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ACCA Applied Knowledge · Business and Technology · Communicating in business

Senior managers at Larkin Co pass information about planned job cuts down through four layers of management. By the time it reaches staff, parts have been left out and others exaggerated. Which combination of barriers best explains this?

Filtering and distortion from a long chain of communication best explain it. Each management layer may omit or alter parts of the message, so details are lost or exaggerated by the time it reaches staff. The scenario gives no sign of language, noise or overload problems.

  1. AFiltering and distortion arising from a long chain of communicationCorrect
  2. BSemantic barrier from translation between languages
  3. CPhysical barrier from open-plan noise
  4. DInformation overload from the use of email

Explanation

Passing a message through many layers lets each person filter out or alter content, causing omissions and exaggeration. This is a structural problem of a long communication chain. Nothing in the scenario suggests language translation, noise or too many emails.

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