The document discusses the definition, elements, and importance of communication within organizations, highlighting the dynamics of communication processes and their impact on performance. It identifies barriers to effective communication, including vocabulary deficiencies and hierarchical challenges, while emphasizing that both upward and downward communication channels are essential for success. The role of feedback, context, and individual factors in shaping communication effectiveness is also explored.

2. Define communication;
Identify elements of communication;
Explain a model of communication;
Discuss the importance of communication
in organisation;
Describe communication barriers in
organisation;
Explain types and form of inter-
organisational relationship;
Discuss the environmental dimensions.

3.  Communication is crucial for organisational
managers and their work.
 In modern companies, communication from
lower to higher members in the hierarchy is
critical for organisational success.
 The sharing of accurate information is critical
to organisational success.
 The sharing of accurate information between
superiors and subordinates affects not only
the satisfaction and attitudes of organisational
members, but also the organisational
performances.

6.  Transmit, transfer, and transact (Bittner, 1988).
 Communication is a dynamic, ongoing,
transactional process (Verdeber, 1984).
 According to Verdeber (1984), communication is
dynamic because it is constantly in motion, it is
ongoing because it has no fixed beginning or end,
it is transactional because the elements occur
simultaneously and the people communicating are
interdependent.

7. Katz (1978) state: “Communications -the
exchange of information and the
transmission of meaning-is the very
essence of a social system or an
organisation”
Communication is most important,
therefore, in organisation and
organisational segments that must deal
with uncertainty and complex.

9. The communication process is by
definition is a relational one; one party is
the sender and the other the receiver at a
particular point in time.
The social relations occurring in the
communication process involve the sender
and receiver and their reciprocal effects on
each other as they are communicating
(Hall, 1996).

10. Communication is a dynamic process.
It is constantly in motion, constantly
changing, and constantly being adapted by
both sender (encoder) and receiver
(decoder) of communication.
Each participant in the process of
communication affects and is affected by
the other people involved.

12.  Sender : Sender is the source of communication
process. Contemporary communication scholars
have systematically analyzed what constitutes a
credible speaker. Results indicate that people tend
to evaluate a communication source on at least
five specific dimensions: competence, characters,
composure, sociability, and extroversion.
 The dimension of character has strong influence
on a receiver’s perception of source credibility.

14.  Receiver : Face-to-face communication provides a good
perspective for viewing the transactional nature of the
relationship between a source and a receiver.
 Receivers will greatly influence communication transactions.
 The receivers help determine the topic, level of interaction and
decide whether or not the interaction will proceed any further.
 Receiver will also shape the interaction by deciding how much
attention to give to the source or content of the message

15.  Channel : The channel is both the route travelled by
the message and the means of transportation

16. Feedback : Mental or physical response to
the messages and it is the response of the
receiver that often enables us to determine
whether sharing of meaning really took
place.
Feedback tells the person sending a
message whether that message was
heard, seen, or understood.

17.  Noise : A person’s ability to interpret, understand and respond
to symbols is often effect by noise.
 Noise is any stimulus that gets in the way of sharing meaning.
 External noises are distractions such as sounds, sights and
other stimuli that draw people’s attention away from intended
meaning.
 Internal noises are the thoughts and feelings that interfere the
meaning such as day dreaming.
 Semantic noise are those alternate meanings aroused by
certain symbols that inhibit meaning such as decode a word or
phrase differently from the way you intended.

18.  Messages : Communication takes place through
the sending and receiving of messages.
 Messages have at least three elements:
- the symbols used to communicate the meaning
and form or organization.
- meanings are ideas or feelings communicated;
ideas or feelings are expressed through
symbols such as words, sounds or
- actions that represent meaning.
 Symbols can be communicated with both voice
and body

20. Context : Context is the physical or social
setting in which communication takes
place.
Examples of context variables are location,
seating arrangements, time, light,
temperature, distance between
communicators and any seating
arrangements.
Effect communication effectiveness.

21. Historical or Previous Experience :
affect the meanings currently being
shared.
Psychological : The way in which people
perceive themselves, as well as how they
perceive those with whom they
communicate at the time of the
communication event, will affect the
meaning that is shared.

22.  Communication model is a pictorial
representation of the communication process.
 A communication model helps us to analyze
communication situations, help us both to
analyze those situations and to solve
communication problems.
 Many models of communication have been
concerned with how information passes from
one point to another.

26. Communication plans very important roles
in organization.

28.  Individual Factors :
 The role that the individual plays in the organization .
 Communications behaviors differ according to one’s position in
a role set.
 Stereotyping is your preconceived ideas of what something is
about or stands for.
 The ‘halo effect’ or the use of only one or a few indicator to
generalize about a total situation; ‘projection’” or a person’s
assuming that the other members of a communication system
have the same characteristics as the person’s own; and
“perceptual defense,” or altering inconsistent information to put
it in line with the conceptual framework already developed.

29.  Vocabulary Deficiencies :
Communication breakdown occurs when we
assume that we understand meaning of a
word that in reality is outside our recognition
vocabulary.
 Bipolar Thinking :
One illogical oversimplification that frequently
interferes with effective communication. It is
the reduction of complex phenomena to
simple, either-or, good-or-bad
conceptualizations.

30. The Tendency to Evaluate :
the major barrier to mutual interpersonal
communication may be defined as our very
natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to
approve (or disapprove) the statement of
the other person or the other group from
our point of view or our own frame of
reference.

31. Organizational Factors :
1. Vertical Communication
Downward communication takes
place at all levels from the top down.
E.g :job instruction: directives from
management on what is to be done,
how it is to be achieved, rationale for
a task, rules and regulations:

33. Upward Communication Organizations sensitive to
employee feelings and opinions encourage every
opportunity for upward communication .

34. 2. Horizontal Communication
Horizontal or lateral communication is a regular and
important facet of organizational life.
Interaction among peers is only one form of horizontal
communication.
The other major form, obviously vital for the overall
coordination of the operations, occurs between members of
different organizational subunits.
It can be used to form some of the strongest relationships
between employees.
Horizontal communication is sometimes difficult to monitor.

36. 3. Lack of Communication Policy
For such a policy to be effective, there must
be a climate conducive to communication
within the organisation. There must be free
and permissive attitudes for the exchange of
ideas and information in all directions.
Individuals often become communication or
power-centers as a result of their technical
knowledge, access to information or
leadership abilities.

37. 4. Hierarchy
The most obvious contribution of a hierarchy is coordination
Hierarchies give some people power and authority over other
people and prevent some people from gaining power.
Differences in term of power and authority inhibit effectiveness
communication .
Upward communication is important to management as it
reveals how well ideas, policies, and work rules have been
accepted.

39. 5. Horizontal Communication
Communications between subunits
inevitably contain elements of conflict.
The conflict will be greater if the units
involved invest values in their
understanding and conceptualizations.

40. 6. Omission and Distortion
Distortion refers to altered meanings of messages
as they pas through the organisation. People are
selective, intentionally or unintentionally, about
what the
Omission involves the deletion of aspects of
messages. It occurs because the recipients may
not be able to grasp the entire content of the
message and only receive or pass on what they
are able to grasp. y receive as messages.

41. 7. Overload
If there is a case of extreme overload, the
interpretive process becomes inundated
with so much material that it becomes
inoperative.

42.  The communication process in organizations is complicated by the fact that
we as individuals have our idiosyncrasies, biases, and abilities and
complicated by organizational characteristics such as hierarchy or
specialization. Nonetheless, communications within organizations are
central for the other processes of power, leadership, and decision making.
 Communication breakdown occurs for many reasons. At times the
breakdown results from vocabulary deficiencies. Since our brains are not
capable of computing the thousands of bits of information picked up by our
five senses, the phenomenon of selective perception frequently becomes
another source of communication breakdown. Oversimplification of complex
phenomena into simple bipolar conceptualizations also significantly reduced
the options available to participants in a communication transaction.
 To have efficient organizational communications, there must be upward as
well as downward channels. Some barriers to this are lack of freedom to
contact superiors, inability to communicate ideas with superiors, and failure
to understand the role of the supervisor’s job.