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THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

The term communication describes the process of sharing meaning by transmitting messages through media such as words, behavior, or material artifacts. Managers communicate to coordinate activities, to disseminate information, to motivate people, and to negotiate future plans. It is of vital importance, then, that the meaning of a particular communication is interpreted by the receiver the way the sender intended. Unfortunately, the communication process, as shown in Exhibit 4-1, involves stages during which the meaning can be distorted. Anything that serves to undermine the communication of the intended meaning is typically referred to as noise.

The primary cause of noise stems from the fact that the sender and the receiver each exist in a unique, private world called her or his life space. The context of that private world, based largely on culture, experience, relations, values, and so forth, determines the interpretation of meaning in communication. People filter, or selectively understand, messages according to what is consistent with their own expectations and perceptions of reality and their values and norms of behavior. The more dissimilar the cultures of those involved, the more likelihood for misinterpretation. In this way, as Samovar, Porter, and Jam state, cultural factors pervade the communication process:

Culture not only dictates who talks with whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted. In fact, our entire repertory of communicative behaviors is dependent largely on the culture in which we have been raised. Culture, consequently, is the foundation of communication. And, when cultures vary, communication practices also vary.

Communication, therefore, is a complex process of linking up or sharing the perceptual fields of sender and receiver; the perceptive sender builds a bridge to the life space of the receiver.6 After the receiver interprets the message and draws a conclusion about what the sender meant, he or she will, in most cases, encode and send back a response, making communication a circular process.

The communication process is rapidly changing, however, as a result of technological developments, therefore propelling global business forward at a phenomenal growth rate; these changes are discussed later in this chapter.


Comparative Management : Communication

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