Communication in Organizations

Описание: While there are a number of different ways to think about the organization–communication relationship, two have been particularly influential in the history of organizational communication. Lets look at the communication in organizations perspective. This perspective views organizations as relatively stable, physical structures within which communication occurs. In this sense, organizations are containers for communication processes, and people send information to each other from their various positions in the organization.

In many respects, this has been the dominant model of organizational communication for much of the history of the field. Its approach is largely technical, focusing on questions of efficiency and clarity. This perspective on the organization–communication relationship has its place, especially if one is primarily interested in questions of clarity and accuracy, but it also has serious limitations.

First, by treating communication simply as an information transmission process within an already established organizational structure, it tends to downplay the significance of communication in the optimal performance of organizations. Communication becomes one organizational variable among many, and thus is easy to overlook. Second, it overlooks the complexity of the communication process. The reality is that communication is not just a means for transferring information from one person or location to another; rather, it is the process through which we create meaning.

Third, we have a sense of who we are, our connections to others, and our place in the world because we are communicating beings. Finally, this information transmission view of communication is a problem because it tends to treat organizations as given. When we think of organizational communication as the process of communicating in organizations, then the organizations themselves tend to be taken for granted. They become relatively fixed, unproblematic structures that exist independently from the communication process that occurs within them.