Receiver's Interpretation Of The Sender's Message example essay topic

Organizational Behavior Cost - Cutting Humor at Bear, Stearns A manager has the responsibility of working with and through diverse groups of people efficiently and ethically to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Effective management utilizes a multitude of skills to accomplish this objective. There are eleven of managerial skill profile behavior categories exhibited by effective managers, according to material extracted from C. Wilson, "Identify Needs with Cost in Mind", Training and development Journal, July 1980 and F. Shipper, "A Study of the Psychometric Properties of the Managerial Skill Scales of the Survey of Management Practices", Educational and Psychological Measurement, June 1995. The skills profile categories are: 1.

Clarifies goals and objectives for everyone involved. 2. Encourages participation, upward communication, and suggestions. 3.

Plans and organizes for and orderly work flow. 4. Has technical and administrative expertise to answer organization-related questions. 5.

Facilitates work through team building, training, coaching, and support. 6. Provides feedback honestly and constructively. 7. Keep things moving by relying on schedules, deadlines, and helpful reminders.

8. Controls details without being overbearing. 9. Applies reasonable pressure for goal accomplishment. 10. Empowers and delegates key duties to others while maintaining goal clarity and commitment.

11. Recognizes good performance with rewards and positive reinforcement. Wilson and Shipper's research described three lessons: 1. Management is about dealing with people. The 11 managerial skills profiles develop a creation / commitment /feedback / reward /accomplishment cycle with human interaction at every turn.

2. Managers with high skill mastery have better departmental performance and higher employee morale. 3. Effective female and male managers do not have many different skill profiles. A manager must have strong communication skills in to execute any of the managerial skills identified.

Communication is the transference of meaning involving the minimum of two people. As the chairman of a corporation, Alan Greenberg demonstrated poor communicational skills through the memos he sent to the employees at his organization. Alan C. Greenberg, chairman of Bear, Stearn & Company, and Haimchinkel Malintz Anaynikal, a fictional antisocial philosopher of budgetary restraint, are working together to cut cost at the Wall Street investment firm. To communicate their concerns and expectations to the employees at the firm, they have selected the media of written memos. This is the process of Hierarchical communication, which involves information being exchanged downward from management to employees and upward from employees to management. Downward communication provide managers a medium to communicate job instructions, job rational, organizational practices and procedures, performance feedback and indoctrination of goals.

Upward communication provide employees a media to communicate to management information about themselves, co-workers and their problems, organizational policies and procedures, what tasks are to be perform and how it will be executed. It had been assumed in the past that the communications process is a pipeline of information and meaning being transferred from one person to another, according to the conduit model. The conduit model was criticized by communication experts for being unrealistic. The model assumes the communication transfers intended meaning from person to person. There would not be misunderstandings or miscommunication's if this were true.

Researchers realized receivers need to process information in order to interpret it. The perceptual model of communication was developed to allow the receiver to develop meaning to the message they are receiving from the sender. The perceptual model of communication is made up of eight elements: 1. Sender: a person, group or organization wanting to communicate with a receiver. The receiver may be a person, group or organization. 2.

Encoding: translates mental thoughts into a code or language that can be understood by the receiver, such as words, numbers, gestures, ect. 3. The Message: the output of encoding. They contain hidden agendas and it is important to match the message with the media use to send it. 4.

Selecting a Medium: it may be face-to-face communication, a phone call, E-mail, a fax, a picture, a written letter or memo. The selection of a medium depends on the nature and purpose of the message, location of the receiver, how soon the sender expect the receiver to receive the message and personal preference. Face-to-face communication is useful for important and sensitive information, telephones offer quickness and privacy but no nonverbal communication. If there is difficulty in meeting with someone or there is no need to embellish on understanding in a face-to-face contact, writing is a good form of communication. 5. Decoding: the receiver translates the spoken, written or visual message into a form to be interpreted.

It is the main contributor to misunderstanding in communication due to social and cultural values of the receiver that may not be understood by the sender. 6. Creating Meaning: the receiver's interpretation of the sender's message. Repeating communication is helpful in reducing the risk of the receiver misinterpreting the sender's message. 7. Feedback: The receiver becomes the sender by responding to the message of the sender.

It is a tool used by the sender to gauge the understanding of his message by the receiver. 8. Noise: anything that interferes with the transmission and understanding of a message. Examples of noise are: poor hearing or eyesight, speech problems, poor handwriting, bad phone connections, ect. Communications can greatly be improved by reducing noise. Selecting an inappropriate medium will result in inaccurate information or misunderstood information.

It is also important to make certain that the nonverbal signs, in Alan's case words, are consistent with your intended verbal message. Alan Greenberg should have reconsidered his medium selection as well as his choice of word to sent his intended message. Alan C. Greenberg is the sender desiring to communicate, through written memos, with the employees at Bear, Stearn & Company about cutting cost. Mr. Greenberg's encoding process does not effectively translate his mental thoughts into words that all employees would understand, for example: In the memo dated June 19, he writes: "The month of May is history, but it looks like we did get 10 runs in the first inning". This language could easily be interpreted as language used by baseball players, fans, and reporters. People not familiar with the baseball language would not have any idea what he is trying to say.

In the last paragraph of this memo he writes: Haimchinkel Malintz dropped down, saw the figures and made some suggestions... He pointed out to me that the tendency is to cut expenses when things are tough and how stupid that line of reasoning is. Where did Mr. Malintz drop down from and what stupid line of reasoning is he referencing? Mr. Greenberg did not take into consideration that his messages may have personally attack or offend undeserving or uninvolved employees. In the June 19 Th memo he wrote: "The partners of firm must continue to work together and learn to over look petty differences. We are all expendable and I hope that your Executive Committee does not have to prove that to any one of us".

He has assumed that what is petty to one employee is petty to all. In the September 10th memo he speaks about the pads that are issued to the employees with their names and company logo and how expensive they are. The sentence: "This is conceptually wrong". Because he views this practice as being wrong, others do not have to believe it also. Mr. Greenberg selected the medium of communicating with the employees through written memos. The written memos are a mismatch for the messages he is attempting to send.

His messages were very strong, accusing of negative behavior and performance. It addresses important and sensitive issues that would benefit from face-to-face communication in order for the employees to have the opportunity to decode his messages and get full understanding by associating his non-verbal cues with his words and therefore they would have created the meaning he intended in his message.