(Adapted from d.Whitehead, g.Wighthead. English for Business. - Oxford: Made simple Books, 1995. - p. 12.)
C
ommunication
and the need to exchange information are no longer constrained by
place and time. Email, voice mail, and facsimile have facilitated
communications and the sharing of sharing of knowledge. Email
is the computer transmission and storage of written messages. Voice
mail
is the transmission and storage of digitized spoken messages.
Facsimile
(fax)
is the transmission of documents.
To add to the typology mentioned above, we can also classify communication as
conscious and subconscious (degree of awareness),
long-term, short-term, recurrent and sporadic; or real-time (oral communication, telephone, electronic systems) or delayed (written information, facsimile);
complete and incomplete.
One can take into account the sender’s attitude to the receiver and classify communication as communication-absence, as ritual, friendly and sympathetic, formal and business-like, playing with the partner, hostile, inimical, intimate.
We do not consider the above-mentioned classifications exhaustive, yet they demonstrate how complicated, systematic and diverse the communication is.
Prospects of the Modern Business Communication Development
Despite the type of organization you are going to work in, information exchange will be of crucial importance. Communication is equally important both for separate people and for companies. Communication in business is mainly your relations with other people.
Many people consider oral communication as natural as breathing, eating or sleeping. They maintain that with age and experience people develop to become ‘experienced’ communicators. Yet there is evidence that without special training a person cannot use his communicative potential completely. If in your personal life you have the choice with whom you prefer to communicate, in the world of work you have to be able to communicate effectively with anybody whom you come across when doing your business. Moreover, your business effectiveness depends on whether your communication partner understands and wishes to act in the way your business will benefit.
Thus, compared with the communication model described above (see Figure 1.1), the business communication model has one more, crucially important element - acting. In business setting it is not enough that the sender formulates, codes and delivers the message, that the receiver receives, decodes and gives feedback of understanding the message. It is important that influenced by the message communicated the receiver acts on it in a certain way to have business done, to execute an order, to convey some information, etc.
So when trying to answer the question ‘Who is the main actor in the play called «Business Communication»?’ we have to admit that the main character is the Client. Whether the receiver (the client) understands the message and acts accordingly always determines his success or failure. The sender has to treat the client with ‘kid gloves’ and, in order to be able to communicate effectively, he should understand the client’s needs, expectations, strong points and weaknesses. To foresee the client’s reactions on the receiving end of the communication model we have to learn and take into account the client’s style of work, i.e. the client’s way of perceiving, mastering and applying the information.
The main purpose of business communications is to increase the efficiency of the client as a user of the information. One should think of providing the business partner with all relevant data so that he is able to take competent decisions for the benefit of your common business. If one wants to become an effective communicator, the business communication formula for him is to give the client the opportunity «to hear», «to understand» and «to do».
As J.M.Lannon (2000) maintains, ‘a truism of today’s workplace might be “nothing lasts forever”’. Quickly emerging and vanishing businesses, employers’ flexible labour strategies result in the fact that in the 21st century ‘instead of joining a company, climbing up through the ranks, and retiring with a gold watch, and a comfortable pension, today’s college graduate can expect to have multiple employers – and careers.’ [Lannon 2000, p.7]. In order to be successful in the contemporary world of work a manager should have well developed transferable skills, the most significant of which is information worker, a professional able to locate information, verify its quality, define its meaning and adapt it for the receiver’s specific purposes.
Future development of business communication is greatly influenced by information technology (IT). IT resources such as fax, electronic and voice mail, videoconferencing, etc. give tremendous advantages to modern business communicator, as they can reach huge audience globally and quickly, enhance the speed, volume and variety of ways of transmitting information. These and many other advantages motivated businesses to invest in information technology development and to capitalise on all the benefits IT has to offer.
Information technology proves to be an effective tool of distributing information. Yet it is information that provides a basis for action. Business functions rely heavily on the quality and completeness of information which allows business people to perform tasks, solve problems, answer questions, or make decisions. Information technology provides all sorts of data (statistics, price lists, company accounts, etc.). To become information data should be filtered, evaluated, interpreted and placed in a usable context. These tasks are performed by people, whose functions have changed but not been ousted by IT development.
Information technology is just a tool, not a substitute for human interaction. Sir Roger Penrose noted, ‘intelligence cannot be present without understanding. No computer has any awareness of what it does.’ With so much information required, and so much available, no one can afford to ‘let the data speak for themselves’. People add value to information by posing and answering questions no computer can answer, for example:
Which information is most relevant to this situation?
Can I verify the accuracy of this source?
What does this information mean?
What action does it suggest
How does this information affect me or my colleagues?
With whom should I share it? [Lannon 2000, p.6-7]
Although information technology becomes more and more sophisticated, it cannot replace humans in solving various communicative problems that emerge in the workplace. John Lannon mentions at least four groups of problems a human communicator has to solve:
the information problem (different information needs for different people performing different tasks);
the persuasion problem (disagreement about the meaning of information and the actions to be taken);
the ethics problem (conflict of interests of the parties involved), and
the collaboration problem (teamwork challenges) [Lannon 2000, p.13]