Description/Focus: Business Communication Essay

Introduction

Business Communication

Student’s Name:

Course:

University:

Within organizations, managers tend tend to face many challenges when there is the need to address a challenging issue to all the staff within their organizations both above and below them. As a result of coronavirus, their has a been a challenge of communication within a university in Sydney, where I am the vice chancellor. As a result of tough times during this corona time, the university has had hard times where it has decided to cut off every unnecessary expenses including updating the key software and hardware, printing of papers and the 24 hour access to the campus facilities. The newly proposed changes restricts the opening of the campus and the closing time is limited to four days within a week where it is in between 9 to 5 pm. All students and staff are intended to learn and work online within their homes outside these timings. It is important to communicate to the students and the staff members about the changes for them to be aware of the planned rescheduling of activities to prepare for the changes. Therefore, the main aim of this essay is to critically analyse how I being the vice chancellor will apply the business communication theories to convince the university staff as well as students to cope up with the new policy.

The parties involved in this issue are mostly the students and the staff within the university. These parties are directly affected by the proposed changes within the institution (Kramer, 2014, n.p). To communicate effectively concerning the institutional changes, internal communication approach would work well. Setting up an internal newsletter or a memo to communicate about the changes will enable the staff and the student to know about the changes and the reason of making the changes (Bharadwaj, 2014, p. 188). Those within the university facilities will be able to come across the newsletters and go through them to know all what it entails. Through the internal communication, as the ice chancellor, I will be able t uphold every student and staff members to be informed concerning my work and the kind of challenges the campus is facing and the most appropriate measures proposed to be made (Tanner and Otto, 2016, p. 2190). This will show how concerned you are to the staff and the students during this pandemic season.

The target social media messaging approach may be used to address this issue of change to the staff and the students (Christensen, 2014, p. 366). Being a higher education institution, we have social media accounts which are followed by many students and staff as possible, and also other people like parents and any other people interested (Cornelissen, et al., 2015, n.p). The university social media pages are very active. Therefore, I will use the various social media platforms to communicate about the proposed institutional changes (Bloom, et al., 2014, p. 2865). Through this, many students, staff members, parents, among others will be able to come across the news and read them and know much about them where the awareness of the institutional changes will be effectively communicated (Razmerita, Kirchner and Nielsen, 2016, n.p). This approach has been seen working well in various universities and colleges globally such as the Harvard University which almost all its communications are one online through their social media pages (Mumby and Kuhn, 2018, n.p). Messaging can also be in terms of text messaging as every student and all staff members registered their phone numbers to the administration as they were being admitted to the university.

Email is also another mode of communication which I can consider to communicate with the staff members and the students during this corona time. every staff member and all students have university based corporate emails which can be used to convey the information concerning the changes to them Bharadwaj (2014, p.190). This will be a very important medium as it will directly go to the concerned people where they will be ale to read on their own and know why the changes were made.

The actor-network theory of communication will work during this high time. This is because through this theory the network created towards the proposed institutional changes will end up being successful I being the actor in conveying the message and the staff members and students being the network, we will be able to achieve our successful implementation of the changes to the university Razmerita, Kirchner and Nielsen (2016, n.p). Agenda setting theory of communication will also play a critical role during the communication about the proposed change Cornelissen et al., (2015, n.p). Through this theory, the mass media organizations will help in conveying the information to the public through the social media where the public will access including staff members and the students.

The linear model of communication will be the most effective. Being the sender, I will only have to choose the channel to use in conveying the message, and send the message to the receiver Bloom et al., (2014, p. 2878). Only three models will be needed, that is the sender, channel and the receiver. Therefore this model will suit my one way message transmission process Christensen (2014, p. 380). This model of communication is beneficial because the sender’s message is normally clear when it gets to the sender and normally no confusion is created at all. It is also important a the conveyed message normally reaches the targeted audience, thus a straightforward model Tanner and Otto (2016. p. 2200). The only disadvantage which is there is that no feedback will be provide by the receiver once he or she gets the message Kramer (2014, n.p). In dealing with this issue, during the composing of the message, I will use convincing words to make sure that they all get to understand the reason as to why these changes have to be made and how substantially they will benefit them.

In conclusion, changes are good and are part of every organization including learning institution more so during this high time of corona, where people have to be careful in taking care of themselves and adhering to the advised measures. Therefore these proposed changes for this university will be good and will match with the World Health Organizations’ measures. These changes will be favourable to everyone in the university as everyone will be able to access the teaching and learning facilities at their comfort zones. The proposed theories and models of communication will be of much help in communicating the proposed changes. Therefore I would like to urge any other higher education institutions to take the same measures to make sure students learn even at home and staff are able to lecture at their homes too. This will help in preventing the spreading of the virus as much as possible while still the institutional activities are still going on.

References

Kramer, M.W., 2014. Managing uncertainty in organizational communication. Routledge.

Bharadwaj, A., 2014. Planning internal communication profile for organizational effectiveness. IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 3(2), pp.183-192.

Tanner, G. and Otto, K., 2016. Superior–subordinate communication during organizational change: under which conditions does high-quality communication become important?. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(19), pp.2183-2201.

Christensen, M., 2014. Communication as a strategic tool in change processes. International journal of business communication, 51(4), pp.359-385.

Cornelissen, J.P., Durand, R., Fiss, P.C., Lammers, J.C. and Vaara, E., 2015. Putting communication front and center in institutional theory and analysis.

Bloom, N., Garicano, L., Sadun, R. and Van Reenen, J., 2014. The distinct effects of information technology and communication technology on firm organization. Management Science, 60(12), pp.2859-2885.

Razmerita, L., Kirchner, K. and Nielsen, P., 2016. What factors influence knowledge sharing in organizations? A social dilemma perspective of social media communication. Journal of knowledge Management.

Mumby, D.K. and Kuhn, T.R., 2018. Organizational communication: A critical introduction. Sage Publications.