The Importance of Communication

Communication is the exchange of information between two or more people. (Stremel, 2008) As defined by Newman and Summer in Business Communication, it is the process of imparting facts, ideas, or opinions. It has an important role in life and especially in education. People cannot live without communicating. Everyone communicates in many different ways and for many different reasons. Creating effective communication among people and establishing contacts are survival needs of human being. (Isman, 2011)

There is no doubt that communication is so fundamental that without it no organization can exist and function effectively towards achieving its objectives.(Kushal, 2009) It enables organizations to coordinate their activities. It is also the principal means by which members of an organization work together. Effective communication is an essential component of organizational success whether it is at the interpersonal, intergroup, intragroup, organizational or external levels. (Tofanelli, 2012) Regardless of the type of organization, communication is the element that maintains and sustains relationships in it. (Richmond.,et.al) It helps to bind them together, enabling them to react to and influence each other. It is therefore appropriate to call communication the “life blood” of an organization. (Ahuja, 2009)

According to the article of cape-communication studies.com, in a communication process, there are important components to be considered. These are: sender/encoder, medium, channel, receiver and feedback. One of the important elements of communication is the channel. Communication channels are the means through which people in an organization communicate. The selection of the appropriate channel is important to reaching an audien...

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...mmunication channel like confidentiality, confrontation and emotional support using office hours resulted to 0.7718 and 0.7379. Finally, accuracy, receiving/turning work, reaching a consensus and overall effectiveness for e-mail during office hours resulted to 0.7540 and 0.6706. These results shows that the theory that the communications media are selected by the productivity required by the task (Reinsch 1990 and Rice 1993).

Office-hours are the preferred communications channel for tasks requiring rich communication media, especially confrontation and emotional support, as well as confidentiality, and reaching a consensus. On the other hand, the students considered e-mail to be superior for timeliness, convenience, efficiency and turning in work . Meanwhile, faculty considered e-mail to be superior for convenience, retention and efficiency. (Pena-Sanchez, 2008)