Communication in Organizations

Communication in organizations encompasses all the means, both formal and informal, by which information is passed up, down, and across the network of managers and employees in a business. These various modes of communication may be used to disseminate official information between employees and management, to exchange hearsay and rumors, or anything in between. The challenge for businesses is to channel these myriad communications so they serve to improve customer relations, bolster employee satisfaction, build knowledge-sharing throughout the organization, and most importantly, enhance the firm's competitiveness.


Effective vs. ineffective communications
Perhaps the importance of good communication is best understood by considering what things would be like in its absence. For instance, if a company has no mechanism for recording and transmitting special order requests from its customers, and the employees in the sales and fulfillment areas only interact minimally, there's a good chance that when it receives a special request the company will have difficulty delivering what the customer wants. It may even lose the sale as employees grapple with an unusual request the management hasn't prepared them for.

Now consider a company going through a merger.…