Organization Behavior and Business Communication

Question: Discuss about the Organization Behavior and Business Communication and identify the best practices of the company and develop a model. Answer: Introduction The following section is going to make an in depth review of varied literatures regarding internal communications that affect organizational structure as well as culture. More precisely, the following discourse is going to select an individual organization, which has recognizable internal communication strategies and organizational structure. It is required to mention here that the chosen topic for the paper has been organization structure and design in the context of internal communication. The motive will be here to identify any recent changes going within the selected organization and recognize any particular issues regarding the premise of organizational internal communication and organizational structure. With the help of emphasizing on existing models, concepts and theoretical perceptions regarding internal communication and organizational structure, the present paper is going to develop a conceptual model of internal communication. In this context, it is significant to mention that the prime objective of establishing a conceptual model of internal communication and organizational structure is to solve the identified issues or difficulties that the considered organization is presently encountering in the field of stakeholder or internal communication. Therefore, in order to accomplish the aforementioned purpose, the paper has chosen the Australian giant retailer Woolworths. Following the above-mentioned objective, the paper is going to establish a coherent rationale for selecting the considered organization and thereafter will elaborate the background information of Woolworths. At the same time, current organizational practice and recent changes taking place in the enterprise will also be emphasized and evaluated. Through this way, the paper would identify and denote issues regarding internal communication and finally will cumulate all the necessary theoretical underpinnings regarding internal communication. The paper will finally culminated in making a conceptual and convenient model for mitigating the organizational issues. In this respect, it should be mentioned that the phrase internal communication is known to be a transmission of organizational information between organizational stakeholders (Argenti, 2015). Background information and recent changes in Woolworths Among other organizations with retail interest, Woolworths is known to be the best. The enterprise is considered as the second largest organization by the rate of revenue in Australia. In the market, the only potential competitor of Woolworths is known to be the Perth-based conglomerate Wesfarmers. On the other hand, it has been found that Woolworths has successfully won the place of largest takeaway liquor store in the territory. In terms of size, the organization has the number of employee of 202,000 and the gross revenue of the organization until 2016 has been a$59 billion (woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2017). The grandeur of Woolworths operation is not only limited to supermarket retailing, as the organization has stores of Petrol, liquor, general merchandise, hotel and gambling and home improvement (Bolton, 2015). It has been found out that the organization has more than 3000 stores with more than 29 million customers across the world. In this respect, it is essential to mention that the organizations culture and policies are largely influenced by the organizations goal or mission to win the position of being number one across all other brands (woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2017). Following the particular organizational goal, the organization believes in making a well-integrated team of internal stakeholders. The organization believes that it is essential to acquire support of the team members and suppliers first prior to integrate support of the customers (King Thobela, 2014). Most significantly, the organization believes that to dodge the competition, it is necessary to improve the shopping experience of the target market and therefore team focus is something that the organization desires to accomplish through their organizational structure. Currently, the considered organization is going through some significant changes in the organization structure as the organization has recently employed Brad Banducci for the post of managing director. Due to managerial changes, the organization has incorporated changes in internal communication strategy in terms of organizational structural change. The organization has previously faced issues regarding poorly maintained organizational structure and internal communication (Spillan Ling, 2015). However, following the spectacular managerial change in the enterprise, the organization has changed the existing way of internal communication and has decided to become more customer-centric. Nevertheless, it should be denoted that in terms of change, the organization is planning for overhauling the reward or loyalty programs for its customers. Rationale for selecting Woolworths The retail giant Woolworths has been chosen due to the reason that the organization is currently going through some changes in the organizations structure due to leadership changes and high revenue and share market loss. Therefore, the considered topic, which is organizational structure and design possibly, has a relationship with the considered organizations current situation. On the other hand, it is say that internal communication refers to successful transmission of information among the internal stakeholders, which cannot be fruitfully accomplished without a proper and well-maintained organizational structure and design. Understandably, the organization is going through unstable condition of internal communication as well. However, another reason for considering the retail organization Woolworths is, instead of suffering through a long-term managerial instability, Woolworthss revenue margin and brand recognition is still maintaining its position to be the second market leader in the market front of Australian after Wesfarmers. Therefore, internal communication issues and its impact on the organizational structure of an organization like Woolworths, which has recently gone through huge management changes is justified. Practice of Woolworths regarding organizational structure Prior to elaborate the existing organizational structure and internal communication method of the considered organization Woolworths, it is essential to point out that for giant international organizations like Woolworths, it is essential to break the organization in several parts and distribute the responsibilities equally (woolworthsholdings.co.za, 2017). It has been found out that the considered enterprise Woolworths has been fundamentally following the hierarchical or divisional organizational structure. As per the reason that in divisional or hierarchical organizational structure, responsibilities of an organization are distributed to several divisions although every subordinate group work under one individual head or authority. However, in this respect it is essential to denote that unfortunately in divisional organizational structure, an organization cannot successfully accomplish a prosperous communication with all the internal stakeholders (woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2017). T he reason behind such possible circumstance is that workers in varied divisions do not work together. However, for a giant international organization like Woolworths, primarily it can be said that selection of the hierarchical or divisional organizational structure is helpful as per the reason that the enterprise works in a large geographical area. It is unfortunate that now most of the business critics are criticizing the individual organization structure of Woolworths to be the main flaw of the enterprise for maximizing the illness of management practice. Current internal communication of Woolworths and its issues Following the organizational structure of Woolworths, it can be therefore said that the organizations long term issue of poorly managed management and communication flaw is justifiable as understandably, following the divisional structure, the organization could not have properly pursued an apt internal communication. Nevertheless, it has been identified that in term of pursuing organizational communication among the internal stakeholders, the retail giant Woolworths has been considering using corporate intranet, newsletters, team meetings and official e-mail (woolworthsholdings.co.za, 2017). Instead of these formal modes of internal communication, according to the current organizational practice of Woolworths, the organization conducts people survey and communication forums with the employees. It has been found out that for individual internal stakeholders, Woolworths has kept different sets of internal communication policies and methods. More precisely, it has been identified that for integrating communication with the service providers or the employees and individual contractors, as per the current practice, the organization shares relevant information as well as pull significant feedbacks. The organization pursues that through both formal and informal and verbal communication. Further, it has been identified that Woolworths pursues ongoing direct as well as indirect communication engagement through electronic and written communication (woolworthsholdings.co.za, 2017). On the other hand, in form of another part of organizational internal communication, the company uses annual general meetings, review of the bi-annual analysts outcomes, analysts meeting in documented form, website updates and sustainability report to communicate with their stakeholders. The aim behind engaging shareholders in the internal communication is to acquire accurate expectation from them and to take approval prior to take any corporal actions (Nijkrake et al., 2015). Nonetheless, it has been identified that for the suppliers, the organization engage in a broad communication process through supplier conference as well as supplier visit and company email in order to discuss about product development, business journey and risk assessment. On the other side, it has been found out that in terms of abiding organizational structure and organizational practice, Woolworths conducts ongoing personal as well as electronic data sharing, franchise satisfaction surveys and franchise meetings for discussing about initiatives and opportunities. Most significantly, it is to say that for the employees, the chief motive behind pursuing internal communication is to discuss about organizations expectation from the employee, employee development programs and any kind of issue an d concern regarding employees. However, it has been understood that instead of having varied practices and ways of integrating internal communication with the help of different convenient communication procedures, Woolworths is found to have a relatively weak internal communication practice (woolworthsholdings.co.za, 2017). The prime reasons behind such a circumstance is found to be lack of engagement from the employees, different cultural backgrounds of the subordinates that are culminating into cultural conflicts and most significantly, lack of proper leadership. Henceforth, it seems that the organizations long running hierarchical structure is not working as per the expectation. However, it has been also understood that the organizations long running managerial dispute is having a long-term and negative impact on the premise of internal communication. Industry internal communication models in the context of organizational structure Prior to elaborate different theoretical underpinning regarding internal communication of business organizations, it is significant to understand organizational structure and its relationship with inter-stakeholder communication. Fundamentally, organizational structure and design can be classified among functional, divisional and matrix type (Ashkenas et al., 2015). However, there is a contradictory percept that says that in terms of organizational structure, line and staff organizational structure and project organizational structure should be also regarded well. In the functional organizational structure, individual departments of an organization is integrated or grouped together for accomplishing organizational goal (Butler Wilson, 2015). However, it is to mention in this context that functional structure does not work well for large business enterprises, which are expanded on a large extent on international premises. Next is the divisional structure, in which an organization for ms different departments based on varied responsibility. It is essential to mention that the bases for establishing different departments are function, product, project, geographic territory and finally combination approach (Fan et al., 2013). The last though not least identifiable and applicable organizational structure and design is known to be the matrix style, which is considered to an amalgamation of the functionalities of functional as well as divisional structure (Guadalupe et al., 2013). More precisely, in the matrix style an organization can integrate its department and can distribute the responsibility into different departments. However, the phrase internal communication is considered to be another name of corporate communication (Krl Krlov, 2016). More specifically, the goal of internal communication is to provide corporate level data to all the subordinates and demand their individual opinion regarding the particular information. The role of internal communication in a business organization is beyond acceptability as the aspect is supposed to be intrinsic to the managerial work (Halter, 2015). Internal communication plays a significant role in determining the performance of an organization. Most importantly, it has been found evident from many researches those say that more than 70% of the change programs fail due to not having a weekly managed internal communication system (Grunig, 2013). However, it is a matter of disappointment that employee relation, which is a integral part of organizational culture, structure and the expected outcome area of internal communication, is undervalued most of the time. According to the human communication theory, in business organizations, in term of internal communication aspects, intrapersonal, interpersonal, group and mediated communication should be pursued (Goodman Hirsch, 2015). It is to regard in this respect that essentially internal communications theoretical underpinnings are related with the concept of organizational management. The concepts of persuasion and processing of information within an organization is highly influenced by individual managerial approach of command and control (Cornelissen, 2014). It can be said that without complete engagement and participation from the management, it is not possible to share information and integrate feedback from all of the internal stakeholders. Therefore, it can be said that individual organizational management is dependent upon individual organizational structure. For example, in hierarchical or divisional organization structure, employees get less chance for communication their side of opinions with the management (Subramanian et al., 2013). It is because in this structure, information flow from top to bottom line of a company is best possible. Organizational structuring type highly influences the decision-making, employee survey, feedbacks and presentation of official documents, which are essentially the areas of internal communication (Lee et al., 2015). Therefore, the aforementioned brief is indicative of the fact that relation between concept of organizational management and internal communication is true and in reality internal communication within an organization give a proper shape to the individual organization structure. Nevertheless, in this context it is essential to mention that the fundamental theoretical underpinning of internal communication says that internal communication in an organization is related with four functional areas- management, efficiency enhancement, image enhancement and human resource functions. Furthermore, for a properly integrated internal organizational communication, sufficient amount of horizontal as well as vertical spread of information is required (Halter, 2015). Therefore, the above-mentioned concept clearly implies that an appropriate integration of internal communication is dependent upon organizational structure, which enables vertical and horizontal spread of corporate data among the internal stakeholders. Development of a conceptual model for recommendations From the above discourse about varied concepts of internal communication and its relation with the organization structure and design and the current organization structure and practice of internal communication of Woolworths, it is understandable that the organization is lacking a suitable organizational structure. It seems that the organization is running with a hierarchical or divisional organizational structure that is not completely supporting the organization to accomplish a proper horizontal and vertical communication within the organization. Most significantly, it is understandable from the present practice that instead of the matter that each individual stakeholder is being engaged in fair corporate communication though employees have relatively less communication with the management. Therefore, a conceptual model in terms of recommendation for mitigating the issue would be the following The above diagram is a supposed model for Woolworths, which the organization can utilize in order to mitigate its structural issue that is harming its leadership and internal communication functions. With the help of matrix organizational structure, the organizations communication with the stakeholders would become flexible, whereas the company would be still maintaining its function through shared responsibility in a wide geographic territory. The conceptual model is indicative of the fact that the structure would accomplish both the vertical and horizontal communication through face-to-face communication along with email, intranet, notice board and news bulletin. Summary From the above discussion, it has been understood that the considered organization Woolworths needs to adopt a firm organizational structure, which is the matrix structure through which the organization can successfully pursue a flexible and satisfactory internal communication. The model has indicated that along with face-to-face communication in terms of having meetings, the organization should use news bulletin, company intranet, email and notice board and company web portal for communicating with internal stakeholders. References Argenti, P. A. (2015).Corporate communication. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Ashkenas, R., Ulrich, D., Jick, T., Kerr, S. (2015).The boundaryless organization: Breaking the chains of organizational structure. John Wiley Sons. 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