Following several threads on communication, credibility, and
trust, and whether communication depends on listeners or not:
This seems to me another of the difficult knots we've taken up
from time to time. Trust and credibility clearly affect whether or not the
hearer will accept, or even understand, what the speaker (writer, actor or
other communicator) wishes to convey. Yet equally, to simply say "without
trust, there's no communication" is to abandon the issue prematurely.
There is abundant opportunity for mistrust in a society of pervasive media
(for example), where ideology drives communication efforts. The recent
Aldrich book supposedly detailing salacious tidbits about the Clinton
White House is a case in point: a Wall Street Journal editor stoutly
defended the book despite revelations that some of the most sensational
allegations were made up, borrowed from some movie and applied to the
current situation.
Much discussion about communication seems to envision a face to
face, two-person exchange. Yet much of what we experience is broader -
organizational communication between "management" and "workers," for
example, or pronouncements from "the government" directed at "the
citizens." Perhaps we need to return to some of the early studies about
propaganda and persuasion (several very interesting ones carried out in
the 1940s as part of the war effort), and figure out how to innoculate
ourselves, our children, our organizations and our society against the
blatant manipulations in the media. Certainly evidence suggests that the
Serbian- Croatian - Moslem animosity as well as the Hutus and Tutsis in
Ruwanda were orchestrated hate campaigns .
Sam
MXJELI@MAIL.WM.EDU
Mariann Jelinek
Richard C. Kraemer Professor of Business
Graduate School of Business,
College of William and Mary,
Williamsburg, VA 23185
Tel. (804) 221-2882 FAX: (804) 229-6135
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The only enduring strategic advantage is the ability
to change the rules of the game.
--mxjeli@mail.wm.edu (Mariann Jelinek)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>