face meetings and in person oral presentation where the communicators change share their thoughts immediately. The rich channels include video conference and online
2COMMUNICATION CHANNEL meeting which are however not effective as richest one. The lean channels include phone call, teleconference, video and voice messages where the communicators share their ideas in spite of being in different places. The leanest channels only allow one-way communication at a time which includes, blog; report; newsletter; flier; brochure; email; social media posts and phone texts (Wang, Pauleen & Zhang 2016, p. 6). However, as the number of communication channels have grown in these recent years in order to cope up with the demand of the global business, the communicationinthebusinessorganization,therearetwoprominentchannelsformal communicationandinformalcommunication.Basedontheefficiency,associated communicators and reliability, these two-communication channel have different aspects to explore. 2.1.1. Formal and informal communication channels: The communication in which the flow of information is already defined, is the referred as formal communication. This type of communication flows is hierarchical chain of command that remains established by the organizations themselves. This type of communication is followed exclusively in the workplace and the employees are compelled to abide by this channel of communication to effetely perform their responsibilities (Mishra, Boynton & Mishra 2014, p. 185). The formal communication channel transmits information such as the goal, policies and procedures of the organizations as mentioned before, this type of communication channel follows chain of command which means information flows from the manager to the subordinates and they’re in turn pass this information to the next levels of staff. The formal communication channel s the newsletters of the companies that gives the clients of the organizations and employees an implicit idea of the goal and vision of the companies.Thisalsoincludesthetransferofinformationwiththeregardstoreports,
3COMMUNICATION CHANNEL memoranda,directionsandscheduledmeetinginthischainofcommand(Hänninen& Karjaluoto 2017, p. 460). The formal communication channel also includes the customer satisfaction survey, manual of the employers, annual reports, review meetings and business plan. Through the formal communication system, the higher authorities send email to the sales teams describing new commission structures for the new set of sales targets which will be sent making theformalnetworkofthecompanyconnectingthemanagersandsubordinates.Formal communication follows the practices designed by the official policy, technological systems and hierarchy (Piekkari, Welch & Welch 2014). Formal communication is mainly one way in the traditional organizations which are initiated by management and received by the employees. This is also quite authoritative as this originates from the highest levels of the organizations. On the other hand, some of the actions and decision of the organizations are also taken in the informal channels of communication. This is important as the structure hierarchical web of communication can never always function effectively on their own. Therefore, there is a communication channel expert that operate outside the communication web. However. This type of communication channel often creates disruption in the chain of command. This is the reason whythegoodmanagersneedtofindafinebalancebetweentheformalandinformal communication channel (Pearson 2017, p. 112). Informal communication channel does not follow the authority lives. It is purely established around the social affiliation of the members of the organization. This is the reason why this network is referred as the grapevine communication. An example of informal communication can include the managers walking around and adopting a hand-on approach to hand the employee queries. In order to solve minor employee issues, the communication among the employees in the relaxed atmosphere which is often encouraged by
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4COMMUNICATION CHANNEL the organizations which also falls under informal communication channel (Wang, Pauleen & Zhang 2016). Quality circles, different training programs and team work are outside of the chain of commandthereforefallundertheinformalcommunicationchannels.Thereareseveral differences present in the formal and informal communication system. Formal communication involve documentation while the informal communication usually leaves no recorded trace for sharing. The informal communication can occur in any direction in the organization and connect the people with different roles and status (Ruesch et al. 2017). Informal communication needs to be managed properly as this can cross the boundaries within the organizations and commonly separated from the work flows. This channel is often used to manage people who do not work together but share common interests or affiliation in the activities of the organizations. This is used to motivate the employees to perform their jobs well. The managers also use this type of channel to convey their messages and transmit important information. 2.2. Establishing and managing communication: Themanagementoftheorganizationsusuallyutilizebothformalandinformal communication channels through three types of communication flow. These are downward, upwardandhorizontalflowofcommunicationbutamongthese,downwardandupward communication is more formal than the horizontal one. It is used in the informal communication system to manage the motivation among the employees themselves.As mentioned before, the formal communication is the flow of information and messages. This mainly follows the downward or top down flow of communication (Georgescu & Popescul 2015, p. 279). The managers hold this type to be one of the most essential factors that manipulate the success of the organizations. The mangers create concise communications and maintain a respectful tone to
5COMMUNICATION CHANNEL ensure that the employeesget proper understanding of the messages shared through the downwardcommunication(Wang,Pauleen&Zhang2016,p.7).However,inthis communication system, differences of experience, levels of authority and status can lead to the misunderstanding as well as misinterpretations. The upwards communication helps the managers to transmit information from the lower levels to the higher ones in the organizations (Allen 2016, p. 139). This is mainly the responses of the downward communication requests for actions, opinions and information. This channel of upward communication includes direct verbal, telephonic and written modes. The managers manage this type of communication in the decision-making process as this reveals the actual situation of the organizations and the strength of the companies (Verhoef, Kannan & Inman 2015, p. 180). Through this, the organizations get proper idea how they get competitive advantage from the aspect of their human resource and mitigate the employee issues in a very initial situation. Upward communication manipulates the downward communication as this makes the employees satisfied with the level access to the channels of upward communication and they feel important for the organization they are serving. The horizontal communication refers to flow of information across the functional areas on the same level of an organization. It is the proper transmission of information among the divisions, departments and units operating in the same level in the organizational hierarchy. The managers use this type of communication flow to share information informally (Van et al. 2017, p. 435). This is the proper method of solving problems internally which increase with then miscommunication or gap among the departments working in the same project. Thus, the managers can increase collaboration among the teams of subordinate employees and implement changes if needed. This is the way this type of communication system an effectively enhance the
6COMMUNICATION CHANNEL productivity of the firms by sharing information informally had resolute conflicts among the people working in the same level (Wang, Pauleen & Zhang 2016, p.10). This communication system helps the organizations to implement the top-level decisions on the employees on the lower level. It makes this process easier as the employees guarantee coordination among themselves. This is also used for increasing job satisfaction among the employees of the organizations and motivate them to create more employee empowerment in communication.
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7COMMUNICATION CHANNEL References: Allen, M., 2016. Transformational Organizational Change, Reinforcing Structures, and Formal Communication.InStrategicCommunicationforSustainableOrganizations(pp.139-188). Springer, Cham. Georgescu, M. and Popescul, D., 2015. Social Media–the new paradigm of collaboration and communication for business environment.Procedia Economics and Finance,20, pp.277-282. Hänninen, N. and Karjaluoto, H., 2017. The effect of marketing communication on business relationship loyalty.Marketing Intelligence & Planning,35(4), pp.458-472. Mishra, K., Boynton, L. and Mishra, A., 2014. Driving employee engagement: The expanded roleofinternalcommunications.InternationalJournalofBusinessCommunication,51(2), pp.183-202. Pearson, R., 2017. Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice and the idea of dialogue. InPublic relations theory(pp. 111-131). Routledge. Piekkari, R., Welch, D. and Welch, L.S., 2014.Language in international business: The multilingual reality of global business expansion. Edward Elgar Publishing. Ruesch, J., Bateson, G., Pinsker, E.C. and Combs, G., 2017.Communication: The social matrix of psychiatry. Routledge. van den Boer, Y., Pieterson, W., Arendsen, R. and van Dijk, J., 2017. Towards a model of source and channel choicesin business-to-government service interactions: A structural equation modeling approach.Government information quarterly,34(3), pp.434-456.
8COMMUNICATION CHANNEL Verhoef, P.C., Kannan, P.K. and Inman, J.J., 2015. From multi-channel retailing to omni-channel retailing: introduction to the special issue on multi-channel retailing.Journal of retailing,91(2), pp.174-181. Wang, W.Y., Pauleen, D.J. and Zhang, T., 2016. How social media applications affect B2B communicationandimprovebusinessperformanceinSMEs.IndustrialMarketing Management,54, pp.4-14.