Hochschule Bremen

Organizational Behaviour (7. Semester)
WS 2001 / 2002

Communication
focussing corporations

by

 Niels Gliwitzky / Jan C. Scheffold

Bremen, 12.02.2002

1 Introduction

Everywhere in the world communication is present 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But this rather complex interaction of two or more people can hardly be  defined and a whole lot of scientists (biologists, evolution theorists, sociologists, psychologists and medical personnel) do research.¹

In the past there was a famous example what could happen, when communication failed.
The building of the tower of Babel, where god punished the mankind because of their inability to communicate and to come to an agreement. Therefore, the bible says, the people have different languages. And this caused by a lack of communication. Somehow irrational.

The second example is the modern communication. Almost everyone has got a mobile, one telephone at home, one in the office. Furthermore one or more faxes, a lot of different eMails which have to be controlled every now and then. Otherwise you are „out“ of the communication process by the blink of an eye. Because communication is nowadays everywhere, anytime and only little private and personal, a little poem (in German, I am afraid) shows the development in a literal way:

„immer mehr und immer schneller
können wir einander mitteilen
daß wir
immer mehr und immer schneller
immer mehr und immer schneller
einander mitteilen müssen²

Because of our focus on corporations, communication as such in companies (internal) and of companies (external) will be topic of our following text.

2 Definition of communication

First of all communication in general can hardly be defined. Because many things, like body language, facial expressions are included in our daily communication. Much of it not even noticed or being seen as „usual“ aspect. Therefore the communication is obvious, permanent and done without (direct) instructions. This can be seen in the following quotation as well: „A fish would be the last to discover the existence of water (...) because water was such a pervasive and important part of a fish’s environment, its existence would not even be noticed unless it were absent.“³

Nevertheless „to communicate“ has it’s roots in the Latin language and can more or less be defined as: „to inform somebody about something, to be connected“.⁴

2.1 Reasons for communication problems

Communication in companies does not differ much from the alldaycommunication in e.g. families. The difference is, there is a framework being given from the corporation (legal framework, offices, buildings, etc.). The rules and the hierarchy of a company influence the corporate communication. If you go more deep into the structure, then you have the department and the group influencing the employee’s behaviour and communication.

To a certain grade every individual has it’s own communication plans, aims to be reached by convincing him or her in a communicative way. Some aims people only have because the instructions, or company’s aims are to be reached. But all in all there are rules to be followed to make the way to a targetoriented co-ordination of the communication-process.⁵

[...]

1 Wahren, H.: Zwischenmenschliche Kommunikation und Interaktion in Unternehmen, S. 7

2 Seethaler, H.: Gedichte zum Pflücken, 1999

3 Wahren, H.: Zwischenmenschliche Kommunikation und Interaktion in Unternehmen, S. 7

4 Burkhart, W.: Grosses Universal Lexikon, 1982, S. 1117

5 Wahren, H.: Zwischenmenschliche Kommunikation und Interaktion in Unternehmen, S. 45f.