MBA作业：业务流程的沟通

业务流程的沟通

Orchestration of Communication

如今，随着商业世界变得更加具有竞争力，技术更先进，创新，和组织的利益相关者更复杂，高度的组织适应变化的强烈主张，使一个组织是不太可能落后，并希望能取得更好的表现。

首先,对“业务流程的沟通”这一核心概念做简要说明,紧随其后的是识别三个阶段的变化过程,包括“解冻”,“移动”和“重新冻结”，基于列文的三步理论。然后在每个阶段相关具体问题将与示范适当的例子,进一步说明通信专业人员需要处理和如何处理这些问题,特别是伴随着变化风险和威胁。和简要总结主要参数声明将在最后。

 

2.业务流程的沟通

 

齐斯B.M. van里尔(1995年,p.18-21)已经对”编排的各种形式的公司通讯通过共同的起点”重要性作出说明，最终完成有效的沟通和整体组织绩效,并进一步解释说,公司的核心价值是“共同的起点”,任何形式的组织内部沟通是基于他们会有所不同根据不同企业自组织的实际和期望的身份和形象需要考虑。

 

Communications Professional's Role in the Orchestration of Communication during a Change Process

 

1.介绍——1. Introduction

 

Nowadays, as the business world becomes more competitive, the technology more advanced and innovated, and an organization's stakeholders more sophisticated, a high degree of organizational adaptability to change is strongly advocated so that an organization is less likely to lag behind and is hopefully to achieve better performance.

 

This paper focuses on the role of communications professional in the orchestration of all forms of communications during a change process and providing general guidelines which communications professional can adopt to better orchestrate communication effectively when change occurs within organizations, for the overall purpose of achieving a competitive advantage and to improve organization performance.

 

First, brief explanation about the core concept “orchestration of communication” will be unveiled, followed by the identification of three stages of change process including “unfreezing”, “moving” and “refreezing” based on Lewin's three-step theory. Then relevant specific issues in each stage will be identified with demonstration of appropriate examples so as to further illustrate what communications professionals need to deal with and how to handle those issues, especially risks and threats accompanied with change. And a brief summary of main arguments stated will be presented in the end.

 

2.业务流程的沟通——2. Orchestration of Communication

 

Cees B.M. van Riel (1995, p.18-21) has stated the importance of “Orchestration of all forms of corporate communication through common starting points” in accomplishing effective communication and eventually the overall organization performance, and further explained that “common starting points” are the core values which any forms of communication within an organization are based on and they will vary according to different companies since the organization's actual and desired identity and image need to be taken into consideration. He (2000, p.157-81) further argues that a sustainable corporate story is strongly recommended for functioning as an effective approach to improve quality of orchestration of communications between an organization and its wide variety of stakeholder groups, provided four criteria (relevant, realistic, sustainable and responsive) are met.

 

Mike Wallace (2007) has defined orchestration as “coordinated activity within set parameters expressed by a network of senior leaders at different administrative levels to instigate, organize, oversee and consolidate complex change across part or all of multi-organizational system” and emphasized the importance of coherence in the orchestration of communication during a change process particularly in the public services.

 

Based on Van Riel's work, Geller (2009) further explains the orchestra metaphor in that during a merger (one form of change) “musicians” are internal stakeholders, “composer (the dominant group)” is the one who writes the strategy, “conductor” represents the communication professional whose responsibility is to keep all musicians presenting a symphony harmoniously, and “audiences” are external stakeholders. Nevertheless, defining the role of communication professional only as “conductor”, from my perspective, devalues the communication professional during a change process, therefore detailed discussion and argument will be demonstrated in the following part.

 

3. The Role of Communications Professional in the Orchestration of Communication in a Change Process

 

Whether a change can be successfully implemented and further rooted within organization often rely heavily on communication during the change process (Cornelissen, 2003, p.201), which indicates the necessity and importance of effective orchestrated communication.

 

Based on the orchestration metaphor, the role of communications professional can be categorized as either “composer” or “conductor” during a change process. This part will begin with identifying the three stages of a change and then discuss the role of communications professional and the main tasks which they need to handle with, and further to provide suggestions on how to deal with the relevant issues accompanied with a change, so as to achieve effective orchestration of all forms of communications among all stakeholders and ultimately to enhance organization performance.

 

There are various kinds of definitions about the stages of change, according to Lewin (1958), the stages of change can be classified as “unfreezing (the present state of an organization)”, “moving (to a new state)” and ”refreezing (the new state)”. Compared with Lewin's model, punctuated equilibrium theory can be considered as a more appropriate model of change process which is developed by Gersick (1991), Miller and Friesen (1980), and Tushman and Romanelli (1985). Tushman and Romanelli (1985, p.171) explain the theory as “organizations evolve through relatively long periods of stability (equilibrium periods) in their basic patterns of activity that are punctuated by relatively short bursts of fundamental change (revolutionary periods)”, which more concentrates on constant change occurring within organization from my understanding. Here in order to clearly identify relevant issues of change in each stage and the role of communications professional in orchestration of overall communications in each phase accordingly, the classical model of Lewin's three-step theory will be adopted because it can explain both evolutionary and revolutionary change more suitably and reasonably, additionally, as an extended version of Lewin's model, Lippitt's phases of change theory (1958, see Appendix) which focuses on the role of a change agent will be modified accordingly and combined as a basis as well.

 

3.1 The Role of Communications Professional in the Orchestration of Communication in “Unfreezing” Process – Composer

 

The initial phase of a change process involves unfreezing a current state within an organization. As a communication professional, three steps are chosen from Lippitt's phases of change theory and adjusted based on the specific responsibility of a communication professional to achieve effective orchestration of communications: diagnose the problems which might occur in change, evaluate the motivation and capability for change especially among internal stakeholders and compose the communication strategy with senior management.

 

And in all of the three steps a communication professional should make sure that stakeholder management is underlined as the cornerstone of orchestrated communication. Furthermore, when considering all stakeholder groups, communication professional needs to define which stakeholder groups are the dominant ones and set priorities according to the stakeholder salience model which includes three elements: power, legitimacy and urgency (Cornelissen, 2003). Additionally, it is strongly recommended to communications professional that the in-depth understanding of organizational “inertia, content, tenacity and interdependency” (Weick and Quinn, 1999) is prerequisite for better understanding organizational change, which can be beneficial for better developing a communication strategy before implementing a change.

 

Undoubtedly, change might unleash emotions of stakeholders and stimulate learning (Antonacopoulou and Gabriel, 2001). Nonetheless, in unfreezing process, it is often the case that stakeholders do not always welcome change, especially employees who often resent and resist a change not because of change itself but of the feeling of uncertainty (Cornelissen, 2003, p.207), which would result in a wide variety of problems such as low commitment to the job or rumors among employees. Existing studies (Shapiro and Kirkman, 1999; Folger and Skarlicki, 1999) have focused on the potential effects that a change could influence on employees' negative feelings particularly resistance due to the anticipatory injustice. Therefore a communication professional shoulders the responsibility of diagnosing these potential problems accompanied with a change. Both qualitative techniques such as focus groups and quantitative techniques like questionnaires can be employed to explore and identify potential barriers and risks caused by change. For instance, employee attitude surveys can be conducted to evaluate internal motivation and capability for change (Schneider et al., 1996) which can be considered as a resource to predict how well internal stakeholders can handle the change and further to assist communications professional to compose a well-designed and feasible communication project.