Chapter 14 - Privacy in the Internet Age

Chapter fourteen talks about the fastest growing form of communication, internet communication. Although it is filled with advantages, I would like to talk about a very important disadvantage, privacy.

The internet is full of opportunities to make money. Unfortunately, one of the best ways to make money is collecting private information. A rising problem is Facebook. Users of Facebook are giving away a ton of information and most people don't even know they're doing it. Facebook is gathering a lot of information, whether it'd be your demographics or the things you like. Information that is unique and information advertisers would love to get a hold of.

Another example would be the one that was discussed in the book. Google bought this company called Neven Vison which specializes in analyzing and reading facial expressions. This would be great information to buy as well, as advertisers would love to see how their consumers react to ads or webpages, be it a smile or a frown. There is a lot of controversy behind this as people are generally not to keen on having their facial expression read to the benefit of advertising.

Privacy infringement is a growing concern, and the internet is adding fuel to the fire.

Management by Walking Around

A section titled “Management by Walking Around” discusses a technique where managers walk throughout the organization and communicate with all levels and departments. Employees favor this method because they often prefer to hear information directly from their manager. It is much more effective than sending an email. This section is informative and offers six different tips when managing this way.
They recommend dedicating a certain amount of time each week without a cell phone which could become a distraction. It is not effective if the manager is distracted during these walks. The next suggestion is to use active listening and to discuss casual topics not always related to business. Showing interest and positively responding to feedback builds stronger working relationships and develops trust amongst the organization.
In my opinion, “Management by Walking Around” is vital to being a successful manager. The atmosphere it encourages is an appropriate balance between levels and promotes a flow of communication which is constructive for the organization.

Levels of Communication

The various levels and corresponding types of communication, including horizontal, vertical, external, and casual, are very important to understand in any organization. When communicating with superiors, subordinates, co workers, or external relations of an organization, it is important to emphasize the role by exemplifying the appropriate qualities. This includes utmost courtesy and respect of superiors, friendliness toward external relations, and cooperation with co workers. Each person has a specific role, and therefore each person will decode the information they receive differently, and determine how it will affect them. For example, it is important for a supervisor to communicate effectively with his/her subordinates when there are problems with the company and it's industry. Employees are generally concerned with this matter, and will feel more safe if they are informed by a superior. The quality exemplified here is responsibility by the supervisor when he effectively communicates with the employees about the status of the company.

Good communication abilities are essential to properly communicating a vision and action plan in any organization. When a person is in a leadership position with followers, it is the responsibility of the leader to effectively communicate the vision of the organization, so as to create purpose and consent among all those involved. The effective communication of the vision will also lead to motivation and employees feeling as though they are part of something bigger, if they agree and want to help achieve the organization's vision.

Kreitner, Robert. Organizational Behavior. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010.

Komives, Susan R. Et al. Exploring Leadership. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. San Francisco: 2007.

Pros and Cons of Email

In Chapter 15, Kreitner discusses communication in a digital era. The most practical piece of information (in my opinion) is the discussion of the pros and cons of using e-mail as a communication channel. According to Kreitner, the pros include: reduced costs of distributing information, increased teamwork, reduced paper costs, and increased flexibility; the cons include: wasted time and effort, information overload, increased costs to organize and store, an neglect of other media. So how do we utilize this form of technology in a way that benefits us in the best way possible?

The article, "Liability of Certification Service Providers Towards Relying Parties and the Need for a Clear System to Enhance the Level of Trust in Electronic Communication" offers a solution. In this article, Balboni talks about how trust is a huge issue in communicating electronically. To make emailing safer and more efficient for us, he conducts an analysis of using the Electronic Signatures Directive. After balancing the pros and cons of the system recommended by the European legislator. This system is based on the concept of a different type of liability for different types of information provided in the certificates by certification service providers. His findings allow him to, in the end, propose another program quite similar to this.

Although it's not guaranteed that this will build trust up 100%, it certainly is a step in the right direction. With the ease of accessibility of the internet nowadays, it's hard to distinguish what's right and wrong. Taking measures to prevent incorrect information, or fraud to thrive in the digital world can help do this. Email, should therefore, be used in moderation in unveiling certain information. The cons to emailing can still pose a threat.

Source: Balboni, Paolo. "Liability of Certification Service Providers Towards Relying Parties and the Need for a Clear System to Enhance the Level of Trust in Electronic Communication." Information & Communications Technology Law 13.3 (2004): 211-242. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

Nonverbal Communication

Chapter 14 was a very interesting chapter that focused on how to become a better communicator in the "Digital Age." The chapter discussed a few differences between communication styles. One for example was, Interpersonal Communication. Interpersonal Communication is defined as "all aspects of personal interaction, contact, and communication between individuals or members of a group." So basically, this is saying that this is communication that takes place more than with just words. Nonverbal communication is the subject that caught my interest the most however. There are "many different "channels" of nonverbal communication: facial expressions, the clues in our voices ("vocal paralanguage"), hand gestures, body movements ("kinesics"), touch ("haptics"), and personal space" (Archer 1). Chapter 14 states that in fact "65% of every conversation is partially interpreted through nonverbal communication" (Kreitner 410).
The chapter continues to outline a variety of different nonverbal signals, so one may become more aware of what they are and how to react to them.
The first is Body Movements and Gestures. This includes leaning forward into the conversation, or leaning back away from away. It is important to remember that body movements are on the of most misinterpreted signals of nonverbal communication.
The next is Touch. Touching as a form of communication is a powerful way to convey a message. For example, if someone were to have a conversation with you, and placed his/her hand your shoulder, there purpose is to grab your attention and have you understand the importance of what it is they're saying.
Facial Expressions, including smiling while listening to a speech can really give the speaker a positive attitude about he or she is saying.
Eye Contact is another form of nonverbal communication that can really let a speaker see inside the head of his listener. For example, if someone is giving a presentation or speaking one-on-one with another employee, and they are looking everywhere except into the eyes of the speaker, it should be as clear as day that the listener is not intrigued in what the speaker has to say.
Dan Archer, a communications professor from the University of Santa Cruz states that other key signals to notice are "personal space, the human voice, and cross-cultural differences" (Archer 3). This few tips can really help the communication process in the business atmosphere.

Archer, Dan. "Exploring Nonverbal Communication." University of Santa Cruz. 4/12/10. http://nonverbal.ucsc.edu/.
Kreitner, Robert. Organizational Behavior. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010.

E-mail Tips to Follow

Business people in the workplace receive numerous emails each day. Technology has now allowed us to send and receive emails practically anywhere. What often times happens when everyone is always involved in e-mails is that communication among coworkers decreases, emotions are often poorly communicated or miscomunicated, and often times coworkers feel less connected.

By using the books tools and finding more in the article, “Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips” there are many practical E-mail tips to help you curb e-mail overkill. First do not assume email is confidential, so don't send anything over e-mail that you wouldn't want posted -- with your name attached -- in the break room. Be professional and courteous. You can do this by not sending chain letters around and refraining from using colored fonts or typing in all caps. Avoid sloppiness and check your work and proofread before you send it to look professional. Do not use e-mail for volatile or complex issues. Make sure to keep messages brief and clear as well as focused and readable. Use a meaningful subject heading to grab readers attention as well as bullets and refraining from writing long essay like e-mails. To save people time write that no reply is necessary to help the receiver prioritize messages. In order to follow e-mail etiquette, respond quickly. Remember to distinguish between formal and informal e-mails. It might be okay to use short abbreviations with your friends, but with your boss and coworkers you should not. Be careful with attachments because they can crash peoples systems and use up time for downloading. Lastly, make sure you clearly identify yourself.

Jerz, Dennis G., and Jessica Bauer. "E-Mail: Ten Tips for Writing It Effectively." Dennis G. Jerz. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. .

Kreitner, Robert. Organizational Behavior. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010.

Chapter 14: Horizontal Communication

In chapter fourteen the idea that resonated with me the most is Horizontal Communication. In the textbook the authors, Kreitner and Kinicki define it as the flow among coworkers and between different work units and its main purpose is coordination. “During this sideways communication, employees share information and best practices, coordinate work activities and schedules, solve problems, offer advice and coaching, and resolve conflicts” (Kreitner and Kinicki 418). Good communication allows everyone to feel involved and useful in every task that is performed. Communication is essential; it is important to talk within your group to help better understand positions in order to see what goals need to be met. If someone is confused, it is vital that they get the information they need in order to do their portion of the work. If one person is down in the group, the group as a whole is down since it’s all about the team as opposed to the individual work.

In a research study conducted by Teresa Calendrillo, she focuses on the Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN). It emphasizes that the essential element in an effective team work is horizontal communication. It also stresses that the role of the nurse leader is to maintain the relationships between team members by offering knowledge, supplies, mentoring support, and tools needed to facilitate patient care. It notes that the team building sessions include personality assessment, horizontal hostility in-service, conflict management presentations, customer service seminar, and generational awareness session. As a result, no productive work or good work can be accomplished without a strong team work among any profession such as nursing or business.

Source: Calendrillo, Teresa. "Team building for a healthy work environment." Nursing Management 40.12 (2009): 9-12. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.

Gender Differences in Communication

It has been studied and researched that men and women communicate differently in numerous ways. The research and data that has been collected on this topic is not stereotypical. Some women are less likely to share the credit and some men are less likely to boast about their achievements. Also people's linguistic style influences perceptions about their confidence, competence, and authority. These differences may affect your future job assignments or job promotions. There are 10 differences found in the book. Some of them are the followin:
-Men are less likely to ask for information or directions in a public situation.
-In decision making, women are more likely to downplay their certainty; men are
more likely to downplay their doubts.

I did a little more research to try find some more differences. I found the following on www.associatedcontent.com written by Allison Vyncke:
-Women are more sensitive to others' feelings.
-Men show emotion to communicate dominance.
-Women show attentiveness through verbal and non-verbal cues. Many men avoid
these cues to keep from appearing “one-down.”

Vyncke, Allison. "Gender Differences in Communication." Associated Content. 30 Aug.
2006. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5434
/gender_differences_in_communication.html

Informational Technology

With the growth of technology brings many different possibilities to your work environment. It is now fast and easy to send a coworker a message from your home, office, car or train. E-mail, or electronic mail is an instant way for you to contact all or anyone specifically through your computer. There are many pros to this but there are also downfalls.
Pro: reduce costs and paper mail, eco friendly, fast and easy, increase teamwork by sending information to everyone, increase flexibility of employees.
Con: distracting, junk mail, information overload, security system costs, neglect of other media such as phone calls or even in person meetings.
Information is not always private so be careful what you include in the e-mail and double check the recipients. Avoid doing group lists and forwarding junk mail to all employees. This causes distraction and unnecessary time spent reading and deleting these messages. It is often a good idea to put the main point of the message in the subject box so that those who do not need the information can discard it.
E-mails are very beneficial to the professional environment but be careful what you send and how you send your information out.

Chapter 14

The perceptual model of communication is a process where a message is sent to a person who interprets the meaning from their own points of view. There are 6 elements in this process: sender, message, and receiver, encoding, selecting a medium, decoding and creating meaning, feedback, and noise. The sender is the person who wants to communicate a message to the receiver, the person that the message is intended for. An example is a company, the sender, who wants to portray their product as reliable, the message, to its customers, the receiver. Encoding is transforming the message into a language, code, or word choice that the receiver would be able to understand. For our example, the company would select words that everyday consumers would be able to understand and relate to, as opposed to science jargon. Selecting a medium to send the message is choosing what type of media method. Such methods include T.V., telephone, internet, radio, or mail. In order to reach our intended audience of everyday consumers, T.V. and internet would be a good way to reach out to numerous amounts of people. Decoding and creating meaning rests on the job of the audience, the receiver. Once they’ve received the message, they interpret it based on cultural norms and values. Once the audience has created a meaning for the message, they react to it. In our example, consumers can react to the message in two ways, they either go out and buy the product or they don’t see any value of the product and don’t buy it. Noise is any interference between sending the message and the audience receiving the message. In our case, the noise would be a lack of internet users or T.V. viewers.

In my marketing book, by Gary Armstrong and Philip Kotler, they define the different elements of the communication model by using McDonald’s as an example.
• The sender is McDonald’s, encoding is the use of words, sounds, and illustrations used in their ad to convey the message.
• The message that McDonald’s is the actual ad that they’re sending.
• McDonald’s media is the use of television and specific television programs that they select to reach their audience.
• Decoding is what the viewers, the receivers, interpret of McDonald’s words and images in the ad.
• A response would be more consumers like McDonald’s, more eat at McDonald’s, remembers the ad, or does nothing.
• Feedback would be that consumers remember the ad or praise/criticize the ad/products.
• Noise may be a misinterpretation of McDonald’s message.
According to the authors, a message is effective when the sender’s communication process meshes with the receiver’s decoding process. When symbols and words are familiar to the receiver, they are more likely to understand the message that the sender intended for them. In addition, the sender’s field of experience might be different than that of the receivers; therefore the sender must understand and take into consideration the consumer’s field of experience when creating the communication model. This section is important because it also takes in account for other factors that affect the communication model.

Works Cited
Armstrong, Gary and Philip Kotler. "Communicating Customer Value: Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy." Principles of Marketing. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2010. 407-409.

The Difference Between Men and Women

Chapter 14 mentions some of the different ways that communication is hendered. One of the topics discussed is the difference between the way men and women communicate. Women tend to be focused on 'nuture' and men on 'nature'. In other words, women tend to be very sweet when talking to others and need to make sure that agreements are reached through consensus. They do not view this as a sign of being a weak leader, but a leader that takes the wellfare and interests of the people around her into consideration to make the best possible decision. Men tend to view any 'femine' tendancies as a sign of weakness. Thus the joke about men never being able to ask for directions actually has some truth to it. It's not that men cannot ask for directions or use some of the communication techniques women do to avoid conflict and create a positive environment, only that men are less likely to. In a group of all men, such tendancies are ok, but in mixed groups this can lead to conflict between men and women, who see the men as being insensitive and cause the men to view the women as 'weak' because they are not assertive as much as themselves. In order to find out more about these differences I read an article titled "A Language in Common" by Deborah Cameron.

According to her, "Women are the more verbal sex: they do more of the talking and are generally better with words. Typically they use language in a collaborative and supportive way: they are good at listening and creating rapport. Men are more competitive, good at arguing their corner and asserting themselves. They are also more direct communicators, who say what they mean, mean what they say, and are often confused by women’s less direct approach." There have been some research directed at finding the exact cause for this difference in communication, however there is no conclusive evidence supporting commonly held ideas like 'women talk more than men'. It is more likely that the difference is similar to a cultural difference in communication between two nationalities. It is just engrained and most are unaware of the differences, just that there is conflict sometimes when men and women communicate with eachother.

Source:
Cameron, Deborah. "A language in common." Psychologist 22.7 (2009): 578-580. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14 was about communication and the workplace. Through this chapter we learned the different types of communication that can be seen while working. It talked about the differences of the communication between men and women. It also talked about the differences of communication based on the hierarchies—such as upward, downward, and diagonal communication. Lastly, it talked about the different ways we communicate—such as phone calls, emails, voicemail, facebook, and other various ways.


After looking into this subject further, I came across an article that made me think about larger corporations and how they communicated. Surely, it would be different from a small company wherein they can have meetings. If there was a company where they were hundreds of employees working, how do they communicate? How does technology affect their work? I then came across this article by Pamela Hinds and Sara Kiesler. They found that when employees are talking with their superiors, it was usually done through phone or email. But if they were talking to one another (on a more lateral level) then it was more face to face. They also found that most workers used email, rather than the phone to talk. “email is more effective than voice mail for conveying and discussing complex situations.” (Hinds & Kiesler) They continued and said, “voice mail technology would be more attractive to administrators both because it is efficient and it conveys social information to the sender, such as his or her status, accessibility, and dominance.” (Hinds & Kiesler)

Source:
Hinds, Pamela and Sara Kiesler. "Communication Across Boundaries: Work, Structure, and use of Communication Technologies in a Large Organization." Organization Science (1995): 303-393.

CH 14

Overall, I found chapter 14 interesting, I enjoyed the topic of communication and the various forms it obtains. My favorite part was the topic of non-verbal communication, it was interesting to me that the old saying, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it” is actually true. There are four main categories when talking about nonverbal communication, body movements and gesture, touch, facial expression and eye contact. These were all interesting to me yet what stuck with me the most at the end of the chapter was the “Practical Tips” section, which gave nonverbal communication skills which would build positive, interpersonal relationships. They all seemed like common knowledge e.g. Eye contact, smiling and showing interest, leaning towards the speaker, yet they are all very vital to a positive conversation outcome. The section also includes actions to avoid during conversations, such as licking your lips, turning away, biting your nails, etc. All of these are things that we do, no necessarily to upset the other person, but we do them unconsciously.
I did some in depth research on nonverbal communication and found that, “Good communication is the foundation of successful relationships, both personally and professionally.” The two categories which I found that were not in the book were voice tone and space. I think that both of these should be included in the text, how one says something can cause tension. In addition, people value their personal space and being too distant or too close can mislead a listener.


http://helpguide.org/mental/eq6_nonverbal_communication.htm