INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Communication is a very vital tools in carrying out our day today activities which makes the saying that if you don’t say here I am nobody will say there you are unique and outstanding from every business firms world wide today. Everyone needs communication with people around to share experience jobs, frustration, hopes and fears. From childhood we all learn how to communicate, as children, we are able to recognize and identify happiness and annoyance in our parent’s faces or words. And at school, we learn how to write and interpret numbers and diagram; we also came to understand the silent language of communication expressed in faces, gestures and body movement that is the body language of non verbal communication. This array of skills has helped us to be active members of the family, school and work group.
It is only when people have come to know others through work, play or study that they prepared to open up and to trust others with a share of them, their inner thought reactions and feelings.
According to Chester Bernard the first executive function is to maintain a system of communication which is fundamental to the existence of any organizational communication function. Which is the means by which social inputs are fed into social system or organization the means by which behaviour is modified, changed is affected, information is made productive and goals are achieved be it in business, military etc.
Every organization is established to achieve a set objectives for example certain business organization are set up for profit making by the provision of goods and service. While others are set up mainly for the provision of service by training high level of manpower for both in the public and private sector of the economy.
However the defined objective of any organization has to be achieved through the instrumentality of individual person who form the basic unit of the organization. The people’s readiness to perform for the attainment of goals and objectives of an organization.
As defined by Drucker, management is concern with the direction and control of an enterprise and involves planning and the direction of the work of others. These managerial functions cannot be successfully carried out in the absence of communication. Brown defined communication as the process of transmitting ideas and thought one person to another for the purpose of creating understanding in the thinking of the person receiving the communication, Drucker made the following statement. The manager has a specific tool, information. He does not “handle” people; he motivates guides and organizes peoples to do their own work. His toll to do this is the spoken or written work. no matter whether the manager’s job is engineer, accounting or marketing effectiveness to a large extent depends on his ability to listen and to read or his ability to speak and write. It needs skill in getting his thinking across to other people as well as skill in finding out what other people are after.
The above contribution by Drucker implies that communication is needed to convey information necessary for an on going operation and secondly that communication can have an impact on the attitude of people in the organization and consequently on the general performance of the organization. Managers spend a lot of their time in order to co-ordinate human and physical resources of an organization into effective and efficient working units. It is only when the human and material element of and organization is harnessed into a working whole that the objective goals of the organization can be achieved.
Before any organization decision can be made relevant information, facts feeling and ideas must be communicated within all organization.
In recent years, communication has been tipped as a management function because of its growing importance in large organization and also because it has been realized that communication is not forced but has to be learnt.
Language, which is deemed the most important tool of communication in organization, have many features which limit their- assuredly in communication. Available statistics show that there are more than three language in Lagos State alone while the entire nation is said to have about 3000 different language. It was observed that in the organization where this research was carried out, workers were selected from almost all the ethnic groups in Nigeria with different social and cultural backgrounds. This shows that the rate of communicating effectively in organization cannot be predicted correctly. As S.I. Hayakawg had it, the meaning of words is in the words, they are in use and no word has exactly the same meaning
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1MEANING OF COMMUNICATION
Much has been said and written about the effect of communication gap on the achievement of organizational goal. Communication is a very important and vital tool in every organization, even in the Ports Authority.
Various authors have defined communication. In his own definition, John M.P. Fiffner saw communication as a galaxy of connotation, each of which is valuable and useful for its particular context. It is indeed common that the mere mention of world communication conjures pictures of the letters, telegram, radio, cables, telephone, TV etc. in the mind of the people in the street. These pictures present examples of some of the instruments of communication but do not define what the word communication really is. Basically, communication has to do with how these and other instruments are employed in the act and art of passing information from one person to another or from one person to a group of people.
C.J. Coulson defines communication as the process by which the process by information is transmitted between individuals transmits information between individual or organization by means of commonly accepted symbols in order to elicit a particular response.
The above definition implies that for communication to take place, there must be two or more people and that communication should have an air, the intent of sender, which must be properly perceived by the receiver, otherwise the communication is lost.
Since communication involves the conveying of information from one person to another, it is now clear that the process of communication is an essential one in any human endeavour as no one is an Island, and therefore always interacts with other people. However, stated definition of communication applies to people at home, school, conference meeting, anywhere, anytime in this era of specialization when knowledge has been compartmentalized into various disciplines. It is natural that specially makes modification and so arrived at definition that are considered unique to and suitable for these disciplines. No wonder why some specialized writers on business studies often make it clear that they define is not just communication but business communication.
There are some elements which any good and effective communication in an organization should contain.
Purpose: Any communication, which should be effective must have predetermine objective.
Interchanges: Communication as a for mentioned always involve at least two or more people including the sender and the receiver.
Ideas and Opinion: Instruction and the likes. The content of the message encoded will vary depending on purpose or circumstance.
Personally or Impersonally: Communication channels chosen may be direct, face to face or via television to million of people simultaneously.
By symbol of sign: Some devices or methods of communication should be employed to carry or convey the message or bring the interchange