Reprinted
in Maidment, F. H., ANNUAL EDITIONS:
Organizational
Behavior 00/02,
ISBN: 0-07-233376-6
Abstract
Organizational Rules
on Communicating:
How Employees Are --
and Are Not -- Learning the Ropes
Jeanette Gilsdorf
California State University
– Long Beach
This
research explored how employees perceived and articulated organizational
"rules" in describing specific communication problem incidents. The research
elicited and then analyzed 560 short narratives from MBA students describing
an actual on-the-job communication problem caused by another organization
member's weak understanding of "how we communicate here.
In
citing sources of guidance on communicating, respondents cited many more
unwritten than written means. Respondents named 22 different means by which
organizations conveyed guidance on "how we communicate here.
An
effort was made to categorize types of communication problems recounted.
About 20 percent would be amenable to positive influence by communication
policy guidelines; other kinds of managerial intervention are recommended
for those owing more to bad individual judgment, poor managerial oversight,
or dearth or inappropriateness of cues from corporate culture.
Organizations
with some written policy on communicating may have thought more about "how
we communicate here" and how to convey that information to employees.
Respondents'
cost estimates suggest that communication problems are a drain on profitability
and effectiveness. Most organizations should examine how employees learn
the communication rules at present and should introduce measures that reduce
uncertainty. If employees can make sense of their work environments sooner
and more accurately, errors are likely to diminish.
Organizational Rules
on Communicating:
How Employees Are --
and Are Not -- Learning the Ropes
Introduction
How
do employees of an organization know how the organization wants them to
communicate on the job? How do organizations tell them? Do they
tell them? Do organizations rely on corporate culture to inform employees?
Do organizations rely on their ability to recruit observant people and
to train them thoroughly? Do some rely on employees' peers and co-workers?
Do some decline to think about the matter at all? A study based on 560
critical incidents narrated by MBA-level respondents permits some inferences.
Organizations,
relying on human beings to create and deliver products and services, lose
serious money and see productivity eroded when errors are made. Many, many
errors trace back to a problem in communication, a problem in the sending
and receiving of signals. Human beings make decisions about what to do
and say based on interpretation of a changing, moving mass of cues from
others in their environment. Some organizations give employees excellent
guidance on how they expect them to communicate; some organizations give
little or none. As will be suggested by this study, however, most organizations
could do more to help employees reduce uncertainty and make better, more
profitable, communication decisions.
Research
Questions
Using
analysis of MBA students' narratives about miscommunications, this study
sought to draw inferences about how employees perceived and articulated
organizational "rules" as they described specific communication problem
incidents and commented on what their organization expected.
Earlier
research has offered little firm information on where and how employees
learn the organization's rules. Therefore, another important goal of the
study was to try to infer the origin of the rules whose violation
created the cost: Were the rules written or unwritten? If unwritten, by
what means should the individual have obtained knowledge of them?
The
literature (e.g., Schein, 1985) suggests
that corporate culture is an important conduit of organizational expectations.
Accordingly, this study also sought to learn whether a link exists
between strength of corporate culture and the degree to which employees
understand communication expectations. Also, following out of previous
research (Gilsdorf, 1987, 1992), the study examined whether organizations
with strong corporate cultures are likely to put more of their communication
expectations in writing.
Another
goal of the study was to try to infer how many of the problems cited
by respondents could have been mitigated or solved if the organization
had developed clearer rules. To be sure, rules cannot cover all
eventualities, nor can they compensate for an individual employee's bad
judgment or imperceptiveness, or an individual manager's inattention or
incompetence. But would having clear rules be important in enough
cases that organizations should attend to them more?
The
study analyzed 560 questionnaires completed by students in MBA-level human
resource management classes in universities from across the United States.
The questionnaire was administered at a point in the term when students
had already been introduced to the concept of corporate culture. Respondents
were asked to narrate the problem incident, discuss what went wrong, and
state what the originator of the problem should have known to avoid the
problem. This "should have known" amounted to the rules for communicating
in that situation in that organization.
Rules,
Policy, and Culture
The
term rules as used here will refer to the assumptions organizational
members make about the right way to communicate in given situations in
their particular organization. Rules might be formal or informal; written
or oral; implicit or explicit; general (an organization-wide policy, for
instance) or particular (specific to a department or even to a task); positively
stated or implied ("do this") or negatively stated or implied ("avoid this").
A
policy
usually sets forth, at a high level, an organization's firm belief and/or
course of action on a given important matter. Strategic planners create
policy, but so also do lower-level staff or line people responsible for
departments. For instance, the corporate communication department might
generate crisis communication policy, and human resources might formulate
policy forbidding sexual harassment. One also sees the word policy
attached to statements with narrower focus than the organization as a whole:
guidelines and procedures are often referred to as policies.
The
category rules contains the
various kinds of policy, but there are many rules outside the policy categories.
A priori, these rule categories were of interest:
·written
and acknowledged (e.g., cited, posted, provided to organization members).
For example, a policy encountered fairly frequently in writing is "Your
manager's door is open. Ask questions or raise concerns as needed." OR
"Our customer is always first."
·written
but unacknowledged (e.g., outdated or not widely available) ·unwritten
and explicitly stated/acknowledged. For example, a rule fairly common as
an oral but explicit policy is "We work as a collaborative team
here. Ask for help in solving problems." ·unwritten,
definitely present, but unacknowledged and unlikely to be viewed as policy.
For example, ·A
rule such as "When you use someone else's good idea, give the person credit
and don't try to hog the rewards," might be implicit and helpful
to the organization's goals. ·A
rule like "People can come in up to 20 minutes late in the morning without
calling" might be implicit rather than explicit and might be very
harmful
to the organization's goals. As
another example of the unwritten category, an unspoken defensive rule such
as "CYA" may or may not be congruent with many organizational goals. "CYOA"
(cover your organization's ass) is generally consistent with at least some
organization goals. Written
rules are conveyed
by familiar means such as policy statements, memos, or posters. In contrast,
unwritten rules are not always easy to trace. Some are clear; some are
"fuzzy." The more they are understood rather than explicit, the more they
blur into the area that is considered culture -- that is,
an organization's shared vision, values, beliefs, goals, and practices.
Rules are sometimes formulated deliberately but sometimes coalesce from
practice. Whatever their origin, they exist, and they guide the decisions
of organizational actors. To
succeed in organizations, employees have to find out that the rules exist
and what they are and decide whether it is in their interests to follow
them. Though one might initially think it would always be in employees'
interests to follow the rules, this is not always so.For
instance, in cases where employees hear conflicting rules from different
sources or where rewards do not follow compliance, people might well decide
to ignore rules. Furthermore, skilled communicators may make communication
decisions that promote organizational objectives better than those suggested
by the "rules." In fact, rules often evolve for the better in exactly this
way. Managers
in organizations think about "how we communicate here" only some of the
time, and some managers do so infrequently or not at all. Since people
assign meaning to experience, correctly or incorrectly, rules are formed
in abundance. If an organization's management does not consider which communication
behaviors it wishes to foster for its success, the signals it sends to
employees may be inconsistent or counterproductive. Desirable behaviors
may not be reinforced. Resulting patterns may be dysfunctional to the organization. This
article will argue that greater emphasis on deliberate, workable, and consistent
messages about "how we communicate here" will increase an organization's
chances of obtaining useful communication behavior more of the time and
avoiding costly errors. It
is a given that "how we communicate here" can be an elusive set of concepts.
Rules can exist in combinations, admit of many exceptions by their very
nature, and depend on one's level in the organization. In clusters of rules,
different organizational actors will sometimes perceive different ones
as salient. Some rules have metarules.
For example, in a department of one technical organization, employees understood
that they were to listen politely to how the manager told them to do a
task but then go and ask a long-term staffer how they should actually do
it. The work group's rule about the manager's rule was, in essence, "He's
a manager, not a technical expert. He doesn't understand this function,
doing it his way would create problems, and he doesn't know how to check
on you anyway." This arrangement was functional, because the manager was
out of his depth in this case. Clearly, however, this kind of "rule" setup
is laden with peril. On the part of both the manager and the work group,
there are too many unexamined assumptions. The
concept of rules is "messy," but this has not prevented researchers from
examining it. Research on Communication
Rules Learning
the ropes in organizations is a challenge to newcomers but also a continuing
process for longer term organizational members. Employees move up or transfer;
new managers make changes in "how we do things here"; organizational culture
itself evolves over time. Many scholars (e.g., Daft & Weick,
1984) agree that organizations are complex systems that interpret events
for their members and create meanings that guide actions. Numerous sources,
including Van Maanen (1976), Jablin
(1987), Miller & Jablin (1991), Mills
& Murgatroyd (1991), and Teboul
(1994) describe how newcomers to organizations become socialized. Louis
(1980, 231, 246) emphasizes that most newcomers have prior cultural assumptions
and behaviors to unlearn as well as new ones to perceive, interpret, and
take on. Weick (1995) emphasizes the continuousness
and complexity of sensemaking. Thomas, Clark,
& Gioia (1993) explore the processes
linking cognition (scanning, interpretation, etc.) to action and the effects
on what the actors do in the organization. Deal
and Kennedy (1982, 15) link strong corporate culture, effective communication,
and cost saving: "By knowing what exactly is expected of them, employees
will waste little time in deciding how to act in a given situation. In
a weak culture, on the other hand, employees waste a good deal of time
just trying to figure out what they should do and how they should do it.
The impact of a strong culture on productivity is amazing. In the extreme,
we estimate that a company can gain as much as one or two hours of productive
work per employee per day." Where
employees understand management's expectations, they apparently contribute
better to management's goals.Clampitt
and Downs (1993), building on previous studies by Downs and Hain
(1982) and Downs, Clampitt, and Pfeiffer
(1988), demonstrated a close link between effective communication and productivity. Trombetta
and Rogers (1988, 510) showed that information adequacy directly predicts
commitment and job satisfaction. Guzley
(1992) showed that employees' commitment to the organization correlates
positively with organizational clarity and is maintained even when changes
are occurring in the organization "if they sense some form of clarity or
orderliness exists for work activities, goals, objectives, and the like"
(398). Ibarra & Andrews (1993) found that the more closely connected
employees were to the firm's informal communication network, the more positively
those employees viewed the organization's climate for risk-taking, access
to information, and acceptance. Informal,
nonhierarchical means of communication appear to fill in gaps between what
employees want to know and what management has time, attention, or inclination
to tell them. Katz & Kahn (1966) discuss the asymmetrical communication
needs of superiors and subordinates. An individual in a direct-report relationship
does not always want to send or receive the information desired or offered
by the other."The greater the conflict
between the communication needs of these two hierarchically situated senders
and recipients of information, the more likely is an increase in lateral
communication. . . . Horizontal exchange can be an escape valve for frustration
in communicating upward and downward; and sometimes it can operate to accomplish
some of the essential business of the organization" (247). Comer (1991)
suggests that managers not merely allow but actively encourage newcomers
to rely on peers as sources of information. Louis (1980, p. 245) recommends
that managers make knowledgeable insiders the primary associates of newcomers.
Wilson (1992) explores non-peer information-seeking outside the chain of
command. Individuals' cognitive styles, the uncertainty level, and the
nature of the organization (organic or mechanistic) regulate what kinds
of organizational linkages (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal) are relied
on for information (Wilson & Malik,
(1995). Employees
generally enter the organization intending to learn and fulfill the firm's
expectations and prosper by doing so. They form schemata (see Harris, 1994)
based on formal and informal information from supervisors, formal and informal
guidance from co-workers, observation of results of their own and others'
behavior, and the organization's own statements about itself and its expectations.
To convey cultural values, which drive much communication behavior, informal
channels are used even more than formal ones (Johnson, Donohue, Atkin,
& Johnson, 1994, 119) and the channels are interrelated in complex
ways (120). Newcomers infer what alliances to build, and with whom, whose
opinions are and are not influential, when and when not to communicate,
whom to trust and under what circumstances, and many other subtleties of
communication behavior. Southard (1990) lists numerous cues organizational
newcomers use in learning official and unofficial corporate protocol. They
process the information as it is salient - that is, as they perceive it
to apply to problems they face. Learning
rules is a continuing process. Events occur and people interpret them.
As Gray, Bougon, and Donnellon
observe (1985), action-taking causes observers to amend meanings; leaders
are powerful insofar as they can cause others to accept their interpretations
of events; and some (not all) organizational meanings will be widely agreed
upon and "crystallized as informal and formal structures" (91). Schall
(1983) examined an organization's communication "rules" using multiple
methods, defining these rules as "tacit understandings (generally unwritten
and unspoken) about appropriate ways to interact (communicate) with others
in given roles and situations; they are choices, not laws (though they
constrain choice through normative, practical, or logical force), and they
allow interactors to interpret behavior
in similar ways (to share meanings)" (560). Goldhaber
(1990) adds, "If these rules are followed extensively throughout an organization,
we state that 'communication policies' are in effect, especially if they
are put in writing" (129). A
firm's rules on communicating are sometimes summed up as a firm's "communication
climate," here defined by Poole: "A communication climate is a molar description
of communication practices and procedures in an organization or subunit.
It consists of collective beliefs, expectations, and values regarding communication,
and is generated in interaction around organizational practices via a continuous
process of structuration" (107). Czarniawska-Joerges
& Joerges (1988) say that managers can
and should construct linguistic artifacts that convey shared meaning about
the organization's values and cultural assumptions. Such statements, they
believe, reduce uncertainty and facilitate control. Stohl
(1986) analyzed messages that employees found memorable and found that,
first, organizational members do remember value statements from higher-status
persons that seem to embody what an organization desires; and second, managers
can formulate these statements deliberately and helpfully. But where individual
managers' or whole organizations' communication signals are mixed and undeliberate,
employees might never be sure what they are expected to do. Indeed, in
a study by Harcourt, Richerson, & Wattier
(1991) a national sample of middle managers rated as poor the quality of
the information they received on their job responsibilities, company policies
and objectives, and other elements regarding expected behaviors. They also
said that formal communication was less reliable than informal. Some
"linguistic artifacts," such as value statements or organizational guidelines,
are put in writing. Gilsdorf (1987; 1992) examined the nature and incidence
of written organizational policy on selected aspects of communicating and
found that it is not abundant. Her studies also suggest that formulating
written policy on communicating could clarify organizational expectations
to employees by revealing where expectations are uncertain or unshaped
and by making explicit those expectations that are implicit and/or misunderstood.
Francis & Woodcock (1990) recommend that organizations examine, write
down, and exemplify their values. "It is what managers do - symbolic communication
- that is vital. The actions of managers must reinforce their value statements
. . . . Until a set of values is clear enough to
be committed to paper, it will not have the authority to be a leadership
statement" (35).InSchein's
(1985) opinion, however, formal written policy "will highlight only a small
portion of the assumption set that operates in the group and, most likely,
will highlight those aspects of the leader's philosophy or ideology that
lend themselves to public articulation" (242). Schein
listed many other mechanisms for embedding and reinforcement of values,
including what leaders consistently view as important enough to measure,
how leaders react to critical incidents and crises, leaders' deliberate
role modeling and coaching, what things they reward, and what bases they
use for recruiting, selecting, promoting, and terminating or isolating
(224-225). Employees
look at an organization's reward system, as well as its messages, for signals
about what the organization really values. Vroom (1964) and Porter &
Lawler (1968) say employees are more likely to perform desired behaviors
if they are told what is expected, offered incentives toward those behaviors,
shown they are feasible, and rewarded fairly for desired behaviors. Though
it should be clear that an organization's reward system should reinforce
the behaviors it desires, Kerr's famous article "On the Folly of Rewarding
A, While Hoping for B" (1975, updated 1995) is, according to a survey taken
by the editors of Academy of Management Executive(Dechant
& Veiga, 1995), still descriptive of
actuality. "Ninety percent of our respondents told us that Kerr's folly
is still prevalent in corporate America today. Over
half concluded that the folly is widespread in their companies" (p. 15). If
organizations reward the behaviors they say they reward, their messages
are congruent and credible. If these messages are inconsistent, employees'
response will be at worst antagonistic (because contradictory and equivocal
signals generate resentment), and at best unpredictable (because no clear
signal is available to guide the well-intentioned). While it is true that
an equivocal message can sometimes serve useful purposes (Eisenberg, 1984),
the present study's findings suggest strongly that many mixed or nonexistent
messages result from inadvertence-
that is, from managerial inattention to the need for clear, consistent
communication with employees - rather than from purpose. Employees
do not always feel free to ask what managers really want. In their article
on individual feedback seeking, Ashford and Cummings (1985) refer to the
risk employees take in exposing their ignorance and asserting their needs.
They believe managers should reduce that risk by "communicating their positive
interpretation of such an act" (78) and should also "become more self-conscious
about their own actions and how employees are interpreting them as feedback
. . . . Managers need to be aware that through their behaviour
they signal to employees those behaviours
they most value, those employees they most esteem, and what strategies
really
lead to goal attainment in that setting" (78). To
be sure, only some of the communication problems gathered in the present
study trace to unclearly understood expectations. Many stem from individual
employees' bad judgment or some other unforeseeable element. Organizational
"rules" on communicating cannot cover all eventualities.Where
managers and organizations can avert waste or loss by providing helpful
direction, however, it would seem that they err if they overlook the opportunity. Research Methods Twenty-five
instructors, at eighteen graduate business programs, agreed to distribute
a two-page instrument in their human resource management classes at the
MBA level and allocate 20 minutes to its completion. Classes of this kind
were chosen because these students could be assumed familiar with the concept
of corporate culture and organizational norms, because many MBA-level students
have professional work experience, and because MBA-program entrance requirements
make it probable that respondents will in general be intelligent and perceptive
observers. Using
a questionnaire, respondents were asked to think of an organization where
they had worked and which they knew well - an organization where they "knew
the ropes," and then to think of a person who didn't know the ropes - a
person who did not have a good feel for the culture of the organization.
Respondents were then asked to recall and narrate an incident where this
person made a mistake that had adverse consequences for the organization.(Respondents
were asked about a third party's actions for two reasons: to get around
individuals' tendency to self-justify when reporting problem situations
and to induce respondents to reflect objectively on rules they perceive
to be in effect.) The
purpose was to position the respondent as an observer in an organization
where s/he felt s/he fit in; and next, to get the respondent to examine
what there was to know about the organization's operating rules, how s/he
learned what to do there, and how clearly the organization communicated
its expectations to employees in general. Respondents
were asked to rate the strength of the organization's culture on a 1 (very
weak) to 10 (very strong) scale. (An even number was used because previous
pilot-testing of the instrument revealed no tendency for respondents to
seek an exact middle point on the scale.) After
narrating the incident, respondents were asked ·to
estimate the cost of the mistake in actual dollars, in soft terms, or both. ·to
state what the erring individual should have known about the organization's
communication expectationsin
order to avoid creating the problem ·to
attempt to explain why that person did not know. The
latter two questions aimed at getting the respondent to voice the "rule"
in force on "how we communicate here." Respondents
were asked to indicate whether most employees of the organization know
clearly how management wants them to communicate. If
respondents believed employees received guidance from management in how
to communicate, they were asked to state the ways in which management
guided them. The
last content question asked whether written policy on communicating exists
in the organization and, if yes, where an employee finds it. The formal
written policy did not have to address the specific "rule" violated. The
question was intended to discover whether the respondent was aware of any
written organizational guidelines on communicating. Last
of all, so that the researcher could make sure the respondent was qualified
to observe and comment on the incident, the instrument asked the observer's
position in the organization, the core business of the organization, and
the size of the organization. Given that MBA programs tend to enroll students
within the 25-40 age range and about 55 percent male and 45 percent female,
the usual demographic items (e.g., age, salary) were not requested.
Returned
questionnaires were entered into a database for tallying and analysis.
The rules (what the individual "should have known") were recorded and studied
in the context of their narratives. One of the study's research questions
was to infer how often an explicit policy would have mitigated or prevented
the communication error and, where policy would not have been applicable,
what other sources of influence guided organizational actors. It was anticipated
that a clear policy would help in some cases, that individuals' communication
skill and common sense would be more important in others, and that still
other cases would be amenable to other kinds of cues, either from organizational
culture or from managers. It was anticipated that some cases would be mixed
or difficult to classify. The
analysis then categorized the means by which respondents said their management
typically conveyed communication expectations to employees. This was done,
not to fit incidents into the written/oral and explicit/implicit categories,
but to gain respondents' perceptions of which media their managers generally
used and how frequently each medium was cited overall. Four
factors limit this study: The information gathered depended on respondents'
reports of remembered incidents. The questions about managers' use of communication
media and about the existence of written policy were not connected with
the critical incident narrated. Some of the data (e.g., strength of corporate
culture) depended on respondents' interpretation of terms used and of motives
for others' behavior. Finally, the sample was not random and therefore
cannot represent U.S. organizations as a whole. Returned
questionnaires with usable narratives numbered 560.N
varied slightly for some items; though some respondents declined to answer
one or more items, nonresponse to one item
did not necessarily invalidate responses to others. Where nonresponse
or unclear response was problematical, that questionnaire was disqualified. Culture Strength, Employee
Understanding, and the Rules The
more than 500 organizations that respondents represented ranged in size
from small proprietorships to some of the nation's largest firms and across
business, governmental, nonprofit, and even military organizations. Virtually
all the respondents (all but three) had at least some work experience;
these three, however, also usefully narrated an incident they had observed.
Categorizing responses by position of respondent, core business, and size
of firm was not a goal of the study and did not permit useful inferences. In
answering the "how big is the organization" question, some people clearly
meant a whole organization of 1200 people while others meant their department
of 30. The information was useful in that it indicated the size of the
unit an individual was thinking about. Job title was useful because it
showed what the person could observe but was not used in categorizing because,
first, organizations are wildly inconsistent in what it means to be a vice
president or an executive assistant, and second, an underemployed MBA student
observing the mistakes of a 15-year up-from-the-ranks manager might be
much more perceptive than another 15- year manager might be. The "core
business" question did not produce neat categories. Culture
and Employee Understanding of Communication Rules Before
asking for the narrative, respondents were asked whether the organization
they had in mind had a strong or weak culture and to mark a scale in answer
to this question: The
overall response on this item was: 6.83 Mean, 7 Median, and 8 Mode. Toward
the end of the questionnaire, respondents were asked, Overall
response on this item was: 6.55 Mean, 7 Median, 8 Mode. A
Pearson product moment correlation coefficient was calculated. r
= .495p = .0001 In
the social sciences an r of.4-
.5 is considered good to strong. The p of.0001
suggests that this correlation coefficient of.495
is significant. The literature links strong culture with understanding
of "the way we do things around here" (Deal & Kennedy, 1982); this
correlation indicates that in organizations with strong culture employees
are more likely to understand the organization's communication expectations. Most
respondents viewed corporate culture as fairly strong (median of 7) in
their organizations. Most believed employees knew pretty clearly (median
of 7) how the organization wanted them to communicate. Thus it seems clear
that corporate culture is functional as a transmitter of communication
rules in many organizations. But
respondents were not at all at a loss for problem incidents to narrate.
(Some said, "What? Only one?!") Based on
the median responses, considerable numbers of employees are likely not
to
clearly understand their organization's communication expectations. It
is important to examine the responses of those who did not assign high
marks to strength of culture and employees' understanding. With 7 as a
median response for both items, let us assume for the purposes of discussion
that respondents who marked 5 or below on the culture statement felt that
the culture was relatively weak and that those marking 5 or below on the
"do employees" item were not very willing to say that most employees understood
the organization's communication expectations. A cross-tabulation using
a 5 response as a cutoff yields these numbers: don't
know know relatively weak relatively strong Adding
the right-hand cells shows that of 541 who answered both questions, 374
felt positive (>5) about employees' understanding of communication expectations.
Of those, however, 46 responses (8.5 percent of 541) appear to indicate
that employees' understanding came from
something other than a strong
culture. Adding the left-hand cells shows 167 respondents who were
not
very willing (5 or under) to say that most employees understood communication
expectations. Of those, 76 marked the strength of culture item higher than
5. These responses would seem to suggest that in these cases (14 percent
of 541) strong culture did not work well in guiding employees' communication
decisions. The following incident shows an example: The
company is a small but growing information service firm. We sell data that
has had "value added." The company has been acquiring several products
from other companies in the last four months and marketing kits need to
be revised so clients understand everything we now offer. One
person from sales (call him Bob) is assigned to create new marketing pieces
for new products. Bob carefully reviews the previous owner's marketing
pieces and uses information from those to create new ones. These new pieces
are sent to press and eventually to customers. The company gets lots of
calls about new products and Bob is pretty happy. The problem, however,
is that Bob did not have anyone on the operations side review the marketing
pieces. First, major computer programming was required to get new products
up and running, and several products would not be available for a couple
of months. Meanwhile, sales had already sold them. Second, one of the marketing
pieces that a previous owner had written contained some erroneous information
and essentially promised a service that was impossible to deliver. (Again,
several clients had already "bought" products for this specific service.)
All of the operations managers were aware of the problems, but sales had
not consulted any of them before marketing information went out to hundreds
of clients. Products therefore could not be delivered although we had promised
them. Several clients were very upset. What
should the employee have known? "All internal and external communications
should be reviewed by the department head . . . Even the president has
someone review ALL his external communication to make sure it is the best
that it can be." The policy (one-over-one review) was known to the respondent;
yet no one had told Bob. The respondent said that "people get told when
they screw up" and that, although there is some written policy on communicating,
it is not distributed reliably. This incident cost the firm $15,000, as
well as client goodwill when products bought could not be delivered. This
respondent rated strength of corporate culture at 7 but employees' understanding
of communication expectations at 5. Seventy-five other respondents
marked corporate culture at 7 or higher and employees' understanding of
communication expectations at 5 or lower. Thus it is tenable to infer that
strong
corporate culture often helps guide employees' communication decisions
but cannot always be relied on to do so. Identifying
the Rules and Their Sources Analysis
of the incidents and responses to the "What should the person have known?"
question divided the incidents roughly into these categories: ·cases
where a clear, well supported policy would have helped ·cases
where the culture should have shaped the behavior of the individual ·cases
involving individual bad judgment or imperceptiveness ·cases
due to management shortcomings From
respondents' answers to the "what should the employee have known" question
and from study of the incidents, the "rules" were recorded. The rules were
numerous and various; thus Table 1 shows examples of the kinds of
rules that, in the context of their incident, fell into the four main categories. To
be sure, many of the incidents gathered in this study show mixed causes.
Note that no category is absolute. The distinction of most interest to
this study was that between cases where an explicit rule would help and
cases where an explicit rule would be largely irrelevant. About
20 percent of the answers to "What should the person have known to avoid
creating the problem" were matters where a clear, well supported policy
would have helped greatly.These
communication problems happened because policy, whether oral or written,
either didn't exist, as in the following example, where a work-flow diagram
was sorely needed: This
individual did not communicate the changes made to a specific engineering
drawing. She made the changes and continued with her work. She did not
know the flow of information and who should be told about these changes.
As a result, when the customer came in for a review, the changed drawings
did not match the rest of the information. As a result many changes had
to be made to other documents, technical manuals, teaching materials and
requirements of the equipment. or
existed but was not sufficiently reinforced, as in this instance: I
worked as a senior customer service specialist for [XYZ] Savings &
Loan for approx. 1 and 1/2 years. The firm has a customer service credo. On
Saturdays [XYZ] closes at 1 p.m.One
Saturday right at 1 o'clock X had just closed the doors and was returning
to her terminal.One of our long
time customers, a loyal customer for years, began to knock on the door
showing a check she needed to cash.X
screamed at the customer that we closed at 1 p.m. and she would have to
come back on Monday.The customer
again knocked on the door desperately as X began to shake her head. Just
then our district manager, who frequently visits the branch, walked up
to the door and told X to open the door.The
district manager politely apologized to the customer, while I assisted
her with her transaction.After the
customer left, our D.M. pulled out our operations manual and showed us
that we are required to help any demanding customer up to 15 minutes after
we close.X soon after was placed
on P.I.P. (Performance Improvement Program). The
bulk of the incidents - the 80 percent - were less easy to classify, as
the next examples will illustrate. Many of the communication problems would
not
have been amenable to a stated policy but were instead matters where the
culture should have shaped the behavior of the individual, as in
this case: A
product that our group in quality control was testing gave results outside
specifications, which was very unusual. It turned out that the person responsible
for submitting it to our group failed to inform us about a problem with
a different test - one that is repeated and that provides data that we
base our testing on. This person did not inform us of this problem because
it did not directly impact his immediate responsibilities. It caused our
group to waste significant time and energy. The norm in our workplace is
for everyone to be aware of as much as possible and to approach problems
as a team, giving assistance whenever possible, even if it is something
not "defined" in a person's immediate duties. As
the last sentence implies, culture at this firm calls for attentiveness,
proactive communication, and mutual assistance. The other employees evidently
understood the norms well. A policy would probably not have helped; to
have guided this individual in this instance, a statement would have needed
to be so concrete and specific that, if offered as a policy, it would sound
absurd and possibly insulting to the intelligence of other employees. Instead,
cultural cues would convey that where B depends on A, we always make sure
the people who work on B find out about A. Some
others had little to do with culture or policy but instead occurred owing
mainly to individual bad judgment or imperceptiveness, as here: "M"
would at times yell at subordinates or fellow members of the executive
team.He was bright, with an educational
background well suited for the position he was in. However, his means of
communication were totally unacceptable to the workings and inner culture
of the organization. In one instance, this executive yelled at another
executive with less seniority who simply wanted to pin down and identify
particular problems that existed in his department. . . .This and other
inconsistent behavior finally led to the elimination of his entire department
and the subsequent layoff of approximately 30 employees and staff. The
"should have known" rule was to exercise self control and treat others,
especially other executives, courteously. This basic, common-sense rule
would hardly need to be set forth as policy. At lower organizational levels,
disciplinary options are available for controlling outbursts. Here, the
firm got rid of the executive-level offender, but only after many complications
and at a high cost. Still
other problem incidents stemmed from management shortcomings that
would probably not have been influenced either by explicit policy or strong
organizational culture, e.g., We
were at the client's office having a meeting. The manager presented a proposal
which [had not been] taken up in the office.All
of us in the meeting were lost. The manager [had] not consulted us about
the new proposals. There were a lot of things wrong about the proposal.
After the meeting, one of the client's personnel approached me. He said
they weren't too happy about the proposal.I
could not tell him that we were not informed. In
some cases, causes were mixed: an individual was insufficiently acculturated,
and both individual judgment and managerial oversight were at fault as
well. Another
manager from a different functional group casually asked the employee in
question to "look into" an issue. The request was very informal and vague,
and was not documented. The employee failed to raise the issue with his
manager. A week or two later, the issue took several sharp, negative turns,
and the employee in question was accused of dropping the ball - although
the request and the actual event that followed were not really one and
the same. The
culture here dictates that employees take initiative to inform their managers
of EVERYTHING and take every suggestion or comment from a superior as an
order (request for action), [though] the communication channels and the
nature of the information passed through them did not obviously match in
formality, speed of response, and so on. Metarules
apply. The visible rule is "We are low-key and casual here," but the rule
about the rule is that the casual term "look into" means "solve the problem,"
and a suggestion means an order. Policy statements rarely enter territory
such as this. Stating
clear policy would have headed off about 20 percent of the problems narrated
by this study's respondents. For
communication to be most effective, however, all the factors need
to work well: The organization's expectations need to be clear, the culture
needs to support them, individuals need good judgment, and managers need
to be good at their jobs. An
organization has many means of behavior shaping, including culture, training,
cultivation of the grapevine, and many other media. The next section shows
how respondents perceived and named the various means used heavily by their
organizations to shape employees' communication behavior. Ways
Organizations Guide Employees in Communicating Answers
to "In what ways does management let employees know how it wants its people
to communicate?" fell into the categories shown in Table 2, arranged in
order of total frequency of mention. (Note: This question regarded usual
practice at the respondent's organization, not merely the practices affecting
the incident narrated.) Not all respondents answered; indeed, respondents
who felt management at their firms did not give good guidance on communicating
(based on their response to the "Do most employees know..." question) were
less likely to respond to this item. Table
2 further subclassifies numbers of responses
with regard to whether the organization had any written guidelines on communicating
that were known to the respondent. Naturally
enough, respondents in organizations with written communication guidelines
answered "memos, postings, newsletter" and "manual, handbook, policies"
in considerable numbers.
Interestingly, however, respondents representing firms with written policy
also referred to "meetings" and "training...role-play" at more than twice
the rate of respondents in no-written-policy organizations. This
seems to suggest a deliberateness about some
written-policy organizations: Many such appear not only to have considered
"how we communicate here," but also to use multiple channels in conveying
their guidance to employees. The
first six categories would strike most managers as beneficial, reliable
channels, and "after-the-fact criticism" is at least reliable feedback
that helps the next time a similar problem arises. "Frequent interaction,"
"open door," "evaluations and counseling sessions," and most other categories
can be considered helpful. The seventh category, however, suggests that
the 37 respondents who marked it felt disappointed or angered over the
organization's failure. Several
other categories, such as "just watch," "peer pressure," and "informal
network, grapevine," are reliable only if the behavior models or informal
informants themselves know and follow behavior of which management approves.
These can and often do convey salutary guidance. However, since they are
less easily monitored, individuals with defensive agendas or grievances
would select means like these to promote rules that the organization would
not countenance if it were aware of them. The "figure it out or GET out"
category suggests a rather bitter view of the organization in the minds
of those who answered that way. As
organizations become flatter, as more mid-level jobs are lost, and as more
is expeced of those who remain, it would
seem that fewer individuals and organizations are likely to be ideally
matched, and more proactivity will be needed.
Managers desiring to shape employees' behavior and employees wishing
to meet the organization's expectations could increase their success by
using a greater variety of channels for information flow. Employees' relying
on peers or on persons outside the chain of command works only if the organization
has ensured that clear information is available and persons possessing
it are motivated to share it. Part of a manager's job should be to place
reliable guidance information in channels employees use. Another part is
to ensure that public statements on "how we do things here" are borne out
when individuals "reality-test" those statements. Costs
of Communication Problem Incidents As
mentioned earlier, the questionnaire asked these MBA-level students, most
of whom had professional work experience,
to estimate hard costs if possible and if not, to specify types of soft
costs incurred owing to the incident narrated. This was done partly to
make sure the incident they chose was not trivial. (Respondents were permitted
to specify both hard and soft costs if appropriate.) Though respondents
were only making approximations and these data cannot be considered solid,
their estimates are sobering. Of 560 respondents, 247 cited dollar estimates. Even
if approximate, the price these respondents estimated for ineffective communication
suggests it is a serious drain on organizations' finances. Few of the estimates
fell below $100. Less than a quarter of the 247 respondents citing hard
costs placed those costs under $1000. The largest share of the estimates
fell between $1,000 and $9,999 - 82 respondents set the price of the mistake
in this range. Eleven estimates exceeded $1 million. Most
of the respondents (514 of 560) in this study referred to one or more soft
costs, as follows. "Soft
costs" have heavy consequences. Managers are well aware of the expenses
surrounding, for instance, voluntary or involuntary employee turnover.
(Problems leading to the separation, waste of training costs for the lost
employee, disarray during the time the position is vacant, and costs of
recruiting, hiring, and training the replacement do not exhaust the reasons
why an employee's quitting or being fired is so expensive.) Negative image
or word of mouth is gravely injurious to an organization. Exposure of the
firm to risk or liability is more dangerous every year, as the nation becomes
increasingly litigious. It
would seem reasonable that where organizations can give well-considered
and explicit guidance, more employees would do the right thing more of
the time. Organizational life moves quickly, however, and the many competing
demands on managers' time tends to distract attention from the act of communicating
guidance and expectations. Still, as suggested here, the costs of ignoring
this task can be heavy. A
Taxonomy of
Rules: Written? Acknowledged? Reinforced? Functional? There
were a great variety of rules invoked, some general, some particular, some
commonsensical, some rather idiosyncratic. Many cases entailed combinations
of causes and influences. Indeed, the categories of policy, individual
judgment, culture, and management are interrelated in complex ways. As
mentioned earlier, a given rule can be written or unwritten, acknowledged
or unacknowledged, reinforced or not reinforced, functional or dysfunctional,
and complied with or not complied with. The branching tree diagram in Figure
1 shows these categories. It would seem that the more visible a rule is,
the more confident the employees feel in following it and the clearer it
is that management intends and supports what the rule says. The uppermost
branch on both trees is the configuration for a rule, whether written or
unwritten, that is likely to be working well for both employee and organization. Figure 1 Possible
Rule Configurations Figure 2 Employee Response to
Rule Configurations Of
the critical incidents that related to unwritten rules, most fell into
the category acknowledged [explicit] and functional andnot
acknowledged [implicit] and functional. This makes intuitive sense;
observers who knew the rules were asked to comment on organizational actors
who either did not understand the rules or understood them but violated
them anyway.
This
incident illustrates the former; clearly the individual would have been
told that his job was to clarify the customer's needs before implementing
a solution:
In
a data processing department for an insurance company, a programmer on
my team was expected to deal with customers on a one-to-one basis. The
instance I am thinking of was an error that could have been prevented in
the implementation of a program enhancement. Due to his shyness and fear
of appearing unintelligent, key questions were not asked.As
a result, program errors existed that resulted in important financial information
being lost.Resulting reruns of information,
late fees, etc. amounted to $25,000. This was the first step in a chain
of events that resulted in his termination.
An
implicit, functional rule was violated in this next incident: That people
in this organization need to build relationships before trying to impose
major changes.
A
very bright woman broke the glass ceiling and moved into the lower executive
level. Rather than doing some one-on-one groundwork before introducing
a new performance appraisal system, she tried to demand acceptance of her
new program by asserting her new authority. Resistance developed quickly
and the program failed miserably.
An
interesting example follows of an implicit, reinforced policy ("Mind your
own business") that resulted in harm when people complied with it.
The
accounting supervisor held communication to a minimum. The subordinates
had no dialogue with him except the most minimal work instructions. After
he was promoted, problems came to light in his former department and as
a result, one person (not the supervisor) lost his job. It was discovered
that many accounts were "fudged," and most employees were doing their jobs
without realizing what was happening around them. The supervisor took advantage
of the corporate culture, which was one of tacit trust, to discourage checking
and controlling of this department. The wrong person took the fall and
was fired. In this organization there is also little or no "backstabbing,"
so the whole incident was kept silent.
Many
other incidents were so mixed that to attempt to assign them to categories
with any kind of accuracy would have been unproductive. Especially where
rules are implicit, unexplained, or dysfunctional, they might be at war
with other rules linked to other schemata (from sources as varied as rumor-mongers,
union organizers, external pressure groups, or an individual's ego - or
conscience). Where rules compete, individuals have decisions to make, and
they may have to defend their decision. "This doesn't fit what I know."
"What will really work here?" "What does the company really want?
"What makes sense?" "How can I protect myself?" And, of course,
where the rules themselves are not clear, the need for intelligent exceptions
to the rules cannot even have a context.
This
study elicited relatively few cases involving written guidelines, either
functional or dysfunctional. (Recall that respondents were asked if they
were aware of any written organizational policies on communicating,
not if their organizations had written policy addressing the kind of incident
they narrated.) Where written guidelines figured in the stories respondents
narrated, they tended to be rules that would have been functional but were
not well reinforced - in which case the erring person would turn to an
unwritten rule for guidance. Written but unreinforced
policies tend to enter the picture after the mistake is made, when someone
unearths the policy either to instruct or to justify punishment.
The
inference to be drawn is that unwritten rules, whether explicit or
implicit (not acknowledged), tend to apply to more eventualities.
By their very nature unwritten rules on communicating will be more numerous
than written rules, because many aspects of communicating are particular.
A spoken instruction exists in a situational context and thus can often
be brief. A warning facial expression or some other type of symbolic guidance
might not even be subject to articulation. Written guidelines are appropriate
for more encompassing matters, where an immediate situation is less important
(see Table 1), or for highly specific tasks -- proposal preparation, for
instance. Unwritten rules are also more adaptable to change as an organization's
culture evolves.
Figure
1 shows a branch for a written, unacknowledged rule, although intuitively
this may at first seem unlikely. Respondents in this study were asked (at
the very end of the questionnaire) "Is there written policy on communicating?"
Some who answered "yes" or "don't know" made comments such as, "We wrote
one once - I think"; "If there is one, the secretary in administration
has the only copy"; or "We might have one, but it would be way out of date."
Although it would seem that a guideline important enough to put in writing
would also be perceived as a living document and updated as needed, clearly
not all organizations do so.
Where
a written guideline is buried and unused, I would argue that a guidance-seeking
employee will "default" to the informal and unwritten communication channels
for information.Similar behavior
will occur if a written guideline exists but is not reinforced: "We have
a written policy, but that's not what we really do here." A written
guideline could also be dysfunctional; for instance, it might be inflexible,
bureaucratic, or formulated so as to privilege some and disadvantage others.A
well-intentioned but noncompliant employee might think, "We'd be crazy
to follow that policy. What do people say to do?"
The
point of the discussion of employees' choices among rules is that
where organizations' managers clarify what they really want employees to
do, they lower the likelihood that employees will do something they do
not desire.
Discussion
Most
respondents marked between 6 and 9 for both questions. Most respondents
felt that their organization's culture was moderately strong (median of
7). Asked "Do most employees know pretty well how management wants people
to communicate?" most respondents believed that most generally did (median
of 7). Corporate culture appears to operate as a transmitter of communication
rules in many organizations. But respondents who marked their organizations
considerably lower on both questions suggest that culture does not operate
universally in this way. Cues come from many sources.
Stating
clear policy would have helped head off20
percent of the problems narrated by this study's respondents.
Analyzing their communication expectations and making them more explicit,
then, is a good start for organizations with communication problems. If
some of a firm's "rules" are misunderstood, or underground, or dysfunctional,
or local, or contradictory, policy analysis -- a communication audit, for
instance -- can make them the rules more visible. In addition, if, in examining
policy, management focuses more attention on "how we communicate here,"
that emphasis is likely to improve the other problem categories: managers
are likely to see improvements in individual employees' judgment and managers'
oversight and are likely to increase salutory
effects of the organizational culture.
Respondents
mentioned many more unwritten means than written means by which communication
expectations were conveyed in their organizations.
Meetings, training activities, and one-on-one interaction with supervisors
were the most frequently named. Of written media, the category containing
more ephemeral but more immediate means such as memos, postings, and newsletters
was cited more often than the category containing company manuals and policy
handbooks.
Organizations
with some written policy on communicating may have thought more, on the
average, about "how we communicate here" and how to convey that information
to employees,
as suggested by the data in Table 2. This bears out findings by Rogers
(1988) that, compared to companies without
formal policies, companies having or considering written communication
policies were more likely to believe in the importance of 15 of the 20
communication values on which he queried them. (On four other values, no
difference appeared.)
Recommendations
for Further Research
Future
research might address the extent to which the strength of organizational
culture might be related to the kind of rules people mentioned - or violated.
It would be useful to study a limited number of specific organizations
to see whether respondents within each organization had similar or different
perceptions about the strength of the culture and the communication rules
in effect, and whether differences of perception existed among top management,
middle management, and professional support staff. Another direction might
explore similarities and differences between perceptions of female and
male respondents; or similarities and differences in perceptions of respondents
based on age, ethnicity, type of organization, functional area of the respondent,
or position of the respondent within the organization.
Implications
for Managerial Practice
Employees
joining and succeeding in an organization have to figure out how to communicate
effectively there. Learning the ropes takes a while. Attentive and intuitive
people are faster, obviously, than those who tend toward "oblivious." While
it is true that, because the questionnaire asked for examples, the narratives
tended to exemplify people who tended toward "oblivious," numerous incidents
exemplified people who tried to act in the organization's best interests
but could not be sure how to do so.
Costs
of the communication problem incidents were high
- high enough in a number of cases to make a serious difference in profit-and-loss
statements. At the high end of the cost scale, the incident narrated led
to one medium-sized company's having to cease doing business. One very
large company saw an entire department collapse.
Especially
where many policies are implicit, organizations should examine what norms
are shaping employees' communication behaviors,
since organizations comprise many employees who are capable workers but
not very intuitive or attentive to implicit messages.
The
finding that explicit rules would probably have helped in about 20 percent
of the problem incidents suggests a worthwhile opportunity: Managers can
reduce problems substantially if they analyze their communication expectations
and state them explicitly. In the other categories (poor individual judgment,
poor management practice, unhelpful culture), attention to what "rules"
the offenders were using would often have shed light on how similar
errors could be avoided in the future. Based on this study and
the literature that supports it, organizations should study the messages
they send employees about "how we communicate here," the means by which
they send them, and the consistency or inconsistency of those messages.
Indeed, communication executives (Gilsdorf, 1992, 336-341) indicated that
the benefits of analysis would greatly outweigh the costs. Whether an organization
writes policy guidelines or not, the act of examining communication practices
and expectations is likely to be instructive and beneficial.
Where
weaknesses are revealed, organizations should clarify their expectations.
Written guidelines may be appropriate for some situations, training for
others, example for others, grapevine for still others, and so on through
the many other options. Respondents named 18 positive means and several
negative means of shaping communication behaviors; the literature and everyday
experience show still others.
Based
on the wide variety of incidents narrated by subjects, expensive communication
problems are sometimes local, personal, or departmental, but sometimes
pervasive in organizations. Managers should consider the conveying
of clear communication-behavior expectations as a fundamental element of
strategy.
Achieving
this clarity may take, for different organizations, one or several of the
following: analysis of organizational culture, especially
where culture is weak or is idiosyncratic among departments; analysis
of existing strong corporate cultures for communication values;
and communication audits. Firms might also perform ethnographic
analysis, including observation and interviewing, to learn exactly what
organizational communication policies are operating (see Whitney,
1989). Firms should consider communication training
for managers, especially in giving performance feedback. Organizations
should examine how their reward system affects communication
behaviors. Most employees are concerned for the organization's success
but are also moved strongly by the "WIIFM factor": What's in it for me?
It would be useful for organizations to analyze managers' behaviors
and words that send messages about communicating.
"One
size" will not fit all organizations: For instance, service organizations
generally will need to emphasize customer communications more, whereas
product organizations' more crucial communications are likely to regard
quality, schedule, and quantity goals. To be sure, organizations cannot
foresee all information needs and should not attempt to formulate guidelines
for all situations. Henderson's (1987) model of interpersonal managerial
communication shows the range and complexity of influences on what managers
say and do. This study suggests, however, that many organizations could
be far more deliberate than they are at present about sending consistent,
workable messages about communication expectations and could conserve time
and money by doing so.
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