Rumors have been a regular feature of society for as long as it has existed and can have adverse effects on people, especially within the business context. Rumors within businesses can alter the social perceptions within by affect the attitudes and behaviors of people as well as increasing hostilities. To understand the effects of rumors, we must define what a rumor is and what the different components are, as well as distinguishing the difference between rumors and gossip. Definition of Roumours in Organization Context The phenomena of rumors have been studied since the mid-20th century and as such there have been many different definitions published. One of the first definitions was by Allport & Postman (1947), defining it as “a specific (or topical) proposition for belief, passed along from person to person, usually by word of mouth, without secure standards of evidence being present”. While this definition has held up Continue reading
Business Communication
As the term suggests, business communication includes all communication that occurs in a business context. A knowledge of business communication presupposes an understanding of both business and communication.
Why Intercultural Communication is Important in International Business?
Intercultural communication is one of the most important and relevant areas in business research to this day. Researchers need to understand what leads to positive interpersonal communication and have a good effect on relations between people of different cultures and what has a negative impact and leads to conflicts. Thanks to the positive attitude of people of different cultures to each other, strong relationships are established, which are later called intercultural friendships. The most straightforward definition of intercultural friendship is that people have intentional positive emotions towards each other, and communication occurs spontaneously and not with any task. The characteristics of people’s personalities have a beneficial effect on the development of intercultural communication. These include patience, empathy, and other features that are measured using various social tools. Another practical technique for the study of friendship is the Ting-Toomey approach, which discovered five personality types. Her version is based on the Continue reading
The Impact of Information Technology on Communication
Communication is the key thing that sets human beings apart from all the other animals. The human ability to communicate at a very sophisticated level has enabled us to build civilizations and to develop advanced technologies. Technology has increased incrementally since then and there have been huge leaps in communications technologies, such as the Internet. Whereas, the quality of the communication deteriorated as our ability to communicate rapidly via technology. The world today is a global world; we live in a global village and the world as we know it keeps decreasing due to the rapid growth of technology. The ever increasing speed at the development of new technology creates innovative ways of communicating and in more ways than one has changed the way people communicate. It will be argued here that although modern communication has some advantages, which include convenience, speed, dissemination, the disadvantages cannot be neglected, such as Continue reading
Design and Placement of the Corporate Communication Function
The need to centralize or decentralize usually comes down to weighing the considerations of company size, product, or service diversity, and geographic spread. For a company as diverse and large as General Electric, for example, the question was moot. Such a huge, diverse organization involved in activities as different as aerospace and network television cannot possibly remain completely centralized in all of its communication activities. Perhaps then, the best structure for large companies is some combination of a strong, centralized, functional area plus a network of decentralized operatives helping to keep communications consistent throughout the organization while adapting the function to the special needs of the independent business unit. Despite its advantages, the mix of centralized and decentralized activities presents problems for organizations in terms of reporting relationships. If the communications operatives report to their local managers, as they inevitably would, they will run into problems when the manager from Continue reading
Successful Business Communication
Business communication is vital for success in all business. Success in this context means, being able to accomplish a particular task or to achieve a specific objective. Good business communications in relationships either with fellow staffs or customers is needed in order to prosper. Business success can be measured in terms of the practicability of business relationships which is directly proportional to the quality of communication. Steps in Achieving Successful Business Communication The first step in successful business communication is to identify the communication weaknesses in a business. This can be through brainstorming where challenges facing the business can be identified. Such challenges can be obtained through reviewing the day to day activities of the business. Some questions may serve as a guideline, these include: Have employees been provided with a good working environment? Are they happy with what they are doing? Has the business been able to satisfy all Continue reading
Barriers in Cross-Cultural Communication
Cultural noise refers to barriers and impediments to successful communication among people of different cultures. Sources of cultural noise are numerous and could be consist of: Difference in language for instance the same words have different meanings in two languages which can creates noise in communication. Dissimilarity in non-verbal cues such as interpretation of body language. Differences in values such as importance of being on time in a culture. Self-reference criterion (SRC) which refers to one’s unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values when attempting to understand another culture. In the process of organizational communication model, fail in communication at any point can happen. Breakdowns occur when the sender fails to influence the receiver in the ways that are intended or when the receiver fails to do the same. The sender may convey the message in a way which is not received. The receiver might decode the message inaccurately, misinterpret Continue reading