Below are some illustrations of the theories we talked about in class. The first image is the most basic form of the sender/receiver model. We also call it the sender/receiver model, the transmission model or the linear model of communication. The sender/receiver model provides with a basic way to understand and explain what communication and is and what is not. The second image illustrates a slightly more complex understanding of communication, including the concepts of encoding and decoding messages as fundamental elements of the process of communication. One important point to take away from the progress of the sender/receiver model is that communication is dynamic process.
The third image below is the onion model of organizational culture and it allows us to understand what culture is and helps us to begin to understand the large number of factors that help account for differences and similarities of cultures. We discussed the onion model when we engaged in the "Island thought experiment" and discussed how different cultures might progress given different environments and demographics.