Lecture notes on business communication. Учебное пособие

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Adaptors are displays of nonverbal communication that help you adapt to your environment, making you feel comfortable and secure. A selfadaptor involves you meeting your need for security, by playing with your hair for example, by adapting something about yourself in a way for which it was not designed. An object-adaptor involves the use of an object in a way for which it was not designed. You may see audience tapping their pencils, or playing with them, while ignoring you and your presentation.

Principle 4. Nonverbal Communication Is Universal.

We have a lot of contexts where interaction occurs during the day – in the morning, at work, after work, at home, with friends, with family, etc. Now try to consider the differences in nonverbal communication across these contexts. When you are at work, do you jump up and down and say whatever you want? Why or why not? If you had been born in a different country, to different parents, your world would be quite different. Yet nonverbal communication would remain a universal constant. It may not look the same, but it will still be nonverbal communication in its many functions and displays.

Principle 5. Nonverbal Communication Is Confusing and Contextual. Nonverbal communication can be confusing. We need contextual

keys to help us understand, or begin to understand, what any movement, or gesture means. Then we have to figure it all out based on our prior knowledge (or its lack) of the person and hope to get it right. Nonverbal communication is everywhere, and we all use it, but that doesn’t make it simple or independent of when, where, why, or how we communicate.

Principle 6. Nonverbal Communication Can Be Intentional or Unintentional.

Let us suppose that a person is working as a manager in a retail store, and a customer shows disappointment to you. Would the nonverbal aspects of his response to a client be intentional or unintentional? His job as manager is to be pleasant at all times, but still his wrinkled eyebrows or big eyes may have been unintentional. They clearly communicate your negative

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feelings at the moment. The stress of the moment is often “written” on the face.

Can we tell when people are intentionally or unintentionally communicating nonverbally? Ask ten people this question. You may be surprised. It is clearly a challenge to understand nonverbal communication in action. We often assign intentional motives to nonverbal communication when in fact their display is unintentional, and often hard to interpret.

Principle 7. Nonverbal Messages Communicate Feelings and Attitudes.

In real life, you often react faster than you think. Your nonverbal responses communicate your initial reaction before you can process it through language or formulate an appropriate response. If a spoken response doesn’t match your nonverbal reaction, you may give away your true feelings and attitudes.

Albert Mehrabian asserts that we rarely communicate emotional messages through the spoken word. According to Mehrabian, 93 percent of the time we communicate our emotions nonverbally, with at least 55 percent associated with facial gestures.

Is your first emotional response always an accurate representation of your feelings and attitudes, or does your emotional response change across time? We are all changing all the time, and sometimes a moment of frustration can signal to a receiver some feeling or emotion that existed for a moment, but has since passed. Their response to your communication will be based on that perception, even though you might already forget it. This is where the spoken word serves us well. The words can serve to clarify additional discussion.

Principle 8. We Believe Nonverbal Communication More than Verbal.

On the basis of all the information presented above, let’s ask the question: what would you believe someone’s actions or their words?

According to William Seiler and Melissa Beall, most people tend to believe a nonverbal message over the verbal one. People aren’t logical all the time, and they really experience feelings and attitudes that change. But we still place more confidence in nonverbal communication, particularly when it

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comes to lying behaviors. According to Miron Zuckerman, Bella DePaulo, and Robert Rosenthal, there are several behaviors people often display when they are being deceptive:

•Reduction in eye contact while engaged in a conversation

•Awkward pauses in conversation

•Higher pitch in voice

•Deliberate pronunciation and articulation of words

•Increased delay in response time to a question

•Increased body movements like changes in posture

•Decreased smiling

•Decreased rate of speech

Our nonverbal responses have a connection to our physiological responses to stress, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductivity.

Polygraph machines (popularly referred to as “lie detectors”) focus on these physiological responses and demonstrate anomalies, or variations. While movies and TV crime shows may make polygraphs look foolproof, there is significant debate about whether they measure dishonesty with any degree of accuracy.

Principle 9. Nonverbal Communication Is Key in Speaker/Audience Relationship.

When we first see each other, before anyone says a word, we are already evaluating each other. Within the first few seconds we make judgments about each other based on what we wear, our physical characteristics, even our posture. Are these judgments accurate? It is hard to answer without context, but we can say that nonverbal communication certainly affects first impressions. When a speaker and audience first meet, nonverbal communication in terms of space, dress, and even personal characteristics can contribute to expectations. These expectations might not be accurate, but it is important to admit that they are present. There is truth in the saying, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

Your attention to the areas you can control, both verbal and nonverbal, will

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help contribute to the first step of forming a relationship with your audience.

EXERCISES

1.Identify at least five common clichés and look up their origins. Try to understand how and when each phrase became a cliché. Share your findings with your classmates.

2.Using Google or other search engine, look through newspaper articles from the 1950s or earlier. Find at least one article that uses sexist or racist language. What makes it racist or sexist? How would a journalist convey the same information today?

3.Identify one slang term and one euphemism you know is used in your community, among your friends, or where you work. Share with classmates.

4.How does language change over time? Interview someone older than you and someone younger than you and identify words that have changed. Pay special attention to jargon and slang words.

5.Choose a piece of writing from a profession you are unfamiliar with. For example, if you are studying IT, choose an excerpt from a book on fashion design. Identify the terms you are unfamiliar with, terms that may be considered jargon. Share your findings with your class.

6.In your chosen career field or your university major, identify ten jargon words, define them, and share them with the class.

7.Choose a television personality you admire. What do you like about this person? Watch several minutes of this person with the sound turned off, and make notes of the nonverbal expressions you observe. Turn the sound back on and make notes of their tone of voice, timing, and other audible expressions. Discuss your results with a classmate.

8.Search for information on the reliability and admissibility of results from polygraph (lie detector) tests. Share your findings with classmates.

9.How do illustrators help us comprehend and clarify our speech?

10.What are the merits and demerits of training professionals to better read nonverbal communication compared to those who are naturally good?

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LECTURE 4. BUSINESS ETHICS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1.Explore the definition of business communication ethics and its impact on relationships with customers;

2.Discuss the topics business ethics covers;

3.Identify computer ethics.

4.Explain what digital ethics is and list main rules of netiquette.

4.1. Ethical issues in business communication

Business ethics is usually defined as the study of proper business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial issues, such as corporate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility and fiduciary responsibilities. Business ethics can also be determined as the system of laws and guidelines by which business professionals and corporations operate in a fair, legal, and moral fashion. Business ethics comprises the principles and standards that guide behavior in the conduct of business.

Businesses must balance their desire to maximize profits against the needs of the stakeholders. From the viewpoint of business ethics, anyone who owns, or runs, or works for a business, in short, almost all of us, needs to be in the position to know which decisions are the morally acceptable, and which are the morally not acceptable. Maintaining this balance often requires tradeoffs. To address these unique aspects of businesses, the rules are developed to guide the businesses to earn profits without harming individuals or society as a whole. There are generally 12 business ethics principles:

1. Leadership: The conscious effort to adopt, integrate, and emulate the other 11 principles to guide decisions and behavior in all aspects of professional and personal life.

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2.Accountability: Holding yourself and others responsible for their actions. Commitment to following ethical practices and ensuring others follow ethics guidelines.

3.Integrity: Incorporates other principles—honesty, trustworthiness, and reliability. Someone with integrity consistently does the right thing and strives to hold themselves to a higher standard.

4.Respect for others: To foster ethical behavior and environments in the workplace, respecting others is a critical component. Everyone deserves dignity, privacy, equality, opportunity, compassion, and empathy.

5.Honesty: Truth in all matters is the key to fostering ethical climate. Partial truths, under or overstating don't help a business improve its performance. Bad news should be communicated and received in the same manner as good news so that solutions can be developed.

6.Respect for laws: Ethical leadership should include enforcing all local, state, and federal laws.

7.Responsibility: Promote ownership within an organization, allow employees to be responsible for their work, and be accountable for yours.

8.Transparency: Stakeholders are people with an interest in a business, such as shareholders, employees, the community a firm operates in, and the family members of the employees. Without divulging trade secrets, companies should ensure information about their financials, price changes, hiring and firing practices, wages and salaries, and promotions are available to those interested in the business's success.

9.Compassion: Employees, the community surrounding business partners, and customers should all be treated with concern for their well-being.

10.Fairness: Everyone should have the same opportunities and be treated the same. If a practice or behavior would make you feel uncomfortable or place personal or corporate benefit in front of equality, common courtesy, and respect, it is likely not fair.

11.Loyalty: Leadership should demonstrate confidentially and commitment to their employees and the company. Inspiring loyalty in employees and management ensures that they are committed to best practices.

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12. Environmental concern: In a world where resources are limited, ecosystems have been damaged by past practices, and the climate is changing, it is of utmost importance to be aware of the environmental impacts each business has.

Together with the principles, let’s point out the fields that are covered by business ethics. They are as follows:

Globalization

Executive pay

Earnings management

Marketing practices

Bribery

Tax avoidance

Corporate governance

Fiduciary responsibilities

Corporate social responsibility

Intellectual property

Insider trading

Corruption

Discrimination

Health and Safety

Privacy

Human resource management.

One of the fields in business ethics that deserves our special attention is Corporate Social responsibility (CSR). Corporate social responsibility is a self-regulating business model that helps a company to be socially accountable to itself, to its stakeholders, and public. By practicing corporate social responsibility, also called corporate citizenship, companies can be aware of all kinds of influence that they have on all aspects of society, including economic, social, and environmental. Corporate social responsibility means company’s concern and commitment in the direction

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of society sustainability & development. In other words, CSR is ethical behavior of a company towards society.

To follow CSR means that, in the standard course of business, a company is functioning in such ways that enhance society and the environment, instead of contributing negatively to them. Through various CSR programs, as well as volunteer efforts, businesses can benefit society while promoting their brands. CSR is important not only for the community but it is equally valuable for a company itself. CSR activities can help forge a stronger bond between employees and corporations, boost morale and help them feel more up-to-date with the world around them.

By addressing these issues systematically, enterprises improve their own business performance, expand growth opportunities, and contribute to the development of social capital. This can lead to specific business benefits, viz.:

•Improved public image. This is crucial, as consumers assess your public image when deciding whether to buy exactly your product or service. The policy of a company regarding CSR can serve to create or enhance its reputational image. If it occurs that a brand is experiencing from negative reputation leading to losses, the CSR plan would be considered an effective solution to improve the damaged image and ultimately increase the profitability. In various situations, applying the CSR policy operates as part of the business model, where buyers are considered to show more loyalty to a specific brand that has the ability to show strong commitment to environmental and social concerns.

•Increased brand awareness and recognition. If you’re committed to ethical practices, this news will be known to others by a word of mouth. More people will therefore hear about your brand, which creates increased brand awareness.

•Cost savings. Even slight changes in favor of sustainability, such as using less packaging, will help to decrease your production costs.

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•An advantage over competitors. By following CSR, you stand out from competitors in your industry establishing yourself as a company that is ready to go one step further by considering social and environmental factors.

•Increased customer engagement. If you use sustainable systems, you should tell this to as much public as possible. Post it on your social media channels and create a story out of your efforts. Customers will follow this and engage with your brand and operations.

•Greater employee engagement. Almost all global corporations know that employees are considered as the most esteemed resources, which can be regarded as a fundamental structure of a company in relation to the CSR compliance. In other words, it means treating the workforce with utter dignity and respect, providing them desirable office infrastructure, friendly working culture, developing fair practices as well as developing a workplace that does not promote work discrimination. Hence, focusing these points enhances the teamwork and confidence among the employees within a good office culture. Employees enjoy working more for a company that has a good public image

instead of negative one. Furthermore, by showing that you’re committed to things like human rights, you’re much more likely to attract and retain the top candidates.

In order to achieve these benefits practically each multinational corporation or even a smaller company elaborates the Code of Conduct, or what is popularly known as Code of Business Conduct containing standards of business conduct that must guide actions of the Board and senior management of the Company. The Code may include the following:

•Company Values.

•Avoidance of conflict of interest.

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•Accurate and timely disclosure in reports and documents that the company files before government agencies, as well as in company's other communications.

•Compliance of applicable laws, rules and regulations including insider trading regulations.

•Maintaining confidentiality of company affairs.

•Non-competition and maintaining fair dealings with the company.

•Standards of business conduct for company's customers, communities, suppliers, shareholders, competitors, employees.

•Prohibition of directors and senior management from taking corporate opportunities for themselves or their families.

•Review of the adequacy of the Code annually by the Board.

•No authority of waiver of the Code for anyone should be given. The Code of Conduct for each Company summarizes its philosophy of doing business. Though the exact details of this code are a matter of dispute, the following principles usually occur in most of the organizations:

Use of company's assets

•Avoidance of actions involving conflict of interest

•Avoidance of compromising on commercial relationship

•Avoidance of unlawful agreements

•Avoidance of offering or receiving monetary or other inducements

•Maintenance of confidentiality

•Collection of information from legitimate sources only

•Safety at workplace

•Maintaining and managing records

•Free and fair competition

•Disciplinary actions

To create a code of ethics, any organization must define its most important guiding values, formulate behavioral standards to illustrate the application of those values to the responsibilities of each person affected, review the existing procedures for guidance and direction as to how these