You have been hired as a consultant to improve communication between engineering and marketing employees in a large high-technology company. Use the communication model and the four ways to improve that process to devise strategies to improve communication effectiveness among employees in these two work units.
Support your answer by utilizing research that you have gathered from at least 2 sources other than your text. Finally, be sure to cite your sources in APA formatting.
A detailed and thoughtful response to the topic is required (minimum of 500 words). RUBRIC IS ATTACHED BELOW.
Additionally, emphasis is placed on your ability to conduct and synthesize scholarly research.
Your posts should be professional in content and follow the APA standards. Be sure to city your sources in APA formatting.
SAMPLE RESPONSE:
Communication is defined as “Any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person’s needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes” (Keyton, 2013). Communication between employees can occur in many forms, including face to face, email, telephone, and text messages. In general, written communication allows employees to carefully think about what they intend to say and allows for more thorough communication, whereas face to face communication is more personal but can allow for less thorough communication and idea sharing (Berger & Iyengar, 2013). There are several ways to improve communication coding and decoding: both parties have motivation and ability to communicate through the channel; both parties carry the same ‘codebook’; both parties share similar mental models of the communication context; and the sender and receiver are experienced at communicating the message topic (McShane & Von Gilnow, 2013).
The engineering and marketing employees can use the above steps to improve communication between the two departments. Both departments need to be motivated to communicate with their coworkers and also have the ability to communicate, whether that be face to face, on the internet, or by telephone. Next, employees in both departments must carry the same ‘codebook’, meaning that workers in the engineering department need to be familiar with the basic concepts, terminology, and activities of the marketing department and vice versa. This will make it much easier to determine what the respective departments need from one another in order to perform business successfully. If the engineers know exactly what the marketing department needs to know in order to adequately market the product, it will make the marketing department’s job much easier and much more successful. It is also important for employees to share similar mental models about the context of the information. Employees in both departments need to be familiar with the products they are working with in order to successfully communicate about them. Ensuring that both the engineers and marketers are adequately prepared in each of the product areas will make the communication between the departments more smooth. If employees are not informed about the products, communication problems with occur and the success of both departments will likely decline. Lastly, both the sender and receiver must be experienced at communicating the message topic and the communication channel. This implies that both the engineers and marketers should be familiar with the different forms of communication they will be required to use. Video conferencing, text messaging, emailing, and verbal communication can all come into play in the workplace and employees need to be proficient in each of these communication forms in order for successful communication to occur. If video conferencing is required for the interactions between the departments to occur successfully and certain employees do not know how to use this form of communication, then information may be left out and business can suffer. In order to avoid this situation, the company can provide training in the forms of communication that the employees in both departments will be required to use.
References
Berger, J., & Iyengar, R. (2013). Communication channels and word of mouth: How the medium
shapes the message. JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, 40
Keyton, J. (2013). Investigating verbal workplace communication behaviors. Journal of Business
Communication, 50(2), 152-169. Retrieved from http://0-
web.ebscohost.com.catalog.lib.cmich.edu/ehost/detail?sid=fe3d44d3-0c78-4a93-b96b-
[email protected]&vid=1&hid=10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==
McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2013). Organizational behavior (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
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