Contemporary Business Environment Report

Running head: REFLECTION PAPER 1
Reflection Paper
Name
Institution

REFLECTION PAPER 2
During the semester have attended several courses, however, professional
development and business communication stand out. The course stood out; I thought I have
acquired enough knowledge about communication and its application in the business
environment only to be introduced to new concepts and principles of communication. In the
end, I was a better person than I was before. One of the fundamental concepts of the course,
that I learned, was the importance of communication in human interactions. The objective of
the course was to equip the student, who is deemed future managers, with both oral and
writing communication skills which are necessary for the contemporary business
environment (Bruckmann, 2012).
My course primarily focused on communication as a tool for professional
development within the business context. Communication plays a vital role in different
aspects of an organization. To a large extent, the success of an organization squarely depends
on the effectiveness of communication strategies that have been put in place. Conversely, as
human beings, we have to spend a lot of time during our lifetime communicating with one
another (Gutierez, 2014). However, how one communicates, how people should
communicate or how the communicated message is perceived matters a lot. Individual and
organizations relations are developed through communication; the former is highly dependent
on the foundation placed on the latter (Sehgal, 2008).
Within the business context, the relation is very important. For instance, the
continuity and success of an organization depend on the relationship that exists between the
management and other stakeholders such as shareholders, customers, suppliers, contractors
etc. Therefore communication is key to the success of an organization (Guffey & Loewy,
2012). As an economic and social system, business should always put its customers at the top
of the communication chain. No business can prosper without effective communication with
the customers. For example, an organization cannot survive a competitive business sector

REFLECTION PAPER 3
without a strong relationship with the consumers. How business managers communicate with
the customers determine the kind of relationship they have with the customers. I have
realized that even the best products fail to capture the attention of the targeted customers in
absence of good relationship (Moore, 2014).
Successful relationship not only enhance the business prosperity but contribute to its
social aspects as well. The ability to maintain effective communication with the community
equips a business with the ability to solve arising conflicts quickly and efficiently. Hence,
contributing business performance and continuity of its life. Conversely, communication is
essential in conveying information, persuasion, and promoting goodwill between
stakeholders both internally and externally (Patterson, 2011).
I have also learned that communication skills play a vital role in employing personnel
like managers. The skills are acquired through learning. There are several elements of
communication that are fundamental. For successful communication, the recipient should
convey a feedback to the initial sender acknowledging the reception of the message. Besides
the sender and recipient, other elements of communication include the perception of the
message, encoding and decoding of the message, and the message itself (Hattersley, 2015).
Likewise, in written communication elements such as grammar, spelling and sentence
structure is important as well.
Effective communication, in a business, involves both centralized and decentralized
networks. Under centralized network, the flow of information is controlled by the leader. On
the other hand, the decentralized network allows each people to access the messages and
ideas from other members of the group equally (Hattersley, 2015). However, the success of
any communication network is affected by cultural, individual and organizational factors.
Such factors hinder effective communication unless there are strategically addressed by