Communication is the transfer and understanding of meaning. The communication process consists of seven elements: First, a sender or source has a message. A message is a purpose to be conveyed. Encoding converts a message into symbols. A channel provides the medium along which a message travels. Decoding happens when the receiver retranslates a sender’s message. Finally, feedback lets the sender know whether the communication was successful. The barriers to effective communication include filtering, emotions, information overload, defensiveness, language, and national culture. Managers can overcome these barriers by using feedback, simplifying language, listening actively, constraining emotions, and watching for nonverbal clues.

Technology has radically changed the way organizational members communicate. It improves a manager’s ability to monitor performance; it gives employees more complete information to make faster decisions; it provides employees more opportunities to collaborate and share information; and it makes it possible for people to be fully accessible, anytime anywhere. IT has affected managerial communication through the use of networked computer systems and wireless capabilities.

The two main challenges of managing communication in an Internet world are the legal and security issues and the lack of personal interaction.

Organizations can manage knowledge by making it easy for employees to communicate and share their knowledge so they can learn from each other ways to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. One way is through online information databases, and another way is through creating communities of practice.

Communicating with customers is an important managerial issue because what communication takes place and how it takes place can significantly affect a customer’s satisfaction with the service and the likelihood of being a repeat customer.

It’s important for organizations to get input from their employees. Such potentially valuable information should not be ignored.

Having civil conversations in the workplace is an important factor in managing organizational and interpersonal communication. Managers have to be the role models.

How an organization’s workspace is designed and configured can affect the communication that occurs as well as influence an organization’s overall performance. That’s why it’s important to make design choices that will enhance communication effectiveness..

Finally, it’s important that a company’s communication efforts be ethical. Ethical communication can be encouraged through clear guidelines and through answering questions that force a communicator to think through the communication choices made and the consequences of those choices.