Excellence in Internal Communication Management by Bowen Shannon A. & Linjuan Men Rita

Author:Bowen, Shannon A. & Linjuan Men, Rita [Bowen, Shannon A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Business Expert Press
Published: 2016-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

Participative Organizational Culture

A participative organizational culture, as the name implies, encourages participation across organizational levels by stakeholders. This type of organizational culture is able to encourage input, innovation, and collaboration. In a participative organizational culture, stakeholder input and participation in management and decision-making are commonly sought and encouraged (Goodpaster 2007 ). Rather than focusing on economies of scale and large-scale organization, a participative organizational culture focuses on innovation, input, collaboration, and team performance (Grunig 1992 ). Good ideas can come from any level within the organization, and thus seeks to be inclusive in seeking input and managerial decision-making. Whereas authoritarian cultures can be seen as top–down communication, participative cultures can be seen as bottom–up communication (Grunig 1992 ).

It is common to find a participative organizational culture in industries with highly skilled or highly educated workers, and in small- to medium-size enterprises. For example, a consultancy focused on finance and accounting may have a highly educated workforce in which hierarchies between reporting lines are minimized in a team-based structure that seeks input from all members. Some team members may be CPAs, while others may be tax attorneys, yet all have valuable input to contribute to the team.

Participative organizational cultures offer the main competitive advantages of innovation and flexibility. These types of organizational cultures generally foster stakeholder creative thinking and offer a fertile environment for problem-solving and building community (Eisenberg and Riley 2001 ). Information sharing and two-way symmetrical discussion can improve decision-making by offering inclusion for stakeholders at all levels of the organization. Participative organizational cultures have low turnover rates because they tend to instill commitment to organizational goals.

One should be mindful of the strengths and weaknesses of participative organizational cultures. Because of the high level and frequency of communication in a participative organizational culture, role ambiguity and confusion about responsibilities, or overlapping responsibilities, may be the norm. Some degree of inefficiency is introduced by this heavy reliance on communication and lack of role specificity. Further, participative organizational cultures function best when all are dedicated to the success of the enterprise and use their own initiative to enhance team performance and improve results. Stakeholders who lack motivation or personal initiative may become entirely disengaged from the participative process.

Participative organizational cultures are not as adept at organizing complex or routine enterprises as authoritarian cultures. However, these cultures offer speed and flexibility of problem-solving that make them responsive, agile, and highly competitive environments, such as the technology industry. In environments where innovation is a key component of success, you are likely to find varying degrees of participatory organizational cultures.

In a participative organizational culture, communication is both one-way and two-way. Symmetrical or dialog-based communication is used for more complex problem-solving and to generate stakeholder input. One-way communication is used as an organizational tool and may be more specific to job responsibilities. An interesting and valuable outcome of generating two-way symmetrical communication is that it enhances employee commitment to the organization. For example, asking stakeholders at all levels for ideas input and feedback about revising

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