ترجمه درست به فارسی: Communication is an important element of the interaction in the workplace and can crucially determine the success of an organization. This has been widely recognized by research in the field of management. For example, Harris and Nelson (2007) point out the decisive role of communication describing it as “one of the most dominant activities occurring in any work setting” (p.12).
Hutchinson (2014) argues that communication in the context of human resource management practices may help to clarify the organization’s goals for the employees, to increase the employees’ commitment and to strengthen the relationship between the employer and the employees.
Den Hartog et al. (2013) maintain that the views of managers and employees on human resource management practices are more aligned when the communication between these two groups is of high quality, meaning that managers communicate sufficiently, that the information conveyed is useful, and that it is properly understood by the employees.
In the economic analysis of strategic interactions at the workplace, communication between players often has a “cheap talk” character, in the sense that messages do not have a direct effect on the payoffs associated with different strategies. Yet, in experimental tests this kind of communication is found to be very effective in changing behavior which in turn can affect the payoffs of the interaction partners (Farrell and Rabin, 1996). Economic theory has provided important insights into the role of communication, both for strictly rational and boundedly rational players.
For instance, it has been shown that private information about interaction partners can be revealed in equilibrium, provided the incentives of the involved parties do not create too severe conflicts of interests (Crawford and Sobel, 1982; Crawford, 1998). Moreover, communication makes it possible for boundedly rational players to coordinate better and achieve higher average payoffs in games with common interests, such as stag-hunt games (Ellingsen and Ostling, 2010). At the same time, ¨ it has been argued that depending on the type of game, communication flows (e.g., either one-sided or two-sided communication) may crucially determine its influence on coordination success.
There is also empirical experimental evidence that the possibility for decision-makers to communicate with each other has a substantial impact on efficiency and payoff allocations in a variety of economic settings. Communication has been found to enhance cooperation in social dilemma experiments (Balliet, 2010, provides a meta study of the literature), to significantly affect altruistic behavior (see, e.g., Charness and Rabin, 2005; Mohlin and Johannesson, 2008; Andreoni and Rao, 2011), and to foster coordination (see, e.g., Cooper et al., 1992; Charness, 2000; Duffy and Feltovich, 2002, 2006; Blume and Ortmann, 2007). Bolton et al. (2003) find that the organization of communication flows significantly affect the outcomes achieved in coalitional bargaining and Brandts et al. (2016) show that communication affects contract choices. Furthermore, communication has been found to affect behavior in strategic market entry games. In a limit pricing game, Cooper and Kagel (2005) report that teams who are able to communicate with each other exhibit stronger strategic play than individuals. In a related study, the same authors observe higher frequencies of strategic play in teams with two-sided communication compared to an advisor-advisee treatment in which only one-sided communication is possible (Cooper and Kagel, 2016). These latter results highlight the relevance of the exact nature of the communication process for its effectiveness. As it is often difficult to incorporate the communication process in theoretical models, due to its complexity in strategically rich environments, experimental studies are an important vehicle to gain an understanding in that respect (Brandts et al., 2019, provide an extensive survey among other things on the effects of the communication process on behavior in experimental studies).