Communications Failures
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This paper will be concerned with the causes of failure in communications on both the organizational and the personal levels. Communications represent an extremely important element of organizational efficiency. communications in the business setting may be carried out on either a formal or an informal basis. Formal communications relate to the ways in which "an organization, department or supervisor communicates with employees . . . through goals, policies, procedures, rules, the chain of command, meetings, memos, and bulletin boards" (Warrick and Zawacki 283). Informal communications, on the other hand, refer to the personal interactions which may take place between the various members of the organization. In both of these forms of communication, the most important factor is that of effectively transmitting a message. This message may be related to one of four specific purposes; it may be social, informational, expressive, or persuasive (Atwater 107). In order to fully understand the intended message of the communication, one must also understand the purpose behind the communication. A problem or failure in communication occurs when either the message or the purpose of the communication is misunderstood. This type of failure may occur at any point in the communication process. In the communication process, the intended message is transmitted by one person, and is in turn received by a second person. The receiver must decode the words of the transmitter in order to
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el 319). According to this definition, noise is caused not only by undesirable sounds in the environment but also by such interpersonal faults as inattention on the part of the receiver or conflicting instructions on the part of the transmitter (308). Studies have indicated that some people are able to adapt to noise in their environment to a certain extent and still maintain effective communication. However, for most people, noise in either the environment or within a personal interaction tends to have a negative impact on both a physical and psychological level, which makes listening and communicating difficult. The distraction of such noise is most troublesome in those cases in which people see it as being "unpredictable and beyond their control" (Atwater 16).
Aside from noise, other listening problems may also occur within the communication process and result in failure or misinterpretation. It has been noted that in effective communications, "transmitting information isn't just telling people things . . . It's also listening" (McMahon 46). By contrast, it is apparent that "the failure to listen is the major cause of poor communication, resulting in needless misunderstandings, errors, and problems" (Atwater 1). Listen
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Approximate Word count = 1610
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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