Role of Organizational Communication - Assignment Example

?Introduction: Bronn (313-25) d that in modern days, communication or better to say business communication has been perceived as extended version of public relationship tools by organizations. Stro?h and Jaatinen (148-65) also supported the fact that there are certain rules being followed in organization and nature of business level communication is directed by the organizational hierarchy. It is evident from the research paper of Johansson (93-110) organizational communication or business communication helps to convey message to internal stakeholders in different department. Hence, it can be surmised that without the presence of business communication, it would be difficult for organizational departments to maintain process flow and operational efficiency would also get hampered. Johansson (93-110) gave example of Swedish organizations where business communication is being used as the strategic medium to convey the message to different departments, internal stakeholders’ & external stakeholders and shareholders. Gregory (215-23) defined communication as the material flow of imagination, views and understanding between two or more parties and in such context, business communication can be defined as the material flow of imagination, information, views and understanding between internal stakeholders or different business entities. Research Subject: Previous researchers stressed on the role of business communication in the organization rather arguing for establishing a common definition of business communication. But, focus of this paper is not to shed light on aspects of business communication in a business organization rather key objective of the study is to shed light business communication issues in educational university. Considering research work of Bowen (418-43), it can be said that modern day educational institutions are equipped with state of art communication tools such as Wi-Fi, online communications, intra department internet connections, relational database etc and in most of the cases, educational universities use business communication process to connect with different departments. Van Ruler (403-23) also concluded that there shouldn’t be any limitation regarding the use of business communication because business communication is customized version of general communication and any organization (whether educational or non-educational) can use it. Due to such arguments of previous researchers, this study has decided to check efficiency of intra-department communication in the university and finding out, whether there is any scope exist for increasing efficiency of communication between various university department or not? Being a student of renowned Alghurair University (AGU) has decreased the choice bias for the researcher and the researcher has selected Alghurair University (AGU) as the sample organization in this paper.   The university faces difficulty regarding communicating the message to all the departments with equal integrity and such disruption of communication might caused due to various communications barrier. Research Background & Problem Statement: Alghurair University (AGU) has many colleges such as College of Law, College of interior design, College of business studies and College of engineering & computing etc. Now, the problem is that numerous departments have been created by the University authority in order to maintain process flow in these departments but for some times now, the departments are facing challenges regarding communicating with each other and also delivering information in accurate and timely manner to students. According to limited knowledge of researcher, although many of the students faced difficulties regarding ambiguous intra-department communication in the university but till date, no researcher ever tried to shed light on the topic. Hence, statement of problem for the research paper is to “identify existing problems in intra-department communication in Alghurair University (AGU) and find suitable recommendation to increase the level of communication efficiency among different departments of the university”. Purpose of the Research: The researcher will investigate perception of students regarding the cause of such intra-department communication barrier in the university. Result of the research might help administrative department of the University to increase its intra level communication efficiency. The researcher will consider issues like integration of technology, online communications, lack of clarity of university guidelines among departments, confusion regarding department wise communication among students etc in order to understand the nature of the research problem in holistic manner. Following research questions has been selected as guiding questions in the research paper? 1- What is the level of understanding about business communication among students of various departments of Alghurair University (AGU)? 2- What is the current status of intra-departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU)? 3- What steps can be taken in order to improve the level of efficiency in intra-departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU)? Research Scope: Although the research work has been designed for academic purposes but findings of research has the scope to exceed the academic boundary. The researcher has the scope to conduct survey on student’s perception regarding the intra-departmental communication in the university and findings of the research can be used by the university to identify existing problems in the communication and take necessary steps to address the shortcomings. Research Methodology: Creswell (157-173) pointed out that researchers should use the quantitative methodology while doing the survey. On the basis of above argument, the researcher will also use quantitative methodology backed by close ended questionnaire survey in order to collect data from respondents. Secondary data is being collected from journals, articles, peer reviewed scholarly academic sources, books etc and Alghurair University (AGU) websites. Likert scale having range of 1 to 5 (Strongly Disagree- value 1, Disagree- value 2, Neutral- value 3, Agree- value 4 and Strongly Agree- value 5) has been used in order to design the close ended questions. 3 open ended questions are also used to gather perception of students in the topic. The researcher has used stratified proportional sampling as part of probabilistic sampling method by dividing population cluster into four segments College of Law, College of interior design, College of business studies and College of engineering & computing. Then, selected 10 students from each college in order to bring homogeneity in sample population and ultimately came up with sample size of 40. Hence, the close ended survey is being conducted with 40 students. Limitations There are certain limitations associated with the research paper and these limitations can be depicted in the following manner; Sample size of the study is 40 which might not be sufficient enough to represent the characteristics of overall population. The researcher has not used predictive statistical model to formulate the researcher problem which has further decreased statistical validity of the paper. To avoid these limitations, the researcher will substantiate each research findings with secondary data sources in other cases personal judgments will be used test reliability of answer of respondents. Results-Participant Distribution: The researcher has conducted close ended sample survey and response rate was 100% which means that researcher got 40 filled up response sheet. Analysis of the data can be presented in the following manner. Generic Information It is evident from the above table that 10 respondents from each college such as College of Interior Design, College of Law, College of Business and College of Engineering & Computing participated in the sample survey. Equal distribution of respondents can be depicted in the following manner; Gender Distribution: It is evident from the above table that 70% of respondents were male while rest was female. Hence, it can be predicted that more no. of male students participated during the survey process.   Age Distribution: It is evident from the above table that 40% of respondents were more than 25 years old while 25% was in the age group of 22 years to 25 years and rest was in the age bracket of 18 years to 21 years. Hence, it can be predicted that majority of respondents were in their 20’s. Descriptive Statistics: It is evident from the research work of Berger (5-28) and Moss, Newman, and DeSanto (873-90) there can be multiple endogenous and exogenous variables which can influence efficiency of communication technique. It is evident from the above table that majority of respondents gave responses inclined to agree (minimum being 2.7 while maximum being 3.1875). The above data table is showing that, respondents from different departments of Alghurair University (AGU) are facing difficulties regarding communicating or accessing course material. Negative value of kurtosis and small value of skewness, standard deviation is showing that there is small amount of variance exist among responses of respondents. Hence, it can be concluded that majority of respondents were agree with the fact intra-departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU) lacks the efficiency at present and these respondents are facing problems due to such inefficiencies. Correlation Study: Dunne (609-22) and Kulik and Roberson (309-31) stated cross functional and cross departmental attributes can significantly affect the internal communication in organizational setting. Same is the condition for Alghurair University (AGU), where lack of communication transparency between departments is creating overall communication gap. Correlation Study Contd….: It is evident from the above correlation matrix that, intra-departmental communication loopholes in Alghurair University (AGU) such as lack of Guidance from supervisors, lack of intra-department communication, use of age-old communication technique, non frequent updating of course material, lack cross-department knowledge sharing and lack of intra-department student communication have negative correlation with overall increase in efficiency of cross departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU). Due to presence of such loopholes in communication, overall communication efficiency in the university is decreasing. Predictive Analysis: Yildiz (46-65) stressed on online communication as an important aspect modern day educational system and there are possibilities that in case of Alghurair University (AGU), lack of disposition of online communication might create communication deficiencies between departments. The researcher has used following predictive regressive model in order to what exact issues are weakening the intra-department communication efficiency in Alghurair University (AGU). Above mentioned regression statistics is showing that mentioned six factors such as lack of Guidance from supervisors, lack of intra-department communication, use of age-old communication technique, non frequent updating of course material, lack cross-department knowledge sharing and lack of intra-department student communication are able predict the efficiency of intra-departmental communication in 40% cases while in remaining 60% cases, there might be other independent factors. Predictive Analysis Contd….: Mathematical formulation of multiple regressions can be explained in the following manner. Y (Dependent Variable) = ?0 + ?1X1 + ?2X2 +?3X3 +…. = ?0 + ?1 (Independent Variable 1) + ?2 (Independent Variable 2) +?3 (Independent Variable 3) + …… Here, ?= Relational coefficient between dependent and independent variable and ?0= intercept in the linear equation Due to significance statistics (p-value less than or equal 0.05), only variable 1, variable 3 and variable 4 came out as significant predictor for predicting efficiency of cross departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU). Hence it can be said that lack of guidance from top level authority regarding mission, vision statement of the university, lack of integration of state of art communication technology and lack of timely updating of course material by different departments are the main problem areas in intra-departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU). Hence, the university should strengthen the predicted three loopholes in order to increase overall communication efficiency. Open Ended Questions Analysis & Summary: Most of the respondents pointed out that at present, they are facing problem in communicating with other departments due to various reasons such as ambiguous vision statement, lack of technology up gradation, lack of interaction between faculties, lack of interaction between students etc. Although, researcher has found that their understanding about communication is at basic level and most of them believe that communication is important for following and interacting rules and regulation. Some respondents suggested that the university should establish a separate communication department for handling student queries. Some respondents also stated that intra-departmental communication can be increased by periodic interaction between university staff and respondents also suggested to top management to conduct weekly meeting between staff. Summary It can be summarized that lack of guidance from top level authority regarding mission, vision statement of the university, lack of integration of state of art communication technology and lack of timely updating of course material by different departments are the main problem areas in intra-departmental communication in Alghurair University (AGU) and the University should take necessary steps to address these short comings. Conclusion and Recommendation: High mean value is suggesting that majority of respondents’ pointed out that the University should ask departments to meet weekly and share knowledge, cross department student exchange can also be used to increase communication efficiency in the University, communicating a clear message through all department will also be important factor while integration of state-of art communication platform can also increase cross departmental communication efficiency. Regression model has also found the similar kind of result. Hence, it can be concluded that Alghurair University (AGU) has the scope to increase cross departmental communication efficiency by not only technology integration but also with increase in interaction between departments through meetings. Read More