Do values influence corporate communication?

Do values influence corporate communication? Corporate culture comprises values, beliefs, hypotheses, experiences, taboos, heroes and of course the history of any given organization. A corporate project is a sort of charter which content is shared by the majority of the employees and groups and that controls the way they interact with each other and with third parts outside the organization. Built on the Cultural Identity of the organization, it is defined as being “the response of the organization towards the environment complexity and turbulence”.

Four important parts constitute the corporate project:

The assigned objectives of the company, The strong main values its members share and rely on to achieve the goals, The right policy which is to be implemented, The challenges. The corporate culture, regularly adapted to the changes of the environment by the Top-Management contributes significantly to employee motivation and thus turns companies into customer focused organisations (ISO 9000 Standards, Business Process Reengineering, New Information Technology, strategy planning…). Important aspects are the continuous assessment of the level of motivation and skills on the basis of systematic employee audits, training, and improvement of managerial and leadership competencies. So the kind of information needed, how it circulates, and what information is shared with whom, generally reflect cultural values, beliefs, hypotheses for hierarchy, formalization, and level of participation. Organizations process information in order to communicate plans, budgets, rules, procedures, instructions and to coordinate across their structures and units to make activities work and to get assigned objectives reached. The Top Management receives in return the feed-back by the means of reporting procedures. Informal Culture and Environment Changes It happens that organizations are perceived as social systems based on relationships, so information may not be easily shared since it is considered as personal, not public; it circulates through personal connections. According to an interviewed manager belonging to those compartmentalised companies that are tightly structured as well as vertically than horizontally, "Information which is widely distributed is useless". Fortunately for them, thanks to the advent of the new information technology and the progress in management techniques, the majority of them had to elaborate corporate projects on the basis of cultural diagnoses stressing the strong shared values leading to participative and efficient management; this was a precondition to implemented Quality Management System in accordance with ISO 9001 standard (stressing the importance of communication) and Information Systems. Managers belonging to those compartmentalised organisations who haven’t undertaken any cultural and managerial changes kept encouraging information as a source of power, and therefore not easily made available to the concerned actors. That’s why informal communication assumed consider¬able importance in those organisations, with a negative impact on the assigned strategic objectives. A survey in an economic magazine found that information was more likely obtained from rumours than from one's immediate boss. Informal communication were compensating for the centralized, formalized, and limited participative nature of information flows.

To day that we are witnessing the development of new behaviours, attitudes and ways of running businesses, managers are less tolerant of uncertainty, pay very attention to formalised structure (defining responsibilities and authorities) and hierarchy and do insist on a communication strategy. Communication patterns are much more open but formalised in detailed communication plans, including internal and external communication. Given their view of organizations as instrumental rather than socio-political, their respective policies aim to shared and comprehensive informa¬tion with everyone who has an interest in it. Information is organised to be put to use; its value is instrumental, not social.

This change is due to the revolution in computing and communication that has induced a technological progress and use of information technology, so let’s bet that it will continue at a rapid pace. For many years, scholars in organizational behaviour have attempted to demonstrate the link between an organization’s culture and its performance. It has been argued that the success of an organization’s strategy depends, to a significant extent, on the culture of the organization. One common thing that greatly influences many of the organizational aspects that enhance performance and increase productivity is the widely shared and strongly held values that underlie and define an organization’s culture.

Japanese Managers facilitate communication at all levels both within and outside the organization. The adaptability of Japanese companies (due to their ancestral culture) is often attributed to this cross-boundary, open flow of information. By canalising the informal exchange of information, and practicing the “Quality Management Circles”, Japanese firms can generate and leverage knowledge and create the concept of “ongoing improvement”.

Most of the successful companies assign a high priority to recognizing individual performance and promoting the systematic development of their employees. For many years they have employed a leadership dialogue for this purpose, which allows employees to anonymously assess the leadership skills of their supervisors and subsequently engage in a constructive dialogue. Managers with the personality to motivate a team of employees are a key factor in the success of any given company. The company uses a range of tools and methods to identify and foster the potential of future managers. A code of teamwork and leadership defines the framework within which managers should operate and gives them clear guidelines for decision-making. The “Management Competencies Assessment” serves to promote professional development.

Cross-cultural communication

During the last decades there has been an increasing interest in the impact of culture differences on development and use of information and communication technologies. The world has moved towards global markets with interactions between members of different cultures. In fact, global activities are facilitated and supported to a large extent by current communications and information technologies. So it is important to understand the impact of cultural differences on these activities. The preconditions to effective cross-cultural communication are analysis and comprehension of what characterises each of the interlocutors’ own culture and adjust one’s arguments and behaviour appropriately; it is important that people have a concise idea on the cultural values according to different aspects. There can be communication only when six elements interact: the transmitter, the receiver(s), the message, the linguistic code, the channel and the cultural referent. Most of us realise very often that when there is a situation of cross cultural communication, communication is altered because the interlocutors neither share the same linguistic code nor possess the same cultural referent.

About the Author

Mohammed MERABET offers extensive experience in:

- Company management (25 years experience); -Specific Training and seminars; -Quality Management Standards; -Business Process Management and procedures; -Communication strategy; -Consultancy management.

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