Principles of Business Communication

Principles of Business Communication

1. The Purpose of the Course. This course is designed to improve the students‟

communication skills through achieving a better understanding of:

 the role of communication in human society

 the nature of communication in human society

 the process of communication in human society

 the importance of feedback in communication

 barriers to effective communication

 specificity of communication in organizations

 forms, media, and channels of communication in organizations

The focus on the principles and conventions of business communication will also help us

improve our basic interpersonal communication skills, such as reading, writing, listening,

and speaking. The all-important role of analytical thinking as the underlying factor in any

form of effective communication will be highlighted.

2. Definition of Communication. Communication is a complex process often involving

reading, writing, speaking and listening. It may be verbal and non-verbal (or a mixture of

both), and it uses a variety of media (language, mass media, digital technology, etc.).

Broadly speaking, communication is a transfer and reconstruction of information. More

specifically, we may define communication as the transmission and reception of ideas,

feelings and attitudes – verbal and non-verbal – that produce a response.

3. Communication Theory. There are two major theories of communication: behavioral

& mathematical.

 The Behavioral Theory covers both verbal and non-verbal communication. First

set forth by Dr. Jurgen Ruesch, a psychiatrist, it postulates that communication is

based on social situations in which individuals find themselves. Our participation

in communication with others must conform to established behavioral patterns

involving

o social situations (culture, social class, time & place, etc.)

o roles (sex, professional, religious, etc.)

o status (authority, respect, social/class standing, i.e. in the caste system in

India)

o rules (protocol, ethics, or code of behavior)

o clues in non-verbal communication (gestures, touch, voice inflections, rate

of delivery, etc.)

This theory identifies communication networks such as

 intrapersonal, i.e., communication with oneself,

 interpersonal, i.e., communication between individuals,

 group interaction, such as between clans, or organizations, and

 cultural, i.e., between distinct cultures, such as Islamic and

Christian, or African, Anglo-Saxon and Spanish, etc. in America.

The Mathematical Theory is largely based on the work of Claude Shannon & Warren

Weaver who were not social scientists but engineers working for Bell Telephone Labs in

the United States. Their goal was to ensure the maximum efficiency of telephone cables

and radio waves. They developed a model of communication, which was intended to

assist in developing a mathematical theory of communication. Shannon and Weaver‟s

work proved valuable for communication engineers in dealing with such issues as the

capacity of various communication channels in „bytes per second‟. It contributed to

computer science, and in making „information‟ „measurable‟ it gave birth to the

mathematical study of „information theory‟.

Their original model consisted of five elements:

 An information source, which produces a message;

 A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals;

 A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission;

 A receiver, which „decodes‟ (reconstructs) the message from the signal;

 A destination, where the message arrives.

A sixth element, noise, is a dysfunctional factor: any interference with the message

traveling along the channel (such as „static‟ on the telephone or radio) which may lead to

the signal received being different from that sent.