Communication between the superior and employees - Assignment Example

Table of content 1.Introduction 2 2.Literature Review 3 2.1.Introduction 3 2.2.Literature 3 2.3.Conclusion 4 3.Methodology 5 3.1.Introduction 5 3.2.Sample 5 4. RESULTS 6 4.1 Introduction 6 4.2 Correlation analysis 7 4.3 Independent Sample t-test 7 5. Discussions 8 6. Conclusion 10 1. Introduction Superior-subordinate communication is of the significance matter, and a tough communication barrier between the superior and their subordinate would result in poor communication between the employees and their superior, and weak employee engagement within the organization. Such barrier will prevent the employees from freely speak up and will break the upward communication channels as fear will build up in employee’s mind that (s) he will never go against his superior opinion as well as he will not be able to give any suggestion or recommendation for his/her workplace or even complain to gain their rights and the reason is that they are afraid of being terminated or will not get promoted when they do so. Some superiors tend to isolate employees from being engaged with the organization development or decision-making process, which would result in slow performance improvement. In another word employees are just machines that follow orders and every thing else is purely management decision. Finding a solution for such dilemma is very important, as it will speed up the organizational improvement. Having a successful-open communication between the superior and their subordinate would increase the level of motivation and employee satisfaction that would result in an increased performance and the productivity of the organization. Employee engagement and interaction is vital key for an organization’s development as the most junior staff might have an idea which could benefit the organization Bob Nelson, the motivational expert said: ‘‘an employee’s motivation is a direct result of the sum of interactions with his or her manager’’, being good listeners to your subordinate will strengthen the relationship between you and will break the fear barrier, which would result in a effective work environment and better organizational structure Superior-subordinate communication and specifically the barriers between the employees and the management are going to be discussedalong this report and its effect on the organizational performance. 2. Literature Review 2.1. Introduction Superior-Subordinate barrier can cause a poor communication in the organization resulting in inefficient production and ineffective performance. By resolving this dilemma, a smooth communication going to be created between superior and subordinates resulting in employee motivation and better performance. In this literature review, the superior subordinate barrier is going to be discussed along with highlighting different studies from number of scholars regarding the research topic. 2.2. Literature Superior-subordinate communication barrier, which is an important part of the relationship between both parties. The communication within the organization means the flow of information upward from employee or downward from the management and how easy is it to transform the information specifically from the subordinates to their superiors. Information could mean a suggestion from the employee, recommendation, complaining and engaging. Having looked at the literature of different studies, (Tata, 2002; Yariv, 2006) observed that many people prefer to maintain relationships rather than expressinginsensitive truth, (Bisel, Messersmith & Kelley 2012) discribed this phenomena as the hirarichal mum effect, which is the reluctance of an individual to oppose his or her superior openion for the purpose of maintaing the relatioship between them.(Edmondson, 1999; Morrison & Milliken, 2000) suggested that by encouraging employees to speak up and raise improvements ideas it will lead to a successful implement change and a better organizational performance.(Fast, N. J., Burris, E. R., & Bartel 2014)discussed that managers with low managerial self-efficiency were less likely to solicit input, which result in low level of subordinate’s voice and manipulating low managerial self-efficiency steered to voice aversion and that voice aversion was driven by ego defensiveness.On the other hand, (Carroll, 2006) argued that employees appreciate working in an atmosphere where they belief in the people they work for, have pleasure in what they do and enjoy the people they work with, and he agreed with other studies of the importance of a positive communication, as he argued that a positive communication effort is a key factor for building trust. (Lowenstein, 2006) mentioned in his study that the internal communication between the managers and employees motivates the subordinates, which would result in superior customer services. (Zhang, Deng & Wang 2013) in their study for superior-subordinate guanxi at China, which is the system of social networks and influential relationships that facilitate business and other dealings and on the other hand(Han and Altman 2009) believe that superior-subordinate guanxi can be a competitive advantage for any organisation because it creates an appropriate organizational outcomes. Nevertheless, (Zhang, Deng & Wang 2013) suggested that superior-subordinate guanxi would facilitate a two way communication between them. 2.3. Conclusion Superior-subordinate communication is of a segnificance matter and their relationship is a key factor for an organisational success. It has been found that some employees priorties maintaing relatioships with their managers rather than going against their superior openions. When employees got the chance to speak up freely it would result in better organizational performance and better customer services. Effective superior -subordinate communication would be accounted as a comeptitive advantage for a given organization or even for individuals. Having said that, the proper question to be asked regarding this dilemma is ‘’to what esxtent superior-subordinate communication effect organizational performance’’. 3. Methodology 3.1. Introduction The aim of the study is to discuss the effect of the communication and the barrier between the superior and their subordinates and what are the influences on the organizational performance. 3.2. Sample The main demographic characteristics of the participants were as follows: 35 % of the participants were ladies while 65 % of the participants were men. There was no intention of concentrating on men as the number of male found higher than female. The sample contained a wide-ranging coverage of ages from 20 to over 60. In terms of Ethnicity, 65% of the participants were Qataris, 18% were Asian, 12% Middle Eastern, and 8% European.2786 were invited to take apart in the research, nevertheless 1811 participated in the study from 4 local organisations based on Qatar, giving a response rate of 65%. Probability randompure sampling techinque were used to give us samples that are close to representative and every unit in the population has an equal chance of being included in the sample. Participants were holding different occupations by utilizing HR data base from the selected organisations: 905 employees, 631 from the middle managments, 74 from the top managments including directors and CEOs and C-Suits, and 200 advisors. A Cross sectional design surveys consisting of 25 questionnaires where designed by the use of Surveymonkey.com. First of all an agreemant has been made with the HR departments for the selected organisations in order to approach the participants, with the email containing a bio for me and puropose for the study with the hyperlink for the survey. As one of the selected organisation is mine, I have sent an email for a specific number of participants along with the support from our HR department. The survey link was shared to the social network accounts for the selected companis after gaining the required approval from the dedicated manager of corporate communications, therefore my survey was shared on Facebook, Twitter and Integram of all of the selected organization. A deadline of 30 days was set to end the survey or when the number of participants has been reached, by setting a maximum respond counts of 2786 maximum participants, whatever comes first and the data collection was managed by the use of the data management collector provided by Surveymonkey.com. 4. RESULTS 4.1 Introduction The results of the survey are presented in two parts; first for correlation analysis and second for t-test. Correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between superior-subordinate communication barrier (openness of supervisor in accepting different ideas, openness of subordinate in expressing their opinions) and the organizational performance which was measured using (job satisfaction, trust between supervisor and subordinate (see Table 1). 4.2 Correlation analysis Correlation analysis was preferred as a statistical analysis tool because it shows the strength of the relationship between the variables and in addition it also shows whether it is apositiverelationship or a negative relationship. When it is a positive relationship, it means that an increase in subordinate communication barrier results in a rise in organizational performance. However, it is negative then an increase in one of the variables results in a decrease in the other variable. 4.3 Independent Sample t-test T-test on the other hand asses if the means of the variables are equal. By carrying out the t-test, we will be able to investigate if one of the variables has a larger impact on the organizational performance than others (see Table 2). Table 1: Correlation of subordinate communication barrier and organized performance Job satisfaction Trust between supervisor and subordinate Openness of supervisor in accepting ideas Pearson correlation 0.085 0.237 Sig. (2 tailed) 0.001 0.000 Openness of subordinate in expressing their opinions Pearson correlation 0.804 0.270 Sig. (2 tailed) 0.000 0.000 From Table 1 it is evident that openness of subordinate in expressing their opinions and job satisfaction has the highest correlation coefficient whilejob satisfaction and openness of supervisor in accepting ideas has the lowest correlation coefficient. Table 2: Independent sample t-test for subordinate communication barrier and organizational performance Levene'sTestfor EqualityofVariances vvv F Sig. Sig.(2-tailed) DV2 Equalvariances assumed Equalvariances notassumed DV1 Equalvariances assumed Equalvariances notassumed IV1 Equalvariances assumed Equalvariances notassumed IV2 Equalvariances assumed Equalvariances notassumed 1.497 .012 .102 3.144 .221 .911 .750 .076 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 Where DV2 =Trust between supervisor and subordinate, DV1 = Job satisfaction, IV1= openness of supervisor in accepting ideas and IV2= Openness of subordinate in expressing their opinions. From the table, it is evident that all the variables have a two-tailedsignificance value of zero. 5. Discussions From the correlation analysis in Table 1, it is evident that all the variables have a positive correlation. This indicates that indeed superior communication barrier do have an adverse impact on the organizationalperformance of a company. To begin with the correlation coefficient of job satisfaction and openness of supervisor in accepting ideas is 0.085 i.e. r=0.085. This represents a weak relationship; therefore it can be said that openness of a supervisor affects an employee's job satisfaction a little bit. With a correlation coefficient of 0.085, it means that the coefficient of determination is (0.007), and therefore only about 0.7 % of employee’s satisfaction is affected by openness of a supervisor.This result is the result, however, different from what (Bisel et al., 2012) got. According to him openness of supervisors has a direct impact on employee's job satisfaction. Still from Table 1, thecorrelationcoefficient of openness of supervisor in accepting ideas and trust between supervisor and subordinate is 0.237. This presents a weak relationship, it, therefore, means that about 0.06 (6 %) of the trust between a supervisor and subordinate can be explained by theopenness of supervisor in accepting ideas.These results are the same as those gotten by Schonake et al. (1990). On the other hand, a strong relationship was found between openness of subordinate in expressing ideas and job satisfaction. This relationship had a correlation coefficient of 0.804 which represents a very strong relationship. Therefore, the coefficient of the determinant is (0.65) which about 65 % of employee's job satisfactionis determined by the openness of the employees in expressing their ideas. A similar result was obtained by (Hatfield & Huseman, 2010). The only difference is that their percentage variation was 85 %. Finally, a relationship of trust between supervisor and subordinate, and openness of the subordinate in expressing their ideas was found to have a correlationcoefficient of 0.270. This about 0.0729 (7 %) of the trust between the supervisor and the employee is affected by that variable. Going to Table 2 it is noted that the significant values of alpha (0.05) is zero. Hence, we reject the null hypothesis that says that all the means are statistically equal. This is because there is no significant evidence to prove otherwise. Therefore, at 95 % confidence level it can be said that the means are not equal. 6. Conclusion After carrying out independent sample t-test and correlation analysis, it is evident that the means that the means superior-subordinate communication barrier (openness of supervisor in accepting different ideas, openness of subordinate in expressing their opinions) and the organizational performance which was measured using (job satisfaction, trust between supervisor and subordinate) are not equal. Correlation analysis, on the other hand, has shown that out of the variables thatwere thought that could affect organizational performance, only openness of subordinate in expressing their ideas seems to affect their job satisfaction. Even though the other variables have a positive correlation coefficient, their impact is not that much. References Bisel, R. S., Messersmith, A. S., & Kelley, K. M. (2012). Supervisor-Subordinate Communication: Hierarchical Mum Effect Meets Organizational Learning. Journal of Business Communication, 49(2), 128-147. Doi: 10.1177/0021943612436972 Schnake, M. E., Dumler, M. P., Cochran Jr., D. S., & Barnett, T. R. (1990). Effects of Differences in Superior and Subordinate Perceptions of Superiors' Communication Practices. Journal of Business Communication, 27(1), 37-50. Hatfield, J. D., & Huseman, R. C. (2010). Perceptual Congruence about Communication as Related to Satisfaction: Moderating Effects of Individual Characteristics. Academy Of Management Journal, 25(2), 349-358. Doi: 10.2307/255996 Read More