Communication

in Organizations
Klemens Ismoyo Djajapurusa (1206290043)
Mid-Term Semester 4 Exam

1. Communication is a core strategic function of any organization, and

with the diversification of the global information landscape, it has
increased its importance. The role of communication is to plan
strategically, manage and sustain an organizations relationship with
key audiences, taking responsibility for the organizations reputation
and thereby helping the leadership to achieve its strategic and
operational goals (CERN 2012-2016)
Organizations have their own set of vision, mission, and objectives. For
any organization to achieve its objective would depend on several
components. One of those components is for the employees to be
aligned with the vision and mission of the organization. In order to do
that, the organization must communicate its vision and mission, and
objectives clearly to all parts. Clear communication is important for
writing mission statements, setting company policy, or developing
guidance for employees. (wiseGEEK.com) With clear communication
within the organization, it will increase efficiency. Employees would
know and understand what is expected of them and what the company
hopes to achieve. It would give a sense if direction to the employees.
With an increase of efficiency, the organization could serve clients and
customers more effectively and increase the chances of the
organization to achieve its objectives, as the employees are motivated
to uphold the vision and mission of the organization. Communication is
also needed when the employees need to develop and complete
projects and with a good and clear communication, it could encourage
the employees to contribute to the projects or even to the creation of
policies.
According to Wikipedia, Strategic communication refers to policymaking and guidance for consistent information activity within an
organization and between organizations. It is the organizations effort
to understand and engage key audience to understand, or preserve
conditions favorable for the advancement of the organizations
interests, policies, and objectives.
According to wiseGEEK.com, strategic communication management is
the control of communication in and out of an organization to promote
the clear exchange of information and ideas. Part of strategic
communication management can involve reaching out to employees to
provide information about company issues, as well as facilitating clear
contact between employees and departments.
With a good and strategic communication, an organization can prevent
crises or reducing their impact because it reduces the rate at which
workers react to changes.

2. a. Key abilities for effective organization communication:

! Discover connection
Systems thinking does not come naturally. Several tendencies
prevent us from seeing the system. One of those tendencies is
that most of us have been taught to break problems down, to
focus on a single problem and look for its cause. But in most
cases of most organizations, it is never a single problem but a
chain of interconnected factors that interacted in a complex way.
Focusing on one part of the system led to over-looking other
important factors. The system model offers a general way to
understand the world that takes its complexity into account. The
basic constituents of a system are its components and the
relationships among them. (page 33-35) The author of the book
mentioned two important types of systems, which are
organizational systems that introduced a network diagram of a
communication in the organization and the process system that
includes seven principles:
i. The whole is more than the sum of its parts
ii. Complex cause-effect relationship
iii. Find the right levers
iv. To understand a system, dont just focus on the system
itself
v. Adaptable system
vi. History is important in organizational systems
vii. Continual learning and review
! Uncovering Assumption Critical thinking
The society from which an organization draws its members
provides a context through which people makes sense out of
their experiences at work. This context guides and constrains
their actions at work and in turn guides and constrains the kinds
of organizational strategies they will enact. Understanding the
organizations that exist within a society and understanding how
communication functions in them involves assessing them
critically, that is, not taking them for granted. Three key
considerations:
i. Social Values and Myths
Organizations and its members exist within a certain
societal contexts and the norms and values of a society
articulated in social myths. Although there are no clear
evidence to prove these myths are true, but they form the
values of their citizens, they way they think, how they
should act. These societal myths provide people with
stable and predictable lives, both inside and outside of
their organizations (page. 44). Organizations need to use
this norms and values as the basis and guidelines for the
strategy of their communication.
ii. Communication and Organizational Tension
Society does not only form by beliefs and norms, but
according to some theorists, tensions also form the basis

of society. Organizations also need to know and

understand these tensions in order to get the best
communication strategy for their employees. In sum, all
societies have characteristic myths, expressions of core
beliefs and values of that are rarely even questioned,
much less examined carefully and critically. Myths may or
may not be true in an empirical sense, but they are
treated as if they are true by members of a society.
Articulated in stories and rituals, societal myths both
express the core values and beliefs of a society and help
to manage its core tensions (page. 46).
iii. Critique as strategy to understand organization
A critical approach assumes that things are not what
they seem and presumes that current arrangements in
organizations often favor some types of people at the
expense of others. It invites us to look below the surface
of the organization for deep-seated power relationship
that render the playing field in the organization uneven
and advantage those currently in ascendance over
groups not in power (page. 46-47).
! Valuing Differences New ideas
After discussing the point above, most organizations tend to be
homogenous where it is easier to design a communication
strategy and policies for its homogenous employees. It is easier
to handle people with the same kind of background and way of
thinking. But this is also a disadvantage to the organization, as
because for the fact that the employees have the same way of
thinking and this applies to the way they solve the problems of
the organization. They would be predictable and none of them
would come up with different ideas.
This is where diversity takes its place. With a diversification of
employees, it will lead to more innovative ideas and more
effective decisions.
! Thinking Globally
In this century, more and more companies have changed their
operation from local to global companies to earn more profit,
which one of the main objective of the company. With this
strategy in mind, companies must open their doors to welcome
foreign talents and not concentrate on only hiring local people.
In order for companies to succeed globally, they must know how
the world works globally and in order to do that, companies must
have the edge to separate them from other companies and to
compete globally.
While it is recommended for companies to have diversity in their
employees, it is also important for them to preserve their own
cultures and identities, which was suggested in the
hybridization thesis.

It is apparent in todays world that globalization is taking place

massively. One of the effects of globalization is that now in
some eastern countries, the citizens are welcoming and even
adopting some of the western cultures.
Understanding the advantages and disadvantages and also the
impacts of globalization, would help organizations in developing
a
strategic
communication.
Effective
organization
communication and organizational effectiveness depend on
taking globalization into account, however difficult it might be to
project its influence (page. 52).
! Understand ICT roles
With new development of technologies at every quarter, ICT
plays an important role in helping organizations. New
technologies allow people from different parts of the world to
communicate with ease. And with the continuing growth of the
Internet, organizations must take this opportunity to expand
themselves virtually. These technologies have allowed a
convergence of communication with information. Convergence
makes it possible to link together and sometimes merge
separate applications, which makes integration of information in
organizations much easier (page.54). The new ICT applications
are also allowing internetworking, where it is the use of
Internet to deliver and access ICT applications. With the
internetworking, organizations are now able to let their
employees to work from home. And with the help of intranets,
the employees are able to move documents around the
organizations more easily.
Although technologies now have offered us with all of these
abilities, there are drawbacks as well, such as cyberespionage
and cyber warfare. But it is an understatement to say that ICT
is not needed in a global organization.
b. If I would like to expand my business globally, there are things that I
have to change within my company. First is to change the mindset of
the company and the employees to think globally. That is to take a look
at the global culture, where my business would compete with other
business in the global market. This is to understand the opportunities
and dangers. And also to prepare my employees to accept
diversification in the company. With the plan of going global, the
company needs people who are experts in the industry and have
innovative ideas to put my company one step ahead of the other
company. The last thing that I have to consider is to understand the
roles of ICT. I have to upgrade the system of my company with a more
advanced technology to be able to support the new communication
strategy in order to communicate and sharing and obtaining information
globally. Those are the three main changes and considerations that I
have to take and do for my company to enter the global market.

3. a. In my opinion, I think Pemda DKI Jaya is using a combination of

communication strategy, without the organization realizing it.
First, they have adopted the cultural strategy. It is a no secret that
most of the government bodies in Indonesia have the corruption
culture. That is people of power are using their power to obtain riches
from any source they could find. In here, the obvious statement to
support this is One copy distributed to the press by the administration,
stated that the companies were exempt from paying the advertising tax
for displaying their logos on the buses for the first five years. The other
one, which the companies received, required them to pay the
advertising tax. One of the scenario that could happen is that, once
the company pay the tax, the money would go to the people that
received it, it will not be added to the company account books, as there
is no records in the company. And it is a cultural strategy because the
people that were responsible for this were not the leader of the
organizations. In the most obvious scenario is that these people
internalized their identities in the organization by externalizing the
culture in the organization and objectified these cultures as the way
the organization does things.
Second, in my opinion, I think they are using the traditional strategy.
In traditional strategy, the top-level management makes most of the
decisions. In other words, it is centralized. There is a big disadvantage
in using this strategy, that there are barriers to information flow. It is
difficult to convey the same message from top to bottom and vice
versa. From the case study, most probably, the first decision was to
charge the companies advertising tax, and that was the message
conveyed to the employees and to inform the 3 companies. But when
there was a change in that decision, that was to forgo the tax, this
message was not communicated properly downwards. That was why,
Ms Endang Widjajanti, the head of BPKD, did not know why the 3
companies still holding the old contract. This particular incident could
also happened because of the cultural strategy implication. The order
to not charge advertising tax to the companies, might have been
received by the lower level employees, and was seen as an opportunity
for the employees to follow one of the cultures in the organization,
which was corruption.
The leadership type being used in Pemda DKI is the traditional
strategy of leadership. In this strategy, the employees must
demonstrate loyalty, both to the organization and to their sponsors in
the power elite. They must keep their distance from people below them
in the hierarchy. Above all, they do not make waves; creative
approaches and new ideas threaten the stability and predictability that
are hallmarks of the traditional strategy of organizing(page 98). In the
organization where I used to work, the order to do things came from
managers, but the decisions and the follow-ups came from the person
who is responsible for the completion of the task. From the case study,
the buses came in 6 months ago, yet there were no one following up
this task, till Ahok issued an order to look into it. The lower level

employees have no initiative to do a follow-up on their own, unless they

are told to do so. They do not dare to go against their managers
because they want to be on the safe and good side of the bosses to be
able to be promoted.
b. In my opinion, the way to go with organization is the relational
strategy, where the decision-making is decentralized to be more
efficient for the organization. Running a city is not an easy task, as it
would involve a lot of organizations and people. It would not be efficient
if the top-level management makes all of the decisions only. Each of
the organizations must train, empower, and encourage their employees
to be able to make their own decision, based on the best situation
analysis for each case. Get the employees to participate in decisionmaking. Give the employees better job enrichment and enlargement to
motivate them, which is lacking in Indonesia state owned organization.
Provide them with rewards, such as pay increments or promotion, if
they are good at what they do, especially making tough decisions for
difficult situations. Position trusted employees to monitor the other
employees and to remind them the new vision and mission of the
organization. The direction where the organization wants to go and that
the employees are a vital part to make this a successful transition. This
would slowly reduce the culture of corruption in the organization. Of
course, to totally eradicate this particular culture is to start from the
highest level of management. The managers need to show the lower
level employees that corruption is no longer tolerated in any
organization, which in my opinion it is what Mr. Jokowi and Mr. Ahok is
doing in Jakarta. Once each department from each organization are
able to run independently from the central government, it would create
a more efficient way of work.

References
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