Organizational research into the media of

The following. quote from a manager demonstrates this: Well, the director told me that my project was at the
top of his list of priorities. After another few weeks of frustration and no action I went back to remind him. "Yes," he'said, "your project is still at the top Qf my listbut the list isn't necessarily in order."
Organizational research into the media of
communication has tended to concentrate on the merits and drawbacks of written and spoken messages~ Baker and his colleagues of.Princeton University found low reader interest' in the employee's handbook of the company they studied, and Professor Maier, in the study mentioned earlier, found that written job descriptions did not affect the degree of agreement over job details between superior-subordinate managers, and that firms without this system were rated as highly as finns with it. In general, interest in company magazines increases as the style becomes more informal. Where the company literature is stiff, precise, and full of company jargon, employees prefer to obtain their infonnation from personal contacts.

Many managers recognize these factors although it may be argued that few apply them. In one survey of 100 company presidents, 98 thought the spoken word at least as important as the written word and 40 felt that it was more important. On the other hand, Higgin and Jessop, in a study of the British building industry, pointed out some of the difficulties which resulted from the use of informal spoken communication. They found that many vital pieces of information were committed to memory or the backs of cigarette packets, and that sometimes detail became blurred. These snippets of research, taken in isolation, may seem to contradict each other. Company presidents favour

Actions themselves are often looked upon as a method of communication.

could be expected to transmit messages accurately without any extra organizational help. Many people would not subscribe to this belief and suggest that benefits would be gained by clarifying company terminology through the media of 'terminology dictionaries. Others, however, warn against undue reliance on the written word in the form of bulletins, booklets, magazines, etc., in that they can be looked upon a substitute for face-to-face communication and not as they should be-an aid.
Another difficulty is that more than one media may be used at the same time. Depending on their interpretation, they can reinforce or contradict each other. Consider an applicant at a job interview. If he is telling of his keenness to obtain the opposition but at the same time looks bored, yawns frequently and sports a two-day stubble, then the interviewer may find it difficult to reconcile the conflicting symbols. The whole area of communication through gesture or appearance is fraught with possible errors. Such imprecise meanings exist that perceptual factors can playa large part in the assessment of meaning. These weaknesses can be compounded since gestures and the use of more than one media are often used to create uncertainty deliberately.

Actions themselves are often looked upon as a method of communication. The managing director who informs all and sundry that foremen are his key managers may have difficulty in having his beliefs accepted by the foremen themselves. If they do their paper work at a space temporarily cleared on an oily work-bench while he has a large office, or if they have to walk through a muddy car park in the rain while he is driven past in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, the credibility gap may be difficult to span.

One might imagine that language-a system of symbols formalized through education, dictionaties, etc.,

Britain. From a similar study, in which managers kept a detailed log of their activities over a period of several weeks, Tom Burns, Professor of Sociology at Edinburgh University, writes:
more important is the picture-the moving picture
such studies give of the management system seen as a communication network. The production of this information itself yields comparative data of considerable interest. For the seven manufacturing concems, to take one instance, the proportion of all management time spent in spoken communication ran as follows:

80-71-68-56-55-44-42 per cent
The order is significant. The firms are arranged from left to right also in terms of their... environmental change. Moreover, the direction of communication changes: in the first firm slightly more than half the communication was lateral, i.e. with colleagues and this proportion dropped until. in the seventh firm, virtually all communication was vertical.
Media
In Western society large numbers of people spend a considerable part of their waking hours in organizations of one sort or another. It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that their main communication media tend to be the same inside or outside the organization, namely speech, writing, gesture, and appearance. Communication may be described as unsuccessful when the received message does not match the transmitted message. As many of the failures have been discovered in the 'coding' and 'decoding' processes, the media involved have come under careful scrutiny.
One might imagine that language-a system of symbols formalized through education, dictionaties, etc.,

Despite these barriers it was reported of one top executive:

Other writers think it is a common mistake to imagine that all organizational ailments can be cured by large doses of official communication. Many wellpublicized 'communication improvement' and 'management information' programmes are ineffective because they overload the formal system. It would seem that effective organizational functioning depends not upon a maximum but on an optimum of information exchange. The communication studies mentioned already amply illustrate that once a hierarchy of virtually any kind comes into existence, information exchange is no longer 'free' but restricted; shaped, and con!folled. The moment a task is delegated the administrator is to some extent insulated from some important aspects of that task. The point is that he not only is insulated but should be. Professor Jaques, who did some highly praised work with the Glacier Metal Company, emphasizes that certain barriers
, to communication frequency are actually necessary if an organization is to get its business done. He refers to 'adaptive segregation' as the automatic process by which barriers are set up, more or less by mutual consent, by sections or levels of a company to keep channels clear for crucial information.
Despite these barriers it was reported of one top executive: "In the sheer volume of all activities demanded of him, verbal interaction is the number one form of contact, consuming upward of 80 per cent of all the executives' time... only 12 times in 35 days of observation was this chief executive able to work undisturbed alone in his office during intervals of 23 minutes or longer.
This seems to be general in industry as identical findings have been reported in America, Sweden, and

Communication frequency

improved conditions, etc. What little research has been done seems to indicate that speed and accuracy in communication are complementary-as that competent general the Duke of Wellington demanded of his commanders: "Do the business of the day in the day."

Communication frequency
While frequent communication may not cause better leadership behavior, good leadership behaviour and frequent communication seem to be associated. A person who is communicating with another is receiving recognition, and his sense of well-being may be enhanced.
As one of the managers in a discussion on the context said: "Those two are just a couple of empire builders-they know all calls are 'supposed to come through here so that we can keep tabs on everything. But no, they keep giving out their office number. I wish they'd give out their home numbers. There's no empire building at night-Oh, no-we get all the calls then of course!'
. One of the two supervisors mentioned above said, after putting the telephone down, 'People are always phoning up about this or that. They see this office as the centre of operations.'
A subordinate's well-being may not be enhanced, however, if he feels that the wall around his boss's office is a mile high. Presumably this is one problem which open-plan areas try to reduce by removing the physical barriers of walls. It is interesting to note here that a
common complaint made against open-plan factories is that too much communication occurs. In this study only one firm had complete open planning, and their frequency of communication was the lowest of all the firms studiednot the highest as might have been predicted.

An interesting case in the diffusion of information was the work of the sociologist Dodd, who had leaflets randomly introduced into isolated communiti

from what is actually going on. Though most directors like to think of a pyramid of communication centres beneath them, labyrinth of commun~cation barriers might be a more apt description.
Speed
An interesting case in the diffusion of information was the work of the sociologist Dodd, who had leaflets randomly introduced into isolated communities by air-drops. In a series of studies the researcher 'planted' information of various kinds and then traced the speed and range of transmission with a corps of on-the-spot int.erviewers.
His studies considered the effects of the size of the. community; the potency of messages; the time factor; the space factor and the stimulation factor. This last factor is of considerable relev~nce to politicians and managers alike. In Britain, for example, samples of the population taken over a 2-year period showed little increased understanding of the term 'productivity agreements' despite its frequent occurr~nce on the news media as one of the keys to Britain's economic recovery.
Other studies have shown the effects on industrial relations when communication is delayed. In one factory it was found that management-union agreements were taking an average of 2.8 days to reach the shop floor via union channels but 12.7 days via formal management lines. Many
of the first-line supervisors resented this type of information coming to them from their workers rather than their superiors. Typically, workers complained about delays in adjusting pay and working conditions following national agreements. The unions quickly let them know, but the foremen had to wait for their managerial channels to advise them before authorizing increased rates,

Replacing the concept of qu.antity' of communication by rate.

of Zipf was confinned and extended by Cavanaugh in the fifties. Replacing the concept of qu.antity' of communication by rate. of interaction, Cavanaugh extended Zipf's hypothesis to cover human transportation.
All of these factors, demonstrated in such a wide variety of contexts, would seem to be relevant in planning the layout of a factory or busine~s premises and in establishing a chain of command-especially in an overseas operation. As Peter Drucker puts it: 'Every additiona). administrative level makes the attainment of common direction and mutual understanding more difficult. Every additional level distorts objectives and misdirects attention. Every link in the chain sets up additional stresses, and creates one more source of inertia, friction and slack.'
Although many managers would agree with this statement, few companies have gone to the lengths of ffiM when they reduced the number of levels in all of their units in the forties. Their grievance procedure, for example, was speeded up by recognizing only three divisions-man, manager, management. The occasional dispute not settled at the man-manager level went straight to the man-board level for settlement. Other see the effects of the problem as being concentrated at the top of an organisation. The top executives have the greatest amount of decision-making power and hence a greater need for information. There may be a tendency for the message flow to them to get increasingly heavy, while they have proportionally less time available to digest the information.. In these circumstalICeS they may soon come to depend on briefed-down communication usually interpreted by their assistants. Because of their very position, many chief executives may be totally insulated