CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN IN AN ORGANIZATION (A case study of champions breweries Uyo Akwa Ibom State)

CHAPTER ONE

1.1       Introduction                         

The modern world is information oriented, thus management becomes more concerned about communication with employees. Hence communication is vital tool for effective management in an enterprise.

The need for effective communication has become paramount because most managers found it difficult to understand why efficiency is not as certain in an organization.

However, communication integrates, coordinate and synchronize organization activities. In an organization, there is need for harmonization of overall activities, this can be done through communication.

According to Koontz H. Weihrich (2008) 12th edition of management at global and entrepreneurial perspective page 22 defined communication as the process of transferring information meaningfully from one to another.

Communication is a fundamental aspect of all human interactions: through languages, humanity has recorded its history and transmit its culture from one generation to another. The ability to communicate has enable human being to build societies, organization and other social group that make for survival and social wellbeing.

Communication constitutes about 60% managers tasks. It takes the following form: directive conservation, request and instruction. The mix include not only oral and written form of one communication but gestures, positive dress and other visual signals.

Concept of Communication

Communication can mostly be facilitated through language and language is purely abstract in nature thus a well spoken language earns benefits and purpose of communication. The more an individual increases its vocabulary, the like/she visualize his words, object and phrase. Many people attach difficult meaning to gesture communication and as such it poses problem. Henry Fayol “studies unity of direction” in his 14 principles of management which means that each group of activities with the same objective must have one head and one plan. While Barnard in his popular book “the function of the executive” saw maintenance of organizational communication as top of his life of the three basic execution functions. Perhaps Bandas and Barret expressed the most eloquent when they write: It is not a secondary or derived aspect of organizational activity and it’s the best process out of which all other functions derive. With reference to the subject matter, the main purpose of this extended essay is to see the causes and effect of communication breakdown on an organization and suggest possible solutions to these problems with a view to enhancing organization efficiency.

1.2       Objective of the Essay

            The objective of this extended essay constitutes the following:

1. To assess the effect of communication on the field of management.
2. To identify the existing communication barriers in an organization.
3. To access the contribution and important role played by effective communication in an organization towards enhancing production and profitability.
4. To find out what communication is all about, how it is done, what instruments are used and what qualities can make up a system of communication effective in an organization.
5. To ascertain and identify the problems of ineffective communication and to suggest possible solution so as to achieve better communication network in an enterprise.
6. To identify the possible barriers that lead to communication breakdown.
7. To know if there is any relationship between effective communication and performance of employees.
8. To know if there is any relationship between communication and effective management.

1.3       Significance of the Essay

It is my sincere hope that this extended essay would be of benefit to academicians and the students of business administrative studies at all levels and member of the public who would stand to benefit from the work, especially managers, administrative officers both in the public and private sector. Again it can also be used by researchers as prelude to another research or reference material for use by entrepreneurs who may find the work useful.

Besides, it is my belief that this essay will be found useful by the enterprise and consequently other organizations which may wish to achieve their established objectives. This is because communication in both private and public undertaking be it non-profit or profit motive play a vital role in enhancing productivity due to the fact that it integrates the management functions in an organization. Since it influence action towards the welfare of organization. Indeed, communication also brings about utilization, improvement and retention of various organization manpower (labour force).

Moreso, communication is important in that, it leads, directs, motivates and create a climate in which people want to contribute to achieve organizational objectives and goals.

1.4       Scope of the Essay

The essay intends to highlight the barriers to effective communication in an organization with particular emphasis on how it affects the performance of employees, with a view to proffer lasting solutions. Though it is imperative for the writer to narrow his area of study. This is simply because the problem of communication in effectiveness of an extensive area of study.

Therefore it becomes extremely difficult for one to cover the whole range of the problem due to the:

1. The art of the financial funds to carryout a comprehensive essay.
2. The problem of not having free access to some vital documents which will help to facilitate the essay as a result of their confidential or classified status.
3. The study is limited by time: The time allocated of data from the organization used to collides with the writer’s lecture houses.
4. It is difficult to be able to speak to highly placed personalities in order to make inquiry.

Despite all the above constraints, I was able to lay my hands on some vital documents. I had been opportuned to speak to some personalities who gave me all the necessary information that guided me through this write -up.

1.5       Limitation of the Essay

Conflict is one disadvantage of communication. Employees may use communication to disagree and argue with each other and with management. Conflicts causes tension among employees and can halt operations, disrupt meetings and prevent task completion. Source of conflict include lack of structure, lack of transparent communication and personality differences. Organizational leaders also use communication to mediate and control conflict to lessen the effect of employee disagreement.

There are some limitations of communication:

1. Distrust/Suspicion: Where there is distrust or suspicion between two communicants, a wrong interpretation of what is said is likely to occur. Such messages may be greatly distorted especially when melayed to a third party, with distrust even the best statement can be misinterpreted as having a hidden message or may be said to be out of context.
2. Physical Barriers: These include geographical separation and locational distance which the media of communication especially face to face conversation.

Another example is a wall that separate persons from group, giving too little or no interaction inter-personally between public servants distracting noises and other physical characteristics of the immediate environment.

1. Content and Context: These are concerned not only with language but also with attitudes and over behavior. This is evidenced in that symbols and words convey different meaning to different people.
2. Inference: Inference occurs when a person makes an assumption about what is being communicated. When assumptions are made, it may be the time that situation is accepted.
3. Background/Values: People with different background tend to see things and interpret them differently. The move divergent the background the danger of misunderstanding or misinterpreting.
4. Language/Semantics/Jargon: Some words may carry a different meaning to the respondent from what the conveyor intends e.g. professionals and highly technical groups tends to develop specialized language known as jargons cannot be easily understood by others.

Delimitation of Communication

Effective Communication occurs when a message is completely understood by its recipient. Communication encompasses most areas of life. It is used in both business and personal relationships.

Communication is intended to inform, persuade or inspire the listener. Some advantages of effective communication are: it provides direction, clarity and purpose.

1. Provides Direction: Effective Communication is able to give clear direction and vision. It accurately defines goals, provides the tools to accomplish these goals, and outlines the steps of the process. Without direction, listener will be left to use his own judgment on how to accomplish a task, which can lead to confusion and frustration.
2. Produce Clarity: Effective communication provide clarity to avoid any confusion. Without clarity messages can be ambiguous, lacking definition and purpose. Misunderstanding commonly occurs when people don’t understand exactly what is being communicated to or expected of them: clarity comes through effective communication; asking questions and repeating messages to the sender.
3. Provides Purpose: When people know what is expected of them, the timeframe they have in which to accomplish goals, and the reward for completing those goals, it adds purpose to the task they are performing. People who have purpose are move satisfied with their jobs and are more likely to remain loyal to the company for which they work.

Effective communication also adds purpose to personal relationships by defining each partner’s intention and commitment.

1.6       Definition of Terms

• Communication: Communication is defined as the process of exchanging message between five parties with the aims of having such message understood and appropriate action be taken.
• Organization: Is defined as a group of people with a common goal to achieve
• Population: This is defined as a group of people which are similar in one or more ways and which form the subject of study in a particular study.
• Sample: Sample is defined as a fractional represent actives of an object from where inferences is drawn.
• Information: Information are processed data or result from logical manipulation of data which allows decision making.
• Data: Are those facts and figures about people, machine, objectives and places etc are unprocessed.
• Superior: This is a term used to refer to as people on top level of management.
• Subordinate: are those low rank workers that carryout the duties assed to them.
• Sender: Is the person that initiates an ideas and wishes to share it with somebody.
• Receiver: Refers to as that person that receive the message record it to understand it.
• Encoding: This is the process of transcribing the message into symbolic form e.g. through writing, picture and speech.