Ashford University
Management Communications with Technology Tools
As civilization has evolved so has communication technology. From letters to phone calls to email, basic communication methods have consistently progressed into the complex systems we have today. As humans continue to become more dependent on technological communication, such improvements will continue to be made. Modern day communication technology has essentially made interaction instantaneous, inexpensive and concise. This essay will reflect how technology has changed business communication. In the 1970s and 1980s, corporate communicators plugged into the world of computers first as word processing, and then desktop publishing, improving our ability to get words on paper and to our audiences. But according to the experts, desktop publishing will be a mere footnote to the history that is beginning to be made by multimedia publishing. (Wilson, 1993). We’ve come a long way since the very first instances of verbal and written communication. From the early stages of speech, along with the primitive use of symbols and pictures to convey messages to one another, we’ve evolved into a communications powerhouse. Data has never been transferred faster and communication has thus never been more sophisticated than it is right now. Communication in organizations encompasses all the means, both formal and informal, by which information is passed up, down, and across the network of managers and employees in a business. These various modes of communication may be used to disseminate official information between employees and management, to exchange hearsay and rumors, or anything in between. The challenge for businesses is to channel these myriad communications so they serve to improve customer relations, bolster employee satisfaction, build knowledge-sharing throughout the organization, and most importantly, enhance the firm's competitiveness. (Enc.