The Meaning-Centered Approach: Zappos And Interpersonal Communication

In reviewing organizational communication as people, there are occurrences that allow for people of different cultural perspectives and who may speak different languages to create relationships to achieve diverse purposes. These relationships are forged when human interactions and communications amongst people who share similar interest both work and interpersonal interactions.

Using the Meaning-Centered Approach, Zappos has created an organization through ongoing human interaction. Their core values are communicated through training and employees respond positively with a shared understanding, as they experience an environment of family and happiness at all times. If you’ve ever heard the term “one bad apple spoiling the bunch”, you would

Some of the Zappos core values are to build relations through open and honest communications, build a positive team, and embrace and drive change, to name a few. For me, the most rewarding core value and an illustration of socialization described by a Zappos employee, is to “Deliver WOW service”.

Delivering WOW service incorporates honesty, trust, and the sense of building relationships with others. There is such great pride exhibited by Zappos employees that they inherit the message communicated by the company that spills over into their personal lives and will influence their social identity. “Relationship communication contributes to individuals’ identification with an organization or sense of “belonging” in their work environment.” (Shockley-Zalabak, 2015, pg. 31)

Functional Tradition would see my answer differently if the message of the company was not transmitted as organizational communication as people. For example, if the Zappos message was transmitted as organizational communication as meaning, there would be ever changing behaviors because those interactions would create multiple realities and perceptions that become the process through which meanings are