Oral communication is where you either speak face-to-face like an interview or it could be just a basic telephone call. Oral communication is the quickest way to communicate but this is does not mean that it is the most reliable way, as it may be distorted if it has to pass through many people to get to the person that requires it. Written communication is where you write down the information. This could be a quick process but also a very slow process as it can take days for a letter to go through but then there is e-mail which sends straight away.
Written communication is probably the most reliable source of communication because it gets to the occupier with out having to pass through nobody. So there is no way that the message can get distorted. Communication within a business. Within in Boots they would use oral communication, as it is quicker and easier than sending letters from one department to another. Some departments would rather keep information to look back on as it may be vital information, which might be forgotten.
Different examples of communication of how and why the functional areas will communicate with each other are: – Finance would communicate with production via telephone to inform them how much they have to spend on resources in the following month. H & R would communicate via letter to a functional area if there was a misbehaving employee within that department. They would use this method of communication as it is the sort of document you would need to keep on file because it is not a small process and they may have to look back at all the disciplinary records.
Communication outside of the business. Boots would communicate with external contacts through letter or e-mail as it is more reliable and will probably have to travel through a few people before reaching its occupier, this way it wont get distorted and the occupier will get the exact in formation Boots wanted to supply them with. Boots would use different methods of written communication for different external contacts. Examples of this are:
If they needed to send a customer information on up coming products they would probably use e-mail as most people are connected to the internet and it is a quick and reliable way of written communication If they needed to order products from a supplier they would probably send them a letter/order form as it is reliable and the supplier will not get the order wrong as nothing can be changed. Communication is important to a business to meet its aims and objectives as the different functional areas need to know what is going on around the business not just there own as otherwise the company wouldn’t function properly.
There could be sick employees and know one would know, employees could be misbehaving and nothing will be done about it, the company could be in debt and production could be making this worse by over spending on resources. All this could happen if the functional areas did not communicate with each other. So by communicating the company wont go in to debt by over spending, so the company would be making money and becoming a success which is one aim for all companies. The span of control in a flat structure is wide and a tall structure has a narrow span of control.
In the flat structure there is less layers but more employees in each layer. In the tall structure there is more layers, but less in employees in each layer. FLAT STRUCTURES (Boots) HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURES (Leisure Centre) Communications can be distorted Respond quick Manager does not no what subordinates do Not very flexible The above table shows that a main strength for Boots having a flat structure is that staff will respond quicker to any changes that the business makes.
Boots will be able to react to competitors new ideas. If another leading cosmetics company put on a really good special offer. Boots have to compete with this by making their promotion better. They have very good communications and will be able to respond to colleagues quicker. This is a very good strength of how Boots work, because it is small, employees Boots organisational structure is flat; it is flat because there are not many layers in the structure and because there is not many people in the chain of command.
It is different to Thornbury leisure centres structure because each of Thornbury leisure centre functional area has many staff, each of who have there own particular job. Each person has a specialised job and are paid a specific salary for their job. In Thornbury leisure centre communications become distorted as messages pass from one level to another. In Boots, communications rarely get distorted because there are not many layers for the message to go through. Boots employees are quicker at responding to messages and tasks.
