Understanding Organizational Communication

This assignment delves into fundamental concepts of organizational communication. It examines cultural norms, gunny sacking behavior, empathy, stakeholder influence, social loafing, and the challenges in upward, downward, and horizontal communication flows. The document also discusses strategies for resolving these issues and explores the development of self-concept through social interaction and comparison.

Running head: COMMUNICATION
Communication

COMMUNICATION 1
Cultural level rules
Cultural level rules are used in general and are used for the person whom we do not know well in
our culture. For Example- Politely saying “Hello, how are you?”
Gunny sacking
Gunny sacking is when somebody silently gathers frustrations and insults until “the last straw is
placed on them” reason for an exaggerated reaction. For example- A teen girl became angry and
lost her temper when her friend makes jokes about her shirt at the time when they were going
back home from school together. In the art class, the shirt of the teen girl got spots of paint and
whole day all the students were making jokes about it. In the school, time girl handled the jokes
silently. She "gunny sacked" them and finally, her friend's joke was the last straw.
Empathy
Empathy word is used many times in a psychological sense. Understanding the feeling of another
person or sharing their feeling is known as Empathy. For example- The feeling of empathy arises
at the time when Chris watched his friend was in stress while giving the PowerPoint presentation
in the class and thinking about his own presentation how stressful he was a day before.
Stakeholder
A stakeholder is a person, group or organization that is linked or have a concern in an
organization. Stakeholders can be affected or can affect the objectives, policies, and actions of
the organization. Example of Stakeholder- Creditors, investors, employees, partners, customers,
etc.
Social Loafing
The tendency of an individual to exert less efforts while working in a group as compared to
working individually. Example – Rope pulling experiment of Ringelmann.
Problems in Upward, downward and horizontal flow
Upward- Many managers do not like if junior provides the feedback or idea and due to this
employees feel let down and employees are afraid to speak in front of their seniors or managers

COMMUNICATION 2
Downward- It is a slow process, the flow of information is slow this results in receiving slow
feedback and this process is not motivating as there is a delay in feedback.
Horizontal- Specialization is a problem, it occurs in a department or group when it lacks in
uniform knowledge and conflict between the team members of the different team does not like to
share information with each other.
Resolution
In upward flow, managers should welcome the ideas and feedback of their juniors so that they
feel important. In downward flow, the information should be transferred without any delay so
that there is no delay in decision making and in horizontal flow employees should be
professional and should not bring their personal conflicts in between their work.
Sense of Self
The level to which an individual participates and creates proper information of different type it
defines the level of the individual to develop a sense of self that is related to the individual’s
experience. In relation to this, the theory of Cooley’s i.e. looking glass self says that sense of self
of individual grows through interacting with others.
According to the theory of Social comparison inherent habit of people is to evaluate themselves,
mostly in association with others. People make judgments through social comparison about
themselves or evaluating self with others.
Characteristics of Organization– Teamwork, training opportunity, well-defined structure, and
Division of work.