Organizations

There were so many topics that I could relate to in Chapter 8, but the idea of downward, and upward communication made me think about communication in my own job. This chapter stresses the issues that arise from all three types of organizational communication, and I have seen the problems first hand as a server for a corporate restaurant. Problems arise with downward communication at my place of employment because we are receiving too much information, and too little all at once. We are told an overwhelming amount of information pertaining to goals and expectations, but we are not given the information about how to succeed. Conflict occurs when the servers are being criticized for not meeting the goals when we feel that our means for achievment were never communicated in the downward form of organizational communication.

Upward communication is full of tension in my line of work. There is no doubt that servers withold negative information from managers. We are always in a struggle to keep a customers complaint or an accidental broken glass a secret from managers because we don't want to be seen as incompetent. Superiors then don't know they need to order new glasses, or that a customer is going to go tell 3 other people that they had a terrible time dining at our restaraunt. As a tight coupled organization, effective upward and downward communication are important because if the manager knew they had to replace a glass, or maybe give the unsatisfied customer a coupon to come back, then the servers would have sufficient glassware, and more customers coming in for them to make money.