151. The marketing director of a national car parts retail company wants to keep the 20 district managers across the country informed about marketing initiatives and experiences within the company. This information ranges from technical marketing strategies to simple stories about successful marketing experiences within the company. One or two pieces of information are communicated each week and the marketing director wants to communicate this information as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible. If you had to choose just one specific medium and form of communication within that medium, which would you choose? Justify your choice. You may assume that this company can communicate with district managers in any way currently available to organisations in your country.
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152. A few organisations have recently tried to minimise employee use of email when communicating with colleagues. Specifically, these companies have banned the use of email (except for special circumstances) on Fridays. Discuss two reasons why companies might want to minimise the use of email.
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153. You work at an advertising firm where a senior executive has suggested that advertising staff should rely more on email to communicate with clients rather than frequently visiting them in person. The executive has even suggested that this proposal might increase creativity because clients could communicate their ideas to staff members more often than through personal visits. The reason for this recommendation is that it is expensive and time-consuming to visit clients. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this idea (using email rather than personal visits to interact with clients). Be sure that your answer considers emotional contagion, media richness and other factors related to these two communication channels.
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154. Emotional contagion receives relatively little attention in organisational behaviour literature (it is mostly studied by psychologists), yet it is an important part of social interaction in the workplace. Define emotional contagion and identify two benefits of this phenomenon.
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155. An important factor in choosing the best communication channel is its media richness. What does this concept mean and what two conditions require a communication channel that is high in media richness?
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156. A major engineering firm has introduced virtual teams around the globe to resolve client emergencies. Although some of these emergencies are routine (they occur often enough that the engineers have ready-made action plans), several are novel. Furthermore, information about the client emergencies often comes second-hand from employees of the client, so some of the details are missing or ambiguous. Although the company plans to eventually offer a variety of communication media that these virtual teams can use, engineers are currently limited to email, telephone, fax machine and an instant messaging program that was recently introduced. Based on your knowledge of media richness, how can this engineering firm maximise communication effectiveness with the existing resources in this situation? Your answer should briefly define media richness.
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157. The CEO of Bear Securities Ltd is concerned that investment analysts and brokers at Bear Securities are using too much jargon to communicate with each other and with clients. The CEO believes that the use of jargon will result in costly communication errors and may intimidate clients. Discuss the accuracy of the CEO’s concerns.
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158. Comment on the accuracy of the following statement: ‘The communication process is more effective when ambiguity is minimised’.
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159. You have just been promoted to a job in which you have many employees and clients vying for your attention. In particular, these people expect you to review a considerable amount of information to make decisions for them. It is not possible to spend much time with any individual, nor is it possible to delegate any of these decisions to other people. Identify two distinct strategies that you could use to minimise information overload by increasing information processing and two strategies to reduce information overload in this situation.
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160. A resort in New Brunswick employs people from at least eight countries with significantly different cultures. The resort’s new manager is concerned that communication problems might exist among these employees, but she does not know what problems would occur. Identify and explain three communication barriers that might occur due to cultural differences among employees.
