Communication and its constraints on the structure of organisations

Control of organisations is one of the principal concerns of management. Day to day control is frequently mainly achieved by oral or verbal communication. It is suggested that loss or distortion of information during its passage through a chain of command can impose a major constraint on the effectiveness of an organisation. An experiment was devised in order to determine the information loss and distortion likely to occur when verbal information is passed through a series of people. It was found necessary to develop a method of coding and classifying verbal and written information before the data could be analysed. Some 21 different types of verbal information ‘bit’ were eventually isolated. It was found that there were some unexpected effects in the information loss process, and that distortions could frequently take place which created an exactly opposite effect to that required. It was also noted that critical loss levels existed, and that the believed ability to act on the information was related to this level. The results are described in the paper and losses and distortions are quantified so that the reliability of the human command system can be evaluated. The losses are then related to the deduced and observed limitations of the size and structure organisations.