Communications Plan Multicultural With Stakeholders

Discuss about the Communications Plan Multicultural With Stakeholders.

The content of this report is objectified to the topic communication in a business where Samsung has been chosen for the analysis. Communication between an organization, rather say among the different department and authorities of an organization is the fundamental requirement. A successful business, employee management as well as employee satisfaction heavily depends on the appropriate approach to the customer satisfaction. Communication is not required for only the internal management issues of an organization, it is equally important for the relationship with the external factors that is consumers, suppliers, society and governments.

Here, this report is based on an incident of product recall (smartphones, tablet) by Samsung. Strong communication is required prior to such incidents as Samsung is a global company and millions of people are attached to this brand. The aim of this report is to establish a communication plan that helps Samsung to interact with its internal and external stakeholders. However, prior to this descriptive plan, the report has given an account on the different stakeholders of the company so that, different and effective communicative approach can be adopted for different stakeholders. Another important inclusion in this report is the analytical description of the effectiveness of the communications plan that has been suggested here. such measure has made this report more reliable and practical.

Samsung is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company with numerous subsidiaries. Both the smartphones and tablets are manufactured under the label of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. Samsung electronics conducts its business operation across 80 countries and almost 370,000 people are attached to this organization (Roth, 2014). Hence, it is clear that Samsung involves a large number of stakeholders across worldwide. this part of the report has identified both the internal and external stakeholders of the Samsung.

As mentioned by, Shwom and Snyder (2015), internal stakeholders are the individual or groups those participate in the organizational activities. In simple words, internal stakeholders are the part of the organizational structure. Internal stakeholders both influence and get influenced by the success or failure of the business operation of an organization; because, they invest their effort, money and time for the sake of an organization. Argenti(2015), suggested that all the decisions, activities, profitability and performance of an organization greatly impact the internal stakeholders. Without any efficient internal stakeholders, it becomes difficult for an organization to survive in the particular industry in long run. For Samsung, its internal stakeholders are as following:

Internal Stakeholders

Owners: Owners are the significant shareholder of the company and capable of taking any decisions concerning to both the internal and external shareholders (Guffey& Loewy, 2012). Samsung follows an extremely complicated structure for its ownership. Circular ownership is also seen in the organizational structure.  Samsung electronics is the flagship division of the Samsung group that accounted 70% of the revenues for the year of 2012 (Samsung.com., 2017).

Managers: Managers are also important in for the organizational context because they have a substantial role in the determination of any strategies, their implementation as well as for the business operations. According to, Bargiela-Chiappini, Nickerson and Planken(2013), managers act as the mediators between the shareholders and the owners or board of directors. Samsung is divided into many subsidiaries and hundreds of its offices across the globe. Each office has a manager who is concerned with the operation and employee management of the company in that particular region of the country.

Employees: As mentioned by, Ver?i?, Ver?i? and Sriramesh(2012), good human resources are the base of a stable structure of an organization. The success, performance, accomplishment of company’s goal and standard of the service majorly depend on the employee and their inputs for those aspects. For Samsung, a total number of the employees till the year of 2016 is 392,305 (Samsung.com., 2017). An important aspect should be kept in mind that Samsung deals with various countries; thus, the organization is required an effective communication system to handle different issues related to different scenarios of employee management.

Board of directors: A group of members is selected at the annual general meeting, who are supposed to monitor the incorporated entity of the organization. Chairman of the Samsung is Lee-Kun-hee who also is the major shareholder of the company; Lee-Jae-yong and Kwon-Oh-hyun are the vice chairman of the company. Kwon-Oh-hyun has served the position of CEO till 2012 (Samsung.com., 2017).

External stakeholders are not the direct part of the management of the organization; they deal with the company externally. Though external stakeholders do not take participation in day-to-day activities of an organization, its decision effects the external shareholders. However, external stakeholders are an important part of the organization because the success of the company is equally dependent on them (Castells, 2013). For Samsung, external stakeholders are:

Suppliers: They are responsible for delivering the resources for the manufacture. Samsung produces smartphones and other electronic gadgets with the help of microchips, software, semiconductors and other technological intervention in its own production plants. However, it uses few production firms in South Korea.

External Stakeholders

Consumers: Consumers are responsible for the success of a business; if the consumers prefer the products it will enhance the market whereas, lack of customer satisfaction negative affect the business (Anken, 2013). Samsung operation multiple foreign ventures; thus, it covers consumers from different social, cultural and economic background.  A huge number of consumers has led Samsung to hold the position of the most popular organization in the smartphone industry.

Society: An organization is required to maintain the positive impact on the society through its business or operational strategy. Corporate social responsibility is the term that is concerned with such context. Collaboration with the local community to establish ethical and practical goods for the society and the population comes under this provision (Quirke, 2012).

NGOs: NGOs influence the business of an organization by monitoring the facts whether the organization is abiding the provision of child labor, adequate wage system, gender equality, environmental sustainability etc.

Government: Different rules, regulation and legislative acts are the guidelines for an organization to conduct a legal and ethical business (Anderson, 2012). As Samsung has its operational set ups in different countries, they follow different labor acts, industry acts of that particular countries.

Competitors: Competitors create pressure on an organization that in turn helps the organization go for more innovative and approaching products for the consumers (Downs & Adrian, 2012). For Samsung, continuous competition from the Apple has forced it to think the most innovative technologies for its smartphones and tablets so that it can get a competitive advantage.

For this report, the objective of the communication plan is to inform all the stakeholders of Samsung about the incident of recalling the products such as smartphones and tablets from the market. The communication plan will address both the internal and external stakeholders of the organization so that confusion can be mitigated and control over the situation can be obtained.

The scope of the communication plan depends on the fact that how successfully Samsung has incorporated the strategies for the communication plan; moreover, an appropriate presentation is also required in this regard to make each stakeholder acknowledged with the incident. For better understanding description, has been provided on how Samsung can develop a communication plan concerned to the recall for different stakeholders.

Communication with the employees: As employees are the internal stakeholders they must be aware of the facts on ongoing procedures in an organization. However, Samsung should officially discuss the reason behind recalling of the products from the market. In such situation, employees; motivation and performance get affected; they sometimes get confused regarding their job security (Quintanilla & Wahl, 2016). Hence, to avoid such circumstances Samsung is required to hold an effective communicative session with the employees disclosing the current status of the company and its consequences.

Objective and Scope of the Communication Plan

Communication with managers: Managers always act as the mediator between the senior authority and ground workers; thus, they should be aware of the facts to avoid any situations that can result in misunderstanding and misleading events for the employees (Cornelissen, 2014). Moreover, senior authorities of the organization should guide the managers to take control over the situation.

Communication with the investors: The main concern in this context is to give the assurance that they will get the return on their investments. For the scenario, mentioned here, Samsung can present an alternative plan for revenue collection to the investors. Uninterrupted communication with the investors is the only way to make them loyal and engaged to the company (Collier, Blackstone & Taylor, 2012).

Communication with consumers: This is one of the most important measures that the company is required to obtain because recalling of the products leave negative impacts on the brand reputation and business of an organization (Ulmer, Sellnow& Seeger, 2013). Samsung must share the reason why they have taken their products back.  Moreover, they should also give alternative options for the products they have drawn back from the market. Apart from that, it should also be declared to the customers about what improvements organization has made for their latest products.

Communication with NGOs and governmental authorities: Samsung must interact with such entities with the declaration of the issues via the formal approach of communication.

Dozier, Grunig and Grunig(2013), has suggested that an appropriate approach should be adopted while interacting with others. The approach depends on the fact with whom we are interacting. Sometimes, an organization face difficulties to select appropriate options to interact with the different kinds of stakeholders; that is why explanation has been given on different kind of communication channels that could be adopted by Samsung.

Formal communication channels: This kind of communication channel follows the system that involves a chain of commands to deliver the message to the target audience. Such channel is followed when a manager is required to communicate with his or her subordinates. This channel of communication transmits the official information across the organization (Harper, 2015). Samsung can use newsletters or official documents to make the employees and other shareholders such as customers and investors aware of the incident of recalling the smartphones and tablets. The advantage of this communication channel that it will address all the concerned authorities appropriately. The disadvantage of this approach is that the strict hierarchical process can note be efficiently implemented on its own and requires an informal way of communication.

Informal communication channel: Informal communication channel lacks the hierarchal web of the communication. Commands are not strictly followed here. This kind communication takes place in a relaxing atmosphere; for example, it can be said that the conversation takes place among the employees during the free time is part of the informal communication channel (Ruck & Welch, 2012). Managers of Samsung can apply this approach if any employee asks about the incidents happening in the organization due to the recalling of the products. The advantage of informal communication is that it encourages the employees to clear their confusions whereas, it also can disrupt the firm management structures due to the assumptions of audiences on a particular incident.

Unofficial communication channels: This kind of communication is taken place the public aware of any incident unofficially such as using social media to inform the audience about the recalling. This can be done in different ways; for instance, if an employee shares the current status of the internal situation of his organization in his personal social account it will make the other people aware of the incident, however, in an unofficial term. Another option is if the social fan groups of a product or an organization share information (which can be a rumor) on its social page to make people aware. However, Brummanset al. (2014), has argued that using social platform has become more official way nowadays to reach the customer. hence, Samsung can easily adopt this approach to make its consumers aware about the facts behind recalling. Moreover, by doing this, Samsung can avoid unnecessary avoiding of rumors also. One of the advantages of this channel is that it can inform the large number of audience with fewer efforts; the disadvantage of this process is it can spread rumors resulting into uncontrollable disturbances.

Communication is extremely important to maintain a continuous flow of the organizational activities. On addition, the effectiveness of the organizational management also depends on the appropriative communicative relation (Miller, 2014). For the critical evaluation of the communication plan, it can be said the plan can hold successful results if it is implemented in a proper way. Before implementation of any plan collective decisions are required to be taken; for this case, Samsung authority should understand importance of this communication plan to address its different stakeholders about situation. On addition, the company must accept and analyze the feedback of this plan so that improvement in the communication plan can be done for later. For a complicated situation, sensible management is highly recommended; thus, assessment of the key points of this planning must be conducted. As mentioned before, Samsung is required to follow the apposite communication channels to address particular stakeholders of the organization. This communication plan will be helpful for Samsung as it will polish the interactive approach with its shareholders; it can also result in a more successful relationship with the shareholders.

Conclusion:

This report has been constructed for the identification of different measures for an effective communication plan. For, this report, Samsung has been selected; the organization has recently recalled few of its products such as smartphones and tablets from the market. In such condition, it is obvious for formation of a chaotic environment among the stakeholders of the organization. To overcome such situation, this report has developed a communication plan that can be used for the controlling of the situation.

This report has first described the different stakeholders of Samsung; importance of both the internal and external stakeholders for an organization has been described in this concern. The report has provided an analytical approach for the description of different approaches, required communicate with different stakeholders. For the obtaining of an appropriate communication, different channels have been followed within an organization. This report has given a detailed account on those different procedures that Samsung can follow to address its particular stakeholders. Formal communication channel involves a chain of commands, whereas, the informal channel of communication takes place during a friendly or relaxing environment. Unofficial communication involves social platforms for to spread the information.

All the measures, described here, has been evaluated to understand whether these approaches are appropriate and viable or not to the situation. Hence, it can be said that this report has successfully placed all the information to satisfy the topic of communication in business and can be further revised while conducting any extensive research on this topic.

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