603

1. Chapter 2
Communication and Its Functions

2. Function and Structure
Relationship
• Communication Functions and Structure are
highly interrelated
• Major breakdowns in either can render the
communication system in an organization
inoperative
(Farace, Monge & Russell, 1977)

3. Communication,
Information, and Meaning
Traditional Perspective:
• Communication is shared meaning created
among two or more people through verbal
and nonverbal transaction

4. Communication,
Information, and Meaning
• Information and Meaning
• Verbal Behavior
Ambiguity
Group-Restricted Codes
• Nonverbal Behavior
Paralanguage
Body Language
Space

5. Functions of
Communication
• Traditionalist Function Categories
• Interpretive Perspective on Function
• Critical Perspectives on Function
• Interpersonal Communication:
Relationship Development Among
Workers

6. Traditionalist Function
Categories
• Production, Maintenance, and Innovation
• Dance and Larson’s Communication
Functions
• Uncertainty and Information Adequacy
• Social Capital

7. Traditional Function
Categories
Farace, Monge and Russell (1977)
• Production
• Maintenance
• Innovation

8. Dance and Larson’s
Communication Functions
• Linking
• Mentation
• Regulatory

9. Uncertainty and
Information Adequacy
• Creating and Reducing Uncertainty
• Adequacy of Information
–Absolute Information
–Distributed Information

10. Social Capital
• Features of social organization, such as trust,
norms, and networks, that can improve the
efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated
actions (Putnam,1993)

11. Interpretive Perspectives
on Function
• George Herbert Mead: Symbolic
Interactionism
• Berger and Luckmann: Communication
as Construction

12. George Herbert Mead:
Symbolic Interactionism
• Subjective World View (people actively create
the world in which they live)
• Utilitarian Perspective (we base our knowledge
of the world on what is useful to us)
• Focus on the act: overt and covert human
action; relationship between stimulus and
response
• Self and Generalized Other
• I and Me

13. Berger and Luckmann:
Communication as
Construction
• People tend to develop repetitive patterns of
behavior
• We depend on the habits of others
• Reification: passing habits and behavioral
expectations to future generations
• The reality of everyday life in organizations
• Messages may also have multiple meanings

14. Critical Perspectives on
Function
• Mikhail Bakhtin: Communication as Dialogic
• Control and Manipulation

15. Mikhail Bakhtin:
Communication as Dialogic
• Dialogism: all human discourse presupposes
discourse that precedes and follows it. Each
utterance is only a link in a chain
• Dialectic Tensions: all interaction involves
contradictions and tensions
-Unity (Centripetal)
-Difference (Centrifugal)
• Dialogue focuses on struggles over meaning

16. Control and Manipulation
• Hegemony: oppressed group identifies the
dominant group’s interests as their own
• Systemically Distorted Communication:
distorted communication legitimizes
hegemony through manipulation by making it
appear to be something other than it really is

17. Interpersonal
Communication
• Relational Development Among
Workers
• Perspectives on Relational
Development Among Workers

18. Relational Development
Among Workers
• Acquaintances
• Friends
• Close Friends
• Intimate Friends

19. Perspectives on
Relational Development
• Traditional Perspective
Communicating to get the job done
• Interpretive Perspective
Developing shared meanings
• Critical Perspective
Contesting meanings through dialogue