Case Study: Improving Communication for Museum of Springfield Success

This case study examines the communication challenges faced by the Museum of Springfield, focusing on improving team collaboration and resolving conflicts. The solution emphasizes problem-solving techniques, effective decision-making processes, and the importance of virtual communication strategies. It highlights the roles of key individuals like Paul and Mary Weston in fostering corporate support and ensuring project success. The analysis covers methods for enhancing face-to-face communication, including maintaining proper posture and eye contact, choosing appropriate language, and ensuring audibility. Ultimately, the goal is to create a cohesive and productive work environment within the museum, addressing communication gaps and promoting mutual understanding among team members. This assignment solution is available on Desklib, a platform offering a wide range of study resources for students.

Running head: COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Communication at work
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Answer 1
The problem-solving techniques which can be implemented by team in order to overcome
challenges mainly include the improvement of decision making methods. The process of
decision making is considered to be an important process which is helpful in the effective
operations of the management of Museum of Springfield. The management of the organization
needs to reduce the levels conflicts which have taken place in the operations. The conflicts can
thereby be resolved with the help of proper decision making by the management of the Museum
of Springfield. The communication based issues which have taken place in the organization have
been affecting the operations in a huge manner (Parke, Campbell and Bartol, pp.20).
The task which has been provided to Paul, the media coordinator of the organization by
Mary Weston is quite important for the effective operations of Museum of Springfield. The
organization can gain high levels of corporate support with the help of proper design which can
be provided to the media. The communication between the members of the team is considered to
be highly important for the ways by which the media can be created. The creativity levels of the
team can be increased with the help of proper problem-solving based methods. The systematic
process of problem solving is thereby considered to be a major part of the ways by which the
team will be able to provide effective results (Driskell and Driskell, pp. 440). Mary Weston will
play the most important role in this case, which will be helpful for solving the issues which have
occurred in the organization. The organization can maintain its operations and gain corporate
support with the help of proper level of problem solving with the proper collaboration of the
team. Problem solving is considered to be the most important part of the operations of Museum
of Springfield in the industry.

2COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Answer: 2
In terms of making decisions, the most effective method will be evaluation of the
alternatives. This is due to the reason that if the employee can have the access to large number of
alternative before taking the decisions, then they will be more benefited by having different
solutions in hand before taking the decisions. This will increase the probability of effective
decision making process for them (Cox and Bobrowski P. 789). In addition, it should also be
noted that building consensus in the decision making process will also helps the member s in
resolving the disagreement. This is due to the reason that building consensus will involve
consideration of the opinions of all the members in the team and no one will feel deprived in the
decision making process. It should also be noted that more diverse ideas will be generated from
the decision process and the problems can be solved effectively and properly. Inclusion of the all
the internal stakeholders in the decision making process will further ensure that more ideas and
approaches will be generated for a given problem. It is also identified that the major reason for
emergence of disagreement among the stakeholders is the differences in opinions. Thus with the
help of the consensus based decision making process, more members will be involved in the
discussion with the increase in the coordination and cooperation among them. The more will be
the coordination and cooperation among the members, the more they will be able to have the fair
understanding about the skills and approaches of each other. This will be beneficial in taking the
decisions and the disagreements can be mitigated in the initial stage only. Thus, it is
recommended that consensus based decision making process will be the most effective for the
members.

3COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Answer 3
There are several ways that can be pivotal to do communication without having a face-to-
face interaction. In this regard, it can be stated that the virtual communication process will be an
effective method in order to make a communication without having presence in person. It is
more of an example of visual communication techniques. According to Forceville (55) the visual
communication technique is considered to be an effective tool in the present case scenario where
people have no scope or time to get in contact in presence. In case of the Museum of Springfield,
Elaine Dorsch was the site designer of the museum who lived in San Francisco and Julia Winger,
the corporate liaison in Museum of Springfield had her office in Minneapolis. Therefore, it
became difficult for them to get in touch face to face. Therefore, a visual communication system
will be effective in order to connect all the members associated with the event.
In this context, Delhey and Peters (35) stated the visual communication is effective in
corporate decision making in order to make remote intelligence comes into play. It is pertinent to
get acknowledged with the ideas and planning of each and every member through visual
communication. The visual communication techniques include live video chatting mechanism
that is able to connect people from distant parts into an unitary digital platform. As a result of
that in modern times it becomes not a problem for remote intelligence to make a better
framework of communication. In response to this, conducting the event in Museum of
Springfield, it is helpful to make a visual communication system that can be able to get all the
actors in one fold so that they can able to share their planning and understanding related to the
framework. Therefore, it can be argued that it will be able to deal with people without having a
direct meeting in place.

4COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Answer 4
As the conflict has occurred due to lack of communication, in order to organise a
successful meeting the crisis must be resolved first. Simultaneously, to address the
communication gap meetings must be arranged. Considering the study of Chang, Wen & Long,
and Chun & Yi Lee (990), Paul might take initiative to arrange a virtual video conference to
inform all the group members across varied locations, to join the meeting. Acknowledging the
professional ego between two members, Roger and Julie, Paul realizes if he cannot retain these
two members within the project, he might fail to deliver the project on time and with efficiency.
The next agenda of the meetings would be to make the members understand the importance of
mutual collaboration irrespective of their field of operation. As creation of a website needs
everyone’s involvement, insisting conflicts will not help them to complete the project within
time.
As a coordinator, Paul must deliver this message strongly and he must come up with new
communication plan to address the communication gap between members. Within the new plan,
he must include plan of technological support to overcome cultural and professional barriers.
Developing a healthy environment at work is the ultimate priority to address the theme of
allocated assignment. Responsibility is huge and while addressing all the requirements of
“Images of Springfield”, it must be remembered about its community friendly approach.
According to Chan, Teresa, et al (301), as responsible adults working in an esteemed
organisation how important is that to mitigate conflict that is known to all. It will be beneficial if
Paul emphasizes more on virtual modes of communication to maintain both the professional and
social interaction as both San Francisco and Minneapolis are distant locations from Springfield.
The meeting will be conducted on the agenda to mitigate increasing tension between employees

5COMMUNICATION AT WORK
to accomplish the collective goal of creating a website for the Museum’s upcoming new show
“Images of Springfield”.
Answer 5
The face-to-face communication is one of the major factors that helps in the proper and
effective communication among the members of the given business organization. In the given
case study, a communication gap is observed to have taken place among the various officials
who have been serving at the Museum of Springfield. Paul might be advised to maintain the
posture in case of the face-to-face communication. The body language is one of the major factors
that have been affecting the communication within the Museum of Springfield. The maintenance
of the proper body posture helps in the depiction of the open and the relaxed nature of the
communicator and helps in the easing of the communication between the involved parties. The
communicator should maintain a proper eye contact with the other parties involved in the face-
to-face communication (Battiston, Vidal, and Kirchmaier). This helps in the conveyance of the
respect towards the audience of the communication. The maintenance of the eye contact refers to
the sincerity, conviction as well as the truth among the communicator as well as the audience of
the meeting.
The communicator should opt for the proper words and should choose them by applying
the wisdom. The choice of the words should be in accordance to the audience of the concerned
communication. The communicator should choose the jargon with special attention to the
audience of the communication (Hall, Lecuona, and Cummings). The audibility of the
communication is known to have been a huge issue for the in case of the face-to-face
communications. The communicator should be advised to be audible to the given audience which

6COMMUNICATION AT WORK
in turn might help in the proper conveyance of the messages that are discussed within the
meeting. Thus, from the above discussion, it might be stated that the communicator, in
discussion, Paul should implement the discussed techniques in order to enhance the effectivity of
the communications.

7COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Reference
Battiston, Diego, Jordi Blanes I. Vidal, and Tom Kirchmaier. "DP11924 Is Distance Dead? Face
to-Face Communication and Productivity in Teams." (2017).
Chan, Teresa, et al. "Conflict prevention, conflict mitigation, and manifestations of conflict
during emergency department consultations." Academic Emergency Medicine 21.3
(2014): 308-313.
Chang, Wen & Long, and Chun & Yi Lee. "Virtual team e‐leadership: The effects of leadership
style and conflict management mode on the online learning performance of students in a
business‐planning course." British Journal of Educational Technology 44.6 (2013): 986-
999.
Cox, Pamela L., and Paula E. Bobrowski. "The team charter assignment: Improving the
effectiveness of classroom teams." Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management 1.2
(2016): 789.
Delhey, Kaspar, and Anne Peters. "Conservation implications of anthropogenic impacts on
visual communication and camouflage." Conservation Biology 31.1 (2017): 30-39.
Driskell, Tripp, Eduardo Salas, and James E. Driskell. "Teams in extreme environments:
Alterations in team development and teamwork." Human resource management
review 28.4 (2018): 434-449.
Forceville, Charles. "Relevance Theory as model for analysing visual and multimodal
communication." Visual communication(2014): 51-70.

8COMMUNICATION AT WORK
Hall, David, Ramon Lecuona, and Jonathon N. Cummings. "Walk and Talk: The Interplay of
Work Dependencies, Spatial Distance, and Face-to-Face Communication." Academy of
Management Proceedings. Vol. 2017. No. 1. Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of
Management, 2017.
Parke, Michael R., Elizabeth Margaret Campbell, and Kathryn M. Bartol. "Setting the stage for
virtual team development: Designing teams to foster knowledge sharing." Academy of
Management Proceedings. Vol. 2014. No. 1. Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of
Management, 2014.