Organizational Communication

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organizational identity, and organizational identity can relate to a corporate entity and

inform the perceptions and interaction of its stakeholders and hence be a corporate identity.” Extended from this basis, researches in social identity emphasize that

employees who identify with corporate culture would voluntarily generate

commitment to the group and organization (Meyer, Becker & Van Dick, 2006; Hirst, Van Dick & Van Knippenberg, 2009). Similarly, having identification with the value and vision of the organization/corporate, employees are more willing to show support for the organizational objective, which may result in the appearance of altruistic spirit and favorable behavior for the organization/corporate (Smidts, Pruyn & Van Riel, 2001; Meyer et al., 2006; Hirst et al., 2009). In this regard, corporate has to find ways effectively communicating its corporate culture and vision to its employees for the sake of encouraging them to generate sense of belonging to and commit themselves to the corporate based on their identification with the corporate.

2.1.3 Organizational Communication

Traditionally, two and more than two people can create group communication (Bales & Strodtbeck, 1951). While group communication occurs in the context of organizations, this phenomena can be seen as organizational communication.

Combined and based on the definitions suggested by other scholars (Kang and Chuang, 1993; Jones, Watson, Gardner and Gallois, 2004), organizational

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communication is a process that delivers and communicates opinions, facts, values, attitudes and emotions to people in certain organization through appropriate

communication channels, with which this process can not only improve

understandings and create consensus among the members, but coordinate each one’s efforts and satisfy the needs of the members. According to Scott and Mitchell (1976), organizational communication has its functions, such as representation of emotions, morale encouragement, dissemination of information and mission control; further,

well-arranged organizational communication can be regarded as stimulus for

enhancing work efficiency. Most importantly, it’s necessary to figure out what are the

essential components of doing effective organizational communication. Four essences include frequency of communication, channels and types for disseminating

information, the impact of form and content on strategy use, and flow direction of communication (Harold, 1965; Rogers and Agarwala-Rogers, 1976; Richard, Monge and Russell, 1977; Krone, Jablin and Putnam, 1987). Together with these four communicative pillars, the emergence of effective organizational communication is expected. As such, applied to the context of corporate, organizational communication is glue that connects all the employees and ends up achieving ultimate goal of the corporate.

Based on the perspectives from Shannon and Weaver (1949), a typical model of

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communication comprises five elements, including sender, receiver, message, channel and feedback. At the same time, through the work of encoder and decoder, the

communication process is basically completed. However, along the process of communication, there are different kinds of noises facing the sender and receiver. In terms of internal marketing, when the noises occur in the corporate, especially between the employer and its internal customers, then conflict is around the corner.

But if the organization (the sender) can make good use of communication mechanism, its internal customers (the receiver) would be inclined to give positive feedback to their employers, which avoids the emergence of communicative crisis and even creates opportunity for the relationship between employer and its employee (Yu, 2006; Muffet-Willett and Kruse, 2008).

Generally speaking, process of effective organizational communication is full of dynamics and interactions that could be found in certain organization or corporate. In terms of communicative channel, there are basically two different types which are formal communication and informal communication (Lee, 1999). The establishment of formal communication follows the line of authority which corresponds to hierarchy built in the organization; informal communication occurs when information and messages are transmitted in private among organizational members without hierarchy involved. In addition, formal communication includes 4 different types of flow

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direction of information, which are downward communication, upward

communication, horizontal communication and diagonal communication, among which impact of different functions and efficacy on organizational communication and operation is conspicuous (Dessler, 1977; Goldhaber, 1979; Davis, 1985). Though formal communication takes larger part of the organizational communication system, the use of informal communication is of importance because it is complementary to formal communication and helps to improve relations between internal members to create supportive atmosphere in the organization. As for the structure design of organizational communication, there are basically three primary types of

communication structure, which are chain, wheel and all-channel network found in the organization (Robbins and Judge, 2001). Each structure has its pros and cons when it applies to different organizations or corporates, and this is also a fact that can be understood in the use of communicative channels.

Accordingly, given of the impact of functions derived from different

communicative channels and structures, every organization or corporate is supposed to adopt suitable communication strategies corresponding to the implementation of

internal marketing. In other words, based on the external and internal contexts then, it’s necessary for the organization to choose its appropriate communication strategy

complex in accord with the objective of internal marketing. In this regard, the whole

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process of organizational communication would be full of dynamics, in which

interactions among all members are intensive and thus the organizational objective is more achievable. In short, effective internal marketing can’t be achieved without

applying well-arranged organizational communication.