Communications: Core of the firm - Exploring the linkages communication provides within the organisation membrane

Essay by aronkuleUniversity, Master'sA, April 2005

download word file, 6 pages 4.2

COMMUNICATIONS - CORE OF THE ORGANISATION

In the past few weeks, we have discussed how companies can develop their human potential (not merely their human resources - given the view the word resources equates people with other capital goods), throughout the human potential value chain (selection, recruitment, training, development, assessment, pay, benefits and retirement) and explored how we can build an organisation consisting of "knowledge workers." We also discussed how organisations measure themselves against others and in terms of internal benchmarks, not simply in terms of money and profits, but also taking into consideration societal impacts, through mechanisms such as the balance scorecard and the triple bottom-line.

We also explored how HRD or HPD (Human potential development) can be leveraged within the knowledge economy to create an efficient corporation and the function of teams, their formation, and the unitary components that make up high performance teams.

While there is no complete consensus (Thomas K, in-lecture comments, 2004), what is clear is that HRD today is a continuum of change, whether it is a new product or service development, opening an office in another country, promoting one manager, and recruiting another to take his place etc.

Change management researchers like Barret (2002) et.al have recognised that organizational change is difficult whether the impetus is a merger or acquisition, new venture, new process improvement approach, re-engineering, or any number of the flavours-of- the-day management fads.

What some companies still do not realize, however, is that without effective employee communication, change is impossible and change management fails. Thus, they do not apply the same analytical rigor to employee communications that they give to the financial and operational components of the HRD continuum and its value chain.

In his article, ''Leading change: why transformation efforts fail,'' Kotter (1995) lists ''under-communication'' as one...