Effective Communication Theoretical Concepts - Literature review Example

INDIVIDUAL REPORT Name: Student: Table of Contents 1.0 executive summary…………………………………………………..………….4 2.0 Introduction……………………………………………………….…………….5 3.0 Theoretical concepts…………………………………………………………….5 3.1 Uncertainty Reduction Theory…………………………………….……6 3.2 Media Dependency Theory…………………………………………..…7 3.3 Expectancy Violation Theory……………………………………….….7 3.4 Organization Theory…………………………………………………....8 3.5 Social Science Theory………………………………………………….9 3.6 Reardon’s ACE theory ……………………………………………...…9 3.7 Inoculation Theory…………………………………………………….10 3.8 Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)…………………..…11 4.0 Findings…………………………………………………………………….…12 4.1 Effective Communication………………………………………….…12 4.2 Communication Channels…………………………………………….12 4.3 Barriers to Communication…………………………………………...14 4.4 Overcoming Barriers to Communication……………………………..15 4.5 Written Document………………………………………………….…15 4.6 Persuasive Communication………………………………………...…16 4.7 Evaluating Feedback……………………………………………...…..16 4.8 Writing and Delivery of Presentation…………………………………17 5.0 Conclusion………………………………………………………………...…..18 6.0 References………………………………………………………………...….19 7.0 Appendix……………………………………………………………………20 1.0 Executive summary The popular perception of communication suggests that communication process is paradoxically simple yet powerful. Communication is defined as the process by which people interactively create, sustain and manage to mean. We turn our attention to different theories that have been put forward by various scholar relating to communication. We have discussed some of these theories such as uncertainty reduction theory, media dependency theory, expectation violation theory, organization theory, social science theory, Reardon ACE theory, inoculation theory and communication accommodation theory. Effective communication depends on different factors which the managerial team must make sure they understand. It is the work of the managerial team to ensure they set communication objectives in the organization. Successive Communication in the workplace is determined by the channels of communication the organization chooses to use. The channels, on the other hand, is dependent on the type of communication involved, is it verbal, oral or nonverbal communication? However, communication is faced with numerous barriers. Communication barrier is anything that prevents the receiver from understanding the message. These barriers include misunderstanding, polarization, intentional oriented, inference confusion, indiscrimination poor listening skills and lack of feedback. The organization should adopt the persuasive communication. This is the type of communication that can ensure that the workers can understand their supervisor intention whenever they are pursuing something in the organization. The top management should ensure that they evaluate the communication skill as regular as possible. These will ensure that a given channel that the organization adopts remain relevant and popular among the workers. The organization should also give way to more research from the workers and external people. These will ensure that the organization is using the most appropriate communication in all their activities 2.0 Introduction Effective communication skills are vital for the development of the organization. Various theories have been developing to prove the importance of communication in the life of an individual and the organization. Communications are one of the managerial skills that every person in authority should have. The study of communication skills as a tool for good management is thus critical to the success of an organization. The research below looks at the communication from theoretical view to how the skills may be used to the benefit of an organization. The study also assesses various communication channels and the barriers to communication 3.0 Theoretical Concepts The study of communication in the workplace has brought about the formulation of many theories. These theories have been categorized into different categories (Berger and Iyengar, 2013). These include structural and functional theories, cognitive and behavioral theories, interactionist theories, interpretive theories and critical theories. Structural and functional theories are based on the social structure which can be observed objectively. Cognitive and behavior theories focus on the psychology of individuals in an organization. Interaction theories are based on how the interaction processes affects the social life of an individual. Interruptive theories bring out how people understand their experiences. On the other hand, critical theories are concerned with the conflict of interest in the workplace and the way communication perpetuates the domination of one group over another. 3.1 Uncertainty Reduction Theory The uncertainty reduction theory is majorly based on interpersonal communication within an organization or in the workplace (Balasingham, 2013). The concept of information is the main foundation for communication and the development of this communication theory. According to Balasingham (2013), information can be viewed as a basic human function in which a person request, receive and exchange information. The goal of these exchange of the information has the effect of reducing the uncertainty. Charles R Berger and Richard J. Calabrese believed that uncertainty was the central motive of the communication. The study of information is the basic to all the field of communication. These need for information, however, is motivated by the level of the uncertainty in an individual. Shannon and Weaver defined uncertainty as the existence of the high amount of alternatives, and the probability of their event is relatively equal. Shannon and Weaver related their definition of uncertainty to the transmission of messages (Balasingham, 2013). These ideas contributed to the development of the uncertainty reduction theory. It is also believed that in a situation where the level of uncertainty is high the smaller the chance that individual will be able to predict behaviors and occurrences. Communication comes about as a result of people trying to reduce the level of uncertainty in them. 3.2 Media Dependency Theory Media dependency theory is commonly referred to as media system dependency theory. This theory is based on the fact that the more we use the media they more we become media dependency. Hadrioui (2014) believes that media is usually goal-oriented. These means that the media tends to report on what the audience want to hear. The theory state that the more dependent a person is on media, the more the media will be important to that person. According to DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, there is a correlation between media content and the general view of the society on media (Hadrioui, 2014). The theory related factor influencing motives, information seeking strategies media and alternative use and the general dependency on media to provide the necessary information. Media dependency is greatly determined by how the people view media. They look whether the media can meet their information goal. Dependency on a specific media can also be influenced by the number of media sources available to an individual. The person tends to become dependent on the available media. It is also believed that availability of alternative media is likely to make a person less dependent on the media. 3.3 Expectancy Violation Theory According to Judee Burgoon, nonverbal behavior is symbolic behavior whose meanings are culturally situated. Most of the people in the society have expectations of and also make unconscious predictions about behaviors that are mostly nonverbal (Miller-Ott and Kelly, 2015). In case, the nonverbal expectations are violated people tend to assign positive or negative meaning to this violation. In a situation that the meaning of a nonverbal violation is unclear, people will try to give different meanings their lives. 3.4 Organization Theory This communication theory is concerned with the massive information that the organization has available to them. Gadiuta (2015) believes that communication is what constitutes an organization. The organization theory has influenced the way the managers structure their organization as it provides a theoretical framework that can be deployed to achieve a competitive advantage over other organization. There many conceptual models of the organization theory (Gadiuta, 2015). These means that communication is dependent on many factors such as technologies available, the social structure of the society, their culture and the physical structures that exist in the organization. The organization theory focuses on how to increase efficiency, effectiveness and the objectives that are set by the organization. Figure 1.1. Diagram Representing Major Component of Organization Theory 3.5 social science theory McLuhan used to claim he does not work from theory, however, many people have branded him pejoratively as a technological determinist. McLuhan pointed out that he does not view his work as a theory. According to McLuhan a person in the area of exploration should not have any point of view. They should use every available approach to understanding the unknown. From the McLuhan’s media ecology the medium is the message contains a multitude of meaning packed into one memorable package (Jonassen and Land, 2012). McLuhan refers to media and technologies as extensions of human beings. This is because they are produced by human beings in their image. According to McLuhan, we tend to forget and becomes alienated from our creations and try to see them as something other than ourselves. McLuhan provided us with an incredible methodological toolkit to help us understand causes, effects, and connections which go beyond media and communication. His work has extended to include areas such as Education, Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities. 3.6 Reardon’s ACE theory According to Reardon persuasion is a concept that originated from psychology and communication is kind of guide to the people on how to adopt to some behavior or attitude through processes of reasoning and emotional appeals (Hadrioui, 2014). Most people will try to protect their views and can easily by any means. Sometimes people have the tendency of not taking some time to reason with the information they receive. In most cases people will accept the expert advice without event questioning the correctness of the information given. Reardon insists that when there is no motivation are ability to scrutinize information people will form new attitude through simple association rather than the mental ability of reasoning. The Appropriate Consistency Effectiveness (ACE) model include three stimulus inducements that can operate to encourage the adoption of a new behavior. The ACE model of persuasion proposes that most people will tend to use a given criteria to determine whether or not they should respond to an argument of the person who is persuading them (Hadrioui, 2014). The ACE model provide a framework on how the messages are developed to the interest of the receiver. 3.7 Inoculation Theory This theory is not concerned with persuading someone but rather to resist a person from persuasion. According to McGuire, an inoculation message presents a weaker form of a contrary argument. When people are exposed to the new argument they are less likely to change their attitude. This is because these people have already developed a formidable defense system. McGuire revealed that people are more resistant to persuasion when an inoculation process takes place (Gallois and Giles, 2015). People do learn to defend their existing attitudes from persuasion. People attitudes can be inoculated against persuasive communication that is directed at them by some sources. As the theory developed, it became more elaborate defined as a method of stimulating existing attitudes to decline persuasive communications before those messages generated and presented themselves to the receiver. Inoculation systematically provides the necessary information to receivers of persuasive communication. These create some expectation that the information will reinforce the receiver’s resistance to future counter-attitudinal strikes. This theory suggests that by delivering low doses of contrasting perspectives, the audience members will develop a stronger immunity. 3.8 Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) is concerned the interpersonal communication. People are using different language in the world that is not their native language for communications (Air and Channel, 2013). Taking this into considerations, a strategy for effective communication called “accommodation” has been developed. This means that the speakers adjust their styles of speaking to suit their interlocutors. Accommodation is more pronounced in interlanguage talk settings. This focuses on how people accommodate their speech in an interlanguage setting where members have different language levels. In most cases the non-native speaker will try to change their accent to make it sound like that of the native speakers. Giles and Smith integrated this accent mobility model into communication accommodation theory. They pointed out that speaker does not only change accent but also changes other aspects of speech such as pauses, utterance length, and pronunciation. The above theories of communication have contributed to how effective communication will be in a given organization. Communication skills as a tool for management are very vital. The organization should also formulate objectives on how to achieve effective communication in the workplace. The above theories and many others are instrumental in developing an effective communication in the organization. 4.0 Findings 4.1 Effective Communication To ensure there is effective communication in an organization setting, the managerial of the organization has to set the objectives on which the effective communication will achieve in the workplace. Effective communication means that the organization has laid down a strategic way of communication within the organization (Gallois and Giles, 2015). It is how these communication strategies are developed that determines how best the communication will be in an organization. The strategies developed by management may include holding discussions and interviews with the workers. These will enable the worker to communicate whatever the reason they feel is preventing them from working effectively. For these to be effective such discussion should be held on regular basis. Communication is the main connect between the worker and the authority in a given organization. These imply that even workers should be involved either directly or indirectly during the setting of communication objectives. These have the effect of every worker owing the objectives because they have a feeling that they are the one who developed the objectives. 4.2 Communication Channels The communication channel can be referred as the medium in which the communication is taking place. The communication channel one chooses depends on the type of communication used by the organization. These type of communication include verbal communication which involves listening to a given person to understand the meaning of the message. The written communication which is the most common in many organizations in the world (Jonassen and Land, 2012). The other type of communication is the nonverbal which involves observing a person and inferring meaning. Channels vary of information they carry. It is believed that information-rich channels convey more nonverbal information. My research reveals that most manager will prefer to use more information rich channels. These channels are also dependent on whether the information processing is vertical or lateral. These channels include face-to-face conversation, video conferencing, telephone conversation, E-mails, handheld devices, blog, written letters and memos, formal written documents, and spreadsheets. The information richness of this channel differs a lot with a face-to-face conversation with the highest level. The key to effective communication is to match the communication channel with the goal of the message (Jonassen and Land, 2012). Figure 1.0. Information Richness level of Different Channels 4.3 Barriers to Communication A barrier to communication can be viewed as that something that keeps people from understanding the message. These have the illusion of making communication much more difficult than most people seem to realize (Air and Channel, 2013). There is a bigger tendency that if one can talk, they can communicate. There are many barriers to effective communication. These barriers may include misunderstanding; this occurs when we communicate without a clear mind. In these people tend to judges the outcome of events from their perspective thereby missing to understand the matter in question. Another barrier is polarization. These refer to the tendency to look at the world and trying to describe in terms it’s of extreme i.e. good or bad, rich or poor, etc. The tendency of looking at people or object regarding the ways in which they are talked about rather than regarding the way in which they exist and operate. This is referred to as intentional oriented which is a barrier to effective communication. Other common barriers include fact inference confusion – this is marking statements about people that we observe and out of them we make a statement about what we have not observed. Allness – these means that the world is too complex to know all about anything. Some people tend to think they know all there is to know about someone, but these cannot be possible. It is believed that even a person does not know all there is to know about themselves. Static evaluation is another major barrier to communication. This occurs when we take a decision before we understand a statement. Indiscrimination, poor listening skills, lack of feedback, wrong channels are also barriers to communication. 4.4 Overcoming Barriers to Communication The most common way to first overcome the barriers to communication is to develop a positive attitude about communication. This is concerned the general view of the receiver toward the sender and the acceptance of the communication channel used by both sender and the receiver. People should strive to improve communication skills. This will tend to take knowledge and hard work which will eventually pay (Miller-Ott and Kelly, 2015). The top management of the organization should through observations and interviews ensure that the worker understands the barriers to effective communication. This will cause increased awareness of the potential for improving communication which is the first step to better communication. Communication barrier can be overcome by making communication goal oriented. These rational goals will always come first and pave the way for other goals. These will ensure a good relationship between the sender and the receiver. Communication should also be approached in a creative manner rather than just taking it as the chore of the working people. The experimenting different alternative will help the organization to come up with the best communication skills acceptable by every person in the organization hence reducing the barriers. The top management should make sure they vary the channels, listening techniques and feedback techniques. 4.5 Written document The written document is the best and most acceptable way of presenting a research work to the superiors and the workers. Presenting a well-written document on findings on better communication types is likely to make people trust my work (Hunt, Ewing and Ghanbarian, 2014). The document will include the methodology of data gathering, and analysis I have used. The written document will be all the sources of data. After presenting the written document I would request the superior to let me discuss the document with them and the other worker to persuade them the information will be beneficial to all. Written work is considered to be the best option as it can easily be produced in several copies and be shared over a large number of people. 4.6 Persuasive communication Persuasion is a term that is believed many scholars that have its origin from psychology and communication. Persuasion can simply be defined as the attempt by an individual to guide people to adopt the certain behavior, belief or attitude by persuader through emotional appeals. Persuasive communication is used to influence individual worker and also a group of workers in an organization to accept a particular position. These require a clear audience and the receiver to be an intense listener (Hunt, Ewing and Ghanbarian, 2014). The persuader should be able to understand the person they are persuading. Persuasive communication is more acceptable to workers rather than using orders. The people on the authority in an organization should strive to use persuasive communication. Use of persuasive communication will earn one respect as compared to the giving order which leads to workers fearing those in authority. An employee who is persuaded to do something is likely to perform better. Persuasion also acts as a motivator to the employee and create a sense of belonging to the organization. 4.7 Evaluating Feedback Effective communication is critical to any given organization but these communication processes should regularly be evaluated to ensure everyone is comfortable with the current communication model. Effective evaluation of communication skills model being used by an organization requires that every stakeholder being involved. Interviews and observations should be conducted to every person involved in the organization (Miller-Ott and Kelly, 2015). The question of whether an organization is providing the right means of communication is supposed to be the starting point of the evaluation process. The choice of the right channel of communication should also be a major concern. However, there is likely to be a great problem if the organization set unrealistic communication objectives, make the wrong audience target, and communicate unclear messages The organization should use the evaluation systems although they are faced with numerous problems. The feedback and communication of assessment results are an integral part that the management should ensure every employee is aware of (Hunt, Ewing and Ghanbarian, 2014). The effective feedback should be used to improve and develop new communication strategies in the organization. 4.8 Writing and Delivery of Presentation After carrying out the research and documentation of my research and findings, the next great job is to know how the research work will help other people. Presenting a research work to the people using different media may sound convincing, and people will be able to appreciate our work (Hunt, Ewing and Ghanbarian, 2014). On an organization, the best way to present one finding is to use computer aid programs such as PowerPoint. During the presentation, one will be able to get the feedback from my fellow workers. During the presentation, one will be able to persuade the audience on my evaluation. It is during this presentation period that the superiors and workmate will get the chance to criticize my recommendations and present their views. 5.0 Conclusion The research has found that communication plays a critical role in the interactions and relational development in an organization. The different theories of communication have revealed communication to be part of human being daily lives. Communication influences how people will relate to the organization and the society in general. References Air, O., & Channel, I. Y. (2013). International Journal of McLuhan Studies. Sat, 10, 19. Balasingham, K. (2013). Supply management: the theoretical foundation of the IMP approach and its contribution on critical purchasing decisions. Berger, J., & Iyengar, R. (2013). Communication channels and word of mouth: How the medium shapes the message. Journal of consumer research, 40(3), 567-579. Gadiuta, D. (2015). Building resistance to attitude change toward a health product (Doctoral dissertation, Auckland University of Technology). Gallois, C., & Giles, H. (2015). Communication accommodation theory. The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. Hadrioui, B. (2014). Remembrance of things past: How employees perceive their company’s history (Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University). Heath, R. L., & Bryant, J. (2013). Human communication theory and research: Concepts, contexts, and challenges. Routledge. Hunt, A., Ewing, R., & Ghanbarian, B. (2014). Percolation theory for flow in porous media (Vol. 880). Springer. Jonassen, D., & Land, S. (Eds.). (2012). Theoretical foundations of learning environments. Routledge. Miller-Ott, A., & Kelly, L. (2015). The presence of cell phones in romantic partner face-to-face interactions: An expectancy violation theory approach. Southern Communication Journal, 80(4), 253-270. 7.0 Appendix Action plan: communication skills The 9 week plan has been a great success. This has helped been to conduct an organized research. It has acted as my guide all through. It is through the 9 week plan that I have been able to study communication skills at work place. Read More