Organizational Communication In Vodafone New Zealand - Importance, Theories, And Recommendations

Background Information

Discuss about the Organizational Communication in Vodafone New Zealand.

This report explores on organizational communication while focusing on Vodafone New Zealand. It focuses on examining the importance of organizational communication concerning the ethical dilemmas related to communication. The reports also focus on theoretical approaches regarding organizational communication while further evaluating the ethical dilemmas related to organizational communication. The report seeks to find out how Vodafone New Zealand carries out its organizational communication.

Vodafone NZ is a subsidiary company of London-listed Vodafone Plc., operating in the telecommunication sector of New Zealand. It has launched in Auckland, in the year of 1998 and Vodafone NZ is a new company, which is the largest mobile phone operator in New Zealand. This company has employed more than 3000 people from all over the New Zealand, and it is associated with the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (Porcu et al., 2017). In 2013, Vodafone launched LTE network, and by speed testing of Ookla, it was ranked first in the year 2014. It is serving to approximately 200000 customers and more, all over the country (Fearn, 2016). The report aims at finding out what strategies Vodafone has put in place to enhance their organizational communication.

On this report, in Vodafone New Zealand, the instrumental tool used was carrying out an interview. This answers to the interviews aimed at gathering information on how communication is performed in this organization.  This research project is based on the qualitative analysis that was done through the interview process of the area manager of Vodafone NZ (Akobeng, 2016).

The collection of data took place in a period of one day. The manager was asked a series of questions, during the interview concerning the communication in the company. The manager of Vodafone New Zealand answered all the interview questions well. The interview responses were viable for 88% response rate.

In this survey of organizational research, there were few limitations incurred. First, the manager was reluctant on giving full information on the organization. Secondly, the manager majorly focused on the positive side of organizational communication strategies in the organization and was reluctant to provide any negative communication instances in the organization. Lastly, the manager focused more on other successes of the organization rather than focusing on organizational communication. The above limitations hindered the scope of the study.

From the survey results acquired from the interview regarding the issues of communication and maintaining ethics within Vodafone New Zealand, various findings were discovered and below is an analysis of the issues done. They were various issues that surfaced. There are various theories that govern organizational communication in companies. They help organizations to appreciate and comprehend relationships and communication behaviors (Papa et al. 2008)

Research Process

Organization communication is influenced by the structure of an organization. The way an organization is arranged influences how relationships are formed in the organization. For instance, in Vodafone New Zealand, from the interview responses, it is organized into a functional structure, where employees are each designed into specific tasks to perform. Through the organization structure, an organization can determine its strengths and weaknesses.

According to the bureaucratic theory by Max Weber, every organization needs to have a hierarchical chain of command where subordinates have supervisors to answer to. These would create a direct communication link in the organization, improving the relationships within the organization. Having chains of commands create efficiency in the organization. From the responses gathered, in Vodafone NZ organization, due to lack of hierarchical authority in the organization, there has been poor communication between the staff and the management. This has affected the decision-making process in the organization.

To guide every communication in an organization, managers formulate policies. These rules form a resource on communication.  The results from the interview with Vodafone manager indicated that this organization is guided by policies formulated by the manager himself. This has largely helped in enhancing communication among members of the organization.

Time adjustment involves having a schedule in the organization, allocating the time for every activity and the duration. Time orientation helps in directing communication and establishing more distinct relations in the organization. From the responses gathered in this institution, findings indicate that this organization does not have a schedule, which has largely affected the efficiency in decisions made. According to Taylor (2013), states that most organizations fail due to lack of systematic management.

Leadership is a crucial aspect in enhancing communication in an organization. Bureaucracy theory of organizational communication, states that organization should choose bureaucratic leaders in accordance with the objectives of the organization. This theory believes in choosing neutral authority, where leaders will not be discriminative or practice nepotism in the organization. Such leaders promote fair communication to all members of the organization. In Vodafone, bureaucratic leaders, who promote organization communication enhancing decisions in the organization, characterize it.

The manager's responses to the organizational culture in Vodafone NZ, indicate that conflicts dominate the culture of the organization due to diversification in the organization. Most employees have conflicts between each other, for instance, due to the language barrier. Vodafone company lacks any form of feedback platforms to improve communication.  This organizational culture drag communication in the organization behind. Organizational culture is an important aspect of organizational communication.

Findings and Discussion

Conclusions

From the above analysis done from this survey, the followings conclusions are made from the findings identified. Organizational communication in Vodafone New Zealand is not at its best and needs improvement. They are so many gaps in the communication in this organization that needs to be looked upon. The major factor that has contributed to poor communication in this company is the organizational culture in the organization. Secondly, although the organization is characteristics by good leaders, the organization needs to adopt hierarchical authority to create better communication links within the organization. The organizational structure adopted by Vodafone has largely helped in enhancing communication in the organization. The division of labor to specific skills helps to create distinct communication channels in communication between employees and the management.

From the findings and analysis of this survey on organizational communication in Vodafone New Zealand, various recommendations are outlined that could benefit this organization.

1. The management should organize training conferences for the employees on topics of improving communication within the organization. Additionally, the management could arrange a meeting after every two weeks, for the employees to socialize with the management and air out their opinions on the organization. This would create a friendly atmosphere, enhancing communication.
2. The management should work on providing a feedback forum for the employees to enhancing communication within the organization.
3. The management should also create a schedule to guide on when activities are done, with whom, where and the duration it is likely to take. Time orientation will increase the communication in the organization and reduce ambiguity. This will also create focus among employees.
4. The management should focus on creating an organizational culture that is favorable to all employees and promotes communication, through making new policies to govern the culture.
5. This organization should test its employees after every three months on their organizational culture commitment.This will ensure that employees are sticking to their values and following the right culture to the core.

References

Papa, M.J., Daniels, T.D., Spiker, B.K., &Daniels, T, D. (2008). Organizational Communication: Perspectives and trends. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Joseph, K., O’Brien, T., & Correa, H. (2017). Tax strategies and organizational communication in MNC supply chains: case studies. International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 20(2), 105-128.

De Nobile, J. (2017). Organizational communication and its relationships with job satisfaction and organizational commitment of primary school staff in Western Australia. Educational Psychology, 37(3), 380-398.

Varey, R. J. (2016). Cooren’s ‘Organizational Communication.' The American Journal of Semiotics, 21(1/4), 133-134.

Paturas, J. L., Smith, S. R., Albanese, J., & Waite, G. (2016). Inter-organisational response to disasters. Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, 9(4), 346-358.

Becker, J. S., Leonard, G. S., Potter, S. H., Coomer, M. A., Paton, D., Wright, K. C., & Johnston, D. M. (2017). Organizational Response to the 2007 Ruapehu Crater Lake Dam-Break Lahar in New Zealand: Use of Communication in Creating an Effective Response.

Seidl, D. (2016). Organizational identity and self-transformation: An autopoietic perspective. Routledge.

Putnam, L. L., & Banghart, S. (2017). Interpretive Approaches. The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication.

Fearn-Banks, K. (2016). Crisis communications: A casebook approach. Routledge.

Porcu, L., Porcu, L., Del Barrio-García, S., Del Barrio-García, S., Kitchen, P. J., & Kitchen, P. J. (2017). Measuring integrated marketing communication by taking a broad organizational approach: The firm-wide IMC scale. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), 692-718.

Vásquez, C., Schoeneborn, D., & Sergi, V. (2016). Summoning the spirits: Organizational texts and the (dis) ordering properties of communication. Human Relations, 69(3), 629-659.

Padgett, D. K. (2016). Qualitative methods in social work research (Vol. 36). Sage Publications.

Thorne, S. (2016). Interpretive description: Qualitative research for applied practice (Vol. 2). Routledge.

Klenke, K. (Ed.). (2016). Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Akobeng, A. K. (2016). Understanding type, I and type II errors, statistical power, and sample size. Acta Paediatrica, 105(6), 605-609.

Delany, C., Richards, A., Stewart, H., & Kosta, L. (2017). Five challenges to ethical communication for interprofessional paediatric practice: A social work perspective. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 1-7.

Gallagher, R., Miller, M. L., & Roso, C. (2016). Effectiveness of Content Order in Improving Ethical Communication Choices in Oral Communications.

Andersen, S. E., Nielsen, A. E., & Høvring, C. M. (2017). Communicative Dilemmas of CSR: Towards an Integrative Framework of CSR Communication. In Handbook of Integrated CSR Communication (pp. 51-69). Springer International Publishing.

Sparks, H., Collins, F. L., & Kearns, R. (2016). Reflecting on the risks and ethical dilemmas of digital research. Geoforum, 77, 40-46.

Taylor, F. (2013). Principles of scientific management. New York: Harper.