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FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cross-Cultural Communications

Matievskaya Ekaterina Nikolaevna

THESIS TOPIC BACHELOR'S PROJECT

Reflecting company corporate values in internal organizational communication

Moscow, 2019

Abstract

This final undergraduate paper is devoted to internal communication within the organisation and is intended to outline major ways of promoting and maintaining corporate values in the organisational communication in the long-term. The topic is relatively recent, thus, there is a necessity to delve more closely into the exploration of it. This study represents the basic approaches in business communication management in order to build awareness of organisational values and puts forward several channels to be used to achieve the distribution of any company's philosophy. The methodology applied is comprised of the analysing and comparing two organisations: non-profit and profit one, and reviewing case studies with samples on both companies. As the conclusion, the study revealed the importance of anchoring values through proper means so as to provide a solid foundation of corporate unity.

Key words: corporate culture, corporate values, value-based approach, organisational communication, corporate unity, workplace behaviour, business communication, inner branding, internal communication, intranet

Introduction

For the past 20 years there has been an increasing amount of publications on the sphere of corporate management and organisational communication. Numerous questions still arouse on the agenda and generate a lot of interest among human resources managers, leaders and those who at some point guide groups of people and organisations. Scholars debate over the lack of unity in companies and whether the majority of employees adhere to generally accepted principles of behaviour. It is also questioned at what degree the slow growth rate is related to the internal situation or even related at all (Smith & Mounter, 2008). Often the answer lies upon the fact that in a particular company there are no clear concepts about culture, the relationship between employees and the rules of communication. Each of these aspects are collectively expressed in the existence of an organisational culture and interactions within a company (Arvidsson, Fransson & Lundgren, 2010). Based on this, it can be said that this topic is of substantial significance for present time, since the culture of the organisation is manifested primarily through the interactions between employees, managerial structure and even the external environment of the company. Previous research on this topic has disregarded that channels may also influence internal communication and its possible prolonged efficiency.

Specific purposes of this work are to study the characteristics of corporate values, organisational communication, methods of evaluating channels of interaction and to investigate its effectiveness, as well as to consider observable corporate values on the example of two organisations. In addition, one of the ultimate goals is to answer the question of whether portraying corporate values is a key factor in the success of the development of the organisation and what channels are the most useful in order to maintain effective communication within the organisation sustaining the motivation to work, flourish and develop as a team, group or organisation.

The object of the research is corporate values, and the subject of the research is practical methodologies of reflecting values in organisational communication and overall manner of workplace behaviour.

The practical significance of this work is that, since the corporate culture influences not only the internal development of the company, but also the long-term result of its activities, its study will be able to promote the use of the knowledge gained to develop the corporate culture at the future workplace, where it will be necessary to adjust and develop company culture for the successful functioning of the organisation. Moreover, the exploration and understanding of appropriate channels of interaction is intended to influence overall flow of the processes, build awareness, create unity when it is used in practice.

The research methodology includes several models for determining types and approaches to corporate human resources management and development in relation to the occurrence of values as well as practical methods for measuring the effectiveness of channels of communication and its impact on the organisation as a whole. In this study qualitative research is conducted, including case study, which is represented with the analysis of two organisations and sample, which is conducted surveys done in one of the organisations.

This study thrives to make important implementations to the expansion of corporate culture values through identifying and suggesting new ways of communication and channels in order to maintain corporate culture spirit which may support sustainability of an organisation.

Scope and limitations of the study

The scope of this research is limited to the exploration of value-based approaches to corporate management, because other approaches does not involve enough activities about the promotion of values. This study contains only internal interactions within the organisation, no external impact is overviewed. Also, this study does not involve the characteristics of corporate cultures or typologies or corporate culture, because of the fact that I did this research in my previous study on closely connected topic.

Moreover, no titles, names or private information are revealed during the analysis of the second organisation due to ethical norms of privacy.

1. Literature review

In order to study the concepts, it is necessary to deep into the literature impacted the business environment and that have already been covering the majority of information relevant to my study. Moreover, it is vital to analyse the literature to be able to build a solid ground and foundation to develop my ideas further.

A considerable amount of work has been made to deepen and push forward the impact of corporate culture and values on the overall company's productivity and development, nevertheless, the existing gap between the theory and practice is still noteworthy to determine and sound.

1.1 Corporate culture

The concept of corporate culture has been widespread since the 80' shortly after the release of four books about its influence on the productivity of the organisation and its achievements. At that time, American business culture needed some fresh beginnings and the trigger and the source for the change was Japanese business environment, especially managerial peculiarities. Those essentials were elaborated and presented in four books:

The first book is called "Theory Z" or "Ouchi Theory," published in 1981, by an American professor and economist William Ouchi. The book "Theory Z" is concerned with the management models based on two major styles of management: American and Japanese ones. The essence of this theory is organisational values to be the determinant of corporate unity and employees' motivation. Moreover, "Theory Z" emphasises the importance of collective mind and group decision-making process. Thus, American individualistic approach combined with Japanese collectivistic one is set to build a pleasant environment for fit-in employees according to William Ouchi (Ouchi, Theory Z,1981).

The second book by Richard Tanner Pascale, Anthony G. Athos and Peter Parker called "The Art of Japanese Management" was published almost simultaneously with the previous one in 1981. In the book "The Art of Japanese Management" Pascale-Athos-Parker considered people-oriented approach to management by Japanese culture and its possible implementation into the American business environment. The main idea of Japanese business running methods according to Pascale-Athos-Parker was to maintain healthy relationship among employees, provide overall path-goal strategies and make people in company feel valued and fit (Pascale, Athos, Parker, 1981). Basically, the first two books are slightly similar in the content and constitute the trigger to further research and interest to corporate culture as a whole.

The third book on the topic of corporate culture called "Corporate Cultures: The rites and Rituals of Corporate Life" by Terrence E. Deal, Allan A. Kennedy was published later on in 1982. Deal and Kennedy strived to explore elements of business daily management with the purpose of achieving high-performance results and in their book, they outline aspect of organisational environment that may have impact on business flow. What is more, the importance of values is also emphasised as a proper attitude to forces that drive business from the inside out. As a result, the authors were able to determine key concepts and procedures to be implied into organisation activities, such as: traditions, norms, behavioural schemes, routine checklists and etc.

The fourth book that triggered the appearance of the concept of corporate culture was the book by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., called "In Search of Excellence," published in 1982. Peters and Waterman worked in McKinsey and were highly interested in exploring company's activities that have power to make changes within the organisation flow. In the book "In Search of Excellence" Peter-Waterman put forwards a model of an organisational management with seven key aspects to consider, so called the Seven Ss: skills, staff, strategy, systems, structure that rest upon the seventh one which is shared values. With the proper implementation and development of those even aspect it is possible to create and maintain a sustainable organisational management with any shared goals, unless all of them are in the correlation with one another (Peter, Waterman, 1982).

Hence, these four books were the start of the exploration of corporate cultures and the advent of styles and approaches to company management and corporate culture as a concept in business practice.

Corporate culture is an inevitable aspect of any organisation, whether it is distinct and explicit or vice-versa, implicit and unclear. There are several definitions of corporate culture which contain major principles corporate culture is based on. By and large, corporate culture appeared to be the soul in the organisation. It consists of common beliefs and values that are adopted by the employees of the organisation with the purpose of understanding the overall behavioural patterns that exist in this or that organisation. Corporate culture is a set of values and beliefs that helps employees get the idea of the right and the wrong actions to consider and to make. According to the professor Geert Hofstede, the culture of and organisation is a process of personnel interactions, leaders and groups with the company and their behaviour in day-to-day life. As it is stated in the guidebook for professional interpreters, corporate culture is a historical rooted, preserved and partially formalised aspects: mind-set, decision-making styles and behavioural traditions of the company employees.

Organisational culture can partially be aligned to the human's character. The culture of an organisation, as well as the character of any individual, have peculiarities and unique features. Culture is intangible but can be traced in daily actions of employees. The manifestation of cultural peculiarities can be tracked not only in the slogans, symbols, traditions or principles of behaviour, but also in the work-place space and interior, extra leisure space for collective activities, location and interior of meeting rooms and etc. Each of these aspects and many more enhance the understanding of the "character" of the organisation, in other words, its culture.

One of the major elements of corporate culture which exist also in terms of strategy of any company is the mission of organisation. The company's mission facilitates the cohesiveness of people in the organisation, especially if the mission is spread out and acknowledged by the employees via special appropriate channels pf communication.

Another key element of corporate culture is motivation. Motivation as a whole is a vital component of organisational environment. Motivation allows managers to encourage employees to develop, pursuing common chard goals and work collaboratively in order to function as a unity.

According to Kotter-Heskett, corporate culture can be divided into to two layers: visible and invisible (Kotter, Heskett, 1992). The former consists of values that are spread out across people of any organisation, the latter reflects norms of behaviour for everyone in the organisation. The aspects of the visible layer can be more easily changed of influenced, however, the aspects of the invisible layer are subjected more difficultly to any changes.

Thus, the impact of corporate culture on the overall function of the organisation depends on the degree of its expressiveness in the company and what aspect are included.

1.2 The role of corporate culture

Corporate culture plays a vital role in the organisation:

- Culture unites employees, providing the sense of identity with the organisation;

- Culture allows organisations differentiate from each other;

- Culture is able to create commitment that can overweight personal interests;

- Culture sets norms and standards of organisation. In this case, culture teach employees about the ways of interaction and how to behave;

- Culture is essential in projects, where the hierarchy is horizontal and decision-making process relies on the subdivisions and departments of the projects. Culture in this case is considered to be a pinpoint for the achievement of goals and tasks.

Moreover, there are several functions, that corporate culture accomplishes.

The first one is an impact on performance, which is expressed in continuous support of the motivation level and consummation of shared and stated goals. The second function is providing the effective process of communication via specific useful channels of interaction. And the third function of corporate culture according to Smirnova (Smirnova, 2009) is an approval and optimisation of implemented principles and norms that are related also to individual interests and values of employees as well as company's mission.

Culture interferes with every sphere of organisation that is why it plays a significant role in any company.

When establishing a business, it is necessary to take into consideration goals, visions and norms that would be spread out across employees and followed by. Corporate culture defines whether employees will be pleased to work in this or that company.

1.3 The importance of values

Since organisations seek to flourish and develop, something needs to be the driver to that growth within the organisation, especially among people. Values are exactly the ones that drive company as a whole. Values create value. When people have something to value, they are motived and are longing to grow and improve. They have goals to accomplish and clear understanding of what to do and where everyone is going for. Values have specific functions in any organisation. According to David R. Koenig, the author of "Governance Reimagined," values define the meaning to the existence of any organisation. And organisations themselves exist to create some value: for the living, for the people, for customers, employees, relatives. The main idea is that organisational values have the power to create the environment not only inside the organisation, but also from the external side. Values can eliminate the degree of uncertainty, which is also great, for example, for intercultural companies. The set of values, its content and peculiarities mostly depend on the type of the organisation, its field of activities and the position on the market.

Moreover, values depend on the culture, in which the organisation functions and stakeholders, in other words, people involved, whether they are suppliers, customers, partners or employees. What is more, values build up solid ground for the outlook on the whole organisation and it identity (Koenig, 2012).

Corporate values have specific functions in organisations. Glenn Smith in his couching guide "Mission. Values. Vision. A comprehensive guide to creating the mission, values and vision for your company" suggests that there are seven major points in what way values influence organisations.

1. Firstly, values are able to differentiate you from the outside world, from companies across the market (Smith, 2016). Unique values create uniqueness of the company and provide tailor-made characteristic that distinguish your company, your employees from anywhere else in the industry.

2. Secondly, values can disseminate involvement in a company and provide managers opportunities to hire people that are aligned with values of the organisation (Smith, 2016). In other words, values contribute to the fit-in employees to be in the right place for them with those who overview the worlds from the similar perspective.

3. Thirdly, values help share and communicate relevant information (Smith, 2016) and avoid spreading out inaccurate patterns of behaviour.

4. Fourthly, values have the power to shape the way people behave (Smith, 2016).

5. Fifthly, values are able to motivate people to act (Smith, 2016). When values are explicit, clear, vivid and alive, people aspire to follow the lead of it.

6. Sixthly, values facilitate the performance and productivity of the overall success of the company (Smith, 2016). When daily actions of employees are locked up with the values, goals and mission of the organisation, the high-performance results will be forthcoming.

7. Finally, values have the power to transform the culture of the organisation (Smith, 2016).

Thereby, values create the principles and the environment for corporate culture to be nurtured in. Corporate cultures that are based on values have the opportunity to gain efficiency at the market, while establishing unique environment that provide that efficiency to take place.

corporate culture communication

2. Value-based approaches to corporate management

Corporate culture with strong foundation of values can function if there is an appropriate management style, that apprize values as a core. Thus, value-based approaches begun to arise. Corporate management is definitely divided into several fields of knowledge, human resources, strategy, marketing, project management, but the corporate culture itself embodies every aspect in its stated values, mission, tradition, norms and behavioural patterns. That is why corporate culture is an integral part of any organisation. It is responsible for every other decision and action employees make.

A remarkable contribution in the sphere of corporate culture and organisational communication was made by David Young and Stephen O'Byrne in their book "EVA and Value-Based Management: A Practical Guide to Implementation". Renowned scholars advocated a new theory, called Value-Based approach to management, which has gained a lot of followers over the past several decades. The underestimation of values started to go down and more and more organisations became addicted to value-based management style. Young and O'Byrne in their book emphasised that value-based management is a revolutionary approach that can lead to great improvements of the mentality of any organisation (Young & O'Byrne, 2000).

The essence of this theory is that creating and maintaining values encourage and motivate employees to be more consistent at their duties, responsibilities and overall perspective of company's activities. To be more precise, this means putting forward the creation of value in the first place. As Young and O'Byrne suggested (2000), there are several relatable aspects to consider while establishing values in organisation: overall strategy of a company, financial movement, performance measurements, and interior and exterior communication.

Moreover, Young and O'Byrne introduced the explanation of EVA (economic value added) approach to the broader audience, to eliminate confusion between two concepts: value-based management and EVA. Actually, the difference between these two approaches is obvious. EVA measures the performance to help build a strong value-based management system. EVA shows actual "value" of a company on the market, which is not directly related to the corporate culture and values that people trust, follow and agreed on.

Thus, value-based approach combines not only value creation process on its own, but also deliberate measure and evaluation on every aspect of each process in the organisation.

One more proponent to the value-based approach to management is Richard S. Gallagher. According to Richard S. Gallagher (2003), corporate culture is not practices, premises or strict rules, but the matters that people value most. In his book "The Soul of an Organisation" he writes about the necessity to understand specific values that have the ability to propel prosperous organisational cultures (Gallagher, 2003).

The punchline of Gallagher's research is focused on the explanation of value-based management towards the proclaiming values as the groundings for the corporate unity. Values are not generally sounded; however, they are transmitted with the help of daily actions induced by the employees, taking into consideration the business setting. Nevertheless, the long-term success is constructed by the combination of 'quality,' 'quantity' and 'attitude'. Where the 'quality' is the quality of the product provided by the company, the 'quantity' is the period of time when company is on the flow and the 'attitude' is basically the culture and environment, which builds up the other two pieces of the long-term success (Gallagher, 2003).

In his book, Gallagher puts forward possible assessment test of workplace culture questionnaire, that allows to identify which cultural trait is more widespread in the organisation and to provide overview of what corporate cultural peculiarities and strength a company has, speaking of organisational culture. It consists of 21 questions with two choices available. Each question represents two different perspectives on one company value. To make an interpretation and count the score there is a chart with the explanation.

Gallagher emphasises that values, integrated in corporate culture, facilitate team spirit and help organisations grow mentally. Effective corporate culture is mental health of the organisation. He illustrates this idea with the concept of "internal customer," which is serving to members within the organisation. The people-oriented perspective builds up company's development, including, workload productivity, overall performance and, as a result, market value.

To sum up everything examined in the book "The Soul of an Organisation," the punchline of Gallagher's ideas is that one's job should not be just a place where you earn money or do something, but rather it should be a way of life, it should not overwhelm, but rather encourage and motivate to grow as humans.

Moreover, promoting and levelling out core values of any company's corporate culture is unquestionably elaborate strategy (Martin & Petty, 2000). Corporate values, on its own, are also said to be titled as core ethical values (Schwartz, 2012). Since core ethical values are the foundation, which is proceed from the term "core," they are inevitably essential in case of organisational development. In actual practice, values designate the identity of a firm as a whole.

What is more, the research in this area triggered the emergence of many other theories, including the one which comprises quite a new phenomenon in terms of management. A study by Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson (2002) formulated a modern definition of corporate culture development -- transformational management. In the works of Anderson transformational management is defined as the process of transmitting self-observed and self-utilised values to the employees in order to change the whole organisational culture towards the most desirable one. The key concept of the transformational management is its multi-dimensional aspect. It covers a comprehensive three-dimension criteria: content (what to do or change), people (what to feel as human-beings) and process (how to bond content and people together and produce a result/a change). In other words, associates are intended to be empowered and inherent values from leaders.

Similarly, Charles Kerns (2005) studied value-based approach in terms of a system to be applied to transform ethical behaviour. In this study, Kerns adduced to a framework of proactive value-centred model of analysing patterns of behaviour of employees. As a result of rigorous research, Kerns devised an A-B-C method of observation and measuring employee behaviour, where A stands for the "antecedent" or a situation occurred, B denotes the "Behaviour" which is observed, or reaction to the situation, and C signifies the consequences of the reaction. To explain the nature of the A-B-C method in practice, Kerns suggested one more step to its professional deployment between the first and the second steps, which is Proactive Professional System (PPS). In this stage of the PPS managers are responsible for foreseeing the possible behaviour of employees relying on three components: values, action roles and standards of behaviour (Kerns, 2005).

Professor Kerns emphasises that being able to recognise and manage unethical behaviour or to response in a right way to the unpleasant situation happened has positive effects on both parties of the situation occurred. When managers act logically, vividly and according to company's values, rules and ethical norms, they help support the healthcare of organisation via promoting effective example on a daily basis. Employees are likely to follow the leader who walk the talk, to in other words, justify their words (values, traditions, rules) with physical presence by actions.

Thereby, corporate values need to be shared and widespread in order to be acknowledged, accepted and used. Thus, internal organisational communication becomes the major promoter of those values. In other words, the internal communication appears as an inner branding of a company.

3. Organisational communication

Communication is an internal part of human activity. Without communication, no people would exist. It is integrated in our everyday life and actions. Because of the fact that organisations consist of people, so, communication is inevitable in order to function properly, establish connections with partners, suppliers, public societies, followers, employee and customers. Each part of any organisation presupposes the act of interaction between two or more people.

Internal organisational communication -- is the transferring and the exchange of information, points of view, thoughts, ideas, insights, methodologies and strategies among people within the organisation. The main goals of an internal organisational communication are to deliver important information to and from the employees in order to build awareness of the current state of the processed of the organisation, to share values, to create sense of unity, to provide support, to interact and to solve problems. Internal communication is also contributed to social science and sociology. In order to create appropriate inner communication within the organisation, sociological and even psychological studies may have needed to be conducted.

The necessity to maintain communication within any organisation is driven by the aptitudes of people to share ideas in order to maintain the dialogue. It is proved that the lack of communication can undermine mental health, which is not pleasant to experience in any setting, and sure enough, in business. However, communication as a field of study has its peculiarities and difficulties, because of the fact that the main source of communication is human, which is complex on its own. Major goal of internal communication is to provide satisfaction from the interactions for employees.

According to the American professor of communication Dennis Mumby, focusing on building solid effective internal communication nothing the organisation can elevate employees' motivation and increase overall work performance (Mumby, 2013). In my study, conducted in 2018 during the third year of my bachelor's degree, I was able to prove a part of this thesis via assessing corporate culture of the organisation I had been working for one year, which had vivid and explicit corporate culture with specific transparent communicational strategies. In this study, I will also illustrate peculiarities of that organisation, but in more detailed topic-related way.

Internal organisational communication is divided into several aspects of research. According to the way of interaction, communication within the organisation can be either verbal, or non-verbal. Depending on the way of delivering and receiving the information, communication can be upward, downward and horizontal (Larkin and Larkin, 1996). Depending on the way the content is delivered, communication can be formal and informal (Wood, 1999).

Verbal communication is everything that is transmitted with oral or written language, whether during day-to-day conversations, meeting, phone calls and any other possible for of speech. In the contrast, non-verbal communication is everything that does not consist of any actual words. Non-verbal communication is mostly gestures, body language, eye-contact, degree of personal space, facial expressions, psychical touch, symbols and signs.

The main difference between verbal and non-verbal interactions is the essence of the delivery and expectations to be created after the communication is occurred. Verbal communication is commonly used for specific purposes, such as: important daily announcements, rewards, training master-classes, operational guidelines, support and feedback, sharing and brainstorming ideas, leisure activities and etc. However, non-verbal communication main purpose is to support the verbal communication, prolong its spreading and transmit more in-depth meaning if needed. Non-verbal communication has the ability to portray emotions and exchange of the feelings, attitudes, perceptions and aspirations. However, it cannot be said that one of these two types of communication are primary or secondary, both are vital, nevertheless they have unlike functions.

According to Larking (1996) internal organisational communication has three designated types:

• Downward communication (or top-to-bottom (Wrench & Carter, 2012))

• Upward communication (or bottom-to-top (Wrench & Carter, 2012))

• Horizontal communication

The downward communication is the most commonly applied in modern organisational management strategies. The simplicity of its implications leads to its widespread deployment among managers, business owners, CEOs and human resources directors. The downward communication purports the stream of the information from managers to employee. Through downwards types of interaction managers are able to give orders, spread tasks, assign accountable people, where there is no space for employees to interact easily if something is misunderstood, unclear or over the list of responsibilities.

The upward communication, in contrast, is based on the interaction from employees to top-management level. Upward communication is not that expanded on the organisational communication strategies, however, according to the modern research on the sphere of communication and human interactions, for the past several years the tendency to be heard has been arising significantly. The main goal of this way of internal organisational interactions is for employees to be able to communicate their ideas, thoughts, complaints, requests directly to the top level in the organisation, where major decisions are held.

Horizontal communication represents the process of interactions between the levelled-up employees (that are on the same level of responsibilities, districts and functions) and the departments within the organisation.

Overall, the awareness of the processes that are happening at both levels of organisation, employees and managers, is crucial in order to create sustainable long-term efficiency and performance (Zivrbule, 2015).

Formal and informal communication, that are also varieties of organisational communication, are manifested in the interactions depending on the setting people are in. Formal communication is business meetings, court hearings, official letters, formal dinners and etc, where people are supposed to act accordingly, which all of the principles of behaviour. Whereas, informal communication is daily communication between people. Informal communication can involve conversational phrases, abbreviation, shortening, glottalising of the words, and also appropriate in terms of work-place environment slang.

3.1 The role of Internal Organisational Communication

To begin with, the man purpose of organisational communication is to acculturate employees and make them be aware of culture and encourage to follow up. Organisational communication has specific functions in the organisation, apart from being the most vital part (Barbara Diggs-Brown, 2012). According to Cutlip (2005) organisational communications possess four key functions:

• Continuous advancements of objectives;

• Monitoring and coordination of day-to-day activities of employees

• Checking whether internal environment and processes match with the current and desired goals;

• Helping employees get acquainted with the culture of the organisation.

What is more, organisational communication also has goals to achieve in the organisation. In the book "The Development of Mass Communication" Dominick J. Donatellee describes pursuits of internal communications.

According to Donatellee (2012), internal organisational communication exists to fulfil the following tasks:

• Maintaining the employees' awareness about the company's goals, objectives, agenda, processes, tasks, etc.;

• Building the sense of belonging and unity;

• Providing trust and support;

• Satisfying employees' needs in terms of interactions and possible ways to do that.

Generally, organisational communication is directed to build awareness of corporate culture, promote values, deliver newsworthy information and create a sense of unity. In other words, it is responsible for creating a proper workplace environment.

3.2. Strategies of Internal Organisational Communication

In order to promote corporate values and make communication happen in an effective way, appropriate strategies need to be implemented.

Howard Krais (2004), in his internal relations guide, called "Introduction to internal communications strategy" suggested that any strategy creation starts with the realisation of what strategy is and what elements should be constituents for any strategy. According to Krais, strategy is composed of twelve sequential elements:

1. Name or Title. When referred to a strategy, stated name helps recall the strategy without searching for it.

2. The objective. Organisation needs to be aware of why people are doing this action. Spreading of the purpose of the strategy increase trust and mindfulness.

3. Brief overview. One-page document that consists of explicit but concise summary of the strategy to be implemented.

4. Strategy comprehension check. At this stage, it is necessary to provide SWOT of the company, evaluating on what the company has now and what company will have after the implication of the strategy.

5. The communication objectives. How internal interactions will be shifted, advantages and outcomes.

6. Measures of the current state. Underlying key tools and methodologies of how communication is held now and adjust strategy respectively.

7. Define the key messages. Providing short, clear and vivid messages help build simultaneous awareness and call to action.

8. Targeting the employees and stakeholders. Identifying the audience contributes to the logical separation of communicational messages and steps.

9. Channels for communication. Defining appropriate channels for communication is beneficial to the achievements of desired communication goals.

10. Get approval from the top management if needed.

11. Accountability matrix. Assigning people with special responsibilities simple the process and eliminate bias.

12. Realistic timeline. In order to decrease the amount of questions and misunderstandings about all the processes of the strategy, a calendar with specific timing is an internal part of strategy creation and promotion.

After establishing a strategy, collating it with the twelve-element strategy steps, there comes the announcing of the strategy to the target audience, using channels and the actual strategies, that would be illustrated thereunder.

There are fifteen possible practices on how to communicate ideas to the employees (Colin Bovet, 2018):

1. Formulate and imagine. When the purposes and outcomes of the strategy and of the communication is clear at least inside one's mind, the potential of the strategy maximises significantly.

2. Keep in mind appropriate tools. To enhance communication, massages need to be transmitted via relevant conciliators.

3. Make ideas visual. Creative power point presentation or white board illustration on-the-go with the representation of the purposes can be beneficial.

4. Consider enjoyment. Employees will follow if they see the outcomes for them. Making content deliberately satisfactory is key.

5. Data create trustworthiness. Portraying statistics to prove the strategy is also essential.

6. Think outside the box. Considering every little detail as well as the overall picture is vital in order to stay the course.

7. Provide the ability to give feedback. Announcing feedback opportunities builds trust and lighten possible fear of change.

8. Enhance interactions between departments. Communication between branches in a company lead to the overall sense of unity and the elimination of misunderstandings.

9. 'Just enough' information technique. Provide key messages on the right time and with the appropriate channels to avoid the overwhelmed.

10. Be a motivation, not an information. Involvement and aspiration are key elements in the process of the acculturation of employees.

11. Be transparent. Transparency also creates reliability and loyalty, which is beneficial of a long-terms functioning of the organisation.

12. Spread out the intranet solely within the organisation. Intranet opens the door to the next level of internal communications.

13. Share insights. Being open to employees in terms of organisational processes, ideas, structure and strategy build credibility and trust.

14. Appraise success. Being renowned is valued by the employees. Thus, the loyalty to the organisation can also increase.

15. Offer training and materials. Achievements of goals require continuous development, that is why offering possibilities to learn and improve help organisations support employees and gain their recognition and sense of belonging.

Communicational strategy depends on the goals of the organisation and its corporate culture, combining the type of real national culture, which means how people interact on a daily basis. However, strategies are universal and can be adjusted to corporate peculiarities accordingly.

3.3 Effective organisational communication

Nevertheless, corporate values do not exist by themselves, they need to be promoted and proclaimed in order to be widespread, common and used. Thus, a recently new phenomenon, developed by Cowan in his book "Strategic Internal Communication: How to Build Employee Engagement and Performance" (2014), called a "Dialogue Box" method of communication within the organisation. Cowan introduced an entirely new concept for internal organisational interactions, which is meant to facilitate and provide solutions and paths of better understanding corporate culture challenges and explore obstacles in communication. Cowan methodology seeks to increase an effectiveness and productivity of internal communications on a daily basis in business setting. This approach is aimed at simplifying the process of observing and examining communication by dividing it into several zones: "intelligence, emotion, interpretation, narrative and dialogue" (Cowan, 2017). It is exceedingly necessary to emphasise the impact of Cowan's work to current and future studies since the topic is highly debated and still requires more scrutinised examination.

Charles Kerns in his book introduced four concepts of a managerial leader that are supposed to help balance the flow of the organisation on a daily basis. Managerial leader, according to Kerns can be fourth-wise: Influencer, Director, Focuser and Linker (Kerns, 2005). Each of these four concepts has its peculiar features, methodologies and overall idea.

The managerial leader as Influencer, due to its status, is supposed to influence people. The main source of power is interpersonal skills, which combine ability to communicate, interact, build relationship, provide trustworthy information, shows personal achievement and success, share ideas and share personal secrets and tips. Influencers must portray wisdom and self-control, according to professor Kerns (Kerns, 2005). Also, they should acquire the ability to treat people with care and are able to be courages in their actions. Influencers are also associated with ethical leaders, that are recognised by good will and attractive behaviour. Motivation is also a vital aspect for influential managers.

Kerns identified ten crucial interpersonal skills and steps that are to be concentrated on while becoming an influential leader and build effective communications within the organisation. Kerns adduced a theory on two research-books on the field of business communication: "Developing Management Skills" by David Whetten and Kim Cameron and "Training in Interpersonal skills: TIPS for Managing People at work" by Stephen Robbins and Phillip Hunsaker.

First major skill set is Self-Awareness and Control. Being aware of your advantages and disadvantages as a communicator, manager and a person can allow to respond to the situation according to core values integrated and widespread in the organisation (Kerns, 2005). Self-awareness and self-control skill set enables managers to conform his/her actions to maximise the efficacy. According to Kerns, both skills can be developed and recognised with six logically followed-up steps.

1. Identifying of the behavioural gaps and possibilities to elevate them.

2. Measuring of the competence levels.

3. Pointing out specific behavioural patterns to improve.

4. Developing plans to action.

5. Finding partners to be accountable to.

6. Continuous development (timing: for ever).

Second set of skills for effective communication for influential leaders is High-Impact communicating. It is targeted on the effective communication between you and your employees. The essence of this skill set is to be able to make communication happen and achieve goals of communication for both parties involved. Kerns suggested that in order to make communication effective one should take into consideration five key aspects (Kerns, 2005):

· Speaker - the delivery of information should be as useful as possible. This aspect consists of the setting the environment for listeners to make communication clear and understandable.

· Message - the content and the proceeds are two building blocks while constructing a message to deliver.

· Listener - the ability to be a good listener always provide more possibilities to be trusted and reliable. Making eye-contact can eliminate the lack of trust and help maintain healthy relationship without false impressions.

· Feedback - managers are to be taught and experienced in both output and receiving process of communication. Getting feedback is an essential part in modern management styles.

· Filter Analysis. The majority of people are often from various backgrounds that is why their perceptions of experience may be different. In this case, being able to acknowledge and analyse the audience of the communication can be a benefit, which can lead to an achieved goal of communication.

Third skill to acquire is Understanding Work Styles. In his book Kerns referred to the study conducted by Charles Margerison and Dick McCann in "Team Management: Practical New Approaches" (Margerison & McCann, 2000). Margerison-McCann introduced eight roles at work-place:

1. Reporter-Advisor. Features: supportive, interested in searching for new information.

2. Creator-Innovator. Features: creative, unlike others, individualistic preference to work-place and accomplishing tasks.

3. Explorer-Promoter. Features: influencer, effective while interaction, eager to act.

4. Assessor-Developer. Features: analytics is a preferred task, objective, working as a project preferred.

5. Thruster-Organiser. Features: results-oriented, timing is essential, organised tasks as a method of communication.

6. Concluder-Producer. Features: efficiency-focused, tasks-oriented, routines are vital.

7. Controller-Inspector. Features: attention to details, rigorous research, monitoring the processes. Needs to be aware of every action undertaken.

8. Upholder-Maintainer. Features: mundane, conservative, evaluative.

Each of these eight types are considered to be commonly existed in contemporary work environment. Defining the type, the manager or the employee are can lead to the improvement of the communication.

Fourth set of essential skills or, more commonly, action to make is Building trust. Trust is reliability. It is an invisible asset that provide long-term partnership.

Fifth dimension is Persuading Effectively. The ability to influence is similar to persuasion. Credible persuasion can lead to better results for foreseeable future. There are several factors to consider while developing persuasive skills: competence, intentions, the way you act, good will, appealing character and approachability.

Sixth skill-set Shaping and Motivating Behaviour. According to the professor Kerns (Kerns, 2005) there is a specific model of motivation that maintain the encouragement spread out. It consists of five elements: positive expectations, required effort, provided useful feedback, recognition opportunities, perception of equal barter.

Seventh crucial skill set is the ability to Manage Conflict and to Negotiate. As conflicts arise daily and the root for them human beings' communication, the necessity to its solving is vital. Thus, the major step when evaluating the conflicts is to identity possible sources (power, task, goals) and define appropriate conflict negotiating strategy. There are five basic approaches to conflict-solving: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. (It is definitely a worth researching topic, but the scope of my study is limited and does not include conflict-resolution theory.)

Eighth skill is Managing Group Dynamics. There are five states that Kerns introduced in his study:

1. Testing and orienting. This stage is focused on the agenda, rules, norms of behaviour. At this stage people get acquainted.

2. Conflict and organisation. At this stage gaps between expectations and reality is identified and brainstormed for further development of strategies for the functioning of the organisation.

3. Cohesion and exchange of the information. People begin to glue to each other. At this stage people easily share experience, knowledge and thoughts.

4. Problem-solving. At this stage people, usually are tested on the basis of what they learned during the first three stages.

5. Adjourning. The process of facilitating uncompleted tasks and ending up everything left behind for some time.

Ninth set of key skills for influential leaders who eager to build effective communication within the organisation is Decisive Problem-Solving techniques. This stage is based on the decision-making styles and reactions. It combines six essential steps:

1. Problem definition

2. Alternative solutions

3. Solutions filter

4. Solution appliance

5. Ethical solutions filter

6. Solution implementations and monitoring

In this ninth skill managers are able to measure their decisions and make them clearer in terms of required effective business communication.

And the last important skill is Managing Change. Kerns adduced this part from the study by Kurt Lewin, called "Filed Theory in social Science", where he outlined three parts of change. Unfreezing (which is identifying the elements needed to be transformed), changing (the actual process of change of those elements detected) and refreshing (where tracking the results and adjusting the processes come into practice). This topic is widely popular on the agenda, I eager to consider this in my further research.

To conclude the results obtained and research on the effectiveness of communication for managers-influencers within the organisation by professor Kerns (2005), it is essential to mention that successful interactions should be built on the relationship between people. Thus, the cornerstone to those relationships (in order to function properly) are shared values accepted be every member of the organisation.

4. Channels of internal organisational communication

To bind together every approach suggested by the scholars it is necessary to use one more theory in practice. Corporate culture consists of a lot of fundamental values and they are intended to be promoted properly. Thus, the viewpoint of FitzPatrick and Valskov (2014) on the internal organisational communication is through channels of interaction. Channels are the main means of delivering messages among employees. The theory of FitzPatrick and Valskov bears upon the most appealing problem existing in organisations: how to inform employees so that they understand and start to act. Generally, the major focus is on the effective channels of delivering vital information for daily company activities. In this study scholars suggested several kinds of media according to the type of information that is required to deliver: for example, in case of spreading the support they advise to give feedback or offer a consultation. Moreover, in this study several types of channels are implemented, including push, pull, talk, community, engage and intelligence (FitzPatrick & Valskov, 2014). Each of these channels can be used for appropriate type of information:

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