Organizational Communication
What Is Organizational Communication?
There is broad general agreement that well-developed communication skills are essential to personal effectiveness in organizations or, at least, in managerial, professional, and leadership positions.— (Muner, 2002)
Organizational communication involves the composite of two multifaceted concepts: organization and communication.Opens in new window
Both terms have been defined in various ways, but for purpose of this entry,
- organization is defined as a social collectivity or a group of people working together to achieve individual and common goals;
- communication is defined as the process of creating shared meaning through the use of signs and symbols.
Organizational communication may be broadly defined as the communication primarily concerned with the content, structure, and process of human interaction through language and other symbols in day-to-day organizational activities. It fulfils various functions including information dissemination, control, persuasion and integration.
Basically, organizational communication is communication within the organization, often consists in the collective and interactive process of generating and interpreting messages.
The concept of message, here in its broadest sense, refers to a compilation of information—whether visual, verbal, or numerical—that can be written (and read), created as images (and seen or felt), spoken (and heard), video recorded (and seen, heard, and/or read), digitally analyzed (and interpreted), and so forth.
Organizational communication essentially serves to provide members of the organization with information needed to function effectively on the work itself (such as organizational goals, procedures and rules), organizational successes (such as benefits and work standards) and the socio-economic standing of the organization as a whole.
The study of organizational communication thus provides a basis for understanding virtually every human process that occurs in organizations.
In our next entry, we look at the networks and direction of communication within the organizationOpens in new window.
