business communication managment

Business Communication Management

Many people understand business communication as the means of passing on or receiving of information. However, communication is not the transmission of a message, nor it is the message itself (What is business communication?). Rather, according to this source, it is the mutual exchange of understanding, originating with the receiver. Communication is critical to business performance and profitability; a study has actually shown that companies with an effective communication strategy demonstrated a significantly higher market value and shareholder return than their peers, and greater employee involvement and longevity (a critical component of your communication strategy). However, although communication gaps are undesirable, they still happen for a variety of reasons. This paper explains the important functions that business communications facilitates and explores many of the modern-day challenges that business communicators must now address.

The Functions of Business Communication

Communication improves business performance and profitability by serving many different functions inside the organization and various researchers have defined their own categories. For instance, Hargie, Dickson, and Tourish (1999) define the following five major functions of business communications:

Task/work function -- Creates effective communication between managers and staff ensures that the job is done efficiently and productively.

Social/maintenance function -- Builds a harmonious organization with friendly staff and teamwork.

Motivation function -- Encourages and supports employees to ensure that they produce make their best efforts.

Integration function -- Builds a sense of belonging among employees so they are committed to their work.

Innovation function -- Nurtures new ideas for developing new products or for developing more efficient and profitable ways of producing current products.

Neher (1997) emphasizes the social and organizational functions of business communication rather than focusing on the functions of specific communication exchanges. He identifies the functions of communication as compliance-gaining; leading, motivating and influencing; sense-making; problem-solving and decision making; and conflict management, negotiating and bargaining. In addition, Myers and Myers (1982) define three main functions of business communication:

Coordination and regulation of production activities -- Today's production activities require dynamic, reciprocal, lateral communications between production workers and non-routinized, two-way vertical communications between production workers and managers.

Socialization -- Establishing the right organizational culture and climate for organizational members is necessary to effectively coordinate organizational action in the pursuit of collective organizational goals.

Innovation -- Strong communication within and beyond the organization helps promote innovation.

New Business Communication Challenges and Needs

Business communication has always been a difficult endeavor, but today effective business communication today is under pressure from many new sources. Information overload, greater cultural diversity, increased generational diversity, a renewed focus on business ethics, the introduction of new social media and the need to communicate corporate social responsibility are just a few of the modern-day challenges that organizations are struggling to address, meaning that business communicators struggle with what their role should be and what the appropriate rules of engagement are.

Information overload is a phenomenon negatively impacting workers and the organization as explained by Wilson (2001). On a personal level, there is often a perception that the information associated with work tasks is greater than can be managed effectively, and a perception that such overload creates a degree of stress for which the coping strategies are ineffective. At the organizational level, situations arise in which the extent of perceived individual information overload is sufficiently widespread within the organization as to reduce the overall effectiveness of management operations. Information overload is happening because of many factors. Technology has certainly increased the volume of information that is produced and distributed. Globalization, has increased the volume of communication between different parts of a business; de-regulation has increased competition and, consequently, the work-loads of employees; out-sourcing has increased the number of organizations with which a company needs to communicate; and downsizing has increased pressure on the remaining staff to pick up the slack (Information overload) . A Reuter's survey identifies the following detriments of information overload (Information overload):

1. time is wasted - 38% of managers surveyed reported wasting substantial amounts of time looking for information;

2. delayed decision-making - 43% of respondents thought that decisions were delayed or adversely affected by the existence of too much information;

3. distraction - 47% of respondents reported being distracted from their main tasks;

4. stress - leading to tension with colleagues, loss of job satisfaction, ill-health (reported by 42%), reduced social activity (61%), and tiredness (60%).

In an increasingly global economy, the challenge for multinational communication has never been greater. According to Goman, worldwide businesses have discovered that intercultural communication important - not just because they have to deal increasingly with globalization, but also because the workforce within their own countries is growing more and more diverse, ethnically and culturally. Specifically, DuPraw and Axner identify six fundamental patterns of cultural differences that will impact business communication approaches.

1. Different Communication Styles -- the way people communicate through their use of language, non-verbal communication and assertiveness varies widely between, and even within, cultures.

2. Different Attitudes Toward Conflict -- Some cultures condone conflict while others try to avoid it.

3. Different Approaches to Completing Tasks -- People from different cultures have divergent ways to complete tasks stemming from different access to resources, different judgments of the rewards associated with task completion, different notions of time, and varied ideas about how relationship-building and task-oriented work should go together. People from different cultures also form relationships at different times when they must work together on projects.

4. Different Decision-Making Styles -- the roles individuals play in decision-making vary widely from culture to culture; some delegate decisions and some don't or rely on majority rule instead.

5. Different Attitudes Toward Disclosure -- in some cultures, it is not appropriate to be frank about emotions, about the reasons behind a conflict or a misunderstanding, or about personal information.

6. Different Approaches to Knowing -- the ways people come to know things all differs by culture; some cultures rely on cognitive means; some prefer symbolic imagery and rhythm and others strive toward transcendence. Different approaches to knowing can affect ways of analyzing a community problem or finding ways to resolve it.

Today, we work not only in a multicultural workplace, but also a multigenerational workplace. For the first time in history, as many as four generations are working together in the workplace and generational diversity is a greater challenge today than in times past in both the marketplace and the organization (Manning). Common experiences within generations tend to mean that each generation will have its own set of shared attitudes, expectations, and values concerning work (Manning). Therefore, business communications is challenged to keep up with the demands of diversity where a one size fits all approach has a good chance of failure.

The pressure for business communicators to conduct themselves in an ethical way is intense following numerous occurrences of corporate malfeasance that has included dubious accounting practices and misleading financial reports (Ethics in business communication). This source explains the difficulty a business communicator has in fulfilling ethical obligations. Communicator sometimes has a conflicted relationship with an audience and with the people on whose behalf they are communicating. They must serve two different roles, members of a profession and advocates for their audiences. This dual position can result in a conflict of interest that impacts decision making. Communicators have a vested interested in promoting the interests of their employers, but must also offer advocates useful information. This type of situation presents a clear ethical conflict without an obvious way to resolve it.

Social media is defined as media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. It supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many) (Social media). The use of social media is growing in popularity because it supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers (Social media). Common examples include blogs, social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace, Wikis, and opinion sites such as epinions and Yelp (Social media).

Social media isn't simply a new media channel, it is fundamentally different from traditional media, and, thus, poses new challenges for business communicators. With traditional media, control is in the hands of a few, there is a minimal feedback loop and a small universe of known contacts (Voedisch). In new social media, there are many publishers and there is a lot of interaction from different unknown sources (Voedisch). As such, social media can represent an opportunity or a threat for a business and business communicators need to make the right decisions about how they leverage social media to promote their business and how they respond to content published on social media sites.