Upward Communication And Downward Communication

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Internal Communication

Control, motivation, emotional expression and information are the main functions of communication within a group or organization. First of all, communication plays an important role in controlling member behaviour due to the fact that organizations have authority hierarchies and formal guidelines that employees have to take into consideration. To be more precise, communication acts as a control function when employees respect their job description, obey the company policies or simply communicate a job-related complaint. Informal communication can also control behaviour. When work groups draw a member’s attention to his excessive involvement that may affect the others’ reputation, the member’s behaviour is informally …show more content…

In this regard, distortions may be exaggerated owing to the fact that face-to-face communication is less frequent and violations of the chain of command may stifle internal communication (Gordon, 1996).

Not only does a good communicator describe the purpose behind his downward communication, but also invite the employees under his supervision to communicate. Therefore, this introduces the next direction, which is upward communication (Robbins & Judge, 2015).

Upward communication can be described as the information that flows from a lower organizational level to a higher level in a group or company. In particular, it is utilized to provide superiors with feedback, notify them of progress towards the achievement of goals and report immediate problems. Upward communication keeps managers informed about employees’ job satisfaction, their opinion about colleagues and the organization as an entity, and it also raises awareness of improvements the company should consider (Robbins & Judge, …show more content…

Direct communication among the subordinates is usually faster and more accurate. Even though biases may appear in encoding, transmission and decoding, lateral communication is seen as beneficial to problem solving and work coordination.

Even if lateral communication makes use of formal channels, it happens informally in many situations due to the fact that it occurs outside the hierarchy. The formal hierarchy slows down lateral communication and yet managers often prefer an exchange of information succeeding the basic hierarchy. The transmission of information following the order of functions, more precisely from subordinate to manager to top manager to second manager to second subordinate, is an adequate approach to keep the managers informed, check the decision-making process and reinforce the chain of

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