The three basic types of formal organizational communication are downward, upward, and lateral.

1. Downward organizational communication is communication that flows from any point on an organization chart downward to another point on the organization chart. This type of formal organizational communication is associated primarily with the direction and control of employees. Job-related information that focuses on what activities are required, when they should be performed, and how they should be coordinated with other activities within the organization must be transmitted to employees. This downward communication typically includes a statement of organizational philosophy, management system objectives, position descriptions, and other written information relating to the importance, rationale, and interrelationships of various departments.

   Downward communication thus refers to the messages that management delivers to employees. Such communication can have a significant impact on an organization’s productivity and, hence, its profitability. Thanks to technological advances, many organizations are able to leverage technology to enhance the communication that flows from management to the workforce. Consider, for example, Ericsson, a leading manufacturer of telecommunication equipment and a service provider. With a geographically dispersed workforce, Ericsson leadership sought an efficient way to communicate company news quickly and uniformly throughout the organization. Ericsson turned to audio podcasting as a way to deliver up-to-the-minute information to its over 75,000 employees in the field. Podcasts have helped the company boost the effectiveness of its salesforce.⁴¹

2. Upward organizational communication is communication that flows from any point on an organization chart upward to another point on the organization chart.⁴² This type of organizational communication contains primarily the information managers need in order to evaluate the organizational area for which they are responsible and to determine whether something is going wrong within it. Techniques that managers commonly use to encourage upward organizational communication are informal discussions with employees, attitude surveys, the development and use of grievance procedures, suggestion systems, and an “open door” policy that invites employees to come in whenever they would like to talk to management.⁴³ Organizational modifications that are based on the feedback provided by upward organizational communication will enable a company to be more successful in the future.

3. Lateral organizational communication is communication that flows from any point on an organization chart horizontally to another point on the organization chart. Communication that flows across the organization usually focuses on coordinating the activities of various departments and developing new plans for future operating periods. Within the organization, all departments are in communication with all other departments. Only through lateral communication can these departmental relationships be coordinated well enough to enhance the attainment of management system objectives.

By its very nature, organizational communication creates patterns of communication among organization members. These patterns evolve from the repeated occurrence of various serial transmissions of information. According to Haney, a serial transmission involves passing information from one individual to another in a series. It occurs under the following circumstances:⁴⁴

One obvious weakness of a serial transmission is that messages tend to become distorted as the length of the series increases. Research has shown that message details may be omitted, altered, or added in a serial transmission.

The potential inaccuracy of transmitted messages is not the only weakness of serial transmissions. A classic article by Alex Bavelas and Dermot Barrett makes the case that serial transmissions can also influence morale, the emergence of a leader, the degree to which individuals involved in the transmissions are organized, and these individuals’ efficiency.⁴⁵ Three basic organizational communication patterns and their corresponding effects on the variables just mentioned are shown in Figure 12.7.

The informal organizational communication network, or grapevine , has three main characteristics:

1. It springs up and is used irregularly within the organization.

2. It is not controlled by top executives, who may not even be able to influence it.

3. It exists largely to serve the self-interests of the people within it.

Understanding the grapevine is a prerequisite for a complete understanding of organizational communication. It has been estimated that 70 percent of all communication in organizations flows along the organizational grapevine. Not only do grapevines carry great amounts of communication, but they also carry it at rapid speeds. Employees commonly cite the company grapevine as the most reliable and credible source of information about company events.⁵⁰

Like formal organizational communication, informal organizational communication uses serial transmissions. The difference is that it is more difficult for managers to identify the organization members involved in these informal transmissions than it is for managers to identify the members of the formal communication network. A classic article by Keith Davis that appeared in the Harvard Business Review has been a significant help to managers in understanding how organizational grapevines spring up and operate. Figure 12.8 sketches the four most common grapevine patterns as outlined by Davis. They are as follows:⁵¹

1. The single-strand grapevine—A tells B, who tells C, who tells D, and so on. This type of grapevine tends to distort messages more than any other.

2. The gossip grapevine—A informs everyone else on the grapevine.

3. The probability grapevine—A communicates randomly—for example, to F and D. F and D then continue to inform other grapevine members in the same way.

4. The cluster grapevine—A selects and tells C, D, and F. F selects and tells I and B, and B selects and tells J. Information in this grapevine travels only to selected individuals.