Target of communication

Target of communication

(i) At the individual levels
This is one to one communication that is mostly carried out orally. In small firms, such oral communications may take place face-to-face but in large corporations, a bulk of this communication is oral but not face-to-face. It may be through the use of telephones, mobile or Internet telephony etc
It can also be through written reports – information flows through the organization to the remotest corners in the form of hourly, shift or daily reports. These reports are further summarized into weekly, monthly and quarterly reports for dissemination at the appropriate levels of the enterprise. Messaging through electronic mail is changing the scenario rapidly.

(ii) At the group level
Contemporarily, this has emerged as the most common form of communication as enterprises move from individual way of job design to a more socially accepted form of team working. Every job that is being done is communicated to the team members, located in different departments, different cities, and different countries. Experience has confirmed that teamwork ensures better and faster completion of jobs at most levels of working.
Both oral and written types of communication are used extensively. Much of the oral communications take place in meetings, seminars, and conferences done by inviting them to a room or through computer-based video conferencing.
Similarly written reports are either circulated physically or, as is becoming more common, soft copies are emailed to everyone. As a rule, no hard copies are made. Anyone wanting hard copies and authorized to have them can request the same from the nearest server station of the computer network. This has been the corporate policy followed by Microsoft for almost a decade now. We are still quite far away from the utopian situation of having „paper-less, people-less‟ offices but there is no doubt that the sizes of the establishments are becoming leaner through downsizing and de-layering of organization structures.