Sisekommunikatsiooni eripärad arvutiga töötava ja mittetöötava personali puhul AS Samelin näitel
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
The objective of „Employee-communication differences among computer-users and non-users
in Samelin“ was to analyse communication processes in the factory among computer-users
and non-users focusing on communication channel selection motives and influences.
Keywords: communication channels, communication technologies, new and traditional
channels, channel selection, internal communication in factory.
Samelin, a manufacturing company, which produces mainly work- and safety footwear, is a
object of the the research. The factory has a high labor requirement and 75 percent of
workforce are manual labor. A semi-structured interview was the research method of the
current inquest. With interviews information from 10 employees, computer-users as well as
non-users, was gathered.
Although development of technology is seen as bigger reverse on organization in the last
decade (Modaff et al 2011) there are still organizations, where employees do not use new
communication technologies in their work, like manufacturing companies, with a lot of labor
force. Manufacturing companies are seen as organization with certain structure and hierarchy
(Kone et al 1992) a lot of bureaucracy and rare two-way communication (Riege ja Zulpo
2007; Veinot 2007).
Current research showed that computer-users, specialists and managers, prefer e-mail and
telephone as a communication channels. For non-users, manual labor, communication
channels are limited with verbal communication and notice-boards.
The biggest influence on communication channel selection is the strict organization
requirement to forward all messages written from supervisor to subordinates. On these
grounds all messages from supervisor are put on notice-board for factory workers and send as
an e-mail for specialists and managers.
According to media richness theory e-mail and notice-board are poor channels, because they
don't afford immediate feedback and emotions. Therefore supervisors report all message from
the managing board, besides by letter on notice-board, also verbally to manual labor.
Specialists and managers prefer to communicate via e-mail. To improve disadvantages of email
and to make message transmission faster, specialists and managers integrate e-mails with
telephone conversations and face to face interaction. Factory workers prefer face to face
interaction with all communication partners.
The biggest influence on communication channel selection are organizational influences, rules
that say all downward moving messages must be send written, job roles and status, that
designates who works with a computer and who doesn't.
Manual labor communicate upwards via foreman and formal relationships follow
organizational structure, what shows that there is a strong hierarchical structure in the
company. Two-way communication between managers and workers is expandable. For
instance the workers don’t have anonymous feedback opportunities. There is only few
information exchange opportunities between manufacturing facility and workers, so they don't
know about each other problems what causes misunderstanding and confusion.
Employee communication in the factory is characterized by a message flow that follows the
organization hierarchical structure, bureaucracy that represent rules of written messages and
rare upward communication. Presented results of this thesis describe only one organization,
but internal communication in an industrial company is a rarely demanded subject and there
are many opportunities for further research.