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Text Summary, Lecture Outline
The Role of Communication in Business
Slides 1-1, 1-2, 1-3
This chapter puts business communicaon in context. It explains the importance of business
communicaon skills, describes large and small factors that aect business communicaon, idenes the
main types of communicaon, and describes the problem-solving approach that is essenal to eecve
business communicaon.
Slides 1-4, 1-5
Communicaon is important to you and to the business you will work for.
For you, good communicaon skills can lead to advancement.
Your performance will be judged largely by your ability to communicate.
The higher you advance, the greater your need for communicaon skills will be.
For the business for which you will work, communicang is important because it is a major part of the
work of the business.
Communicaon is essenal for organized acvity.
Much of the work done involves the processing of informaon.
Unfortunately, many businesspeople do not communicate well. You might share highly publicized
communicaon blunders that companies have made, or ask students to share stories they may have
about how good or poor communicaon in a company had a signicant result, either for a parcular
communicator or for a company in general.
Slides 1-6, 1-7
The nature of work today presents special communicaon challenges.
Media literacy: Since the arrival of email in the late 1980s, business communicaon has been
experiencing a revoluon. Now more than ever, there’s a need for expanded media literacy in the
workplace.
Increased globalism and diversity: According to a panelist for a recent webinar on workplace trends, we
are seeing “the emergence of the truly globally integrated enterprise,” which means that the likelihood
of working on a global team is increasing, as is the importance of “global social networks.”
Strong analycal skills: Adapng to a quickly changing business landscape requires being able to assess
informaon quickly, focus on what’s relevant, and interpret informaon reliably and usefully.
Ethics and social responsibility: Meanwhile, since ethical scandals have hurt many businesses,
generang trust through ethical behavior has increased in importance, and social responsibility has
become a buzzword and markeng strategy for many companies.
You can have good conversaons with your class about technological innovaons that your students
have seen in their own lifemes, about the internaonal nature of business these days, about diversity in
places where students have worked, and about the growing presence of ethics and
corporate-responsibility-related issues in the news. During the discussion of each trend, ask how it might
in4uence business communicaon pracces.
Some of the richest conversaons you can have with students involve technology and social media. Here
are some ideas for discussion.
Much has been wri6en about the dierences between the Millennial, Gen-X, and Baby Boomer
generaons in the workplace, and these o:en include their uses and understandings of technology. You
may ask students: Have you personally experienced these dierences? Do you think “growing up” with
technology gives Millennials an advantage in the workplace? How might you use this experience to your
advantage during an interview?
Here are some related quesons:
1. How are apps, Skype, tweets, social networking, and virtual meengs changing business? How might
apps and Skype be employed for internal and external communicaon?
2. How are telecommung situaons, where your rst meeng takes place over email, and you never
meet in person, changing business interacon? How does this change “the stakes” of your rst email and
subsequent emails? Is it really possible to form a professional relaonship over email? Have you ever
experienced a business relaonship like this? Was it successful?
3. Also, some companies that hire out of state are hiring people strictly over Skype, without ever
meeng in person. Is this wise? Do you believe it’s possible to really know a person or a company
through one Skype interview? How would you prepare for such an interview?
Slide 1-8
Despite all the changes we’ve seen in the last 25 years or so, most communicaons in business sll fall
into one of three basic categories.
Internal-operaonal communicaon is all the communicaon that occurs in conducng work within the
business. It is the work done to carry out the operang plan (the business’s plan for doing whatever it
was formed to do).
It takes many forms—orders and instrucons from superiors; oral exchanges between workers; wri6en
reports, emails, memorandums, proposals . . . and the list goes on.
Much of it is conducted through the business’s computer network. (Here you can call a6enon to the
Intranet example provided and discuss other contemporary communicaon media that businesses are
using internally.)
External-operaonal communicaon is all the communicang businesses do with people and groups
outside the business. Because businesses are dependent on outside people and groups,
external-operaonal communicaon is necessary for success.
This category includes direct selling (sales presentaons, adversing, public relaons acvies, mailings),
correspondence with other businesses, and communicaon with such external pares as community
representaves, non-prot and/or government organizaons, and more.
Nowadays, much of this communicang is technology assisted. Ask students what types of
computer-assisted messages businesses are sending out these days in addion to email and faxes.
Personal communicaon is the exchange of informaon and feelings among the workers.
People will talk when they come together. Much of this talk is personal. But this communicang can
aect the workers’ aGtudes—and thus their job performance.
Too much or too li6le personal communicaon, or the wrong type, can adversely aect producvity. Ask
students to discuss the types of personal communicaon that went/go on in a workplace they are
familiar with. Bring out the benets and drawbacks and see if you can draw some conclusions about how
much and what kind of personal communicaon is appropriate in a workplace or develop rules of thumb
for personal communicaon in business.
Slides 1-9, 1-10
The formal network consists of communicaon along established channels in the business.
Every business has a formal network. It may be completely hierarchical, meaning li6le can be
communicated to the company unless it goes through the CEO and internal communicaons team rst.
Or it may be less hierarchical and “4at,” meaning that every employee can call a team meeng or has
access to “company wide” email and can send any noce out as required. In larger companies, the
former is generally true, while in smaller companies the la6er is o:en true.
In general, communicaon 4ow can be downward, upward, or lateral (with this la6er type growing in
importance as hierarchies in organizaons become 4a6er).
Each business develops its own forms (or genres) of communicaon to get its work done. Whether it’s
formal work requests and progress reports, weekly/monthly sta meengs, or an internal project
management/communicaons system, such as Basecamp, every organizaon has its own formal,
traceable way of disseminang work informaon internally.
The informal network consists of all the personal communicang that goes on in the business.
The informal network includes those employees you have professional and personal relaonships with
within your company. It’s also the external network you interact with outside of work and within your
social media networks, when talking about your company.
It follows no set pa6ern and may link any of the workers in the business. Its structure is ever changing
and may be extremely complex.
Known as the grapevine, it carries rumors and gossip but can also spread informaon and insights that
enhance an organizaon’s culture, cohesion, and performance.
It cannot be outlawed or controlled—so wise execuves work with it rather than against it.
The informal network also includes the social media networks you interact with outside of work, through
Facebook and other venues. Many companies, such as Procter & Gamble, have extremely detailed social
media policies and lengthy internal courses on how to use social media eecvely. For instance, as of
2010, P&G employees could not promote a P&G product on their own Facebook pages without
disclosing rst that they were employees of the company. Many companies will also re employees for
sharing proprietary informaon or speaking negavely about their companies and other employees on
their Facebook pages.
Here, you can invite students to share their experiences with formal and informal networks in places
where they or those they know have worked. Ask them who the “talk leaders” were in their examples of
grapevines, and point out that even those without a great deal of formal power can have considerable
informal power.
You can also invite students to share the diLcules they’ve encountered with Facebook and work
situaons. Have they seen a coworker write something negave on a page or share proprietary
informaon? Did they feel the need to react? How did they deal with the situaon ethically?
Or you can discuss a news arcle on a well-known social media case covering a workplace issue.
If you have me for a brief, in-class wring assignment you may want to invite students to remember a
me when they found out condenal company informaon from an informal communicaon. How did
they deal with it? Did they share it? You may also ask them to write about the most powerful
professional relaonship they’ve experienced, and how the relaonship contributed posively or
negavely to their careers. Helping them understand the in4uence relaonships have on their careers is
crical to helping them understand the in4uence of communicaon.
Slide 1-11
How much and what kind of communicang a business does depends on the type of business, its
environment, and the nature of the people involved.
Nature of the business: Some industries have more communicaon needs than others.
Size and complexity: Relavely simple businesses, such as repair services, require far less
communicaon than complex businesses, such as automobile manufacturers.
Industry environment (relaon to environment): Some industry environments are more stable than
others, leading to more strategic and less impromptu communicaon processes.
Geographic dispersion: Obviously, internal communicaon in a business with mulple locaons diers
from that of a one-locaon business.
Organizaonal culture: Some organizaons have stronger cultures than others. Are the employees
supporng the culture’s values and mission with their internal and external communicaons or
undermining it?
For discussion, you can draw on students’ own experiences as employees and consumers to help them
understand the signicance of these factors. Compare students’ experiences working for large and small
companies and companies in dierent industries. Get them to volunteer stories about the organizaonal
culture of places where they’ve worked or shopped and to discuss how the culture probably in4uenced,
and was in4uenced by, the company’s communicaon pracces.
You can relay that if the company culture is formal—for example, you need to set up an appointment to
see the CEO, rather than dropping by his or her oLce—you can probably assume that the
communicaon will be formal as well (perhaps having strict communicaon channels you must follow
and not as much access to informaon).
If the CEO is wearing jeans when you meet him or her—now common in many industries, especially if
the company is a start-up—you’ll probably nd an informal and conversaonal wring style, parcularly
internally and possibly externally.
Companies with the strongest cultures—shared values/mission, company-sponsored team-building
events/retreats, etc.—are o:en the most successful. You may ask students why they think this is true.
However, the “unoLcial culture”—what the employees really believe and what they’re really
doing/saying behind closed doors—is o:en considered the true culture. When the company-sanconed
culture and the unoLcial culture are aligned, you o:en have success. When they aren’t, the company
struggles more. You may ask students if they’ve ever worked for an organizaon where the oLcial
culture was dierent from the unoLcial culture.
You may also want to ask students what they feel are “p-os” to a company’s culture. You can also
share these signs of an organizaon’s culture recognized by researchers and ask them to contribute
others:
What kind of stories does the company tell about its past—the living history? What a culture chooses to
share says a lot about its values.
Do they have certain “heroes” that they elevate (or even make fun of in a friendly way) because they’ve
had such an impact on the success of the company? This says a lot about the professional contribuons
the company values.
Do they have rituals? Burgers or happy hours on Friday? Ba6le of the bands every year? Community
clean-up day? When the company gives employees ckets to events are they ckets to NASCAR or ckets
to the ATP? This says a lot about the type of culture it is.
Does the team seem like a cohesive group with shared values or are they “doing their own thing” and
confused about where the company is going?
Ask students how important an organizaon’s culture is to them. Should they ask quesons about it
during an interview? For instance, if a company has “ba6le of the bands” every year and employees are
supposed to parcipate and expected to perform, would this be an issue for them? Or would they enjoy
this type of culture?
The Business Communication Process
Slide 1-12
To understand the business-communicaon process, it’s important rst to understand the nature of
business communicaon. Business communicaon is best understood as complex problem solving. This
means that, for most situaons, the business communicator will need to take a unique set of
circumstances into account and generate a unique soluon that will achieve the desired business goals.
That is why being a successful business communicator requires:
Research (interview the players and understand the history of the communicaons situaon)
Careful analysis (to gather and interpret the relevant informaon)
Creavity (to think of possible soluons)
Judgment (to pick the soluon that will t this situaon best)
You might ask your class how it’s possible that, when there’s no single “correct” answer to any
business-communicaon problem, it’s sll possible to say that some soluons are be6er than others. If
you’re not lucky enough to have a savvy student who “gets” this, you can make the point by showing
them dierent handlings of a simple business situaon and discussing what makes some be6er than
others.
You might also share examples of how analysis, creavity, and judgment work during the
business-communicaon process. For instance, in addion to gathering and interpreng the relevant
informaon, analysis o:en involves analyzing the culture’s expectaons for communicaon (formal vs.
informal), considering the current climate (are there sensive/hot bu6on issues, such as limited
resources, that shouldn’t be brought up?), and looking at the individual audience’s needs and fears. For
example, if you’re asking your boss for a vacaon day via email, and you know that he or she is already
afraid a project isn’t going to be completed on me, at some point in the email you need to menon
this, reassuring your boss that you’ll sll meet the project deadline. Many factors go into analysis.
Creavity o:en means looking at a communicaons issue from mulple angles. At its most basic level,
the following quesons need to be asked: What is the correct medium for this communicaon? What is
the correct venue? For instance, if you’re in internal communicaons for a major company and rolling
out a new company brand internally, a memo is probably not the most creave execuon. But having the
IT department turn every employee’s computer background into the company’s new logo and look, so
they’re greeted with it in the morning when they come to work, is a surprising and fresh way to make
the announcement. To make the communicaon even more eecve, the communicaons department
might hold a company-wide meeng that a:ernoon, revealing the new brand on the big screen,
explaining strategy, and handing out T-shirts.
Good judgment is making sure you always pick the soluon that will t the situaon and the long-term
goals and values of the culture. It also means always sending a message at the right me, in the right
tone, to the right audience, and never sharing inappropriate or proprietary informaon. You may let
students know that, believe it or not, this can be tricky in a business environment. It’s common to
inadvertently slip up or step on someone’s toes, but they’ll learn strategies for exercising excellent
judgment in this course.
Slide 1-13
Because the communicang that goes on in business is done by people, it is helpful for us to know how
communicaon between businesspeople occurs. This model shows both process and contexts. Refer to
Exhibit 1-4 in Chapter 1 for a complete illustraon and explanaon of the process.
A fun exercise for illustrang this process in acon is to divide the class up into two opposing teams.
Team 1 must recommend a surprising change to the syllabus to Team 2. Team 2 then has to follow the
process of responding to this recommendaon as laid out in Exhibit 1-4. Do they agree? Will they
propose a dierent recommendaon and argue their case? Will they respond at all? If the class is large,
you may break it up into smaller compeng groups.
Slide 1-14
With this slide you can take a closer look at the contexts in which business communicaon takes place:
The larger business-economic, sociocultural, historical context
The communicators’ relaonship
The communicators’ individual contexts (organizaonal, professional, personal)
As the text says, communicaon is not simply about moving informaon from point A to point B. Anyone
who neglects the specic contexts in which communicaon takes place is likely doomed to be an
unsuccessful communicator. Factoring these mulple contexts into communicaon decisions is a large
part of treang business communicaon as a problem-solving process.
Slide 1-15
Here are the steps that usually occur when people are solving business problems and communicang
about them.
1. Senses a communicaon need. You can emphasize that a “need” can be either a problem to
solve or an opportunity to take advantage of.
2. De/nes the problem. Here, the writer/speaker gathers informaon about the situaon—about
what has happened or what might be achieved, about possible audiences, about prior similar
situaons, about organizaonal goals and possible means for achieving them.
3. Searches for possible soluons. Given the situaon, in what dierent ways might the
communicaon challenge be tackled? What strategies could best further the interests of the
pares involved?
4. Selects a course of acon. Here the writer/speaker decides not only what to say but also how to
say it. He or she makes basic decisions about the type of message that will be sent—which also
involves choosing the communicaon channel (phone? email? texng?) that will best support
the goals of the message.
5. Composes the message. You can preview the advice in Chapter 2 about the wring process. Help
students realize that whatever wring style works best for them is the one they should use, but
emphasize the importance of all three main composing stages (planning, dra:ing, and revising).
6. Delivers the message. Students o:en do not realize how important message ming is, or how
important it is to imagine the hecc work context in which the recipient will receive the
message. This step deserves some careful thought.
7. Receives the message. Now we’re over on the recipient’s side of the process. If the sender has
made wise decisions (about ming, channel, format, and framing of the message), the odds of
the recipient’s actually reading and/or hearing the message are promising. (Otherwise, as you
can remind your students, the message might get thrown away, buried under other messages, or
deleted.)
8. Interprets the message. As the recipient processes the message, he or she will be forming all
sorts of impressions—about the writer/speaker, about the writer/speaker’s company, about the
goal of the message, about the message’s specic contents, about why the message is signicant
(or not).
9. Decides on a response. If the recipient a6ends to the message, he/she will have a response,
whether it’s the one the sender intends or not. If the message has been tailored carefully to the
recipient’s interests, the recipient’s response—whether a return message, an acon, or simply a
change in aGtude—will have a good chance of being the desired one.
10. Replies to the message. Here the recipient becomes the sender, and the communicaon cycle
begins again. And it may lead to another cycle—and another. The cycles may connue as long as
the parcipants wish to communicate. In oral communicaon, you can point out, the cycles tend
to happen quickly as the communicators work to create a mutual understanding, whereas the
communicaon cycles in wri6en communicaon tend to occur more slowly.
There are no guarantees that any message will be successful—but the analycal process presented in the
communicaon model will make the odds of success as high as possible.
Slide 1-16
The last slide suggests the three key features of business communicaon: it’s about sharing informaon,
it’s about building relaonships, and it’s about solving workplace problems.
