The problems outlined

This growth of interest in communication has not been due solely to man’s inherent

curiosity, but also because ineffective communication has been seen as major industrial

problem.

One poll of 650 British works managers put the

following problems in their ‘top five’. .

(a) insufficient cost information to indicate the best areas

for improvement in productivity;

(b) frustration at all managerial levels due to lack of

clearly defined spheres of delegated responsibilities;

© poor communication-upwards and downwards.

Many industrialists define the manager as a person who gets his work done through

others, a job which requires cle.ar instructions passed down, and the ability to obtain the

details of the results created. These same men

The following. quote from a manager demonstrates this: Well, the director told me that

my project was at the

top of his list of priorities. After another few weeks of frustration and no action I went

back to remind him. “Yes,” he’said, “your project is still at the top Qf my list¬but the list

isn’t necessarily in order.”

Organizational research into the media of

communication has tended to concentrate on the merits and drawbacks of written and

spoken messages Baker and his colleagues of.Princeton University found low reader

interest’ in the employee’s handbook of the company they studied, and Professor Maier,

in the study mentioned earlier, found that written job descriptions did not affect the

degree of agreement over job details between superior-subordinate managers, and that

firms without this system were rated as highly as finns with it. In general, interest in

company magazines increases as the style becomes more informal. Where the

company literature is stiff, precise, and full of company jargon, employees prefer to

obtain their infonnation from personal contacts.