Describing the Communication Context of This Situation
Communication plays an important role in the strategic development of any organization (Jandt, 2010). On this basis, businesses and organizations need to ensure that they apply and use necessary mechanisms of communication to facilitate passage of information from one person, entity, department, section or agency to another. In fact with the poor flow of information, the organizational goals and objectives cannot be met (Narula, 20 1 6) . In a manufacturing company that specializes in soft drinks, which I happened to work in, there is well-formulated communication strategy to ensure that messaging is conducted professionally, thus helping in meeting business goals.
Notably, after getting briefs from the senior manager, all managers are expected to ensure that they relay the same information to the workers through different forms based on several factors such as the time, the audience excepted, the message among others. In this case, I happened to be the sales supervisor, where each person is given a sales target to meet for a given period such as a day, one week, or a month. In the communication process, the management has ensured that all components in the Berlo's Model of Communication are considered to facilitate messaging with different stakeholders and parties. The 1960 David Berlo’s communication process was under the “Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver (SMCR)” model, which was postulated from the 1949 Shannon Weaver's Model of Communication (Sengupta, 2011) . In this model, Berlo explained different factors that affect individual elements in the communication process thus making communication much more efficient. At the same time, the model also concentrates on decoding and encoding that takes place before the receiver receives the message and the message is sent by the sender respectively (Sengupta, 2011) . In this paper, the communication case study in the organization will be analyzed based on the application of the Berlo’s communication model.
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Analyzing the Interrelationships of Communication within Organizational Systems
In the organization, there were changes in the policies that would affect almost all departments. The daily, weekly and monthly sales targets were to be increased per each salesperson, including sales supervisors. Therefore, the source of the message was from the sales manager to the team of sales supervisors and salespersons.
Critically to underscore is the fact that each message sent from the source to the receiver is intended to have a specific effect (Rayudu, 2010). Understandably, failure to use the right channel and right message among other factors lead to the poor encoding of the information being sent. The intended message in this case was to inform the supervisors that the organization had reviewed its policies on daily, weekly and monthly targets with the aim of increasing sales and profit margins. In addition, the compensation to each employee, including the sales persons would as well be increased by ten percent. Although the sales manager had good intention in his messaging, he forgot to inform the sales persons that their remuneration would be raised by ten percent based on the piece rate. Therefore, employees decided immediately to go-slow in their work, starting from the following morning.
Based on the above scenario, it is clear that shared meaning was not constructed. Under “shared meaning” both the sender and the receiver of the message correctly encode and decode the intended interpretation (Shockley-Zalabak, 2015). However, the manager and the sales persons were not reading from the same script, thus leading to protest.
Communicating Effectively
Apparently, the case above points out two key elements of the intended message. Firstly, the message was designed to ensure that the sales team underscores the importance of growing together as a team. Secondly, the message also intended to motivate employees by increasing their compensation for the work they were doing within the organization. However, the overall function of the message was to help the organization increase in sales and profit through its sales employees.
Unfortunately, the encoding and decoding processes were not well conducted. The encoding process refers to the organization of the message which includes the content (Hindle, 2008). In order to ensure that the receiver of the message understands and decodes the message as expected, it is important to include the correct content, words, language, among other factors (Rayudu, 2010). In the case above, though other factors were well applied, the content was not correct. Notably, the manager used the English language, which was accepted as the language of official communication in the organization. Further, both the supervisors and salespersons were called for separate meetings to be briefed on the new changes. In the meeting, the sales manager used both oral and written form of communication by applying whiteboard and microphones to pass the message. However, it was unfortunate that during the meeting with the salespersons’, he forgot to point out the ten percent increase, which led to go-slow.
According to Berlo’s Model of Communication, the right channel of communication plays an instrumental role especially in facilitating intended and expected decoding or interpretation of the message by the receiver. On this note, the case above shows that the manager used the correct channel of communication, which would not only help in effective hearing but also in understanding what the manager was saying. On this basis, although the decoding process would have been affected by different types of noises such as murmuring among employees, that would not have affected the messaging among all recipients. Consequently, there was no noise experienced in the messaging process.
References
Hindle, T. (2008). Guide to management ideas and gurus. London, GBR: Profile Books/The Economist.
Jandt, F. E. (2010). An introduction to intercultural communication: Identities in a global Community . Los Angeles: SAGE.
Narula, U. (20 1 6). Handbook of communication models, perspectives, strategies . New Delhi: Atlantic.
Rayudu, C. S. (2010). Communication. Mumbai, IND: Global Media.
Shockley-Zalabak, P. S. (2015). Fundamentals of organizational communication: Knowledge, sensitivity, skills, values (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Sengupta, S. (2011). Business and managerial communication . New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Limited.
