Information bartering: the third zone in interpersonal communication

There has been much research gone into studying the nature of interpersonal communication in organisations. Some of these findings have taken us beyond the traditional classification of formal and informal communications into introducing newer perspectives. For example, the emergent communication networks (Monge and Eisenberg, 1987) amongst middle managers are seen as a particular form of informal communication, and it tells us more about the organisation's communication culture. In this paper we are taking a further perspective at interpersonal communication based on our observations at two organisations. We suggest classifying interpersonal communications into three main types: (1) Friendly and obliging, (2) Formal and Bureaucratic and (3) Bartering. Accordingly, a person's domain of communication (which often extends beyond the organisation) could be divided into three zones representing the above three types, and the boundaries of which would vary over time as people are trying to find ways of overcoming the limitations of bureaucratic routines. We suggest that bartering is an important mechanism, particularly beyond the organisation's boundary where the formal organisational routines do not have power