Communication: why do we need
to communicate?
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•
•
•
•
•
Power
Survival
Co-operation
Personal needs
Relationships
Persuasion
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Social needs
Economic needs
Information
Making sense of the
world
• Decision making
• Self-expression
Dimbleby and Burton, 1998
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Types of communication
• Synchronous: happening at the same time (e.g.
conversation, telephone call, one-to-one meeting,
presentation)
• Asynchronous: indirect/delay on delivery (e.g.
report, email, text message)
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Theoretical concepts: models of
communication
The Shannon and Weaver model
• Communication includes five elements
• Encoder: when you communicate you have a
particular purpose in mind
• Decoder: source needs encoder to translate; receiver
needs a decoder to retranslate
• Senders and receivers must use similar systems or
else information is without meaning
Source
Encoder
Signal
Decoder
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Destination
Theoretical concepts: models of
communication
Berlo (1960s)
• Medium aware
• Transmission model: source-message-channelreceiver
Carey (1975; 2006)
• Context aware
• Rituals and social context of the message important
• e.g. away days, water cooler conversations, meetings
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Theoretical concepts: models of
communication
Galloway and Thacker (2007)
• Interaction between communicators
Argenti (2003)
• Strategic approach: spin/manipulating the message
Li and Roloff (2004)
• Strategic negativity
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Non-verbal communication
• Context specific
• Symbols and artefacts are drawn on (LeBaron, 2003)
• Only 7% of communication is speech (Mehrabian,
1967)
• Negative delivery of positive information is upsetting
for receiver, whereas positive delivery of negative
information does not upset (Dasborough, 2006)
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Non-verbal communication
Silence as non-verbal communication
• Acquiescent: compliant
• Defensive: fear or self-protection
• Prosocial: to protect others
(Van Dyne et al, 2003)
Body language
• Visual memory is accessed as the eyes move
up (eyes move to the right for remembered
memory and to the left for creative memory
(e.g. lies))
• Engaged: person is visibly listening
• Disengaged: disinterested or distancing
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Communication and culture
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There are cultural differences in preferred
information styles (LeBaron, 2003)
High-context culture: a culture with many
rules; implicit understanding of nuances and
etiquette required
Low-context culture: little background
knowledge required to understand rules;
explicit
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Work and communication:
appraisal
• Communication is at the heart of the appraisal process
(DeNisi and Pritchard, 2006)
• Sharing standards in advance to establish ground
rules (Grote, 2002)
• The appraisal should be a two-way communication
process (Losyk, 2002)
• Goals should be set together to ensure greater
success in reaching targets (Latham and Latham,
2000)
• In a 2009 CIPD survey managers were rated poorly by
their employees
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Learning summary
By the end of this chapter you should:
• Understand the purpose of communication
• have an overview of communication theory
and theoretical models of communication
• Understand the role of non-verbal
communication
• Appreciate the relevance of communication to
HRM
• Understand international challenges
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