Communication is the lifeblood of all organizations, so Zappos and other organizations are keeping pace by adopting social media and other emerging channels into their communication toolkit. Certainly, social media technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedln have transformed how we communicate in society, yet we may still be at the beginning of this revolution. Wire cablegrams and telephones introduced a century ago are giving way to e-mail, instant messaging, weblogs, and now social media sites. Each of these inventions creates fascinating changes in how people communicate with one another in the workplace, as well as new opportunities to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well-being.

Communication refers to the process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people. We emphasize the word “understood” because transmitting the senders intended meaning is the essence of good communication. This chapter begins by discussing the importance of effective communication, outlining the communication process model, and discussing factors that improve communication coding and decoding. Next, we identify types of communication channels, including e-mail and social media sites, followed by factors to consider when choosing a communication medium. This chapter then identifies barriers to effective communication. The latter part of this chapter offers an overview of ways to communicate in organizational hierarchies and offers insight about the pervasive organizational grapevine.

 

The Importance of Communication

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Effective communication is vital to all organizations, so much so that no company could exist without it. The reason? Recall from Chapter 1 that organizations are defined as groups of

people who work interdependently toward some purpose. People work interdependently only when they can communicate. Although organizations rely on a variety of coordinating mechanisms (which we discuss in Chapter 13), frequent, timely, and accurate communication remains the primary means through which employees and work units effectively synchronize their work2 Chester Barnard, a telecommunications CEO and respected pioneer in organizational behavior theory, stated this point back in 1938: “An organization comes into being when there are persons able to communicate with each other.”3

In addition to coordination, communication plays a central role in organizational learning. It is the means through which knowledge enters the organization and is distributed to employees.4 A third function of communication is decision making. Imagine the challenge of

 

 

By making employee communication a priority, ESL Federal Credit Union has become one of the top medium-sized companies to work for in America. “We’re always focused on employee communication,” says Maureen Wolfe, vice president of people and organization development at the Rochester, NY-based financial institution. ESL relies on employee surveys, its intranet system, and plenty of face-to-face interaction between management and staff. “Employees feel they understand the expectations and have the tools they need to help in their day-to-day job while also keeping up on the latest business updates and fun activities going on as well.”5

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making a decision without any information about the decision context, the alternatives available, the likely outcomes of those options, or the extent to which the decision is achieving its objectives. All of these ingredients require communication from coworkers as well as from stakeholders in the external environment. For example, airline cockpit crews make much better decisions—and thereby cause far fewer accidents—when the captain encourages the crew to share information openly.6

A fourth function is to change behavior. When communicating to others, we are often trying to alter their beliefs and feelings and ultimately their behavior. This influence process might be passive, such as merely describing the situation more clearly and fully. Sometimes, the communication event is a deliberate attempt to change someone’s thoughts and actions. We will discuss this function under the topic of persuasion later in this chapter.

Finally, communication supports employee well-being.7 Informationally, communication conveys knowledge that helps employees better manage their work environment. For instance, research shows that new employees adjust much better to the organization when coworkers communicate subtle nuggets of wisdom, such as how to avoid office politics, complete work procedures correctly, find useful resources, handle difficult customers, and so on.8 Emotionally, the communication experience itself is a soothing balm. Indeed, people are less susceptible to colds, cardiovascular disease, and other physical and mental illnesses when they have regular social interaction.9 In essence, people have an inherent drive to bond, to validate their self-worth, and to maintain their social identity. Communication is the means through which these drives and needs are fulfilled.

 

A Model of Communication

To understand the key interpersonal features of effective communication, let’s examine the model presented in Exhibit 9.1, which provides a useful “conduit” metaphor for thinking about the communication process.10 According to this model, communication flows through channels between the sender and receiver. The sender forms a message and encodes it into words, gestures, voice intonations, and other symbols or signs. Next, the

encoded message is transmitted to the intended receiver through one or more communication channels (media). The receiver senses the incoming message and decodes it

into something meaningful. Ideally, the decoded meaning is what the sender had

intended.

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EXHIBIT 9.1

Transmit message

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Sender ReceiverThe Communication Process Model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transmit feedback

 

In most situations, the sender looks for evidence that the other person received and understood the transmitted message. This feedback may be a formal acknowledgment, such as “Yes, I know what you mean,” or indirect evidence from the receiver’s subsequent actions. Notice that feedback repeats the communication process. Intended feedback is encoded, transmitted, received, and decoded from the receiver to the sender of the original message. This model recognizes that communication is not a free-flowing conduit. Rather, the transmission of meaning from one person to another is hampered by noise—the psychological, social, and structural barriers that distort and obscure the sender’s intended message. If any part of the communication process is distorted or broken, the sender and receiver will not have a common understanding of the message.

 

INFLUENCES ON EFFECTIVE ENCODING AND DECODING

The communication process model suggests that communication effectiveness depends on the ability of sender and receiver to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information. There are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of the encoding-decoding process.11

1. Communication channel proficiency. Communication effectiveness improves when the sender and receiver are both motivated and able to communicate through the communication channel. Some people are better and more motivated to communicate through face-to-face conversations. Others are awkward in conversations, yet are quite good at communicating via smartphone or text message technologies. Generally, the encoding-decoding process is more effective when both parties are skilled and enjoy using the selected communication channel.12

2. Similar codebooks. The sender and receiver rely on “codebooks,” which are dictionaries of symbols, language, gestures, idioms, and other tools used to convey information. With similar codebooks, communication participants are able to encode and decode more accurately, because they both have the same or similar meaning. Communication efficiency also improves because there is less need for redundancy (such as saying the same thing in different ways) or confirmation feedback (“So, you are saying that… ?”).

3. Shared mental models of the communication context. Mental models are internal representations of the external world that allow us to visualize elements of a setting and relationships among those elements (see Chapter 3). When sender and receiver have shared mental models, they have a common understanding of the environment relating to the information, so less communication is necessary to clarify meaning about that context. Notice that sharing the same codebook differs from sharing the same mental models of the topic context. Codebooks are symbols used to convey message content, whereas mental models are knowledge structures of the communication setting. For example, a Russian cosmonaut

and American astronaut might have shared mental models about the design and technology onboard the international space station (communication context), yet they experience poor communication because of language differences (i.e., different codebooks).

4. Experience encoding the message. As people gain experience communicating the subject matter, they become more proficient at using the codebook of symbols to convey the message. For example, after speaking to several groups of employees about the company’s new product development, you learn which words and phrases help to convey that particular message better to the audience. This is similar to the effect of job training or sports practice. The more experience and practice gained at communicating a subject, the more people learn how to effectively transmit that information to others.

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5.

Communication Channels

A critical part of the communication model is the channel or medium through which information is transmitted. There are two main types of channels: verbal and nonverbal. Verbal communication uses words and occurs through either spoken or written channels. Nonverbal communication is any part of communication that does not use words. Spoken and written communication are both verbal (i.e., they both use words), but they are quite different from each other and have different strengths and weaknesses in communication effectiveness, which we discuss later in this section. Also, written communication traditionally has been much slower than spoken communication at transmitting messages, though electronic mail, Twitter tweets, and other Internet-based communication channels have significantly improved written communication efficiency.

 

INTERNET-BASED COMMUNICATION

In the early 1960s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, university researchers began discussing how to collaborate better by connecting their computers through a network. Their rough vision of connected computers became a reality in 1969 as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPANET initially had only a dozen or so connections and was very slow and expensive by today’s standards, but it marked the birth of the Internet. Two years later, a computer engineer developing ARPANET sent the first electronic mail (e-mail) message between different computers on a network. By 1973, most communication on ARPANET was through e-mail. ARPANET was mostly restricted to U.S. Defense Department-funded research centers, so in 1979, two graduate students at Duke University developed a public network system, called Usenet. Usenet allowed people to post information that could be retrieved by anyone else on the network, making it the first public computer-mediated social network.’3

We have come a long way since the early days of ARPANET and Usenet. The medium of choice in most workplaces today is e-mail, because messages can be quickly written, edited, and transmitted. Information can be appended and conveyed to many people with a simple click of a mouse. E-mail is also asynchronous (messages are sent and received at different times), so there is no need to coordinate a communication session. With advances in computer search technology, e-mail software has also become an efficient filing cabinet.14

E-mail tends to be the preferred medium for sending well-defined information for decision making. It is also central for coordinating work, though text messaging and Twitter tweets might soon overtake e-mail for this objective. As e-mail has been introduced in the workplace over the past two decades, it has tended to increase the volume of communication and significantly alter the flow of that information within groups and throughout the organization.15 Specifically, it has reduced some face-to-face and telephone communication but increased communication with people further up the hierarchy. Some social and organizational status differences still exist with e-mail,16 but they are somewhat less apparent than in face-to-face communication. By hiding age, race, and other features, e-mail reduces stereotype biases. However, it also tends to increase reliance on stereotypes when we are already aware of the other person’s personal characteristics.17

 

PROBLEMS WITH E-MAIL

In spite of the wonders of e-mail, anyone who has used this communication medium knows that it has its limitations. Here are the top four complaints:

Poor Medium for Communicating Emotions People rely on facial expressions and other nonverbal cues to interpret the emotional meaning of words; e-mail lacks this parallel communication channel. People consistently and significantly underestimate the

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degree to which they understand the emotional tone of e-mail messages.18 Senders try to clarify the emotional tone of their messages by using expressive language (“Wonderful to hear from you!”), highlighting phrases in boldface or quotation marks, and inserting graphic faces (called emoticons or “smileys”) representing the desired emotion. Recent studies suggest that writers are getting better at using these emotion symbols. Still, they do not replace the full complexity of real facial expressions, voice intonation, and hand movements.19

 

Reduces Politeness and Respect E-mail messages are often less diplomatic than written letters. The term “flaming” has entered our language to describe e-mail and other electronic messages that convey strong negative emotions to the receiver. People who receive e-mail are partly to blame, because they tend to infer a more negative or neutral interpretation of the e-mail than was intended by the sender.20 Even so, e-mail flame wars occur mostly because senders are more likely to send disparaging messages by e-mail than by other communication channels. One reason for this tendency is that people can post e-mail messages before their emotions subside, whereas the sender of a traditional memo or letter would have time for sober second thoughts. A second reason is the low social presence (impersonal) of e-mail; people are more likely to write things that they would never say in face-to-face conversation. Fortunately, research has found that flaming decreases as teams move to later stages of development and when explicit norms and rules of communication are established.21

 

Poor Medium for Ambiguous, Complex, and Novel Situations E-mail is usually fine for well-defined situations, such as giving basic instructions or presenting a meeting agenda, but it can be cumbersome in ambiguous, complex, and novel situations. As we will describe later in this section, these circumstances require communication channels that transmit a larger volume of information with more rapid feedback. In other words, when the issue gets messy, stop e-mailing and start talking, preferably face-to-face.

Contributes to Information Overload E-mail contributes to information overload.22 Approximately 20 trillion e-mails (excluding spam) are now transmitted annually around the world, up from just 1.1 trillion in 1998. The e-mail glut occurs because messages are created and copied to many people without much effort. The number of e-mail messages will probably decrease as people become more familiar with it; until then, e-mail volume continues to rise.

 

WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

E-mail continues to dominate Internet-based communication in organizations, but a few corporate leaders believe that it undermines productivity and well-being rather than supporting these objectives. The opening vignette to this chapter described how Zappos employees already rely on Twitter, blogs, Facebook pages, and other social media to communicate. As Connections 9.1 describes, the Paris-based information technology consulting firm Atos Origin plans to replace e-mail altogether with social media and other communication technologies.

Social media include Internet-based tools (websites, applications, etc.) that allow users to generate and exchange information. This “user-generated content” is creative content (developed by the user), published on the Internet (perhaps with restricted access), and produced outside of professional routines and practices.23 Social media take many forms— blogs, wikis, instant messages, Twitter tweets, personal presentation sites (e.g., Facebook), viewer feedback forums, and the like. Whereas previous Internet activity involved passively reading or watching content, these emerging activities are more interactive and dynamic.

One recent model suggests that social media serve several functions: presenting the individual’s identity, enabling conversations, sharing information, sensing the presence of

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though that this transformation is less difficult for the com pany’s Generation-Y employees. “These people do not use e-mail any more. They use social media tools.” 24Good-Bye E-Mail, Hello Social Media!

Atos Origin is at war with e-mail. Executives at the Paris-based global information technology consulting firm believe the volume of e-mail transmitted around the company has created “information pollution” that stifles productivity and undermines employee well-being. “We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives,” says Atos Origin chief executive Thierry Breton. The company estimates that reading and writing e-mails consumes up to half of its managers’ workweek. Furthermore, e-mail messages are irrelevant to about 70 percent of the people who receive them, according to a survey by Salesforce.com .

Other companies have fought e-mail overload by banning them for one day each week. Unfortunately, these “e-mail-free Fridays” often produce “e-mail-overload Mondays.” Atos Origin’s strategy is more radical: It plans to ban all e-mail among the company’s 50,000 staff within the next couple of years. The company will encourage staff to share ideas, engage in communities, and have virtual team meetings through instant messaging, web conferences, and an enterprise-strength social media site.

“It is clearly going to be a big challenge for us because e-mail is everywhere,” admits Atos Origin vice president for global innovation Marc-Henri Desportes. Desportes also notes

Paris-based information technology company Atos Origin plans to replace e-mail completely with other Internet-based communication tools within the next couple of years.

 

 

others in the virtual space, maintaining relationships, revealing reputation or status, and supporting communities (see Exhibit 9.2).25 For instance, Facebook has a strong emphasis on maintaining relationships but relatively low emphasis on sharing information or forming communities (groups). Wikis, in contrast, focus on sharing information or forming communities but place much less emphasis on presenting the users identity or reputation.

 

 

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-^CGIDGX 1 Shift grounds*^CEMEX enables employees to communicate and collaborate more easily through its new technology-based platform, called Shift. “Shift combines some of the best elements from popular social networking platforms,” says Sergio J. Escobedo Serna, vice president of innovation at the Monterrey, Mexico-based global building materials company. Along with traditional e-mail and scheduling, Shift incorporates wikis, blogs, web conferencing, and other team collaboration tools. “With Shift, we continue to empower our employees by promoting engagement and collaboration beyond traditional roles and titles, allowing the best ideas to resonate company-wide and effect real change,” says CEMEX chairman and CEO Lorenzo H. Zambrano.26

 

 

A few studies conclude (with caution) that social media offer considerable versatility and potential in the workplace.27 Even so, few companies have introduced these communication tools, mainly because they lack knowledge, staff/resources, and technical support to put them into practice.28 However, a common tactic is simply to ban employee access to social media (usually after discovering excess employee activity on Facebook) without thinking through its potential. One exception is Serena Software, which has made Facebook its new corporate intranet. The Californian company introduced “Facebook Fridays,” sessions in which it hires teenagers to teach older staff how to use Facebook. Most Serena employees now have Facebook pages, and the company’s Facebook site links employees to confidential documents behind the company’s firewall.29

 

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Nonverbal communication includes facial gestures, voice intonation, physical distance, and even silence. This communication channel is necessary where noise or physical distance prevents effective verbal exchanges and the need for immediate feedback precludes written communication. But even in quiet, face-to-face meetings, most information is communicated nonverbally. Rather like a parallel conversation, nonverbal cues signal subtle information to both parties, such as reinforcing their interest in the verbal conversation or demonstrating their relative status in the relationship.30

Nonverbal communication differs from verbal (i.e., written and spoken) communication in a couple of ways. First, it is less rule-bound than verbal communication. We receive considerable formal training on how to understand spoken words, but very little on how to understand the nonverbal signals that accompany those words. Consequently, nonverbal cues are generally more ambiguous and susceptible to misinterpretation. At the same time, many facial expressions (such as smiling) are hardwired and universal, thereby providing the only reliable means of communicating across cultures.

The other difference between verbal and nonverbal communication is that the former is typically conscious, whereas most nonverbal communication is automatic and noncon-scious. We normally plan the words we say or write, but we rarely plan every blink, smile, or other gesture during a conversation. Indeed, as we just mentioned, many of these facial expressions communicate the same meaning across cultures because they are hardwired, nonconscious responses to human emotions.31 For example, pleasant emotions cause the

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brain center to widen the mouth, whereas negative emotions produce constricted facial expressions (squinting eyes, pursed lips, etc.).

 

Emotional Contagion One of the most fascinating effects of emotions on nonverbal communication is the phenomenon called emotional contagion, which is the automatic process of “catching” or sharing another persons emotions by mimicking that persons facial expressions and other nonverbal behavior. Technically, human beings have brain receptors that cause them to mirror what they observe. In other words, to some degree our brain causes us to act as though we are the person we are watching.32

Consider what happens when you see a coworker accidentally bang his or her head against a filing cabinet. Chances are, you wince and put your hand on your own head as if you had hit the cabinet. Similarly, while listening to someone describe a positive event, you tend to smile and exhibit other emotional displays of happiness. While some of our nonverbal communication is planned, emotional contagion represents nonconscious behavior— we automatically mimic and synchronize our nonverbal behaviors with other people.33

Emotional contagion serves three purposes. First, mimicry provides continuous feedback, communicating that we understand and empathize with the sender. To consider the significance of this, imagine employees remaining expressionless after watching a coworker bang his or her head! The lack of parallel behavior conveys a lack of understanding or caring. Second, mimicking the nonverbal behaviors of other people seems to be a way of receiving emotional meaning from those people. If a coworker is angry with a client, your tendency to frown and show anger while listening helps you experience that emotion more fully. In other words, we receive meaning by expressing the sender’s emotions, as well as by listening to the sender’s words.

The third function of emotional contagion is to fulfill the drive to bond that was described in Chapter 5. Social solidarity is built on each member’s awareness of a collective sentiment. Through nonverbal expressions of emotional contagion, people see others share the same emotions that they feel. This strengthens relations among team members as well as between leaders and followers by providing evidence of their similarity.34

 

 

Choosing the Best Communication Channel

 

Which communication channel is most appropriate in a particular situation? Two important sets of factors to consider are social acceptance and media richness.

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emotional contagion

The nonconscious process of “catching” or sharing another person’s emotions by mimicking that person’s facial expressions and other nonverbal behavior.

SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE

Social acceptance refers to how well the communication medium is approved and supported by the organization, teams, and individuals.35 One factor in social acceptance is organizational and team norms regarding the use of specific communication channels. Norms partly explain why face-to-face meetings are daily events among staff in some firms, whereas computer-based video conferencing (such as Skype) and Twitter tweets are the media of choice in other organizations. Communication channel norms also vary across cultures. One recent study reported that when communicating with people further up the hierarchy, Koreans are much less likely than Americans to use e-mail, because this medium is less respectful of the superior’s status.36

A second social acceptance factor is individual preferences for specific communication channels.37 You may have noticed that some coworkers ignore (or rarely check) voice mail, yet they quickly respond to text messages or Twitter tweets. These preferences are due to personality traits, as well as previous experience and reinforcement with particular channels.

A third social acceptance factor is the symbolic meaning of a channel. Some communication channels are viewed as impersonal, whereas others are more personal; some are considered professional, whereas others are casual; some are “cool,” whereas

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Managing your boss may sound manipulative, but it is really a valuable process of gaining power for the benefit of the organization. A\i of us try to manage others—with varying levels of success. In the opening chapter to this book, we pointed out that people apply organizational behavior (OB) theories and practices to help them get things done in organizations. This includes improving relationships, developing power bases, and applying influence tactics that change the behavior of others. In fact, OB experts point out that power and influence are inherent in all organizations. They exist in every business and in every decision and action.

This chapter unfolds as follows: We first define power and present a basic model depicting the dynamics of power in organizational settings. The chapter then discusses the five bases of power, including the role of information in legitimate and expert power. Next, we look at the contingencies necessary to translate those sources into meaningful power. Our attention then turns to social networks and how they provide power to members through social capital. A later part of this chapter examines the various types of influence in organizational settings, as well as the contingencies of effective influence strategies. The final section of this chapter looks at situations in which influence becomes organizational politics, as well as ways to minimize dysfunctional politics.

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The Meaning of Power

Power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to influence others.2 There are a few important features of this definition. First, power is not the act of changing someone’s attitudes or behavior; it is only the potential to do so. People frequently have power they do not use; they might not even know they have power. Second, power is based on the target’s perception that the power holder controls (i.e., possesses, has access to, or regulates) a valuable resource that can help him or her achieve goals.3 People might generate power by convincing others that they control something of value, whether or not they actually control that resource. This perception is also formed from the power holder’s behavior, such as those who are not swayed by authority or norms. For instance, one recent study found that people are perceived as more powerful just by their behavior—such as putting their feet on a table, taking coffee from someone else’s container, and being less vigilant of bookkeeping rules.4 Notice, too, that power is not a personal feeling of power. You might feel powerful or think you have power over others, but it is not power unless others believe you have that capacity.

Third, power involves the asymmetric (unequal) dependence of one party on another party.5 This dependent relationship is illustrated in Exhibit 10.1. The line from Person B to the goal shows that he or she believes Person A controls a resource that can help or hinder Person B in achieving that goal. Person A, the power holder in this illustration, might have power over Person B by controlling a desired job assignment, useful information, rewards, or even the privilege of being associated with him or her! For example, if you believe a coworker has expertise (the resource) that would substantially help you write a better

 

 

EXHIBIT 10.1

Dependence in the Power Relationship

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Countervailing power / «.* Power Person A is perceived as controlling resources that help or hinder Person B’s goal achievement

 

Visibility