1. Week 2. Principles of Communication
1. Business is a subset of communication. One may communicate and never conduct an economic transaction, but one cannot conduct an economic transaction and not communicate.
1. Every living thing communicates in some way and is limited in how it can communicate by the physical processes that it uses.
2. Every human is limited in communication by his or her environment and senses, as well as by the state of knowledge and state of society before and during the time the person is alive.
3. Every human is limited in communication by how he or she views other humans.
1. How you view others determines partially how you communicate to them.
2. Exercise: Have each student take a minute to name the communications vehicles that he or she personally uses at work. Have another student write them on the board for all to review. Have a second student write the list down so it can be typed and reproduced for all.
1. You communicate more than you think you do.
2. Almost all of your communication has a direct relationship to tasks that you must do.
3. You use many modes of communication: Sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.
4. Communication starts with senses.
5. NEXT week's exercise: Prepare an informal inventory of media used to communicate with clients or customers at your place of work.
3. Communication:
1. Occurs between at least two parties
2. Is informational or effective: Business uses informational communication to learn what to say and effective communication to say it and produce results.
1. An economic transaction is effective communication
2. Effective communication depends on persuasion because some information always remains unknown.
3. Value is a function of communication between buyers and sellers.
3. Is a craft:
1. Has rules and grammars, whether verbal or nonverbal
2. Has denotations and connotations
4. Business communication has several languages among which is accounting
1. The power to complete an exchange has no relationship to ethics or legality.
2. The challenge that buyers and sellers face is the future. Neither can know the outcomes of economic communications.
3. Most businesses do not have a perceived public interest, but some do.
4. The influence of third parties works inside a business too. The meaning of layoffs.
5. The ways that communication is used in business splinters into multiple and often, uncoordinated fragments. Corporate communication has many roles.
6. The challenge of corporate communication is its ubiquity. It is, as one manager called it, "the flux" in organization -- the flow that keeps business together and profitable.

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