Business Communication
The success of any business enterprise depends on a multitude of crucial factors, one of them being the ability of its administrators to communicate in a clear and effective manner. The quality of business communications therefore, having a direct impact on the economic act, is hereby studied at four specific levels, as follows:
Interpersonal business communication
Negotiation
Conflict management, and last
Inter-cultural business communication
Interpersonal business communication
Melinda Knight starts her 2005 article at the premise that efficient business communications at the managerial level are quintessential for the overall success of the enterprise. Yet, despite this generally accepted notion, the managers have little actual training of interpersonal communications during their formation in universities or other non- U.S. MBA programs. While some programs have some unaligned courses of interpersonal communications in the business settings, other programs do not include the subject in their curricula at all. Knight asserts the importance of managerial communications, but argues that educational programs tend to disregard this as a discipline that could be taught and then evaluated. In such a context then, the recommendation is that of integrating higher levels of interpersonal communication within global managerial training programs.
Geraldine E. Hynes (2012) argues that an essential factor in the success of any enterprise is the commitment and engagement the employees manifest towards the company. In other words, an organization which is able to align the individual goals of its staff members with the organizational goals of the firm is more likely to attain its business objectives comparative to a company which does not completely integrate its staff members. And Hynes argues that one of the most appropriate means in which such an alignment can be obtained is through the provision of interpersonal communication training programs. In other words, she argues that teaching employees how to relate as individuals, and cherishing this individuality is equally important...
Ultimately, the researcher values the role of the human resource above other resources and believes that open and honest communications between the staffs are the gateway to business success.
3. Negotiation
Whenever two parties interact, sooner or later, some sort of conflict will emerge. And, as in any other arena, within the business setting, conflicts are best approached through an open mind and the ability to negotiate and find a mutually beneficial solution. One of the most extensive study on negotiation was conducted by Henrik Agndal at the Stockholm School of Economics, between 1996 and 2005, and it analyzed a total of 263 articles on negotiations. Among the most important findings of this analysis are the following:
Through negotiation, the parties seek to influence each other through various means of communication so that they attain their individual and common purposes
Negotiations involve a sense of the individual conducting it, as well as the business stance of the profession he/she represents; the most common negotiations occur in commercial settings and the cultural forces and generally not considered
The negotiation model includes the parties (organizational, individual and the relationship), the context (medium, setting, time, context and issues), the process (preparations, steps, offers, strategy, tactics, behaviors, communications and information sharing) and the outcomes (economic terms, perceived outcome and the closing of a deal), all of which are intertwined.
Each negotiation is unique due to the multitude of forces influencing it, and an overall complete image of the negotiation process is impossible to create, especially as experimental research on the topic leads to a decontextualization of the negotiation process and its analysis.
In light with the limitations identified, Agndal made recommendations towards the study of how business people negotiated, rather than students; the use of sales staffs and purchasers as research subjects; the analysis in national contexts; an increase in the areas…
