Answer:
A climate of trust and openness improves organizational communication by:
• Encouraging people to communicate honestly, so that management understands their real feelings and concerns.
• Allowing both positive and negative information to be shared, so that all issues are on the table.
• Suppressing retribution, so that employees can pass on negative information, knowing that it will be used for positive purposes.
Answer:
Communicating with an employee who poorly handled a customer call would best be done in a face to face meeting. This method has advantages of being personal, provides a range of communication input including body language, and allows for immediate feedback. It does have the disadvantage of not leaving a written record, so if the meeting needed documentation (such as for an employee file) it would need to be created during or after the meeting.
Communicating with staff about deadlines for healthcare plan selection would be best done via a group email or a memo to all staff. These methods have the advantage of creating a written record showing that the information was provided to all staff members. These channels also have the disadvantages of being impersonal and one-way, but that is appropriate when sharing general information with all employees.
Answer:
National sales manager C is frustrated with the delayed delivery schedule of a new toy from the Mexican subsidiary, and is concerned that the ordered quantity won't be available in time to meet the demand during the upcoming holiday season. He sent an email to the subsidiary and received a brief response from the plant manager's secretary. In frustration he forwarded this email on to his boss, and it eventually was forwarded back to the plant manager from his boss. The plant manager called C and told him that if the message was critical, he would expect it to be delivered via phone, not email.
The main purpose of C's email to plant manager V was to determine whether the ordered toys would be delivered on time. He had the same purpose when he forwarded the email to his own boss after receiving what he felt was an inappropriate response to the message.
When choosing his communication channel, C should have considered the needs of his recipient, to make sure he was choosing an appropriate message and channel to obtain the information he was seeking. This would be the same consideration he would use when sending an email to his boss. If he had evaluated this first, he would have still communicated the same information, but he would have sent the message differently to the plant manager. An email was still an appropriate channel for the U.S. staff members, as shown by their level of responsiveness to the message.