1.0 IntroductionThis report was commissioned by the President of the IABC to explore the leading causes of poor communication in a business environment. This report presents some major causes of workplace communication problems as well as recommendations for avoiding common communication failures that can lead to crisis situations. The effect of human nature on communication is explored to raise awareness of employee tendencies when communicating internally between different hierarchical levels. The five main factors that influence business communication are examined and recommendations for their effective use are given. 2.0 Main Causes of Miscommunication Poor communication can occur in business environments simply due to human nature. It is in our nature to sometimes think that our opinion is more valuable than that of those who work under us and therefore not pay as much attention to it. This is a very poor view for management to take, as people in lower positions often have specialized skills that make them more qualified to give an opinion on topics. This type of situation can only arise from incompetent management, but a much more common problem results from bad news not being passed upwards in the first place, or bad news not being taken as well at the top. serious as they should be. Housel and Davis (1977) suggest that the communication channel plays an important role in the nature of information transmitted upward: "The channel subordinates use to communicate upward will affect how open they feel to communication." If a subordinate interacts with their superior through a satisfactory channel (i.e. face to face), they will likely feel more open in their communication than if they use an unsatisfactory channel (i.e. writing in the middle of a sheet of paper). .....iness Communication, 14(4), 49-65.Marsen, S. (2013). Professional Writing (third ed.): Palgrave Macmillan. Muralidharan, S., Dillistone, K. and Shin, J. .-H. (2011). The Gulf Coast Oil Spill: Extending Image Restoration Discourse Theory to the Realm of Social Media and Beyond Oil, 37(3), doi: 10.1016/j. pubrev.2011.04.006Shyla DeVeaux, TM, Arnold Scriven, Kevin Samson (2004) from http://www.kdingo.net/engl462group_3/index.php?t=genresTyler, L. (2005). a postmodern understanding of crisis communication. Public Relations Review, 31(4), 566-571. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2005.08.017Winsor, D.A. (1988). Communication failures contributing to the Challenger accident: an example for technical communicators. . IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 31(3), 101-107. do I: 10.1109/47.7814