Managerial Communication

Processes, Practices, and Policy Implications

Without a doubt, the primary activity and skill required by managers is communication. From the earliest studies on what managers actually do, results indicate that managers spend a significant portion of their time engaged in listening and speaking, in face-to-face as well as mediated contexts. Communication is not simply about clarifying and directing others’ actions on behalf of organizational goals, but also is about engaging in strategic ambiguity whereby managers construct messages that can offer space for individuals’ decision making and connections to strategic visions and values. Communication also involves understanding how different organizational levels require more or less specificity in messages as well as how diverse, global, and teams-based workforces require competence in communication practices that foster inclusion, handle different national laws and regulations, and capitalize on synergies inherent in heterogeneous teams.

These tensions in managerial communication—clarity-ambiguity, information flow between and among organizational levels, emerging workforce challenges—take place within the culture and structure of a given organization. Understanding an organization’s culture, or what makes a [Page 898]particular organizational environment unique, allows managers to adapt communication to address issues in effective and constructive ways. Because organizational culture is complex and emergent, it is constantly renegotiated and evolving. Some organizational cultural processes about which managerial communication has great interest are organizational norms, socialization, and organizational identification, as well as particular practices and policy implications.

Organizational norms have direct implications for managerial communication as they both constrain and maintain communication patterns and practices. Organizations may function as a group, or perhaps are representative of the convergence of multiple smaller groups, and convey cultural assumptions about normative behaviors, activities, and values within these groups. It is here that organizational norms come to life. These informal rules developed for the purposes of standardizing activity and behavior emerge through collective interaction, and have implications for organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and overall success. Managerial communication may work to control, encourage, or create norms based on what is best for the organization’s goals. Because norms are constantly brought to life and re-created through interaction, they can be challenging to manage.

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