Communication works for those who work at it : En studie i hur organisatoriska kommunikationsstrategier kan bidra till meningsskapande under en förändringsprocess

• Main Authors: Eklöf, Sara, Hautaniemi, Maria
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informatik och media 2014
• Subjects: Meningsskapande; kommunikation; kommunikationsstrategi; digitalisering; organisatorisk kommunikation; meningsskapande kommunikation; Media and Communications; Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-230444

Aim: The challenges that arise from the development of the digitalization are forcing organizations to adjust their activities and operations to meet the needs of the society and organization´s important stakeholders. To be able to keep up with the developments organizations are constantly changing. These changes must be communicated to their stakeholders in a way that makes sense to them and to ensure that mutual understanding is achieved for the change to be succesful throughout the organization. The main purpose of this paper is to study an organizations communication during a change process. The focus lies on organizational communication strategies and the sensemaking processes as organization communicates about the change to its important stakeholders. Contribution:This paper will contribute to the field of organizational communication by filling a gap on empirical studies of internal communication during an organizational change. Method: The main method for this paper is the qualitative interviews. We conducted a series of interviews with respondents from four different Swedish companies. The qualitative data was transcribed resulting in around 100 pages of raw material. The interviews were then categorized and coded. The results of the coding are presented in four data tables to illustrate the findings. The results were then operationalized to be able to match them to theories in a later analysis. Analysis was done with the operationalized results. Results & Conclusions: In our conclusion we find that a carefully planned way of communicating within an organization contributes to the efficiency of communication, which in turn provides great opportunity to create meaning in a process of change. It is necessary for an organization to take into account the communicative needs of different stakeholders. To be able to achieve sensemaking is certain screening of information needed and that the screened information is put into the right context. Different phases of a change project contain different contexts, which enables sensemaking through communication. This in turn can lead to a successful change process and mutual understanding among stakeholders. In short: Communication works for those who work at it.