Communication Between Local Teams and Higher Management (Leadership) in Organizations

By:
Danielle Dimitrov,
Vijay Krishna
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Communication in any organization does not happen in a vacuum, rather, it is highly contingent on the organization’s communication culture. Effective communication occurs when the communication climate is credible, open, rewarding, and supportive. Issues of trust, power, organizational culture, and management style significantly affect the flow of information between managers and employees. Iedema and Wodak (1999) state that organizations do not exist independently of their members, but are 'created and recreated in the acts of communication between members' (p.7). The current paper examines possible problems of communication between higher-level leadership and local management teams in large organizations. Problems of distrust, the absence of empowerment for local teams, the chain-of-command principle, and the hands-on bureaucratic management approach (Wegeman, 2001) that affect communication are discussed. The leader-member exchange model of Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995), that looks at the way leaders and subordinates interact, is used as a framework to explain the formation of in- and out- communication groups.


Keywords: Communication, Leadership, Groups and Teams, Empowerment
Stream: Communication, Leadership, Decision Making
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation in
Paper: Communication between Higher Management and Local Teams in Organizations

Danielle Dimitrov

Ed. D. Candidate, Human Resources Development, GSEHR, The George Washington University, Washington DC
UNITED STATES

Danielle Dimitrov is a graduate of Sofia University Bulgaria, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and currently a doctoral candidate at the George Washington University. She has been responsible for various training programs in the hospitality industry both in the US and Eastern Europe. Foreign languages are her passion. She believes in the successful human communication. Appealed by the concept of the “Humane organization”, she has set forth her academic endeavours in that direction.

Vijay Krishna

Department of Human and Organizational Studies, George Washington University
UNITED STATES

Vijay Krishna is a doctoral candidate at the George Washington University. His areas of interests are organizational learning, organizational commitment and turnaround strategies. He has over 12 years of teaching, consulting, and entrepreneurial experience.

Ref: M06P0036