Rational Communication in Corporate: The Nexus Between Performance and Understanding

Apiov · 2023-11-13T05:23:13+00:00

This article aims to show that one of the main factors for poor performance in corporates is lack of rational communication that is not embodied with reason, truth, facts and values. This kind of communication appeals to emotions, feelings and sentiments; that leads to informal dissemination of proper intended message. This is the reason why I suggest rational communication that embedded with reason, truth, and fact; is needed in corporate communication in order to bring out good performance to employees. Rationality is one of essential characteristic of human being, likewise language. It is said that among millions of species in the universe, only humans have language. Due to that fact human should embrace communication that is rational. Actually, I am aware that communication is wider as it interwoven different media of disseminating it. Rational communication attracts mutual understanding, and different problems are resolved. Apparently, like demonstrated by German philosopher—Habermas, people should communicate truth, fact and values, that have universal or common acceptability to rational people. It follows that the universality and commonality that is suggested here should reflect the culture and tradition of the company, corporate, organizations, or an institution. I understand corporate or company as a set apart small community that shares the same values, goals, and belief to perform whatever it takes as for their primary objective. So corporate, by using the metaphysical principle of the whole and parts, or the one and many; corporate implies the parts of the whole. Many corporates are business oriented and they are looking for maximization of profits. However, this principle is true even to non-profit organizations, corporates and institutions. To know good is to do good, this is one of golden ethical principle that propagate the idea that if a person knows or understand what is good, he or she expected to do good. Thanks to Socrates, the teacher of Plato. This indicates that understanding is a key factor for a person to perform well. This principle holds truth as it is true that our actions should be guided with rational thinking, our actions are teleological, end, purpose, or extensions of our mind or thinking expectations, this is why, even the Latin’s phrases that are common in law, specifically, in criminal law; mens rea and actus rea, reflects the mental of state when a crime is conducted and the act of physical crime conducted respectively. This asserts that you cannot distinguish between an action and the sate of mind. This alludes that when there is no rational communication, actions and performance are directly compromised, and as a result, the objective of the corporate to maximize profits, it needs communication that is rational and meaningful. However, in our modern times, corporates have decided to adopt an Artificial Intelligence technology (AI) to deal with employees, financial management as well as customer cares. It is usual these days to be served by robots from in steady of human being from call centers. It is believed that AI cut down cost to handle human beings and give some accurate information, punctuality and maintains standards and quality of the company. This is true, but on the other hand it lacks a lively speech and rational communication when it interact with humans. Some of us know the communication modal (chain of command) the way it operates. The famous one is that known as military command that purports from top to bottom. That the Board’s management should communicate to MD what should be done, MD should do the same to his departmental directors/chiefs/line managers/senior managers, managers, supervisors etc depending on the modal and corporate structure. It is my opinion that most of the times miss understanding within a corporate occurs due to lack of rational communication. When communication lacks rationality allows sentiments, emotions, sympathy and empathy to take place; as a result, there is distortion of the message disseminated. I think that the military communication modal is good, but it would be more efficient if it is rational one. Because this kind of communication assumes that the Boss, is all known as far as his message is concerned. When things are like that, the corporate might loose significant information, which would benefit a company in million ways. Apparently, I contend that rational information may come from anyone, provided that he or she is reasonable and communicates the information that is true, factual, valuable and real. Some people think that communication is just a mere word, but I argue that communication is more than that, communication is embedded with actions because it underpinned with rationality. We act because of the command from the mind, as I articulated earlier that that our actions are extension of our mind. If this is the fact, hence, the performance within the company will heavily impacted with poor communication. Yes, to know good is to do good. When communication gets emotional, the agents who participate in it ceases to be rational beings and starts like any other animal. At this point, the CEO or line manager, will use more of his or her heart than mind or than balancing the two. What follows form this situation is confusions to both of them, this is why many companies today, are insisting on emotional intelligence and maturity, but alas! You know what, this is not enough; they need mental maturity too from philosophers. And please remember our principle—our actions are extension of our mind, hence poor performance, and loss of revenues within a company. And what does it mean for the employees to fail to deliver? This means that he or she fails to deliver numbers? Why numbers? Because numbers do not lie. Why numbers do not lie? Because numbers, are as far is it interwoven with Math’s, as Aristotle argued, is an exact science. Numbers are only entity that can stand both theoretically and physically. Theoretically, as we know that, for instance, numbers can exist in our mind as well as in outside our mind by extending on things as one book, two vans, three customers and so on. So number is everything, as Pythagoras puts it, “God geometrized in creating the world; he built the universe on numbers.” However, when I was exploring on this article, the idea of body language as a modal of communication came in. I asked myself if people in corporates do consider it in their daily communication; but what I want to tell is that rational communication do considers body actions when we communicate, and this is very important especially for service based corporates or institutions because our body’s actions and positions when we talk, send a message whether negative or positive. For instance, when you talk face to face during trade reviews, in daily board’s meetings, your body positions can convey the message different to what you utters. So like numbers, our bodies don’t lie. This is because; it is our mind that controls everything happening in our bodies. Customer’s behaviors are always impacted with many things like prices, accessibility, friendly user products etc, but environment to where that product is available becomes of high importance to customers. Those environments is kind of body language to them, because they will not hear any word from them than conducive and welcoming environment. Apparently, this is a reason why in any customer centers, POS, websites of the corporates should be presented with good artworks, colors etc, together with a well trained personnel to handle customers. (I will write next time about the power of color in corporate business). Conclusively, I would like to remind my readers that, the main objective of this article is to show that rational communication in corporate, companies, organizations, communities, institutions has crucial role that can transform performance and increase both customer loyalty and revenues. So its high times now that corporates and other institutions to use philosophers as consultants in order to transform their business or services. About the Author: Apiov S. Lwiwa PhD Candidate in Philosophy St. Augustine University of Tanzania (Morogoro)

Thread starter Apiov
Start date Nov 13, 2023
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Apiov

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Rational Communication in Corporate: The Nexus Between Performance and Understanding

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