Final Exam

All businesses understand that they must use effective communication in order to do well as a business, without communication the business will be a mess and would not run successfully. Using communication allows the employees and offices to stay up to date with the businesses progress and what is currently happening. To use effective means of communication all employees would be in a way trained in order to understand communication and use the most effective means for it. This is done in advance to checking that communication is understood by the recipient.

The term grapevine is commonly used to denote informal communication. Its origin may be traced to the United States Civil War of the 1860s when telegraph lines were strung from tree to tree like a grapevine. For so long, grapevine was equated with rumour. However, the so called grapevine is now a recognised instrument of communication (Banerjee, 1995). Within a business, there are two types of internal communication, formal and informal. Formal communication spreads through newsletters, emails, memos, staff meetings, conferences and official notices. Informal communication occurs through the grapevine, which is generally word-of-mouth communication. Internal business communication that moves through the grapevine spreads throughout the organization

1. Backers of the B-2 bomber have argued that it would be wasteful for Congress to stop their manufacture because so much has already been spent to develop the B-2. Advise Congress on how to deal with this argument.

With effective communication there would be a positive atmosphere in the work place, the staff would be more than willing to help each other out. Communication would be better as everything would be

Managers promote poor communication when it is not planned out correctly, which can cause chaos and friction within the department. Emotions can cause a barrier and result in a communication breakdown. Poor communication is not always at the fault of the manager, poor listening on the staff’s part can

Second, although a VSP may not completely eliminate the need for an involuntary reduction, it can at least reduce the scope of the involuntary activity and fewer layoffs generally make for better morale. (www.shrm.org 2/1/2004 A safer approach downsizing

3) Read the questions carefully. If you need to make any assumptions you must state them in order to receive credit.

Communication is the exchange and flow of information and ideas from one individual to another via the usage of the mouth. This can be through the telephone, fax mail, email, or the aspect of using the face-face entity at the workplace. Basically, this document will illustrate in detail on how to undertake the approach of involving better and improved communication ways that lead to better and positive outcome of the firm. In essence, this shows that the paper is intended to bring about a positive outcome that would be influenced by the presence of improved communication links within a workplace environment (Perkins, 2010).

A leader must listen to its followers and vice versa. Both Gardner and Wooden in their books provide examples that both ineffective and effective communication can affect a group or organization—for better or worse. However, through positive open communication that is produced from the group can lead to positive and effective improvement (Wooden, 2005, p.198-201; Gardner,1990, p.86) for the work environment and respectability between leader and follower.

3 As a consequence of the information circulated by the grapevine in an organization, employees experience

Besides the president having too much power another thing that has the American people buzzing is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a hierarchical authority structure, in which power flows from the top down and responsibility flows from the bottom up; it uses task specialization so that experts instead of amateurs perform technical jobs; and it develops extensive rules, which may seem extreme at times but which allow similar cases to be handled similarly instead of capriciously (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2008).

In my organization we also have an issue with grapevine information. Often I may talk to an employee about an issue and they can take that information and discuss it with other employees causing confusion or tension. I have learned that important issues need to be addressed in groups and try to have frequent staff meetings so everyone is on the same page. According to Darling and Dannels (2003) the practice of speaking and writing is important as it can set the tone for positive change. Speaking is not something that comes easily to everyone especially public speaking in front of large groups of people. Learning how to communicate effectively in each individual organization should be a requirement for all management or leaders within an organization.

Keeping the lines of communication open will foster a positive working environment. Associates will be able to address concerns with their manager immediately, versus his or her concerns, and thoughts bottled up inside. This causes conflict and disputes to arise within a team, staff, or company. All it takes is one associate to be dissatisfied and his or her feelings can be spread throughout the team as second and third person opinions of a process or manager.

In the article, Groysberg and Slind give several examples of how business communications are dealt with in our current world. However, some of the points raised are questionable. Such as that of Athenahealth where the company entrusts secret documents to all their workers and hence makes them all “insiders”. This is worrying, as to deem all employees as responsible is a clear generalisation. They are sure to be several bad apples in any company, waiting to spill their company secrets to a competitor. Athenahealth’s idea requires a high level of trust which is not possibly attainable in a world where white collar crime is rampant. Practices like these might lead to companies losing revenue as ideas are stolen by other companies. Therefore, communications between the top brass and the employees should be amiable and open, but not to the extent where company secrets are divulged easily.

Grapevine is an informal channel of business communication. It is called so because it stretches throughout the organization in all directions irrespective of the authority levels. Man as we know is a social animal. Despite existence of formal channels in an organization, the informal channels tend to develop when he interacts with other people in organization. It exists more at lower levels of organization.