Exam 9: Communicating in Teams and Organizations

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 organizations in your country.

People experienced with a particular communication medium can "push" the amount of media richness normally possible through that information channel.

According to the communication process model,communication begins with encoding the message,then sending it.

Which of the following is NOT a feature of effective listening?

Showing interest and clarifying the message are two activities associated with which active listening process?

Management by walking around occurs whenever senior executives get out of their offices and communicate face-to-face with employees.

Senior executives at a large tire company learned that one line of tires had a tendency to fall apart in very warm weather.This resulted in several vehicle accidents in the Middle East and South America.However,the executives did not hear about these problems until several weeks after they were known to lower-level managers.Although the senior executives encourage staff to communicate all information,the lower-level staff held back the information for fear that they might lose their jobs.Which communication concept best describes this communication situation?

Nonverbal communication is less rule-bound than is verbal communication.

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 doesn't know what problems would occur.Identify and explain three communication barriers that might occur due to cultural differences among employees.

Communication aids employee well-being.

One advantage of E-zines is that stories are longer than those typically found in hard-copy company magazines.

Mimicking the sender's behaviour is a central part of emotional contagion.

Buffering,summarizing,and omitting are ways to:

The organizational grapevine:

The first three steps in the communication process model are:

Which communication medium is a poor choice to convey ambiguous,complex,or novel situations?

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 maximize communication effectiveness with the existing resources in this situation? Your answer should briefly define media richness.

The capacity of a communication method to transmit information is known as:

Management by walking around:

What effect can jargon potentially have in organizations?