ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION

Basic Concepts…

·         Communication - the evoking of a shared or common meaning in another person

·         Interpersonal communication – communication between two or more people in an organization

·         Communicator - the person originating the message

·         Receiver - the person receiving a message

·         Perceptual screen - a window through which we interact with people that influences the quality, accuracy, and clarity of the communication

·         Language - the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used & understood by a group of people

·         Data - uninterpreted and unanalyzed facts

·         Information - data that have been interpreted, analyzed, & and have meaning to some user

·         Richness - the ability of a medium or channel to elicit or evoke meaning in the receiver

Reflexive Listening…

Is the skill of listening carefully to another person and repeating back to the speaker the heard message to correct any inaccuracies or misunderstandings.

One-way vs. Two-way Communications

One-way communication	Two-way communication
Communication in which a person sends a message to another person and no questions, feedback, or interaction follow: ·         Good for giving simple directions ·         Fast but often less accurate than 2-way communication	A form of communication in which the communicator & receiver interact. ·         Good for problem solving.

Nonverbal Communication

All elements of communication that do not involve words Four basic types:

·          Proxemics - an individual’s perception & use of space

·          Kinesics - study of body movements, including posture

·          Facial & eye behavior - movements that add cues for the receiver

·          Paralanguage - variations in speech, such as pitch, loudness, tempo, tone, duration, laughing, & crying

Barriers to Communication…

•        Physical separation

•        Status differences

•        Gender differences

•        Cultural diversity

•        Language

Virtual Team Culture…

“Information technology is providing the infrastructure necessary to support the development of new organization forms” (Ebrahim et al., 2009).

“Virtual teams represent one such organizational form, one that could revolutionize the workplace and provide organizations with unprecedented level of flexibility and responsiveness” (Powell et al., 2004).

Dimensions of effective virtual team leadership:

Communication (the leader provides continuous feedback, engages in regular and prompt communication, and clarifies tasks) (Shachaf and Hara 2005)

Understanding (the leader is sensitive to schedules of members , appreciates their opinions and suggestions , cares about member’s problems, gets to know them, and expresses a personal interest in them) (ibid)

Role clarity (the leader clearly defines responsibilities of all members, exercises authority, and mentors virtual team members) (ibid)

Leadership attitude (the leader is assertive yet not too “bossy,” caring, relates to members at their own levels, and maintains a consistent attitude over the life of the project) (ibid)

Well-planned monitoring mechanisms (the leader should be able to detect and resolve emerging problems that are not immediately apparent as a result of the lack of direct managerial oversight of work undertaken in remote areas) (Kuruppuarachchi 2009)

QUESTION

According to Kuruppuarachchi (2009), what benefits and problems arise as a consequence of the creation of virtual team? Identify five each. Based on this, explain how to make the transition from a more traditional team structure to the more distributed team structure?

The creation of virtual and the application of them teams in many different areas have shown different benefits and also drawbacks of this kind of technological teams. As drawbacks, the presence of virtual teams can cause ineffective communication, loss of vision in terms of unknowing the goals and objectives, difficult quality control, lack of leisure time for team members because tend to be overloaded with work, lack of permanent records and added pressure due to overemphasis on speed. However, a carefully design and well implemented virtual team can offers as benefits that, increase productivity, competitive advantage and customer service, reduce costs, improve business process, eliminate the time-consuming travel to a central office and expand labor force.

To make the transition from traditional to more distributed team structure, it is important to recognize than this dispersion of the members in different locations make the virtual team more dynamic, giving each member a different but important functional role. This transition also gives to the virtual team a diversified group of members, with different foreign people than can contribute all their background to the tasks developed. All this benefits are reached making this transition that has to based on the trust, judgment and self-motivation of talented people working in the project.

REFERENCES

·         Nelson, D and Quick, J.C. (2009) Organizational culture. In Organisational Behavour: Science, the real world and you.

·         Powell, A ., G. Piccoli and B. Ives (2004) Virtual teams : a review of current literature and directions for future research. The Data base for Advances in Information Systems , 35: 6-36.

·         Rosen, B., S. Furst and R. Blackburn (2007) Overcoming Barriers t o Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Teams. Organizational Dynamics, 36: 259-273.

·         Shachaf, P. and N. Hara (2005) Team Effectiveness in Virtual Environments : An Ecological Approach. INFERRIS, P.A.G., S., (Ed.) Teaching and Learning with Virtual Teams. Idea Group Publishing.

·         Kuruppuarachchi, P. R. (2009). Virtual team concepts in projects: A case study Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/218750033?accountid=45662