Ph.D Kotovs’ka Iryna

Ternopil Ivan Pul’uj National Technical University, Ukraine

TRENDS IN BUSINESS AND ADMINISTRATIVE COMMUNICATION

Communication is one of the basic functions of management in any organization and its importance can hardly be overemphasized. It is a process of transmitting information, ideas, thoughts, opinions and plans between various parts of an organization. You cannot have human relations without communication. However, good and effective communication is required not only for good human relations but also for good and successful business.

The importance of communication can never be over-emphasised. Communication is the ‘lifeblood’ of all organisations. It is of vital importance to the well being of a state, a business enterprise, a religion and other social or cultural identities including the family. The success of a business enterprise is directly proportional to the level of communication maintained by it.

Communication skills help in establishing, running, producing and marketing of products by commercial establishments. A worker will not be able to turn out a good product and a customer will not buy a product however good it is, until each is convinced to do so through effective communication.

The term business communication is used for all messages that we send and receive for official purpose like running a business, managing an organization, conducting the formal affairs of a voluntary organization and so on. The success of any business to a large extent depends on efficient and effective communication.

Both business and business communication are changing. Ten trends in business, government, and nonprofit organizations affect business and administrative communication: a focus on quality and customers' needs, entrepreneurship and outsourcing, teams, diversity, globalization, technology, legal and ethical concerns, balancing work and family, the end of the job, and the rapid rate of change.

1. Focus on Quality and Customers' Needs is the first trend. Successful companies make money by offering high-quality products and services that their customers want. Focusing on what customers want may lead a business to redefine itself. We must forget what we sell, let's ask customers what they want and organize ourselves around that.

Communication is at the center of the focus on quality and customers' needs. Brainstorming and group problem solving are essential to develop more efficient ways to do things. Then the good ideas have to be communicated throughout the company. Innovators need to be recognized. And only by listening to what customers say—and listening to the silences that may accompany their actions—can an organization know what its customers really want.

2. Entrepreneurship and Outsourcing. Entrepreneurship is so popular that many business schools now offer courses, internships, or whole programs in starting and running a business.

Some established companies are trying to match the success and growth rate of start-ups by nurturing an entrepreneurial spirit within their organizations. Innovators who work within organizations are sometimes called intrapreneurs.

Some businesses have been forced to become entrepreneurial because of outsourcing. Outsourcing means going outside the company for products and services that once were made by the company's employees.

Entrepreneurs have to handle all the communication in the organization: hiring, training, motivating, and evaluating employees; responding to customer complaints; drafting surveys; writing business plans; and making presentations to venture capitalists.

Outsourcing makes communication more difficult—and more important—than it was when jobs were done in-house. It's harder to ask questions, since people are no longer down the hall. And it's easier for problems to turn into major ones. Some companies now are creating a "Chief Resource Officer" to monitor contracts with vendors so that lines of communication will be clear.

3. To produce quality products while cutting costs and prices, more and more companies are relying on cross-functional teams.

The prevalence of teams puts a premium on learning to identify and solve problems, to share leadership, to work with other people rather than merely delegating work to other people, to resolve conflicts constructively, and to motivate everyone to do his or her best job.

4. Diversity. Teams put a premium on being able to work with other people—even if they come from different backgrounds.

Women, immigrants have always been part of the workforce. But for most of our country's history, they were relegated to clerical, domestic, or menial jobs. Even when men from working-class families began to get college degrees in large numbers after World War II, and large numbers of women and minorities entered the professions in the 1960s and 1970s, only a few made it into management. Now, businesses realize that barriers to promotion hurt the bottom line as well as individuals. Success depends on using the brains and commitment as well as the hands and muscles of every worker.

In the last decade, we have also become aware of other sources of diversity beyond those of gender and race: age, religion, class, regional differences, sexual orientation, physical disabilities. Helping each worker reach his or her potential requires more flexibility from managers as well as more knowledge about intercultural communication. And it's crucial to help workers from different backgrounds understand each other—especially when continuing layoffs make many workers fear that increased opportunities for someone else will come only at a cost to themselves.

5. Business has become truly global. The global economy is more than simply importing or exporting products. Instead, more and more companies have factories and offices in several countries. Even small companies send managers on overseas assignments.

6. Changes in technology support and drive changes in other areas. Intranets— Web pages just for employees—give everyone in an organization access to information.

Modems, faxes, and videophones allow employees to work at home rather than commute to a central office. Fax and e-mail make it easy to communicate across oceans and time zones. Teleconferencing makes it possible for people on different continents to have a meeting—complete with visual aids—without leaving their hometowns.

Technological change carries costs. Technology makes it easier for companies to monitor employees—even when they're out of the office. While technology creates new jobs, it eliminates old ones, requiring employees to retrain. Acquiring technology and helping workers master it requires an enormous capital investment. Learning to use new-generation software and improved hardware takes time and may be especially frustrating for people who were perfectly happy with the old software. And the very ease of storing information and sending messages means that managers have more information and more messages to process. Information overload occurs when messages arrive faster than the human receiver can handle them. In the information age, time management depends in part on being able to identify which messages are important so that one isn't buried in trivia.

The technology of office communication also affects the way people interpret messages. Readers expect all documents to be well designed and error free—even though not everyone has access to a laser printer or even to a computer. Fax technology leads people to expect documents instantly, even though the work and thinking required to produce the document still take time.

7. Legal fees cost businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars. The price of many simple items, such as ladders, is inflated greatly by the built-in reserve to protect the manufacturer against lawsuits. Companies are finding that clear, open communication can reduce lawsuits by giving all the parties a chance to shape policies and by clarifying exactly what is and isn't being proposed.

Ethical concerns don't carry the same clear dollar cost as legal fees. Ethical concerns start with telling the truth and offering good value for money. Organizations must be concerned about broader ethical issues as well: being good environmental citizens, offering a good workplace for their employees, contributing to the needs of the communities in which they operate.

8. Balancing Work and Family. The Wall Street Journal now runs a regular column on Work and Family. One staff writer notes, two research studies named a "lack of balance between work and personal life" one of the top six reasons new managers fail and one of the top five reasons relocations fail. In contrast, Xerox and First Tennessee National Corp. are among companies that have found that taking workers' family needs into consideration produces clear gains in productivity and customer service.

Balancing work and family requires using ways other than physical presence to demonstrate one's commitment to and enthusiasm for organizational goals. It may require negotiating conflicts with other workers who have different family situations or who raised children years ago when fewer companies were family-friendly. The downside of this trend is that sometimes work and family life are not so much balanced as blurred.

9. The End of the Job. In traditional jobs, people did what they were told to do. Now, they do whatever needs to be done. With flatter organizations, workers are doing a much wider variety of tasks. Your parents may have worked for the same company all their lives. You may do that, too, but you have to be prepared to job-hunt—not only when you finish your degree, but also throughout your career. That means continuing to learn — keeping up with new technologies, new economic and political realities, new ways of interacting with people.

10. Rapid change is a constant in business and government today. Change means that what worked yesterday may not work today, let alone tomorrow. But change is stressful. Many people, especially those who have felt battered by changes in the workplace, fear that more change will further erode their positions. Even when change promises improvements, people have to work to learn new skills, new habits, and new attitudes.

Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, is widely acknowledged as the leading master of corporate change in our time. He says, “You've got to be on the cutting edge of change. You can't simply maintain the status quo, because somebody's always coming from another country with another product, or consumer tastes change, or the cost structure does, or there's a technology breakthrough. If you're not fast and adaptable, you're vulnerable. This is true for every segment of every business in every country in the world”.

Rapid change means that no college course or executive MBA program can teach you everything you need to know for the rest of your working life. You'll need to remain open to new ideas. And you'll need to view situations and options critically, so that you can evaluate new conditions to see whether they demand a new response. But the skills you learn can stand you in good stead for the rest of your life: critical thinking, computer savvy, problem solving, and the ability to write, to speak, and to work well with other people.

Business is not today what it was twenty-five years ago. The nature of business has totally changed. Business has changed both at the top and at the bottom. At the lowest rung of the ladder, you have to send out circulars to thousands and receive enquiries and orders by the thousands. You have to deal with them briskly and effectively.

If you are a better communicator, customers and business associates form better impression of you and your organization. This impression is based solely upon your ability to communicate both oral and written. Effective business message builds or retains good will which is a priceless commodity. Because the exchange of written communication is vital to a businessman for promoting goodwill, the art of producing effective correspondence will help ensure your success in business.

References

1. Kitty Locker, Donna Kienzler Business and Administrative Communication, 5th Edition