PUR CH. 7

7 Characteristics of working relationships

1. Confidence and trust between employer and employees 2. Honest, candid information flowing freely up, down and sideways in the organization 3. Satisfying status and participation for each person 4. Continuity of work without strife 5. Healthy or safe surroundings 6. Success for the enterprise 7. Optimism about the future

Acculturating Employees Benefits

1. Ensures that employees get the same information about organizational culture as everyone else. 2. Helps attract new employees who already believe in the organization's culture and values.

Purposes for employee communication...

1. Internal communication is meant to acculturate employees or get them to understand and internalize the organization's culture and values. 2. Serves as a way to inform employees of organizational developments, happenings, and news. 3. Employee-to-employee communication is desired within organizations.

Goals for publications

1. Keeping employees informed of the organization's strategy and goals 2. Providing employees the information they need to perform their assignments well 3. Encouraging employees to maintain ad enhance the organization's standards for and commitment to quart improvement, increased efficiency, improved service, and greater social responsibility. 4. Recognizing employee's achievements and successes 5. Creating an opportunity for two-way communication to generate employee feedback, questions and concerns

Two advantages of inserts

1. Message goes to a strategically targeted public that is predisposed 2. Economy

Two factors that are changing internal communication with employees and enhancing management's respect are..

1. The value of understanding, teamwork, and commitment by employees in achieving bottom-line results 2. The need to build a strong manager communication network, one that makes every supervisor at every level accountable for communicating effectively with his or her employees

Power-distance

A dimension of culture, the extent to which people see inequities as natural and unchangeable.

Publics with high level of involvement in the organization will have...

A greater meed for information in times on uncertainty than in normal times, and internal relations should respond immediately and proactively.

Safety and Compliance rules vary...

Among countries and it is an internal relations specialist to make sure the standards of each country are known

Authoritarian Organization Culture

Arises from an asymmetrical worldview. Communication processes are structured and formalized within a decision-making hierarchy. Ex. Military organizations

Vision statement is usually created...

At the highest level of the organization by the CEO or other members of the dominant coalition

Participative Organizational Cultures

Based on a symmetrical worldview that values dialogue and the exchange of input between the organization and its publics.

Characteristics of Authoritarian Organization Culture

Centralized decision-making, individual accountability for an area of limited scope, high division of labor. Communication is dissemination from upper management to various internal employee publics and they tend to resist change.

Code of Ethics

Document that provides a guide to organizational management's values, priorities, standards, and policy.

Internal relations

Effective communication within an organization.Building and maintaining relationships with all the publics inside an organization.

Most common public for organizational publications

Employee communication

How are organizational policy and procedures normally communicated?

Employee handbook/ Policy Manual

Companies with high uncertainty avoidance...

Employees tend to prefer "clear requirements and instructions" to follow organizational rules,to take fewer risks and to demonstrate more loyalty to the employer

Characteristics of Participative Organizational Cultures

Encourages and rewards innovation, feedback, and teamwork. All decisions are made in a decentralized manner.

Masculinity

Fourth dimension of culture describes behaviors that are traditionally or stereotypically masculine, such as aggressiveness and independence.

What do mission statements convey?

Goals, organizational structure and strategy, legitimacy, values, participation and ownership among employees, leadership, responsibility to the community, ethical priorities, and commitment to publics and stakeholders.

The heart of communication inside an organization is...

In-person verbal communication

Symmetrical Worldview

Incorporates the ideas of negotiation, conflict resolution, and compromise in an organization's operating procedures. Self-oriented and oriented on satisfying the interests of strategic publics.

Downward Communication

Letting employees know what is going on, management to employee.

Training Materials

Materials used in the orientation and training process that help socialize new employees into the culture of the organization.

Asymmetrical Worldview

One in which an organization's goal is to get what it wants without having to change the way it does business internally. Focuses on the goals of the organization and its culture is to resist change, much like a closed system.

Organization with low-power distance...

One in which managers and employees see each other as equals, despite their different positions within the organizations. Communication emphasizes similarities between himself and herself and the employees in terms of goals, values or concerns.

Organization with high-power distance...

One in which managers and employees see themselves as inherently different from each other. Communication emphasizes the power and authority of the top manager giving the information.

Upward Communication

Organization's willingness to "listen to their views." Face-to-face communication with an "open-door policy" is the primary medium for encouraging upward, two-way communication and for building good working relationships with employees.

OSHA requires...

Organizations to hang posters in the workplace that list federal, state and OSHA standards.

Company with low uncertainty avoidance...

People feel ore tolerant of ambiguous situations, have lower resistance to change and show greater interest in taking risks.

Ombudsman/Ombuds Officer

Person charged with giving employees the opportunity to share their concerns and resolve them through informal mediation.

What remains the primary media for internal communication in most organizations?

Printed Publications

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Promotes worker safety standards required by the government.

Vision Statements

Provide an overview of organizational goals in the broadest sense, starting point for developing a more specific organizational mission.

Word of mouth

Quickest means for communicating information. The lesson for the public relations practitioner is that the grapevine will fill the information gaps left by an inadequate internal communication program.

Internal public and Employee Publics

Refer to both managers and the people being supervised

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Regulates disposal and transportation of goods, especially those deemed hazardous in nature.

Vision Statement Specifics

Represents a future goal that outlines general priorities for where the organization is headed. An effective vision statement answers the basic questions: "Why does this organization exist?" and "What would we like to accomplish?"

Organizations with strong individualistic cultures...

Reward employees on the basis of personal achievement s and their is competition among employees to gain individual recognition.

Organization with high masculinity...

Rewards competitiveness and initiative

Organization with low masculinity...

Rewards nurturing and cooperation, that is, traditionally or stereotypically "feminine" characteristics.

Characteristics all organizational publications have in common...

Satisfy the organizational need to go on record with its positions and to communicate information essential for achieving organizational objectives, permit the organization to deliver messages to specie target audiences, let the organization communicate in its own word and way without interruption.

Individualism

Second dimension of culture, the extent to which people put their own individual needs ahead of the needs of the group.

Timely, complete, and accurate corporate communication and face-to-face managerial communication can help...

Secure employee action in favor of company goals

Mission statements are more _______ than vision statements.

Specific

Organizations with weak individualistic cultures...

Strong in collectivism and emphasize needs and accomplishments of teams of employees and focusing on the goals of the group instead of the goals of the individual.

Organizational culture

The sum total of shared values, symbols, meanings, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations that organize and integrate a group of people who work together. Can be a valuable asset in building cohesion and teamwork inside the organization.

Uncertainty Avoidance

Third cultural dimension that explains the extent t which people prefer organizational communication and structures that reduce their social anxiety.

Merger or Acquisition situations

internal publics of all levels have a need for communication about the future of their position in the organization.

Mission statement answers the question...

"How are we different from our competitors?" because of this they are sometimes known as "competitive advantage statements"

Common form of insert

"Payroll stuffer" that goes into paycheck envelopes or gets direct deposit receipts.