Communication theories

Tell me and I`ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I`ll understand. Chinese Proverb

Organizations can not operate without communication. Communication can take various forms but all forms involve the transfer of information from one party to the other. In order for the transfer of information to qualify as communication, the recipient must understand the meaning of the information transferred to them. If the recipient does not understand the meaning of the information conveyed to them, communication has not taken place.

"Communication is the life source of organizations because organizations involve people. People cannot interact with each other without communication. In the absence of communication, everything would grind to a halt."

For example:

The workers in an organization would not know the organization’s objectives so they would not strive to achieve the organization’s objectives.

• The workers in an organization would not know what their roles and responsibilities were, so they would not be able to carry out their daily tasks and duties.
• The managers would not be able to train their workers reports so the workers would not possess the skills they needed to carry out their jobs.
• The managers would not be able to inform workers of changes
• The organization would not be aware of their competitors activities

And the list is endless……………..

On the whole people are able to communicate with each other as this is a basic human function. However successful organizations strive not only for communication but effective communication.

Different Communication Theories

Aristotle Communication Model

In the history of philosophy, Aristotle first addressed the problem of communication and attempted to work out a theory of it in The Rhetoric.In general communication often use models to try to present a simplified version of communication, containing the essential 'ingredients' only. With a bit of luck, these models should help us to tease out the factors which are common to all forms of communication. If we can do that, then we can hope to judge how effective a communication has been, find our where it went wrong if it wasn't successful and improve it next time.

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us that we must consider three elements in communication:

• the speaker
• the speech
• the audience

If you just think for a moment about the variety of communication acts, you shouldn't have too much difficulty seeing those elements. In some cases, of course, Aristotle's vocabulary doesn't quite fit. In the example of you reading the newspaper, no one is actually 'speaking' as such, but if we use, say, the terms 'writer' and 'text', then Aristotle's elements can still be found.

Lasswell's communication Model

Harold Dwight Lasswell ( February 13, 1902 — December 18, 1978 ) was a leading American Political scientest and Communications theorist.
He is well known for his comment on Communications:

Who (says) what (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect
and on Politics:
Politics is who gets what, when, where, and how.

Lasswell's model of communications is significantly different from others and his notion of channel is also different, since it includes different types of media. For example, newspapers, magazines, journals and books are all text media, but are assumed to have different distribution and readership, and hence different effects.

Shannon and Weaver Model

Shannon and Weaver suggested a linear model where a "sender encodes a message that is transmitted through a channel to be decoded by a receiver." This has become known as the SMCR model and appears as the basic model of communication in virtually every management and marketing textbook. The irony is that Shannon and Weaver were engineers at Bell Laboratories (Western Electric) and were trying to describe what happens during telephone conversations.

Schramm Model

Schramm added a very important concept. His model used the terms "source" and "destination" to describe the same entities as sender and receiver. However, his significant contribution was the concept of "frame of reference" or "sphere of experience." Messages must be encoded by the sender or source using common symbols in the frame of reference of not only the sender but also of the receiver or destination.

Shannon and Weaver’s model over the next 5 years was transformed by Schramm into what became his third model in which a message is decoded, interpreted, and then send out as a encoded message. This model in my mind raises the question similar to the chicken and the egg, which came first. Since messages in this model always begin with decoding, it begs the question are all communications simply feedback from earlier messages, a question that may never be satisfiably answered. Over the next few years both Katz and Lazarfield and Westley- MacLean developed models that were ultimately trumped by Kincaids’s convergence model in 1979.