Organizational communication facts for kids

Have you ever wondered how big groups of people, like a school, a sports team, or even a company, talk to each other to get things done? That's what organizational communication is all about! It's a special area of communication studies that looks at all the ways people share information and ideas inside an organization. This field is always changing, and now it studies not just big businesses, but also groups like charities and non-profit organizations. Organizations work well because people inside them, and even people outside, keep talking and sharing goals. This communication can be official or unofficial.

A Look Back: How Organizational Communication Started

The idea of organizational communication began a long time ago, in the 1930s to 1950s. Back then, it was mostly about how people spoke and wrote in business. Over time, it grew into its own field with its own ideas and research.

Important thinkers helped shape this field. In 1947, Nobel winner Herbert A. Simon said that communication is "absolutely essential to organizations." Another key person was W. Charles Redding, who helped make organizational communication a real subject to study.

In the 1950s, the focus was on how communication could make organizations work better. By the 1980s, it started looking at how communication actually creates an organization. In the 1990s, people began to study how communication could both help and sometimes control people within an organization. This idea came from a French thinker named Michel Foucault.

After 2000, organizational communication changed even more. With globalization, organizations and governments started working together differently. There were also big cases of corruption, like with Arthur Andersen, which made people think more about ethics and corporate social responsibility.

In the last five years, we've seen huge changes with mass media. People now get their news from social media like Twitter instead of newspapers. This means communication can spread faster, but it also makes things like "fake news" a bigger problem. Still, it lets everyone share their stories! With new technology, this field will keep growing and changing.

Early Ideas About Communication in Groups

When people first started studying organizational communication, they had some main ideas:

• People act logically. But sometimes, people don't have all the facts, so they might make decisions that don't seem logical.
• Ideas should be based on facts and clear logic. Researchers thought they only needed to measure behaviors and use logic to understand communication.
• Communication is like a machine. A message is built by a sender, sent through a channel, and then received by someone else. Any mistakes should be fixed.
• Organizations are like machines. Each part (like an employee) can be swapped out. What works in one group should work in another.
• Organizations are like containers. Communication happens inside them, and any differences in how people talk inside or outside can be studied.

Herbert A. Simon later introduced the idea of bounded rationality. He said that people in organizations rarely have all the information. Even if they did, they often pick the first good option instead of searching for the very best one.

In the early 1990s, Peter Senge brought in new ideas like the learning organization and systems thinking. These ideas are still important today.

Robert Craig suggested seven ways to think about communication:

• Rhetorical: The art of talking and persuading.
• Semiotic: How signs and symbols create meaning.
• Phenomenological: Understanding experiences and dialogue.
• Cybernetic: How information is processed.
• Sociopsychological: How people express themselves and influence others.
• Sociocultural: How social order is created and repeated.
• Critical: Looking at communication to understand power.

Communication Networks

Think of communication networks as paths or patterns of how people talk to each other in a group. Research has shown that these patterns can affect how quickly a group finishes a task, who becomes the leader, and how happy people are with their roles.

There are different patterns, like a "chain" (information goes from one person to the next), a "wheel" (everyone talks to one central person), a "star," an "all-channel" network (everyone talks to everyone), and a "circle."

Talking Between Organizations

Sometimes, different organizations need to talk to each other. We use abbreviations to show who is talking to whom. These can be for phone calls, computer networks, or even in-person meetings.

Talking Between Individuals

Interpersonal communication is how people talk to each other. This can be with words (verbally) or without words (non-verbally), like using gestures, facial expressions, or body language.

Today, managers don't need to have all the answers. They need to ask the right questions! With so many ways to communicate electronically, answers can come from anywhere. The real job of a manager is to figure out what the business needs to know and how to find that information.

Ideally, the message sent is the message received. This is easier when talking about facts, like "This pipe fits the coupling." You can check if it's true. But when someone shares a feeling or opinion, like "This work is too hard," it's harder to check. People's backgrounds can be very different, leading to different understandings. These differences can make communication difficult.

Nonverbal communication always goes along with verbal messages. For example, if someone talks about the length of an object, they might show it with their hands. This is clear when you're talking face-to-face. People always communicate without words, like through their clothes or body language. Even the situation a message is sent in can be part of its non-verbal meaning. For example, if a company is losing money and orders a reorganization, people might worry about losing their jobs.

Many things affect how well we communicate. Some are in the environment, some are about the people talking, and some are about their relationship (like a boss and an employee). The sender wants to share an idea. This idea goes through "filters" in both the sender and receiver. These filters include how we see, hear, and think. Our past experiences also create a "memory system" that helps us understand the world. This system and the environment work together to shape how we behave. As we learn new things, our memory system changes, helping us adapt to a changing world.

Official and Unofficial Communication

Organizations use both unofficial and official ways to communicate. Official communication goes up, down, and across different levels, following rules. Unofficial communication is often called "the grapevine."

Formal communication is the flow of official information through clear, set paths. It's controlled and takes effort to share properly. It usually follows the chain of command, going from leaders down to employees.

Informal communication, like talking with friends at work, used to be seen as a problem. But now, it's seen as important for getting work done in modern organizations.

The grapevine is a random, unofficial way that information spreads. It can be gossip, rumors, or simple messages. Grapevine communication is fast and often more direct than formal communication. An employee who hears a lot of grapevine info but doesn't share it is a dead-ender. Someone who hears very little is an isolate. While the grapevine can spread wrong information, it can also help people express feelings and even make employees more productive.

Researchers McPhee and Zaug (1995) also looked at how communication actually creates organizations. They found four main ways communication flows, both official and unofficial, that build an organization:

• Organizational self-structuring: How the group sets up its own rules.
• Membership negotiation: How people join and fit into the group.
• Activity coordination: How people work together on tasks.
• Institutional positioning: How the organization presents itself to the outside world.

Why Organizational Communication Matters

Organizational communication is all about sharing information within a group. It's super important because a group's success depends on people working together.

Understanding Organizations as People

This field helps us understand the human side of organizations. It looks at things like power struggles, teamwork, disagreements, making decisions, and how people follow rules. In the past, organizations didn't pay much attention to employees' feelings. Now, organizational communication looks at how to keep people motivated by making sure their needs are met at work.

Today, this field also studies how people communicate when working from home, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic made digital communication so important.

Good and Bad Communication in Organizations

Organizational communication teaches us what communication works best in different situations, especially for good management. Both unofficial and official communication are key, but they must be used correctly. Knowing good communication skills can help reduce and solve problems within a group.

Learning Communication Skills

This field aims to find and teach useful communication skills for both work and personal life. As people realize how important organizational communication is, there's a greater need for jobs that focus on helping organizations, training employees, and career development.

Ways to Look at Organizational Communication

Shockley-Zalabak identified two main ways to understand how communication works in organizations.

The Functional Approach

This approach looks at "what messages do and how they move through organizations." It focuses on how communication helps the organization work. There are three types of message functions:

• Organizing functions: Messages that set the rules, like handbooks or newsletters.
• Relationship functions: Communication that helps people understand their roles and feel like they belong. This affects how well they work.
• Change functions: Messages that help organizations adapt and change, like decisions about new ways of doing things.

The Meaning-Centered Approach

This approach is about "how organizational reality is created through human interaction." It focuses more on what communication is rather than how it works or where messages go.

Different Ways of Thinking About Organizations

Classical Approach

This idea came from the Industrial Revolution. It sees organizations like a machine. Communication flows mostly from the top down, like orders. Each worker has a specific task, like a part of a machine. If one part fails, the machine (organization) might break down. Henri Fayol talked about how managers should plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control.

Human Relations Approach

This approach sees organizations more like a family. It focuses on how happy workers are and their relationships within the group, rather than just their work output. It emphasizes that good relationships and leadership can motivate employees and make the organization work better. Think of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which helps understand how meeting employees' needs affects the whole group.

Cultural Approach

This approach looks at organizations through a "cultural lens." It studies the shared values and beliefs within an organization. Edgar Schein suggested three levels to understand culture:

• Artifacts: Things you can see and experience, like office decor or how people dress.
• Beliefs and values: What the group believes is important.
• Implicit assumptions: Deep, unspoken rules about how things work.

Systems Approach

This approach sees organizations as complex living things that need to interact with the outside world to survive. Key ideas include:

• Hierarchical ordering: Different levels within the system.
• Interdependence: All parts rely on each other.
• Permeability: The ability to let things in and out from the environment.

It looks at how things go in (input), are processed (throughput), and come out (output).

Constitutive Approach

This idea, also called CCO, says that communication actually forms and maintains organizations. It's not just something that happens inside an organization; communication *is* the organization. This approach helps understand how communication creates our social reality.

Critical Approach

This approach focuses on power differences and unfairness in organizations. It argues that power imbalances are a natural part of social groups. It tries to find where power and control come from in an organization to help people who are being treated unfairly. It looks at how dominant ideas and systems control people.

Feminist Approach

This is a newer area of study, starting in the 1970s. Like the critical approach, it highlights power differences, especially how male dominance in organizations can affect women. It also looks at how race and nationality play a role. The idea is that women often have to fit into male ways of working but still face female stereotypes. This approach aims to find and remove barriers for women in the workplace.

Communicative Rationality

This idea comes from the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. It explains that for communication to work well, people need to use their logical thinking. It looks at what conditions are needed for people to truly understand each other when they communicate.

Handling Disagreements

All organizations experience disagreements, or conflicts. So, people have developed ways to lessen their bad effects. Professionals try to solve conflicts in the workplace as effectively as possible. To do this, they need strong conflict resolution skills.

Since conflicts can be big or small, it's important to deal with them quickly. For example, if someone always leaves their desk messy, it can bother everyone else. Or if a co-worker is often loud. These issues can come from inside or outside the team, but they need to be handled well so they don't become daily problems.

A leader's ability to manage conflict is very important. Leaders who focus on working together have more success than those who try to avoid conflict or dominate others. It's also important that leaders get proper training in conflict management.

How Researchers Study Organizational Communication

In the past, researchers mostly used quantitative research, which means they used numbers and statistics. This included surveys, counting words, mapping networks, and studying behaviors.

In the early 1980s, qualitative research became popular. This means researchers looked at stories, observed people, did interviews, and studied texts to understand communication in organizations.

There's also a third way called mixed methods. This combines both quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (stories/observations) data in one study. This gives a richer and better understanding of a problem than using just one method. It helps understand complex situations.

There are many ways to use mixed methods. Some are sequential, meaning one type of data is collected before the other. Others are concurrent, meaning both types of data are collected at the same time.

• Sequential explanatory design: Start with numbers, then use stories to explain the numbers.
• Sequential exploratory design: Start with stories, then use numbers to build on those stories.
• Sequential transformative design: Guided by a specific idea or goal, using either numbers or stories first depending on what works best.
• Concurrent triangulation design: Collect numbers and stories at the same time, separately, then mix them to compare.
• Concurrent embedded design: Collect numbers and stories at the same time, but one method supports the other.
• Concurrent transformative design: Guided by a specific idea, collecting numbers and stories at the same time, with equal or unequal importance.

Mixed methods try to use the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative research while avoiding their weaknesses. For example, quantitative research might not look at the full picture, while qualitative research might use smaller groups and be influenced by the researcher.

In the 1980s and 1990s, critical research became important, focusing on issues like gender, race, class, and power. Today, the study of organizational communication uses many different research methods.

You can find research on organizational communication in many journals, like Management Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Business Communication, and Journal of Applied Communication Research.

What Researchers Are Studying Now

Today, the field of organizational communication has moved beyond just how information moves. It now studies how communication actually builds and changes organizations, and how organizations affect us.

Newer ways of thinking include "postmodern," "critical," "participatory," "feminist," and "power/political" approaches. This field connects with many other subjects like sociology, psychology, business, and even medicine.

Here are some topics researchers are studying right now:

How Organizations Are Formed (Constitution), for example:

• How do people's communication actions create or change how organizations work?
• How does communication itself help create organizations?
• How do the organizations we belong to change how we communicate and who we are?
• What other groups, besides formal organizations, are created through our communication (like markets or social movements)?
• When does a group officially "become" an organization? Has the world changed so much that the word "organization" means something different now?

Stories (Narrative), for example:

• How do groups use stories to teach new members?
• Do organizational stories work on different levels? Are certain stories told on purpose to get specific results? Are there special "organizational storytellers"?
• How does an organization try to control the stories told about it? When is it successful?
• When stories conflict with rules, how are those conflicts solved? Why are some stories accepted and others rejected?

Who We Are (Identity), for example:

• Who do we see ourselves as, based on the groups we belong to?
• Do our communication experiences in one organization change us? How much of who we are comes from the organizations we belong to?
• Can people successfully resist being defined by their organization? What would that look like?
• Do people who define themselves by their work communicate differently than those who define themselves by hobbies?
• Researchers have studied how firefighters use humor to keep their identity, or the identities of police groups and professional women.

How Things Are Connected (Interrelatedness), for example:

• How do our communication actions in one organization affect how we communicate in other organizations?
• How do people's experiences in one organization affect other parts of their lives?
• If someone's role in an organization changes a lot (like a promotion), how does that affect their other group memberships?
• What kind of future relationship between business and society does organizational communication suggest?

Power, for example:

• How do certain communication practices in an organization strengthen or change power relationships? Are people's responses limited by things inside or outside the organization?
• Do common organizational practices support the main, accepted way of thinking? Do people resist these practices? How, and what happens?
• Do changes in status (like promotions or demotions) change how people communicate? How do people tell the difference between "legitimate" (official) and "illegitimate" (unofficial) behaviors? When are they successful?

See also

• Agenda-setting theory
• Organizational learning
• Anticipatory socialization
• Socionics

Associations

• Academy of Management
• Association for Business Communication
• Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (UK)
• International Association of Business Communicators
• International Communication Association
• National Communication Association