Pdf barriers to communication

In most instances the barrier is taken as axiomatic unlike economics and some other disciplines, writings on linguistics seem to embrace an implicit view of what constitutes a barrier. There is also very little effort in these studies to discover, at the individual level, the im- plications of these linguistic barriers to such spatial behaviour as migration, job searches, etc. There are other barriers to inter-personal communication besides those asso- ciated directly with language.

Culture and education have been highlighted in several studies and often seem linked to language barriers. But there are also potentially deeper barriers. Barriers to communication Trust and confidence are required for complete communication between in- dividuals. Lack of such confidence can lead to distortions in the information flow. In the economic literature this problem was initially formulated by Akerlof in terms o f sales o f second hand cars.

The seller will inevitably have dif- ficulties in communicating the full information available to him regarding a vehi- cle because the prospective purchaser will have have a natural inclination to distrust many of the details. The same type o f barrier, that relating to trust, also emerges in medical works and the problems o f communicating between doctor and patient; e.

Cormican points to communications barriers which exist between doctors and older patients engendering a lack of confidence on the part of the elderly in younger doctors who speak differently and exhibit different social characteristics. From the regional science and urban studies perspective this question of confidence is reflected in land market transactions where buyers are generally suspicious of vendors.

In aggregate terms, it leads to slow transactions as buyers attempt to maximise the quality of their information. It can also be seen as a reason for government interventions in real estate markets to assist in improv- ing overall confidence levels by standardising legal transaction procedures.

Even if there exists no language, confidence, cultural or other similar barriers of an essentially human kind, there are still physical barriers to inter-personal communication.

Geographical distance and physical obstacles such as oceans are the most obvious although the literatue here at the inter-personal level is thin. Modern technology offers a variety of ways to surmount these types o f barrier but each imposes costs, especially learning costs, involved in their use. These learning costs can influence the mode choice for communication at the inter-per- sonal level. A study of a banking corporation and a retail organization in the USA by Moore and Jovanis , for example, found a hierarchy of learning costs associated with different means of telecommunications with the telephone involv- ing minimal costs but electronic mail and voice mail requiring periods of familiarization.

The actual costs of barriers to communication between individuals very much depends upon the context in which they occur. The medical literature, for exam- pie, shows repeated concern about barriers to communication between doctors and patients which could, in the extreme, have fatal consequences Cormican In some instances such barriers may reflect wider and more general barriers to communication between better and less well educated individuals see again, Lewis In other instances, barriers may arise because o f cultural difficulties or language problems Quesada and lead to lack of acceptance o f medical treatment There may also be longer term costs to society o f poor interper- sonal communication which is highlighted in the education literature.

This in- volves the general level of education which people can attain and impacts on the development potential of an area Sepulveda The literature concerned with ways of breaking down barriers to inter-per- sonal communication only occasionally offers technological solutions - such as 13 From the spatial perspective,barriers of this kind can also lead to spreads of epidemics if in- dividuals with contageous diseases lack confidence in their doctors or misunderstand basic public health requirements.

Button and E Rossera multilingual television programmes to overcome language Hindmarsh and Luyken and distance barriers Barron Indeed, technical progress is not always seen to be very helpful and may produce new forms o f barriers.

An example is the barrier which automatic telephone answering machines can have on inter-personal communications Roth It is not surprising, therefore, that much of the relevant literature tends to focus on better teaching methods and on improving personal communications skills more generally. A topic of spatial relevance but one seldom touched upon in the spatial literature. While much of the literature in this category may be seen as somewhat distant from the issues which are normally thought to concern spatial analysts, this is a false impression.

The major growth area in most industrialized countries involves the service industries - indeed, in the case o f the thrust o f the European Com- munities' towards a Single Market in , the achievement of spatially integrated service sectors is a major objective. These industries require extensive inter-person communication - "Computing and telecommunications infrastructure are behind the information flows that support the international services economy" Lakshmanan , p.

Further, barriers at this level are important in terms of adding friction to the spatial labour market - the possession of appropriate technical qualifications in service industries may prove inadequate in many cases if, for example, language or cultural barriers remain. More generally, and following Akerlof's t argu- ment, asymmetric information can distort person transactions which, at the level o f large scale business, may influence industrial location and production levels.

It is after all individuals who make location decisions T6rnquist Individual of group communications Here we are concerned with communications depicted as category B in Fig. In this context a group is being defined as a number o f individuals which, for one reason or another, join to act as a single unit or have a single purpose - it may, for instance, be a firm or a government department.

The basic difference between a group and an individual in the context o f communications is that there may be many points of possible contact with the group and that there will be some fur- ther intra-group communications set in train by the initial individual's actions in contacting it.

At the most basic level there is the need for an individual to be able to com- municate with the wider society in which he lives Rogers , policy makers which influence his life Bengurion et al. But this may be reduced in many cases to more specific communications. Examples of these relate to such diverse things as, individuals communicating with companies, the use o f individual advertising through the media, researchers disseminating their finding to the wider research community Bourne , etc.

The category also includes barriers which may arise in the act of translation of material by professionals for group use Stolt Barriers to communication Dissemination of new research findings and discoveries is important if technical progress is to continue.

The way in which it is disseminated also has im- portant implications for the spatial development of regions and industries as well as the modelling of geographical spreads o f information. For these reason, we spend some time looking at the literature dealing with barriers which exist in the communication of research findings from the individual to a wider audience. Academics and research workers are nothing but inward looking some might say practical!

The types of barrier which have been highlighted in the literature, however, while specific to this group, also tend to have wider significance. One of the major instruments of communicating research findings is access to a wide range of academic journals Clearly barriers here may be related to several aspects of publishing, e.

Since the costs of selecting the wrong mode of publication can be high, it is not surprising that effort has gone into isolating and studying the major bar- riers. Barriers here seem to emerge in several forms. First, there is the language bar- rier Baldauf and Jernudd which tends to limit the range of journals open to many researchers.

Shafranskii , for example, has demonstrated the serious problems that the lack of a knowledge of English poses to scientists.

This has obvious spatial implications for dissemination o f ideas from regions where English is not generally spoken. Second, there is the problem of actually com- municating the information rapidly through journals. The referreing and produc- tion process can take a considerable time Coe and Weinstock Weber's work looking at the time between submission of papers and acceptance in 68 journals indicates significant lags 15 Gaining acceptance of papers may also pose a barrier.

In many instances there are claims that some journals with no supposed allegiances , and indeed major conferences, have been biases in favour o f particular institutions which constrain the communicative powers of those outside of the 'magic circle' Fusfeld Lack o f command o f the correct 'language' in which one would embrace mathe- matics and appropriate jargon can effect a further barrier Braun In other cases it is important that certain 'conventions' are abided by.

There are a number of papers giving suggestions on how barriers o f the latter kind may be broken down by the apprentice researcher or academic Vandermenlen ; Mohring Finally, there is the question of whether the appropriate audience will be reached. The very considerable proliferation of journals, especially specialist ones, can act as a barrier to communication if bibliographic services are inade- 14 See,for example, Berg , Eagly and Coats I for assessments of the importance of learned journals in economics.

In the longer term this affectsthe relative attractiveness of different regions to researchers. Button and E Rossera quate Simpson Indeed, a survey analysis of economists in Britain found some confusion existing between journals which were actual publications and which were fictitious Button and Pearce I Further, it may not be the technical adequacy o f the bibliographical system which poses the barrier to reaching potentially interested readers, although these may exist Carvalho ; Schultz , but rather the inability o f the person using it to pose the appropri- ate questions Mount The greater use of abstracting systems and reductions in the number o f 'hard copies' o f journals held by libraries is sometimes seen as a further barrier, reducing the chance of the casual browser finding an in- dividual's paper Bourne Group to individual communications Barriers here relate to communications which fall into category C in Fig.

At one level one can think of these in terms of such things as advertising and indoctrina- tion where, by some means a 'corporate' entity is trying to communicate its ideas to individuals.

Political canvasing and various forms o f propaganda also fail within this categorization Bergsdorf One might also include the public in- formation dissemination which accompanies such activities as local land use and structure planning whereby planning authorities seek to inform individuals of their policies and, in turn, ultimately gain feed-backs via public participation pro- cesses.

But group-individual communications also relate to such things as society educating individuals and the general dissemination of information in a impartial way.

Some forms of public health programmes, for example, would be embraced in this category as would information systems dealing with employment oppor- tunities Vanderkamp , and public service broadcasts. In terms of barriers, there is the converse set to that discussed in the previous section, namely that of the research community communicating its findings not only to the 'man in the street' and to individual research workers who may wish to make use of it but also to specific policy makers who may be influenced by it t6.

At a more micro level, this category can also embrace firms training in- dividuals to conduct particular tasks. Additionally, there are barriers which arise in agencies and authorities in communicating their role to individuals - an im- portant issue in the fields o f local and national administration.

In many cases barriers in this category have been reduced in recent years with the advent of new technologies. Television, radio, cheap printing, etc. In some sense, they have also removed physical, spatial barriers. For instance, Baumol and Wolff point to the ability of television to take live theatre and concert performance to which one may add sporting events to a much larger geographical audience than any auditorium could ever expect to hold.

Technical developments of this kind reduce many of 16 See in this context, e. Barriers to communication the geographical advantages of agglomeration Richardson and are elements in forces stimulating such phenomena as urban sprawl. Barriers, however, still exist. One of the major problems in the communication of research findings to the wider research community, for instance, still appears to be language. The actual barrier seems, however, to extend beyond the need to make translations available since few respondents ordered them even when they could be provided.

Circumventing barriers inhibiting group to individual communication often seems to involve improved selection of the information to communicated A more scientific approach to translation is seen as one way around the barrier with regard information access.

Anderson , for example, advocates a bibliometric approach in selecting material for translation which at present, he argues from a study of translation of scientific and technical articles in , is selected on a subjective basis. At a more technical level, there is also still scope for widespread adoption of more sophisticated telecommunications technology leading, for instance, to greater amounts of the information about products being conveyed to consumers e.

In turn, though, this will influence travel behaviour. Group to group communications The final category of communications, category D, is rather more macro in its orientation than the others. It can be considered to embrace such diverse things as communications of philosophy between religious groups e.

Biser 18, ideologies between political parties and information between nation states US Congress ; Hepworth as well as more technical matters such as links between the telecommunication systems of countries Anderson ; Barron ; Hudson ; Hindmarsh and Luyken ; Moss and the crossing of physical, geographical boundaries Maruyama Here barriers are often thought of in physical terms, especially distance, and given the group effects there is greater scope for employing mathematical model- ling techniques to assess the impact of the barriers.

The techniques of analysis in this field have also been more finely turned because of developments in the 17 This even extends to the Baumol and Wolff example cited above of televised theatre where the viewer looses both the physical atmosphere of the theatre and the third dimension - depth - of the stage. They influence the establishment o f ghettos in urban areas, mass migrations o f individuals and the establishment o f segregated, homogeneous economic regions. The difficulty, one supposes, is that o f quantifying these bariers in a mathematically convenient way.

Button and F. Rossera related area of international trade theory 19 Because of its concern with tariffs, quotas, transport costs, etc. While the nature of the barriers to trade may differ considerably front those impeding communications, the fundamental modelling requirements are often quite similar. Included in barriers of this category o f barriers to communication must be man-made barriers in the form o f regulations and controls which prevent com- munication between groups Powell and Browne Many of these are of a purely political nature which, for example, simply prohibit the linking of national communications systems into international networks Michel ; Crombie It also includes the barriers of culture, custom and language to com- munication at the group level Pedler ]; Wodak ; Masao This is, in many ways, an aggregation o f person-to-person communications barriers but takes on a somewhat different dimension when it embraces whole regions or countries.

Efficiency in macro level communications requires a high degree o f uniformity or at least compatibility in the hardware involved US Congress ; Martyn t; Lakshmanan In terms of telecommunications, for instance, this com- patibility must extend across terminal equipment, links and switching systems. Speed of technical advance often makes it difficult for less developed countries to keep pace and hence barriers of a technical kind can emerge Hudson The problem may also be one which such currently advanced countries such as the USA could encounter in the longer term unless measures are taken to ensure communications systems are both up-dated regularly and are compatible with other systems Anderson ; Crombie Much of the literature concerns itself with these technical types of barrier but, of course, they are not the only ones.

Poor communication, which may stem from any off the three technical elements of a communication system can impose severe costs to a group.

There is evidence that poor telecommunications facilities have limited the development of some high-technology locations in Research Triangle, North Carolina Button while overcoming inadequacies in telecommunication systems has been demonstrated to have positive developmental effects on areas Gillespie and Williams At a more macro level, Green and Howells have shown a high correlation between economic growth in regions of the United Kingdom and available information technology.

New telecommunications systems are, in these senses, very spatially discriminating. While freer flows o f information between groups confers certain benefits it also imposes costs which cause some groups to object, often resulting in legal bar- riers arising.

A major concern o f many groups and o f individual members of these groups is privacy and confidentiality US Congress t Barriers to communication have, therefore, been established in many countries to restrict communication of certain types of information.

Of course, one must add here that some such bar- riers are designed to limit communications or to distort the information being sent for political and propaganda purposes - the merits or otherwise of legal barriers is a subjective issue.

Removing or at least reducing barriers at the macro level represents a massive task. Suggestions for improving communications between Japan and western countries put forward by Masao , for example, involve a long term strategy with greater person contact coming from both enhanced cultural exchange visits and the permitting of Japanese universities to hire foreign staff on a permanent basis.

This would be supplemented by the translation o f more Japanese books in- to other languages. Concluding comments The literature on barriers to communication is abundant in the sense that it exists and there are numerous references to be cited but it is also defuse and, in many instances, extremely fragmented.

While there is logic in arguing that a trans- disciplinary approach may offer the most effective way forward in improving our understanding o f the implications of barriers, the evidence suggests, however, that much of the existing work does not transcend the traditional disciplinary bound- aries.

In particular, much of it, because of the context of its origins, does not ap- pear to relate directly to spatial issues but, nevertheless, it does have immediate relevance in the sense that it provides regional scientists with important insights into the relevant variables to include in their analysis of communications which by definition are spatial in nature and indicators of the likely impact they will exert. Further, implicit problems of definition abound in the literature and are generally carefully avoided by most of those who have written in the field.

Indeed, in some disciplines the notion of a barrier to communications is submerged under a variety of other guises - this is especially true of economic analysis where, until comparatively recently such barriers have traditionally been assumed away in worlds of 'perfect information'. Added to this, the various elements o f the literature at this stage only indicate where some of the main barriers lie. There does, however, seems to emerge a strong view from the literature that barriers to communication do exist and can be quite powerful in their influence - be it negative or positive.

Quantification is seldom attempted, however, and even soft-modelling procedures are shied away from. Also lacking at this stage is any substantial and detailed analysis - although the relationship between transportation and communications barriers is slowly being explored - of how barriers to communication inter-act with other forms of constraint e.

Equally, analytical considerations of how barriers can be manipulated and used as an actual policy tool to influence land use patterns, fac- tor mobility, regional development, etc.

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Hutchinson, London Quesada GM Language and communication barriers for healthy delivery to a minority-group. It is crucial to communicate effectively in negotiations to ensure you achieve your goals. Communication is also important within the business. Effective communication can help to foster a good working relationship between you and your staff, which can in turn improve morale and efficiency.

The process of communication refers to the transmission or passage of information or message from the sender through a selected channel to the receiver overcoming barriers that affect its pace. The process of communication is a cyclic one as it begins with the sender and ends with the sender in the form of feedback. Emotional barriers are mental walls that keep you from openly communicating your thoughts and feelings to others. They prevent you from being yourself and living your life to the fullest.

Individuals with emotional barriers tend to be extremely reserved, cautious, and insecure. Effective communication is defined as verbal speech or other methods of relaying information that get a point across. An example of effective communication is when you talk in clear and simple terms. Physiological barriers of communication occur due to the physical condition of sender or receiver which might even be physical disabilities.

It includes sensory dysfunction and other physical dysfunctions. Effective communication requires proper functioning of the senses in both the sender and the receiver. Causes of Status Barriers in Organizations. Social Barriers are external influences that hinder one's completion of a goal. Social barriers include opinions and actions of others that affect our daily life. An example of a social barrier could be the use of stereotypes and how they can affect the behaviors of others.

What are communication skills? Communication skills are abilities you use when giving and receiving different kinds of information. Some examples include communicating ideas, feelings or what's happening around you. Communication skills involve listening, speaking, observing and empathizing. Noise and distractions can clog up the communication process on all levels. Avoid Slang. Remain Aware of Cultural Differences. Stay Open Minded for Questions and Answers.

Choose a Communication App. Cultural barriers is when people of different cultures are unable to understand each other's customs, resulting in inconveniences and difficulties. An example would be a Chinese living in Canada. Another cultural barrier would be the customs and practices of a person's culture. What are the barriers of communication PDF?

Category: medical health mental health. Psychological Barriers: Barriers or problems arising due to the stress or psychological problems are psychological barriers. It is difficult to accept and overcome these barriers. Socio -Cultural Barriers: Due to differences in social status or cultural barriers many times we face differences in communication. What are the 7 barriers of communication? Barriers to Effective Communication.

Physical Barriers. What do you mean by communication? What are the six main barriers to effective communication? What are the different types of barriers? What are the greatest challenges to good communication? What are the types of communication? What do you mean by barriers? Why is communication important? What is the process of communication? What is emotional barrier?