Technology is advancing at a very fast pace. Organizations are not left behind in the adoption of the ever-changing technology. Among other things, technology has made communication easy in organizations. Through phones, computers, and other devices, employees can pass information to each other without the face-to- face interaction.  Organizational communication relies mainly on the use of technology such as websites, emails, video and audio conferencing, online peer supports, facsimile machines and many others.  When used effectively, communication technology makes the organizations more efficient and better connected (Butts, Becker & Boswell, 2015).

Communication technology has revolutionized the way people communicate not only in the workplace but also in our societies. At just the click of a button, information is passed from one employee to the other without much effort.  The great impact is the timesaving factor. Communicating through technology consumes less time. Time in any organization is an important factor (Butts, Becker & Boswell, 2015). Spending less time communicating and more time working, an organization can be more productive. However, it also has negative impacts such as isolation. People must socialize but with technology such as social media, people no longer socialize physically. People depend on technology to socialize, but its effectiveness is less than face-to-face socialization.

Technology has many functions in the organizational communication. One of them is that it helps organizations to communicate worldwide. Through emails and mobile phones, organizations are becoming more wired outside the workplace. Technology has changed how and where employees work and has bridged the gap between work and non-work domains. Traditionally, workplace communication is held face to face. However, with technology employees can communicate from anywhere in the world through electronic communication. A report released in 2008 revealed that 96% of the employees use the internet, cell phones and emails to stay in touch with communication from their organizations.  Since the year 2002, the number of employees who check for any communication from their organizations has tripled. With the advancement of technology, this number is expected to increase in future (Bruhn, Schoenmueller & Schäfer, 2012).

Employees can be anywhere in the world but still working.  Take for examples colleges. In recent years, colleges and universities have introduced online classes where students study online and take their exams online. This is virtual learning. It can be done from anywhere in the world. Another function of technology in organizational communication is that it gives organizations access to an enormous wealth of information from anywhere in the world. Through the emails and websites, organizations can have access to any information desired.

A study was done by Petiz, Ramos & Roseiro (2015) to understand the use of ICT in learning and its impact on the organization’s capability revealed that both the leaders and employees perceive ICT to positively contribute to organizations capability. The study, which was done in the Portuguese organizations studied five common practices which are market and technology surveillance, idea generation,  dialogue and knowledge transfer,  problem solving, competence development training. For an organization addressing innovation, learning is an ideal part of the changing process. Organizational learning involves the acquisition and construction of new knowledge. This learning is an ongoing process and occurs in three levels, which are individual level, group level, and organizational level.  These levels must be connected to the organization to benefit. Individual or group learning does not necessarily benefit the organization unless the knowledge is institutionalized

Surveillance of the business environment is significant in the development of internal knowledge. For an organization in a competitive industry, it is significant to remain informed of what is happening in the world. This will help such an organization develop and implement strategies to remain competitive in the market. Any organization deals with people in one way or the other (Petiz, Ramos & Roseiro, 2015). Thus, all organizations have the need to know what is happening where and why. This is enabled by the use of communication technology. Everything happening anywhere in the world is instantaneously shared all over the internet and reaches all people in no time. The sharing of information and ideas using technology is very efficient and instantaneous as opposed to the traditional methods of face-to-face and telegraph methods.

In recent years, organizations are turning to crowdsourcing to solve problems. This involves outsourcing a problem to many people. Most of the companies are turning to this kind of strategy. Instead of depending on local specialists, organizations are crowdsourcing from other areas over the internet. Crowdsourcing allows a large number of stakeholders of an organization to solve a problem through a common digital space (Aten & Thomas, 2016). It is supported for its ability to support innovation by bridging the inter-organizational boundaries. Crowdsourcing allows an organization to tap into the capabilities of a crowd.

While developing strategies, it is significant for an organization to incorporate as many views as possible. However, it is extremely difficult to collect all the view of all the stakeholders. However, with crowdsourcing, stakeholders are connected virtually and there they can be able to discuss and air their views without any fear.  With the tight schedules placed on the management of organizations, physical meetings can be a problem. However, the management can hold a meeting from anywhere in the world while doing other things. Problems arise now and then in the organizations (Aten & Thomas, 2016). Seeking a solution from as many people as possible is better. Organizations recently have turned into posting technological problems in social media sites as a competition to the people. Whoever solves the problem wins a price. This in broader terms encourages innovation.

Communication technology has revolutionized the way people communicate not only in the workplace but also in our societies. At just the click of a button, information is passed from one employee to the other without much effort.  The great impact is the timesaving factor. Communicating through technology consumes less time. Time in any organization is an important factor. Spending less time communicating and more time working, an organization can be more productive.

Technology has positive and negative impacts on organizational communication. One positive impact is mass communication. Consider a manager sitting in his office and wants to communicate with all the employees. All he has to do is a draft an email and send it to all the employees. Traditionally, this would have called for the manual drafting of a memo, type the memo, print it and then deliver manually to all employees. However, with technology, information is sent instantaneously to everybody at ease. It also saves the cost of sending and accessing information (Bruhn, Schoenmueller & Schäfer, 2012). With websites, an organization can access any information required. Web sites operate for 24 hours meaning that information can be accessed anytime anywhere in the world. In addition, people can communicate from anywhere in the world. The distance between people is no longer a hindrance to communication thanks to communication technology.

Another positive impact is the communication for the disabled.  For the disabled employees, communicating with other employees has been a challenge.  However, with technology, one cannot even realize that another employee is disabled. This is mainly because they do not have to be face to face to communicate. The use of mobile phones, for example, has enabled everybody to be able to communicate with each other at any time. For the physically challenged, it may be hard to move from one place to the other to share information but with technology, the employee does not have to move around.

Another positive impact is that it safe time. Communication technology ensures that communication is done without wasting time. An email takes seconds to reach the receiver as opposed to postal mails. Saving time brings in efficiency. People can share information from all over the world through video conferencing and audio conferencing. Meetings are held over the internet (Bruhn, Schoenmueller & Schäfer, 2012). The flexibility provided by technology in organizational communication has led to increased productivity. One can multitask by attending a manual meeting far away but also keeping in touch with the organization on any developments.

However, there are also negative impacts. First, security becomes a problem. With the technological advancement, people can hack and have access to unauthorized information. One can hack an employees’ work email and gain access to all kind of information in the email. This can compromise the position of the organization. Anyone anywhere can have access to sensitive information and sell it to competitors.

Another negative impact of technology on organizational communication is the reduction of the face-to-face interactions. Employees no longer have to interact with each other when sharing information.  However, information shared using technology might be different from information shared on a face to face. The facial expressions and body postures are also part of communication. In addition, it may take time to share task-related communication using technology as opposed to face-to-face interaction.

Another negative impact of technology on organizational communication is social isolation. Human beings are social animals thus the need to socialize with each other. It can be viewed that working from anywhere is more efficient, but employees need to interact with each other physically (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012). Lack of social interaction can lead to an employee being isolated and unhappy leading to low productivity.

Organizations use social media to spread awareness.  For the profit-oriented organizations, social media is influential in the spread of brand awareness and promotions. Every day, people post pictures on social media sites of things they like.  Communication on social media has become the modern word of mouth communication. Organizations have also turned to social media to spread awareness about their activities and products. This is part of organizational communication.

Social media is all over the world. Anything posted on social media is viewed by billions of people all over the world.  Communication is not only by writing or verbal but also through pictures art. When an organization posts pictures about its products, it is communicating with customers through those pictures.  This communication has been enabled by technology. Through the internet, people can share moments with each other from everywhere in the world. The non-profit organizations such as the World Health Organization use social media to spread awareness about diseases such as cancer and HIV. Such organizations can reach many people all over the world with the use of less resource (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012).

Organizational communication through social media enables organizations to reach many people at the same time. For example, an advert about a product posted on Twitter can be reposted by as many users as possible. This way, the numbers of users who will view the advert are almost infinite. Just a simple advert from an organization reaches very many people through technology.

Social media in the work place can be very valuable to an organization. However, it can also cause very serious problems. Organizations develop social media policies that allow the organization to benefit from the positive impacts of social media while minimizing the negative impacts. One positive impact of social media usage in the workplace is that it enables the management to create and maintain an online profile that makes the company easily searchable. Such online profiles have to be regularly updated by an employee who will also reply to clients’ requests. This way the organization can maintain its awareness campaign.

Social media can also be used as a public relations tool for organizations.  Through blogs, posts, and pictures, social media make the organizations easier to relate to the average customer.  Organizations can use social media to pass any information to its followers and customers. Organizations can also showcase products and media reviews. This can all be done from the office to reach an infinite number of people.

However, the use of social media in the workplace can be distractive. Human beings are not machines. Valuable time can be lost when employees decide to update their social media profiles. For ease of communication, an organization can allow employees to bring their computers to the workplace. However, employees can take the advantage of the internet and indulge in social media conversations thus wasting time.

A major threat of using social media in the workplace is that it opens the organizations network to malware. As discussed earlier, people can be able to hack an organizations system through the internet and sabotage the organization (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012). In addition, malware can be sent inform of a file to the organizations online profile and immediately after downloading it; it affects the system. Organizations use firewalls and ant viruses to avert this risk but with the technological advancement being experienced lately, the risk of malware is inevitable.

Technological communication is the recent form of communication being used by organizations. By use of technologies such as internet, websites, social media, mobile phones, emails and many others, organizations can pass information to many people instantaneously. These communication technologies have eased the communication process with the possibility of mass communication (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012). However, they also have negative impacts. These technologies are susceptible to human manipulations. Anyone anywhere in the world can hack an email and have access to information. In addition, social media sites can be hacked, and inappropriate information about an organization posted to tarnish the name of the organization. However, it is arguable that the benefits brought about by technological communication out ways the risks involved.

References

Aten, K., & Thomas, G. F. (2016). Crowdsourcing Strategizing Communication Technology Affordances and the Communicative Constitution of Organizational Strategy. International Journal of Business Communication, 2329488415627269.

Bruhn, M., Schoenmueller, V., & Schäfer, D. B. (2012). Are Social Media replacing traditional media in terms of brand equity creation?. Management Research Review, 35(9), 770-790.

Butts, M. M., Becker, W. J., & Boswell, W. R. (2015). Hot buttons and time sinks: The effects of electronic communication during nonwork time on emotions and work-nonwork conflict. Academy of Management Journal, 58(3), 763-788.

Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Information, community, and action: how nonprofit organizations use social media*. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 17(3), 337-353.

Petiz, S., Ramos, F., & Roseiro, P. (2015). The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Organizational Learning Practices: A Research Study in an Innovation-oriented Portuguese Organization. International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning, 8(1).

 
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