Managing people effectively requires an understanding of several behavioral factors. Communication is surely one of them. Surveys clearl\=-0987654321\789++1018920show that communication is one of the most vital skills that managers need. Managers rarely work with things but rather with information about things. Thus, communication pervades the management functions of planning, organizing, and controlling. But what is communication?
Communication is the transmission of common understanding through the use of symbols. The term is derived from the Latin communis, meaning common In other words, unless a common understanding results from the transmission of verbal or nonverbal symbols, there is no communication.
Communicating involves the emotional, psychological, and mental characteristics of individuals, as well as technical characteristics of the medium used to communicate.
The importance of communication in business becomes more apparent when we consider the communication activities of an organization from an overall point of view. These activities fall into three broad categories: internal operational; external operational; personal communication.
All the communication that occurs in conducting work within a business is classified as internal operational. This is the communication among the businesss workers that is done to implement the businesss operating plan. By operating plan we mean the procedure that the business has developed to do whatever it was formed to do for example, to manufacture products, construct buildings, and sell goods.
Internal-operational communication takes many forms. It includes the orders and instructions that supervisors give workers, as well as oral exchanges among workers about work matters. It includes reports and records that workers prepare concerning sales, production, inventories, finance, maintenance, and so on. It includes the memorandums and reports that workers write in carrying out their assignments. Nowadays much of it is performed through a network of executive workstations.
The work-related communicating that a business does with people and groups outside the business is external-operational communication. This is the businesss communication with its public suppliers, service companies, customers, and the general public.
External-operational communication includes all the businesss efforts at direct selling salespeoples spiels, descriptive brochures, telephone callbacks, follow-up service calls, and the like. It also includes the advertising the business does, for what is advertising but communication with potential customers? Radio and television messages, newspaper and magazine advertising, and point-of-purchase (POP) display material obviously play a role in the businesss plan to achieve its work objective. Also in this category is all that a business does to improve its public relations, including its planned publicity, the civic-mindedness of its management, the courtesy of its employees, and the condition of its physical plant. And of very special importance to our study of communication, this category includes all the letters that workers write in carrying out their assignments.
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The importance of external-operational communication to business hardly requires supporting comment. Certainly, any business is dependent on outside people and groups for its success. And because the success of a business depends on its ability to satisfy customers needs, it must communicate effectively with them. In todays complex business society, businesses depend on each other in the production and distribution of goods and services. This interdependence requires communication. Like internal communication, external communication is vital to business success.
Not all communication that takes place in business is operational. In fact, much of it is without purpose as far as the business is concerned. Such communication is called personal.
Personal communication is the exchange of information and feeling in which we human beings engage whenever we come together. We have a need to communicate, and we will communicate even when we have little or nothing to say.
We spend much of our time with friends in communication. Even total strangers are likely to communicate when they are placed together, as on an airplane flight, in a waiting room, or at a ball game. Such personal communication also occurs at the workplace, and it is a part of the communication activity of any business. Although not a part of the businesss plan of operation, personal communication can have a significant effect on the success of the plan. This effect is a result of the influence that personal communication can have on the attitudes of the workers.
