ORGANIZATION COMMUNICATION: AN ANALYSIS
Dr. Tanvir Orakzai
July 03, 2006
Throughout the WWII and post wars era, there has been intensive endeavor to study organization communication in organizational setting. As a result a huge number of workers in 1950s went under communication training initially in the military and then in universities and business environment. Traditionally there have been three metaphors dominating the concept of organization, such as organization “as a machine" and " biological organism." The most popular metaphor, which has appeared in recent days, is “organizational culture”. The term organization culture is borrowed from anthropology which refers to the way organization work.
The earlier assumption about organization communication was those human beings are rational actors and behave in rational ways. Being worker in organizations, they have access to all the required information, therefore they will make rational decisions without any problem, unless there is some breakdown in the communication, they will work in normal way. Another assumption was that human beings communicate like machine and communication is a mechanical process, where a message is created and encoded by the sender and transmitted and then received and decoded by the receiver. Any distortion or difference in message between the messages can be identified and reduced and eliminated.
Other gurus of the time believed that organizations are mechanical organisms like machines, in which employee functions as parts and are interchangeable. And there is no difference in quality of work, as individual differences can be easily eliminated with management persuasion. One more assumption was that organization is a container where communication can be effectively studied.
In the modern times Herbert Simon (1991) challenged the assumption of rational communication. He mentioned that workers working normally do not have enough information, when they make decisions, and even if they have more information, still the common practice was first pick, rather than explore al the options. However, according to Martin "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” thus the basic need is to allocate attention efficiently, rather than providing over abundance of information. During 1960 to 1980s, the communication field expanded and research focused beyond, how to make people understand and how does the communication change and what organizations achieve different result by saying or doing similar things.
Herbert Simon introduced the concept of “bounded rationality” which challenged assumptions about the perfect rationality of communication participants. He maintained that people making decisions in organizations seldom had complete information, and that even if more information was available, they tended to pick the first acceptable option, rather than exploring further to pick the optimal solution.
The recent approach to field of organization communication has moved beyond acceptance of mechanistic models, such as sending and receiving mode. Today’s management theories are dealing with, hegemonic and acceptable ways in which communications is used for many tasks inside organization, and also how life in organization affect its workers .The study of communication has expanded to many other disciplines, such as institutional management, health communication, neurology, anthropology and international relation. Modern organizations are diverse in nature and the working environment is changed. Managers are now facing new problems, such as diversity in workplace, extensive use of technology and stress in workplace which will need new solution in changing times.
The earlier assumption about organization communication was those human beings are rational actors and behave in rational ways. Being worker in organizations, they have access to all the required information, therefore they will make rational decisions without any problem, unless there is some breakdown in the communication, they will work in normal way. Another assumption was that human beings communicate like machine and communication is a mechanical process, where a message is created and encoded by the sender and transmitted and then received and decoded by the receiver. Any distortion or difference in message between the messages can be identified and reduced and eliminated.
Other gurus of the time believed that organizations are mechanical organisms like machines, in which employee functions as parts and are interchangeable. And there is no difference in quality of work, as individual differences can be easily eliminated with management persuasion. One more assumption was that organization is a container where communication can be effectively studied.
In the modern times Herbert Simon (1991) challenged the assumption of rational communication. He mentioned that workers working normally do not have enough information, when they make decisions, and even if they have more information, still the common practice was first pick, rather than explore al the options. However, according to Martin "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” thus the basic need is to allocate attention efficiently, rather than providing over abundance of information. During 1960 to 1980s, the communication field expanded and research focused beyond, how to make people understand and how does the communication change and what organizations achieve different result by saying or doing similar things.
Herbert Simon introduced the concept of “bounded rationality” which challenged assumptions about the perfect rationality of communication participants. He maintained that people making decisions in organizations seldom had complete information, and that even if more information was available, they tended to pick the first acceptable option, rather than exploring further to pick the optimal solution.
The recent approach to field of organization communication has moved beyond acceptance of mechanistic models, such as sending and receiving mode. Today’s management theories are dealing with, hegemonic and acceptable ways in which communications is used for many tasks inside organization, and also how life in organization affect its workers .The study of communication has expanded to many other disciplines, such as institutional management, health communication, neurology, anthropology and international relation. Modern organizations are diverse in nature and the working environment is changed. Managers are now facing new problems, such as diversity in workplace, extensive use of technology and stress in workplace which will need new solution in changing times.
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