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bad news face-to-face, but that doesn’t mean that e-mail is an effective or appropriate
way to deliver this kind of news. When the Message is emotional, the Sender should
use verbal communication. Indeed, a good rule of thumb is that the more emotionally
laden messages require more thought in the choice of channel and how they are

communicated.
Direction of Communication Within Organizations
Information can move horizontally, from a Sender to a Receiver, as we’ve
seen. It can also move vertically, down from top management or up from the front
line. Information can also move diagonally between and among levels of an
organization, such as a Message from a customer service representative up to a
manager in the manufacturing department, or a Message from the chief financial
officer sent down to all department heads.
Figure 12.17

Communication flows in many different directions within an organization.
There is a chance for these arrows to go awry, of course. As Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, author of best-selling books such as Flow, has noted, “In large
organizations the dilution of information as it passes up and down the hierarchy, and
horizontally across departments, can undermine the effort to focus on common
goals.” Managers need to keep this in mind when they make organization design
decisions as part of the organizing function.
The organizational status of the Sender can affect the Receiver’s attentiveness
to the Message. For example, consider: A senior manager sends a memo to a
production supervisor. The supervisor, who has a lower status within the
organization, is likely to pay close attention to the Message. The same information,
conveyed in the opposite direction, however, might not get the attention it deserves.

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