How different organizations adapt to different communication media?

1. HOW DIFFERENT ORGANISATIONS ADAPT TO THE
DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION MEDIA?
- Tosif Mir
Abstract: Advancement in Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) has dramatically changed preferred communication media in
organization’s day-to-day activities. The objective of this empirical study is
to analyze how different groups adapt to the different communication
media like e-mails, phone calls, video conferencing, face to face
interaction etc. Further to identify critical factors like rewards, job
satisfaction, group participation etc that affect the functioning and
effectiveness of work groups. In addition to this classification of the job
based on creative and non-creative work.
INTRODUCTION:
Technological advances have been applied to diverse areas of routine
work and have proved its importance as basic human resource i.e. socio-
cultural advancements, educational advancement, and economic
advancement. Notable among current tendencies is a substantial change
in their structure and functioning of work organizations. If preferred
medium of communication so adopted by the organization is able to
overcome internal barriers and hierarchical differentiation in a team with
the common task assigned, it can make engagement of team players in an
effective manner. At the same time, ICT has enabled better structuring of
group interaction among team members and distribution of timely and
requisite information.
The purpose of this study is to see how communication medium choice
varies with gender, qualification, types of job, communication medium,
and job characteristics. Further, studying critical characteristics
associated with particular type of job setting and what should be the
focus areas for managers to cover loopholes left behind.

2. Example- If R&D team doesn't find face to face interaction interesting, it
becomes important for managers to find ways to bridge gaps left in
information sharing with rest of organizational teams to achieve time-
bound results. Thus before assigning new task or formation of the new
team it is important to ensure that there is a fit between the richness of
communication medium and demand of group’s task.
Numerous studies have found that groups that communicate
electronically focus more on activities related to the task than groups that
communicate face-to-face and invest more time in completing the task
and have more problems to reach a consensus, and that group members
participate to an equal extent (Kiesler, Siegel and McGuire 1984; Siegel,
Dubrovsky, Kiesler and McGuire 1986; Kiesler and Sproull, 1992; Hiltz et
al. 1986).Thus, only task specific information reaches its destined user
and rest of the non-task information is ignored.
More negative socio-emotional behavior has been found in mediated
communication, whilst it is more positive in rich media, such as face-to-
face communication or video conference (Smolensky, Carmody, and
Halcomb, 1990; Siegel et al. 1986; Dubrovsky, Kiesler, and Sethna, 1991).
All the verbal communication takes place through face to face
conversation, e-mails, group discussions etc. However, none- verbal
communication is a powerful arsenal in face-face communication and can
have a negative impact in some particular team set-up. Moreover,
communication is mean to know critical job characteristics of a team and
its members. Characteristics like job satisfaction, team efforts, rewards,
conflict resolution etc are core to this study. Some authors, far from
finding a higher percentage of negative interpersonal behavior in
mediated communication (Spears and Lea, 1992; Strauss, 1997) have
found that these groups even develop more pro-social behavior than
those that communicate face-to-face (Walther, 1995).
As regards the level of conflict found, there are alternative positions. On
the one hand are studies that find higher levels of conflict in mediated
communication (Kiesler et al. 1984), due to the impossibility
Of transmitting non-verbal signals that regulate conflictive behavior, on
the other, there are those that state that groups whose interaction is
mediated by new technologies experience lower levels of conflict than
those that communicate face-to-face because they pay more attention to

3. the task and less to interpersonal relationships (O’Connor, Gruenfeld, and
McGrath, 1993).
A task involving the generation of ideas does not demand the same level
of coordination and interdependence between group members as an
intellective task or a mixed task in which group members show a conflict
of interests, ideas or values (Argote and McGrath, 1993). In our empirical
study, we tried to differentiate between creative and not- creative jobs.
By creative jobs, we mean task involving generation of ideas and non-
creative means jobs involving routine work.
Positive/Negative aspects of various communications medium:
1) E-mail: Some e-mail can cause upset and anger. It fails to acknowledge
‘cultural diversity’ within the organization as they can be a person and
task oriented. May miss overall when it comes to common
organizational goal and can affect overall performance. Also, it
enforces responsibility of task on employee once the message is
received and is likely to be hated.
2) Phone Calls: You cannot see each other’s body language so a lot of
Non-verbal communication is lost. Unlike e-mails, things might be
forgotten or misinterpreted. Can give rise of ‘representativeness
heuristics’ based on the judgment of another employee about
senior manager dictating tasks.
3) Face to Face Interaction: It is unsuitable for large organizations. It has
low legal and reference value thus individual responsibility is
unaccountable in this case. Though there is information richness but
poor retention by listener makes its case weak when compared with e-
mail which is precise, task oriented and easy to retain. Fails to provide
a written job description.

4. Types of jobs and their characteristics:
1) Job Satisfaction: Effective communication reduces morale problems
and keeps employee in the loop and part of the team. Key workers
often have institutional knowledge that is hard and impossible to
replace so communication medium can be deciding factor in their
retention. Can lead to increased teamwork as a person feels as an
important part of development process.
2) Hard-working team: Asking a general question- Who can so this job
better than me? If the answer is nobody it can be problematic and
employee can lose morale. Thus, team members are working in areas
where they are not ’best’ and thus overall frustration for everyone in
the team. However, if all team players are well informed and
communicated with their task and members, it can make
organizational goal above self-interest.
3) Adequate Rewards: Sense of fairness when efforts are equitably
rewarded. The reward system is generally linked with work-
performance, group performance and problem-solving ability or
participation in conflict resolution. Communicate employee with
meaningful work and allow the employee the opportunity to connect
with those with whom they serve to obtain valuable feedback is a
critical factor.
4) Team Player: An excellent team player would embrace the confidence
and communicate his ideas clearly and honestly without staying in the
shadows. Stating the ideas clearly when solving problem with suitable
communication medium was chosen can save time and efforts
5) Conflict Resolution: Promoting healthy conflict resolution should be a
goal of management. Communicating the ground rules timely with
staying in conformity with the problem is essentials. An effective
participant in conflict resolution means he/she is an important team
player and communicates with other team members actively.

5. PROCEDURE:
The study involves participation by employees from various types of
organizations like marketing, manufacturing, design, human resource,
educational institutions and others. Further, classification based on
gender and qualification of employees done. All employees provided with
a choice among various communication media like e-mail, phone calls,
face to face interactions etc to find their preferred communication
medium in their organizational setup. Facilitated to select multiple
communication media and rate them ranging from ‘Strongly disagree’ to
‘strongly agree’. Survey doesn’t provide any option for a neural response.
Similarly, group interaction processes like job satisfaction, rewards, group
resolution etc were part of findings.
VARIABLES
1) Communication media: To get choice of preferred media by particular
type of organization and their job characteristics
2) Type of task: To find how creative and non-creative jobs vary in their
communication medium selection. Whether job involves idea
generations or is a routine work.
3) Hard working team: To find how coordination among team members
make the job easy and smart.
4) Group solution: Degree to which the participant feels responsible for
and committed to the solution.
5) Job Satisfaction: To understand least preferred medium which has
lead to overall job dissatisfaction among participant.
6) Team Player: As an important team player what are the most
preferred information medium to communicate a meaningful idea.

6. RESULTS:

7. TABLES & GRAPHS:
BASED ON GENDER:
Female( Creative, e-mail preferred) 1 5 66.67%
Female ( Creative, phone calls)
Female ( Creative, face to face preferred) 1 7 88.90%
Female (non creative, e-mail preferred) 1 7 100%
male( Creative, e-mail preferred) 12 15 81.81%
male ( Creative, face to face preferred) 12 18 90.90%
male (non creative, e-mail preferred) 2 5 77.70%
male( non- Creative, face to face preferred) 0 7 77.70%
BASED ON JOB TYPE:
a) Creative jobs
Creative, Marketing ,e-mail 7 5 92%
Creative, Marketing, phone-calls 3 9 92%
Creative, Marketing, face to face 5 5 76.90%
Creative, design, e-mails 1 4 38.46%
Creative, design, phone-calls 2 5 87.50%
Creative, design, face to face 2 4 75.00%
Creative, edu. inst., emails 1 3 67%
Creative, edu. inst., phone-calls 1 4 83%
Creative, edu. inst., face to face 3 2 83%

8. b) Non- creative jobs
Non- Creative, Marketing, e-mail 0 0 0%
Non-Creative, Marketing, phone-calls 0 1 50%
Non-Creative, Marketing, face to face 0 2 100%
Non-Creative, design, emails 0 0 0%
Non-Creative, design, phone-calls 0 0 0%
Non-Creative, design, face to face 0 0 0%
Non-Creative, edu inst., emails 1 1 50%
Non-Creative, edu inst., phone-calls 1 1 50%
Non-Creative, edu inst., face to face 0 0 0%
Job interesting 14 25 90.60%
Hard working 9 18 62.70%
Adequate reward 7 29 83.70%
Team player 10 29 90.60%
Conflict Resolution 7 26 76.74%
Non-creative and job interesting 2 8 58.80%
Non-creative and hard working 4 7 64.70%
Non-creative and adequate reward 0 9 52.90%
Non-creative and team player 5 10 88.20%
Non-creative and group problem 1 8 52.94%
Job Interest 2 11 76.40%
Hard working 3 9 70.50%
Adequate rewards 0 11 64.70%
Team player 6 10 94.10%
Group Solutions 2 8 58.80%
male, job interesting 14 22 85.70%
male, hard working 11 16 62.40%
male, adequate reward 7 27 80.90%
male, team player 9 29 90.40%
male, group problem 6 26 76.19%

9. GRAPHS AND RESULTS:
a) Graph 1: Effective Communication medium of organization
b) Graph 2: Types of job and their characteristics
Job
interesting
Hard
working
Adequate
reward
Team
player
Conflict
Resolution
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
90.00%
100.00%
Non
Creative
Creative
Marketing (creative)

10. c) Graph 3: Comparison based on Gender
CONCLUSION:
a) Effective communication medium of organization:
 e-mails (verbal) are the preferred medium of communication
for marketers. Face to face interaction is preferred mode by
students, professors and educational institutions. Also,
e-mails are least preferred by Designing teams.
b) Type of job & their characteristics:
 Creative employees are usually satisfied with their jobs as
lower is the efforts required. Further, result shows,
creative jobs are more rewarding.
 Non- Creative employees are less involved in solving team
problems.

11. c) Comparison based on Gender:
Female:
 The job is less satisfying. (47.05% feels job is non-
creative). However, female employees are generally more
hardworking than male counterpart and believe they are
an important team player in decisions making. However,
their job doesn’t pay them adequate rewards and they
are less involved in solving problems.
Male:
 Don’t want to work hard and are more satisfied with their
jobs.