Convenience

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Part 4:
Leading
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Psychologists, however, are beginning to associate some problems with these
communication advances. For one thing, managers who are seldom in their “real”
office are likely to fall behind in their field and to be victimized by organizational
politics because they are not present to keep in touch with what is going on and to
protect themselves. They drop out of the organizational grapevine and miss out on
much of the informal communication that takes place. Moreover, the use of digital
communication at the expense of face-to-face meetings and conversations makes it
hard to build a strong culture, develop solid working relationships, and create a mutu-
ally supportive atmosphere of trust and cooperativeness. Finally, electronic communi-
cation is opening up new avenues for dysfunctional employee behavior, such as the
passing of lewd or offensive materials to others. For example, a few years ago, the
New York Times
fired almost 10 percent of its workers at one of its branch offices for
sending inappropriate e-mails at work.
INFORMAL COMMUNICATION IN ORGANIZATIONS
The forms of organizational communication discussed in the previous section all repre-
sent planned and relatively formal communication mechanisms. However, in many
cases, some of the communication that takes place in an organization transcends these
formal channels and instead follows any of several informal methods. Figure 12.4 illus-
trates numerous examples of informal communication. Common forms of informal
communication in organizations include the grapevine, management by wandering
around, and nonverbal communication.