Communication and Culture in Organizations

Communication Overview

• Communication is the transfer and understanding of meaning through verbal and nonverbal messages.
• Communication serves four key functions within groups or organizations: control, motivation, emotional expression, and information.

Communication Process

• Formal Channels: Established by organizations to transmit messages related to professional activities.

• Informal Channels: Created spontaneously and emerge as responses to individual choices.

• Channels of Communication: Different methods of communication, including symbolic (e.g., road signs), oral (e.g., telephone), written (e.g., email), and nonverbal communication (e.g., face-to-face).

• Communication Process Model: The process involves a sender encoding a message, transmitting it through a channel, with possible noise, a receiver decoding the message, and providing feedback.

Communication Process: Noise

• Noise can be physical (e.g., background noise, poor connection), psychological (e.g., semantics, attention, perception), or social/cultural (e.g., cultural misunderstandings, mistranslation).

Communication Process: The 55-38-7 Ratio

• 55% of communication is body language.
• 38% of communication is voice tone.
• 7% of communication is words.

Technology and Communication

• Technology impacts communication by changing methods, efficiency, and the richness of the message.
• The method used is a part of the communicated message.
• Richness vs. efficiency of technology in communication.

Efficiency vs. Richness

• Social presence theory (Rice, 1992) describes to what extent the sender can be felt in communication via the communication channel which may include lost non-verbal cues. Emoticons can compensate for lost non-verbal cues.
• Media richness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1986) describes the need for presence contingent on message and that the choice in communication depends on uncertainty and equivocality. Examples from this theory include e-mail vs. telephone.

Emoticons and Emoji

• Emoticons and emojis add another layer of meaning to communication to compensate for lost non-verbal cues.

Discussion Question

• Text messaging is a common communication method; does it transmit correct messages, or does it open the door for misinterpretation?

Geographical Reach

• Boundaryless working ("placeless organizations") and closeness in communication defined as the extent to which people are linked through a network (Latour, 1997).
• Technological advancements and the internet have greatly increased globalisation.

Virtual Teams

• Features of virtual teams (VTs) include having unique skills, located in different places, needing to use technology to collaborate over time and across distances, and having unique communication needs.

A Theory of 'Virtuality'

• Virtual tools impact communication (VTs require less synchronous communication and less richness).
• Three input factors, determining the level of team virtuality, include the number of boundaries to be crossed, proportion of co-located members, and team size.

Why Go Virtual?

• Rapid developments in ICT technologies impact communication methods.
• Communication technologies allow organizations to become agile, flexible to compete in the global market, communicate across geographical, cultural, contextual and temporal boundaries, and take advantage of the pool of global talent.

Global Implications: Cultural Barriers

• Communication barriers can arise due to semantics, word connotations, tone differences, differences in perceptions, high context vs. low context cultures.

Global Implications: Illustration

• Examples of cultural differences in communication, such as use of eye contact, body language, and gestures (e.g., smiling in Western cultures can be a sign of happiness, but may signal embarrassment in some Asian cultures).

Global Implications: What Can We Do?

• To improve communication across cultures, assume differences until similarities are proven, use empathetic descriptions rather than interpretations or evaluations, practice empathy, and treat interpretations as working hypotheses.

This quiz explores key concepts in communication within a global context, focusing on cultural barriers, communication types, and the influence of technology. Discover the distinctions between high context and low context cultures, and learn best practices for enhancing cross-cultural communication. Aimed at improving understanding of communication dynamics in organizations.