BUS 4402-01 Organizational Behavior

Introduction

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The Communication Process

The most vital part of a business is communication. Communication is how leaders and employees coordinate actions to meet the organization’s goals. Effective communication will garner employee satisfaction, gain profits, and cause the organization to thrive. When an organization thrives in communication, they typically employ coordination, transmis¬sion of information, and sharing emotions and feelings. Poor communication leads to lawsuits, poor employee satisfaction, inconsistent turnover, and company failure.

Barriers to Effective Communication

There are many barriers to the communication process. Leaders who fail to communicate have barriers such as filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotional disconnects, lack of source credibility, workplace gossip, gender differences, and semantics. In the communication process, the message is often not received as the sender intended it to be. This is where the communicator must seek feedback to ensure their message is correctly understood.

Ethics in Communication

There are many barriers to the communication process. Leaders who fail to communicate have barriers such as filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotional disconnects, lack of source credibility, workplace gossip, gender differences, and semantics. In the communication process, the message is often not received as the sender intended it to be. This is where the communicator must seek feedback to ensure their message was correctly understood.

Reading Assignment

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As you read through the resources and watch the videos consider the following:

• How is the communication process supposed to work in an organization?
• What are the different methods of communication practices?
• What are the barriers to effective communication?
• Are all communication practices truthful, responsible, and concise?
• Did you ever question an e-mail, order, policy, message, or direction from a leader due to their poor communication practices?

Read

Read the following from your textbook, Organizational behavior.

Chapter 8

• Chapter 8.1: You’ve Got Mail…and You’re Fired! The Case of RadioShack
• Chapter 8.2: Understanding Communication
• Chapter 8.3: Communication Barriers
• Chapter 8.4: Different Types of Communication and Channels
• Chapter 8.5: The Role of Ethics and National Culture
• Chapter 8.6: Employee Satisfaction Translates to Success: The Case of Edward Jones
• Chapter 8.7: Conclusion

Watch

What are the barriers to communication? | Oral Communication in Context-SHS

Communication cycle

References

• Organizational behavior. (2017). University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/organizational-behavior. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.
• Teachlearning English (2020, August 23). What are the barriers to communication? | Oral Communication in Context-SHS [Video]. YouTube.
• Harmon, D. (2018, June 2). Communication cycle [Video]. YouTube.

Discussion Assignment

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In the discussion forum, you are expected to participate often and engage in deep levels of discourse. You are required to post an initial response to the question/issue presented in the Forum by Sunday evening and then respond to at least 3 of your classmates’ initial posts. You should also respond to anyone who has responded to you.

Communication is a critical aspect of all organizations. It’s how we coordinate actions and achieve goals. Culture and communication are closely interlinked, and each employee and leader must know the importance of communication practices through various cultures.

• To enhance the class’s understanding of culture and communication, describe the communication practices that enhance your culture in or out of your organization. Be sure to include the practices that enhance your culture and those that do not.

Your Discussion should be a minimum of 200 words in length and a maximum of 500 words. Please include a word count. Following the APA standard, use references and in-text citations for the textbook and any other sources used.

Written Assignment

Communication can be more challenging than one may think for various reasons, such as language, vagueness, and poor writing skills. These types of challenges are known as communication barriers. You have been introduced to several types of communication barriers in this unit. Many barriers block, change or diminish the communication process. Here are a few examples of types of communication barriers.

• Filtering
• Selective perception
• Information overload
• Emotional disconnects
• Lack of source familiarity or credibility
• Workplace gossip, semantic
• Gender differences

Choose three of the barriers. Describe how each barrier blocks, changes, or diminishes the communication process within an organization. Provide examples for each one.

Prepare a double-spaced one- to two-page informative essay using Times New Roman 12-point font. Use and cite at least two sources which may be material in our textbook or additional sources from the internet, the LIRN, or other sources to which you have access.

Cite references to material that you use in preparing the essay using the American Psychological Association (APA) style.

• For assistance with APA format, refer to the LRC: Academic Writing.
• To access LIRN refer to the LRC: Online Library

You will be peer-assessed on the following criteria:

• Provides a clear description of how three different barriers block, change or diminish the communication process
• Cites a minimum of two sources (APA format) and includes a reference page
• The paper is well-written and free of grammatical and spelling errors.

Group Activity

Building a Cross-functional Team

To build a team, you must understand the behaviors of employees. When selecting a team, leaders should consider all individuals as valuable assets, even those who are not selected for the team. Leaders need to understand the behaviors of the individuals that are in the selection process for a team. Identifying learning, leadership, and behavioral styles is critical for effective leadership. When building a team, you do not want all of the same personality types. Leaders should want teams to be able to ascend through the stages of group development (forming-storming-norming-performing model) and not just agree on everything. Consider the following example to select a team for a fictional organization.

Group Activity Instructions

Global Logistics and Business Solutions is a company based out of San Angelo, California (USA). The organization’s primary focus is the import and export of goods worldwide. They can ship anything from cars and boats to dog collars and potato chips. The organization has partner organizations all over the world that have 250 stakeholders involved with the decision-making of the future of the company.

Eugene M. is the CEO of Global Logistics and Business Solutions. He is an innovative thinker that seeks humor and learning from everyday situations. Even when times are hard for the employees of the organization, Eugene knows how to motivate the team. He is optimistic and believes in and trusts in the organization and its employees.

Eugene wants to develop a cross-functional team of no more than five personnel from his partners throughout the world. He wants to build a team that is a cohesive coalition of people working together to achieve a mutual goal of how to improve employee satisfaction and increase productivity. Cross-functional teams enable businesses to be far more efficient in solving complex issues. With five members on the team, the team member will be able to work through differences and agree on a common plan of action faster than a team of ten.

Your objective as a team in BUS 4402, Organizational Behavior, is to help Euguene by selecting five individuals out of the ten candidates utilizing lessons learned from Unit 1 through Unit 6.

Your tasks include:

1. A 1-page introduction to building a team and why understanding organizational behavior is important to the matter. Provide details and examples.

2. Write one to two paragraphs for each of the selected candidates on why they were chosen. Explain why each member selected is a valuable part of the team and why they were selected with the profiles provided. Use the Candidates for Cross-functional Team document to choose the team members.

3. Write one to two paragraphs for each of the non-selected candidates on why they were not chosen. Explain why each of the members not selected was not the best fit for your team with the profiles provided.

4. As a team, write a one-page draft report on why the selected 5 will make a great cross-functional team.

5. (Team Lead) Build a rank order matrix from 1-10 for the candidates. Each employee is listed in the first column, and your team members are listed as headings in the first row. See the example below:

Example Rank Order Matrix

Employee	UoP Student 1	UoP Student 2	UoP Student 3	UoP Student 4
Patrick M.	1	3	1	3
Leah S.	2	1	3	2
River C.	3	2	2	1

6. Do NOT solve the issues of the company or give recommendations on how to improve employee satisfaction or increase productivity. Only provide information on why the candidates were and were not selected to solve the problem.

7. Working as a team, you will produce a final recommendation report for the best candidates for the team and why the others were not chosen and explain why the selected 5 will make a great cross-functional team. This report will combine all of the components you created in steps 1 through 5. Be sure your report is cohesive. Your report will draw from the resources covered in Units 1-6.

Final Notes

Include a conclusion stating how your team selected the five individuals for a team. Share how the collaboration process was important to your final product in your conclusion in a 1-2 page, double-spaced, document using Times New Roman 12-point font. In addition to course learning resources, please include a minimum of 3 outside sources to justify your recommendations. Check all content for grammar and spelling. Be sure that you have properly cited all resources (in APA format) used and include a title page and reference page. The group activity will be introduced at the beginning of Unit 4 and will be turned in at the end of Unit 7. Each Team member will submit a copy of the report to the instructor in Unit 7.

Assessment

You will be assessed by your instructor using the Group Activity Rubric. In Unit 8, you will complete and submit the Group Project Evaluation Form, where you will rank each member of your team using criteria based on their performance for completing this activity

Your project report Building a Cross-functional Team is due by the end of this unit. Each Team membermust submit a copy of the final report. In Unit 8, you will complete and submit the Group Project Evaluation Form, where you will rank each member of your team using criteria based on their performance for completing this activity. Your instructor will assess you by using the rubric located on the course main page for this activity (Group Activity Unit 7). The rubric is located at the bottom of the page.

Group Activity Reading Resources

These resources will help you complete your group assignment.

• How the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator works
• What are the big 5 personality traits?
• Organizational behavior