The SMU College of Graduate Research Studies organised its first Brown-bag Seminar for the year 2023 on 10 February in a continued effort to promote interdisciplinary conversations at the postgraduate research level. It was a great start to the year as the Brown-bag was well-received and attended by SMU postgraduate research students and faculty from various disciplines.
The student speaker, Nilotpal JHA (Neal), a 4th Year PhD in Business (Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources) student, who was also the SMU 3MT Competition award winner of 2022, presented passionately on his topic: “So close yet so far and so far yet so close: How relational closeness shapes communication effectiveness”. His supervisor, Professor Jochen REB who is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human at the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business (LKCSB) and Director of Mindfulness Initiative @ SMU, chaired the session.
Neal’s research focused on the impact of workplace relationships on key individual organisational outcomes, and he presented one of the projects within this stream of work. The project he presented looked at the impact of relational closeness at work on communication effectiveness. His theoretical arguments focused on explaining how attention and engagement in a conversation might be shaped by relational closeness, in-turn impacting communication effectiveness. With the guidance of his supervisor, Neal leveraged on the literature on mindfulness to make these propositions.
He presented two studies; an online study where participants were asked to recall interactions with a close colleague or an acquaintance and a second study conducted with undergraduate students interacting with each other in pairs. The Brown-bag facilitated a fruitful discussion between Neal and the participants, with participants adding their insights and highlighting important alternative explanations and counter arguments, challenging his arguments in a constructive manner.
As he continues to conduct further analysis of both these data collection exercises, Neal hopes to make a meaningful contribution to address the mounting organisational costs relating to communication breakdowns in the workplace.
The next Brown-bag seminar will be happening on 17 March 2023. Please stay tuned to the CGRS site for further information.
