1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Communication is a very vital tool in carrying out our day to day activities. It is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of ideas, feelings, intentions, attitudes, expectations, perceptions or commands as by speech, gestures, writings, behavior and possibly by other means such as electromagnetic, chemicals or physical phenomena.
Everyone needs communication with people around to share experience, jobs frustrations, hopes and fears. It is indeed common that the mere mention of word communication conjures pictures of the letters, telegram, radio, cables, telephone, TV etc. These pictures present examples of some of the instruments of communication but do not define what the word “Communication: really is. Basically, Communication has to do with how these and other instruments are employed in the act and art of passing information from one person to another or from one person to a group of people.
According to Chester Bernard, the first executive function is to maintain a system of communication, which is fundamental to the existence of any organizational communication function. The means of which social impacts are fed into social system or organization and also the means by which behavior is modified, changed is affected, information is made productive and goals are achieved, be it in business, military etc. Every organization is established to achieve a set objective for example certain business organization are set up for profit making by the provision of goods and services by training high level of manpower for both in the public and private sector of the economy.
However, the defined objectives of any organization have to be achieved through the instrumentally of individual person who form the basic unit of the organization. The people's readiness to perform for the attainment of goals and objectives of an organization. As defined by Drucker, Management is concern with the direction and control of an enterprise and involves planning and the direction of the work of others.
These managerial functions cannot be successfully carried out in the absence of Communication. Drucker made the following statement; The manager has a specific tool, information, he does not “handle people”, he motivates, guides and organize people to do their own work, his toll to do this, is it the spoken or written work, no matter whether the manager's job is engineer, accounting or marketing, effectiveness to a large extent depends on his ability to listen and to read or his ability to speak and write. It needs skills in finding out what other people are after.
The above contribution by Drucker implies that communication is needed to convey information necessary for an on-going operation and secondly that communication can have an impact on the attitudes of people in the organization. Managers spend a lot of their time in order to co-ordinate human and physical resources of an organization into effective and efficient working units. It is only when the human and material element of an organization is harnessed into a working whole that the objective goals of the organization can be achieved.
Before any organization decision can be made relevant information, facts, feelings, and ideas must be communicated within all organization. In recent years, communication has been tipped as a management function because of the growing importance in large organization, also because it has been realized that communication is not forced but has to be learnt. Language, which is deemed the most important tool of communication in organization, has many features which limit their assuredly in communication.
Available statistics show that there are more than three Languages in Lagos State alone while the entire nation is said to have about 3,000 different languages. It was observed that in the organization where this research was carried out, workers were selected from almost all the ethnic groups in Nigeria with different social and cultural backgrounds.
This shows that the rate of communicating effectively in organization cannot be predicted correctly.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The greatest continuing area of weakness in communication practice is the human dimension. In good times or bad, there seems to be little real understanding of the relationships between managers, employees and interaction between the two, when there are problems, misunderstanding, everyone acknowledges that the cause often is a communication gap. Organizations, must build into their leaders the ability to develop relationships and have those conversations that support and encourage focused behavior for the achievement of the organization.
For too long, managers and employees have grappled with the idea of trying to find an end to the communication impasse that bogs down many organizations. Either employees feels that management does not effectively communicate or managements feels they communicate well and it is the employees that have the problem. Regardless of fault or blame at some point, the two sides have to come together to resolve where the breakdown in communication is and move towards the achievement of the company.
It is pertinent to say that communication has been characterized as the life wire of any organization so without communication, organizations don't achieve goals. The sender and receiver of any message share a common responsibility; the sender should ensure that his message is such that could be understood. A message could be in the form of an instruction or information. An instruction in the sense that the receiver is told the definite things he is expected to accomplish. Information could take two forms namely: Information proper and news. Information proposer guides the receiver on what decision to make while news is of no value for decision making.
However, what is important about communication is that the receiver must understand the message that has been across by asking certain questions, it may be possible to find out if the receiver has actually understood the message. This makes communication to be a two-way process in a sense that it prevents the development of psychologically negative attitude among the personnel in an organization. Thus, a feedback mechanism should be built into a communication process.
1.3 Purpose / Objectives of the Study
The purpose of this study is to explore the perceived communication gap in an organization. Some of the common complaints from employees are managers do not communicate effectively, important information is delivered through emails when in some cases, face-to-face, meetings seem more appropriate.
The objectives of the work are?
- To find out the extent to which the effect of communication gap contributes to organizational peace/war.
- To develop a model of communication process.
- To explain how communication improves organizational performance.
- To identify barriers and breakdowns in the communication system.
1.4 Research Questions
- How does the effect of communication gap contributes to organizational peace/war?
- What are the models of communication process?
- How does effective communication improves organizational performance?
- How does breakdowns negatively affect communication system?
1.5 Scope of the Study
The researcher has a wide coverage in mind, which include organization of all sort such as academic institution as well as successful and profitable organization. For this research, the researcher would limit the scope to one of the leading industry in the country, Nigeria Bottling Company plc Onitsha. In this study, attempt was made to examine the effect of communication gap, the achievement of organizational goals.
1.6 Limitations of the Study
It is known fact that researchers encounter a lot of problem, which are inherent in our society and this research, is no exception. This problem will range from personal constraints to environment problems. Time for instance will be constraints. A lot of time will be consumed before this research could be carried out. The researcher has to forfeit a lot of appointments, assignments, and other commitments especially during the collection of information that will be used for the literature review.
Lack of statistic will be another major set back to this research. It will be due to the impossibility of obtaining some accurate information required. It should be noted that lack of accurate statistic limits accuracy of any research work. They seriously guided most information considered confidential to the organization.
1.7 Operational Definition of Terms
a). Communication:
It is the activity or process of expressing ideas and feeling between two or more practices. It is the exchange of ideas, opinions, feelings between a source and a receiver.
b). Information:
Facts or details provided or leaned about somebody or something.
It is conveyed either as the content of a message or through direct or indirect observation of something.
c). Effective:
Producing the result that is wanted or intended. It is the process of producing a successful.
d). Constraints:
The threat or use of force to prevent, restrict or dictate the action or thought of others. It is a restriction or compelled to avoid to a certain thought or idea.
e). Gap:
It is an unfilled space or interval. It is also a space between two things or in the middle of something or the difference that separates people or their opinions, situation etc.
f). Impasse:
It is a situation in which no progress is possible especially because of disagreement. It is an occurrence when the two sides negotiating an agreement are unable to reach an agreement and become deadlocked.
g). Motivation:
It is a theoretical construct, used to explain behavior. It is literally the desire to do things.
A reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.
h). Attitude:
Is the manner, dispositions, feeling, position with regard to a person or thing. It is an expression of favor or disfavor toward a person, place, thing or event. It can be formed from a person's past and present.
