. Size. The smaller the group, the more its members have the opportunity to communicate with each other; conversely, large groups often inhibit communication because the opportunity to speak and interact is limited.
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Perception and Self-Concept. People who are invited to join a group have perceptions of how the group should operate and what it should achieve. The member also has a self-concept that dictates fairly well how he will behave. When expectations and satisfaction of self-concepts fall short, the group will probably be ineffective.
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Status. Some group members will appear to be better qualified than others. Consider a group in which the chief executive of the organization is a member: when the chief executive speaks, members agree; when members speak, they tend to direct their remarks to the one with high status – the chief executive. As a generalization, groups require balance in status and expertise, not homogeneity.
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Group Norms. A norm is a standard or average for behavior, and all groups possess norms. A teacher’s behavior helps establish classroom norms. When a teacher is generally late for class, students will begin to arrive late. People conform to norms because conformity is easy and non-conformity is difficult and uncomfortable. Conformity leads to acceptance by other group members and creates communication opportunities.
Thus the performance of group depends on several factors, but none is more important than leadership. The leader can establish norms, determine who can speak and when, encourage everyone to contribute, and provide the motivation for effective group activity.
1.3 Communication Flow in Organization
. Downward Communication. This flows from superior to subordinate, from policy makers to operating personnel, or from top to bottom on the organization chart. As messages move downward through successive levels of the organization, they seem to get larger. A simple policy statement from the top of the organization may grow into a formal plan for operation at lower levels.
Downward communication normally involves both written and oral methods and makes use of the following guides:
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People at high levels in the organization usually have greater knowledge of the organization and its goals than do people at lower levels.
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Both oral and written messages tend to become larger as they move downward through organizational levels. This expansion results from attempts to prevent distortion and is more noticeable in written messages.
. Oral messages are subject to greater change in meaning than are written messages.
. Upward Communication. This flow of organization contains risks. Upward communication is the feedback to downward communication. When the management requests information from lower organizational levels, the resulting information becomes the feedback to that request.
Accurate upward communication keeps management informed about the feelings of subordinates, helps management identify both difficult and potentially promotable employees and paves the way for even more effective downward communication.
The factors to be considered in an upward communication are:
. Upward communication is primarily feedback to requests and actions of superiors.
. Subordinates often tell the superior the way they think the superior wants to hear even though their messages may contradict their true observations and perceptions.
. Upward communication is based on trust in the superior.
. Upward communication is frequently a threat to the subordinate.
. Horizontal or Lateral Communication. This is used to describe exchanges between organizational units on the same hierarchical level. This description is one of the major shortcomings of organization charts. Charts really do not leave much room for horizontal communication when they picture authority relationships by placing one box higher than another and define role functions by placing titles in these boxes. 中国航空网 www.aero.cn 航空翻译 www.aviation.cn 本文链接地址：电子商务专业英语实用教程(7)
