Does Successful Internal Communication at the Time of Change Result in a Motivated Workforce - Coursework Example

Does Successful Internal Communication at the Time of Change Result in a Motivated Workforce? Hypothesis: successful internal communication does not bring about motivation within workforce at times of change. Objectives: 1. To understand the reaction of workforce to organizational change (qualitative and quantitative analysis) 2. To understand the measures normally adopted by the managers under such circumstances (qualitative analysis; from the questions asked during survey). 3. To find out whether communication within the organization help in motivating workers (quantitative analysis). Background: In topical times, organizations are marked by constant changes taking place in its orientation, strategies and even structural set up. The workers need to constantly adapt themselves to such changes. This often cause stress on their mindset and affect their work quality. At this juncture it is important to shove away any misconception or doubts and bring back the trust, which is extremely essential for the organizational success. In order to achieve this, internal communication needs to be strong and effective. There is a possibility the motivation in the workforce might be restored through successful communication within the organization. Information Technology provides several options for this. E-mails, intranets and other innovations help in meeting the high demand of communication during such time of alteration within the organization (Wojtecki and Peters, 2000). Face to face communication also might help a lot to sort out the differences. There have been mostly separate studies about leadership and grapevine communication. According to McKenna (2000), leadership is an art that can get the optimum work required for the organization. The leader also communicates the organizations goals to his team members. He does not discuss about the communication that is more important between the leader and the team and the effectiveness when such communication occurs in an informal way that leads to more interaction and hence develops a bond with each employee and all together leads to commitment. Most of the studies so far have taken the formal side into consideration. In Contemporary issues in management and organizational behavior (Peter, Poole and Jones, 2005), the whole cycle of Team-leadership has been portrayed in analyzing group decision- making and learning. Later, a global perspective has been given. According to Robert E. Hoskisson, “Organisational Structure specifies the firm’s formal reporting relationships, procedures, controls, and authority and decision making processes.” (Hoskisson, 2008, p.100) This accrues to the basic framework of assigning roles, allocation of resources and provides a basis for cooperation, coordination and communication among the organizational hierarchy. (Hoskisson, 2008). Harris and Hartman discuss the problems of Grapevine. According to them, it is not a dependable source and cannot provide full information and maybe distorted. (Harris & Hartman, 2002). In the article, “Heard it through the grapevine: for communicating during change, facts and tips” by Baxter-Southward, an extensive study has been done about grapevine communication- the negatives and the positives, and how to deal with this in organizations. However the right answer can be provided by a proper survey of the opinions of managers and workers. Whether such communication actually restores the faith and motivation is the area to be explored in this research. Methodology: For the purpose of our research we have adopted both qualitative and quantitative research with a conclusive or causal approach. Both secondary and primary survey will be undertaken. Secondary research will help us obtain a background to the problem under study (Bryman and Bell, 2007). The idea is to find out the association between successful internal communication and motivation of workforce. For this purpose a sample of 50 participants have been taken randomly. Out of them, 20 are from managerial positions and 30 belong to the workforce. The sample has been unevenly distributed among 6 different organizations within London. A semi-structured questionnaire has been designed to know their opinion about coping with change and motivating workers at the time of change. The questionnaire comprises of both open ended and close-ended questions. The survey will be done through emails and phone calls mainly. In some cases face-to-face interactions will help. For the purpose of finding out the association some parameters have been chosen to capture the efforts of managers made towards communication and to capture the response of workers in terms of dedication to work. We would ask questions like “how many times in a day does the management make an effort to communicate with workers (either via internet or face-to-face)?”, “how many times a week does the human resource manager hold meeting with the workers?”. These will be directed towards the manager and crosschecked with the workers as well. The answers will pertain to the period immediately after some change has been implemented in the organization. These will capture the efforts made towards communication within the firm. The qualitative research will help us understand how the workers response during such communication. Now, to capture the response of workers we ask a few questions like: “how many optional meeting do you attend in a month?” (attending meetings), “how frequent do you get in touch with the manager in times of problems with work or other issues?” (solution seeking), “after the change is implemented how many hours are you working a day and how many leaves on average are you taking in a month?” (workload acceptance). These questions will be directed towards the workforce. Same questions will be asked to the managers to get their point of view and the final figure shall be obtained by estimating an average. These are the variables (workload acceptance, attending meetings, solution seeking) are taken as dependent variables. We may denote these with WA, AM, SS respectively. Efforts towards communication per day (EC) and holding meetings every week (MW) are the parameters, which will be taken as independent variables. By regressing the dependent variables one by one on both the regressors and independent variables we will get the significance of association between the successful internal communication and workforce dedication or motivation. We get the following three equations: WA = a + b.EC + c.MW; AM = a1 + b1.EC + c1.MW; SS = a2 + b2.EC + c2.MW; H0: WA is insignificantly associated with EC and MW (b=c=0). H0’: AM is insignificantly associated with EC and MW (b1=c1=0) H0’’: SS is insignificantly associated with EC and MW (b2=c2=0) These hypotheses are respectively associated with the above equations. If the null hypotheses are rejected, then we come to a conclusion that the variables are significantly associated. The significance of the coefficients will decide the significance of association between the two factors and help us arrive at a conclusive result. Such a research offcourse has some limitations. For instance different participant might give different answers to the same question. In such cases we need to arrive at an average, which might not be the exact figure. Again we are generalizing based on the opinions of 50 people. Close observation and time involvement is essential for this research. GANTT CHART Week 1 week2 week3 week4 Background research, design of questionnaire & sending out the questionnaire ************* Primary survey ********************* Draft of the report ****** Final report ****** References 1. Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2007).Business research methods, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2. Wojtecki, Jr., J. G. and R. G. Peters, (2000). COMMUNICATING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE, The 2000 Annual: Volume 2, available at: http://www.centerforriskcommunication.com/pubs/crc-p3.pdf (accessed on July 11, 2010) 3. Newstrom J. (2008). Organizational Behavior –Human behavior at work(P. 160-164). New York : Tata Mcgraw-Hill 4. Chmiel N. (2000). 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