Interpersonal Communication_position paper

7/27/2019 Interpersonal Communication_position paper

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NORSYAHIDA MOHD MAAMON 2012183749

Position Paper:

Interpersonal Relationship and Organizational Success

Interpersonal relationship can be defined as face-to-face interaction between two

people. The face-to-face interaction for particular period of time who anticipate the roles of

sender and receiver of messages simultaneously. Human relations involve all types of

interaction among people which is human conflicts, cooperative efforts and group

relationships. Reece, Brandt, Howie (2010) highlighted that the importance of interpersonal

relations can be conclude in one concise law of personal and organizational success which

is all work is done through relationships. Employees are more productive when they have

the ability to develop good and effective relationship with their supervisor, coworkers,

customer and clients. Interpersonal relationships in the organization can be divided into two

forms, first is organizational and second is personal. An organizational interpersonal

relationship is based on the organizational structure. For instance, two men are assigned by

their supervisor to work on a particular task. Because of the organizational structure has

forced them to comply with the instruction and they need to spend time together on a mutual

task, they are participating in a dyadic relationship. (Modaff, Dewine, and Butler, 2008).

This relationship may remain mostly task-related communication which is in Fayols principle

of subordination of individual interest to general interest show that employees should focus

on the goal of the organization not on their own individual needs and desires. (Miller, 2009).

Good interpersonal relationship is very importance to lead to organizational success.

It is because an organization can be described as collection of people who work together

and coordinate their actions to achieve individual and organizational goals. (M. George and

R. Jones, 2008). The phrase work together is refers to interpersonal relationship among

employees in an organization. In order to achieve organizational goals successfully,

employees must have a good interpersonal relationship between them to ensure that they

will channel their full commitment and work effort in the right way to accomplish the


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Interpersonal relationship also related with the teamwork. Reece, Brandt, Howie

(2010) describe that the healthy functioning of any organization, small or large is depends on

teamwork. A team is referring to a formal work group consisting of people who work

intensely together (team with a good interpersonal relationship) to achieve a common group

goal. (M. George and R. Jones, 2008). If manager apply the teamwork in a positive and

supportive environment, it can help the organization to attain productivity, efficiency and

successful of organizational goal. Employees that work in team will develop and maintain

strong interpersonal relationship that may result for better decisions, develop better product

and services and create a more engaged workforce than do employees working alone.

Team also typically provide superior customer service because they offer more wide of

knowledge and expertise to customer than individual can offer. (Shane and Glinow, 2010).

The spirit of teamwork will place employees in a high interpersonal relationship that will

stimulate them to give the best and focus their work effort for organizational success. Poor

teamwork can restrain your workplace teams from working effectively and attain their goals.

Organizations increasingly rely on project team, product development teams and virtual

team to be productive and efficient in rapidly changing domestic and global markets. Poor

teamwork and failure to work together as a cohesive unit can lead to project delays, feeling

of frustration, opposition between team members and decreased team productivity.

(Sirbasku, 2011). So, it is explicitly can be seen that that the low interpersonal relationship

will result in a poor teamwork that will lead to less productivity and interrupt the process of

attaining organizational goal and success. Thus, it is clearly view that the strong

interpersonal relationship will develop a good teamwork that finally will lead to organizational

success.

An organization that has employees with strong interpersonal relationship may have

consistent value with the organization. Shane and Glinow (2010) stated that personal values

not only define the persons self-concept; they also affect how comfortable that person is

with being associated with the organization and working with specific people. The key


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concept here is value congruence, which refers to how similar a persons value hierarchy is

to the value hierarchy of the organization, a co-worker, or another source of comparison.

Person-organization value congruence occurs when the employees and organizations

dominant value are similar. The sense of high value congruence among employees and

organization will help in socialization process of organization. The socialization process it is

very important because it is the process which employees especially for newcomers become

organizational members. As an employee, they need to adapt with the organizational

environment immediately to ensure they really understand the information of organizational

culture and the role-related information to perform the job. By understand both information it

will guide and lead to organizational success because at this stage, employees experience

metamorphosis phase which is at this phase employees reached at the completion of the

socialization process (Miller, 2009) where they engage in organizations norms, values and

beliefs as well as the formal and informal role requirements associated with the persons

position in an organization. (Modaff, DeWine and Butler, 2008). High value congruence and

reached the complete stage of socialization process represent the result of strong

interpersonal relationship in the organization. Both value congruence and socialization play

an important role to assist the organizational success because when the degree of

congruence is high, members are more likely to adopt the organizational value system and

in order to make sure the organizational value system will benefits them, so they will give full

commitment to focus their work effort for organizational success and the success will useful

for them in the future.

Compared with isolated person, employees with strong interpersonal relationship will

generally more sensitive to each others needs and develop better interpersonal relationship,

thereby reducing dysfunctional conflict. When conflict arises, members tend to resolve their

differences swiftly and effectively. (Shane and Glinow, 2010). Miller (2009) highlight the

definition of conflict developed by Putnam and Poole (1987) which they define conflict as the

interaction of interdependent people who perceive opposition of goals, aims and values and


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who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realization of these goals. Low

interpersonal relationship one of the factor that cause conflict. Conflict will lead to negative

consequences to organization because it will result in poor decision and low productivity of

work effort. It is because employees whose experience conflict with their supervisor, co-

workers and client are unable to give a good cooperation to produce a good work

performance especially if the task need for high team based work effort from all parties that

involve in that particular task. Conflict will give drawbacks to the organization if they fail to

manage it. It is difficult for organization to achieve the goals if their employees faced conflict

with each others. In order to overcome this problem, organization must encourage their

employees to develop a strong interpersonal relationship among them.

As a conclusion, a good interpersonal relationship is the key concept for

organizational success. It is because organization consist a group of people where they

need to interact regularly to make sure they understand the task, the process to perform the

task to ensure that all the work effort they give to the organization is useful and benefits to

achieve organizational goals. In order to achieve these goals, an organization must develop

a good and effective teamwork among their employees. A good teamwork derived from the

strong interpersonal relationship between employees. Other than that, the strong

interpersonal relationship will develop sense of value congruence that will engage the

employees in loyalty towards the organization. Once there is loyalty and congruency

between employees and organization, it will increase employees that will lead to

organizational success. Conflict is a situation that will give negative effect to organizational

success, thus to avoid from this kind of situation organization need to make sure that their

employees have strong interpersonal relationship among them. It was clearly see that good

interpersonal relationship are essential to high productivity that will make employees feel

good about their work and will motivate them to give the best not only for their own self but

also for organizational success.


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REFERENCES

Miller Katherine (2009) Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes 5th Ed.Wadsworth Cengage Learning: Boston.

McShane and Von Glinow (2010) Organizational Behavior: Emerging Knowledge andPractices for the Real World 5th Ed. McGraw Hill: North America

Jennifer M. George and Gareth R. Jones (2008) Understanding and ManagingOrganizational Behavior 5th Ed. Pearson Education: New Jersey

Daniel P. Modaff, Sue DeWine and Jennifer Butler (2008) Organizational Communication:Foundation, Challenges and Misunderstandings 2nd Ed. Pearson Allyn and Bacon:United State

Pamela Shockley-Zalabak (1995) Fundamentals of Organizational Communication:Knowledge, Sensitivity, Skills, Values 3rd Ed. Longman: New York

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Interpersonal Communication_position paper