Chapter 1 Introduction to Organizational Communication: Why Communication Matters

We welcome you to the study of organizational communication. In writing this book, we assume that you have some background in human communication and probably some exposure to the world of organizations. In the preface to this book, which we strongly encourage you to read, we discussed reasons studying organizational communication matters in the twenty-first century.

The average full-time employed person in the United States works 8.5 hours per day and 5.5 hours on weekends and holidays when they work. Those who worked in a physical workplace averaged 7.9 hours per day compared to those who worked at home (3.3 hours per day). Admittedly, these numbers came right before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Department of Labor further noted that these are just the hours a person spends in a traditional working environment. People further spend on average about 28 minutes a day interacting with an educational organization, about 45 minutes shopping, and about 18 minutes attending religious services or volunteering. When people traditionally hear the word organization, they most often jump right to the idea of a workplace. However, “organization” is a much broader term and covers a lot more ground than just someone’s workplace. Hours spent in an educational environment, shopping, attending religious services, and volunteering are also examples of someone interacting with or in an organization.

This book looks at organizational communication as a broad term that encompasses an array of organizational types, which we’ll explore in more detail elsewhere in this chapter. Even if you take just the average of 8.5 hours per day that an individual spends “working” in an organization, you will end up in an organizational environment a little over 99 days per year. If you work for forty years, you’ll basically spend four years at work. We don’t tell you this to scare you, but to help you understand the importance of knowing how to interact and behave in organizations. So let’s get started.