CURRENT ISSUES INCOMMUNICATION
How are electronics changing the way people communicate with each other in organ-
izations? How important is nonverbal communication? What does silence have to do
with communicating? Why do men and women often have difficulty communicating
with each other? How can individuals improve their cross-cultural communication?
We address each of these issues below.
Electronic Communications
Since the early 1980s, we have been subjected to an onslaught of new electronic ways to
communicate. Electronic communications (including pagers, fax machines, videocon-
ferencing, electronic meetings, email, cellphones, voice mail, and BlackBerrys) make it
possible for you to work even if you are away from your workstation. These technolo-
gies are largely reshaping the way we communicate in organizations.^17 You can be
reached when you are in a meeting; having a lunch break; visiting a customer’s office
across town; watching a movie in a crowded theatre; or playing golf on a Saturday
morning. The line between an employee’s work and nonwork life is no longer distinct,
meaning all employees theoretically can be “on call” 24 hours a day.
Organizational boundaries become less relevant as a result of electronic communi-
cations. Why? Because networked computers allow employees to jump vertical levels
within the organization, work full-time at home or someplace other than “the office,”
and have ongoing communications with people in other organizations.
Email
Email has added considerably to the number of hours worked per week, according to
a recent study by Christina Cavanagh, professor of management communications at the
Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario. Between 2000 and
2002, business professionals and executives said they were
working six more hours a week, responding to email.^18
Researchers calculate that 141 billion email messages circu-
late the globe each day. Five years ago, that number was 5.1 bil-
lion email messages.^19 One researcher suggests that knowledge
workers devote about 28 percent of their days to email.^20
Despite the large investment of time, email is not always the
best way to communicate. It does not provide either the verbal
or nonverbal nuances that a face-to-face meeting does. There
has been some attempt to remedy this through the develop-
ment of “emoticons” (for example, the smiley face :-)) to indi-
cate a friendly tone, and abbreviations (for example, IMHO,“in
my humble opinion”) to indicate that individuals are respectfully
trying to convey their own viewpoints. There is also the stan-
dard warning not to write emails in ALL CAPS, as doing so is an
indication that one is shouting. Exhibit 6-4 on page 194 illus-
trates some of the conventional symbols used in email.
The information overload
caused by the use of email in the
workplace deserves greater con-
sideration by managers and
employees alike. Individuals may
use email to hide from direct
interaction, to protect their
Chapter 6 Communication, Conflict, and Negotiation 193Ever notice that
communicating via
email can lead to
misunderstandings?*
3 What are other issues
in communication?Investment bank Morgan Stanley uses the company’s intranet to
distribute data and information to employees at its 600 offices
around the world. For example, the global network allows traders
in Japan to receive up-to-the-minute information on securities
transactions from colleagues in New York. Morgan Stanley has
also connected its “hoot-and-holler” worldwide voice-messaging
system to its intranet, allowing salespeople to receive messages
from their workstation speakers on the trading floor.Christina Cavanagh: Thinking
Outside the Inbox
http://www.christinacavanagh.com