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Sri Lankan organizations:
New communications culture required
Ramani Kangaraarachchi
A new culture of communication is required for Sri Lankan
organizations because no one can be satisfied with the way people with
different status make sense of the communication process in
organizations today, Open University, Humanities and Social Science
Faculty Dean Dr Mahim Mendis said.
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An autocratic communication culture retards organizational
growth |
He was addressing a seminar on communication solutions for
organizational success organized by Rainbow Resources Lanka at the
Chamber of Commerce Auditorium in Colombo on Thursday.
He said that there is a crisis in communication. From an industry
point of view they are often not able to go beyond the definition of
terminology with scholarly precision. What is clearly absent is the
heart and mind for communication, killing the potential for dynamic
organizational actions due to various constraints.
Therefore, people need to have mutual respect in communicating with
one another. Dr Mendis said an autocratic communication culture retards
organizational growth and the incapacity to understand that people are
living in a democracy with attributes such as equality and equity has
led to confrontations at all levels of society.
People are what they are because of the way they have been brought up
and this is so with regard to CEO’s at the highest level and ordinary
workers at the lowest level of an organizational hierarchy, he said.
He elaborated on five major areas that organizational communication
scholars study, namely leadership, teams, communication networks,
organizational culture and organizational learning.
He said that dialogue is a form of communication that fosters high
quality collective thinking which is guided by several principles.
Balanced inquiry and advocacy, suspended beliefs, a safe space for
dialogue and tacit assumptions and beliefs are some of them. |
