Communication practices of Mr Fishy Restaurant

Organizational communication is the part and parcel of each and every successful business. In each and every business organization it is important to exchange information, ideas, and views within and outside of the organization (Hunter, 2014). So the overall communication process inside and outside of the organization is known as organizational communication.

Communication practices of Mr Fishy Restaurant

It is one of the best ways of maintaining relations and a better information flow process among the employees, customers, and other related parties of the organization. Organizations need to focus on their goals depending on such successful communication with different respective groups of business (Hunter, 2014).

Overview of the case

As the fish and chips restaurant named Mr. Fishy was facing some serious issues about communication problems. They need to hold a meeting and address some serious issues to focus on implementing new policies to ensure better cooperation among employees. So for the better understating of Mr. Fishy the owner, the report will be prepared by me, the manager to inform him about all the identified barriers and challenges and their overcoming strategies. The report will also discuss some theories of organizational communication and highlight the relevance of theories with the situation of Mr. Fishy restaurant.

Literature Review

Jeannette Wortman Gilsdorf and Vik, 1999 argue that one way to enlighten the understanding of organizational communication is to comparing with different approaches of communication. By doing so, it will create a starting point for an understanding of communication study and learn about it more precisely.

Organizational Communication

Locker, 1998 explains that people have two ways to define organizational communication. One is a conventional approach that focuses on communication within organizations. Another is communication as an organization means the whole organization will be represented as the result of the communication of employees.

A number of surveys identified that effective oral and written communication is most important after the skills of people who run organizations. Locker, 1998 reported communication competency is the most vital skill required for the 21st-century workforce to become successful in any organization. According to various researches, business communication is focused on all levels of interaction now a day. An interpersonal relationship is the biggest contributor to organizational communication. It is mandatory to maintain and design better organizational hierarchies for the long life span of a business organization.

Importance of Internal Communication practices

Internal communication is the way of increasing trust among the employees which is associated with the business success of the organization. By proper and effective use of communication development of trust can be easily built among the employees and within the organization.

According to the research of Jeannette Wortman Gilsdorf and Vik, 1999, it is important to improve internal communication to ensure organizational functions well and effectively. This affects company names and different interest groups, especially the employees and shareholders. The role of management is to engage employees in business objectives by making the internal communication processes effective in the two-way communication process.

The role of internal corporate communications is vital because it helps the managers to investigate communication conflicts and give the managers the freedom to design and improve communication. Stegman, 1988 argues that managers cannot handle internal communication by themselves so it is very important to focus on the coordination of internal communications in organizations.

Effective communication process

According to many articles and researchers, effective business communication is the key to build up a healthy and friendly relationship between the employer and the employees. It can also help in increasing productivity and the company’s bottom line employee satisfaction (Stegman, 1988). Whereas, poor communication leads to many unforeseen problems such as disgruntled customers, delayed work, and diminishing productivity.

From research, it is evident that employee engagement can be increased by building relationships with the team. It creates a huge impact on employee engagement as everyone can interact with each other and their contributions also visible and accessible by all. So whenever employees feel consistently connected their positive contribution and achievements as a team and a part of the company increased at a significant level (Swenson, 1980).

Communication in the business organization

Organizational communication has grown immensely in scope and depth from the last decades. With the rising of the corporation and the managerial way of doing business, it is mandatory to maintain proper organizational communication in the business corporation. There are practitioners of management who have provided their views and theories of management to support the overall importance and necessity of business communication.

Many prominent management theorists such as Max Weber, Philip Tompkins, and George Cheney has focused on the field of organizational communication studies. The matter is getting importance all over the world day by day for the efficiency of the communication process (Swenson, 1980).

Business communication is not only important for the employee or the organization. It is also very necessary to attract customers. Efficient communication attracts the right customers in the right place. It also the goodwill of the organization. People can easily choose the best organization by following their employees and organizational behavior towards them. Employees and their communication process is the best reflection of the organizational arrangements (Bovée and Thill, 2018). It is impossible to ignore organizational communication importance and avoid it in any way.  The world is operating based on organizational communication and it is making the company’s success count more and more. The goodwill and reputation are increasing day by day. So business communication is the part and parcel of the organization and their best ways to achieve success.

Analysis and Discussion on Communication practices of Mr Fishy Restaurant

The communication practices of Mr. Fishy are described below:

• Recurring meetings: Fishy restaurants can keep employees accountable and focused on regular meetings and discussions. It is effective for the employees and also organizations can keep track of their work (Bovée and Thill, 2018). It is also very helpful to give them a reminder about their duties and responsibilities and how much the organization cares for them.
• Be open and flexible: The restaurant also follows the open and flexible way of communication with the employees. As the restaurant is full of different types of people and diversified workplace it is important to have flexibility among employees (Chaney and Martin, 2007).
• Mentor with meaning: Ease employee’s learning curve by assigning them a mentor who will guide them with resource and value their status by understanding their work progress. Mr. Fishy restaurant maintains it well.

By doing all these it will be possible to remove the barriers of communication among the employees because of the Language differences, workplace diversity, job security, and cultural diversity. The ways of communication of Fishy restaurant will help the employees to understand each other and help one another in the process of their learning and improvement. They will also feel part of the organization.

Based on the previous discussion of the communication the Fishy restaurant it is possible to solve their barriers of communication by following ways:

• Respecting each other’s culture
• Know and learn about cultural differences
• Maintain the cultural diversity of the people (Chaney and Martin, 2007)
• Respect each other and learn different languages to ensure proper communication
• Treat the co-workers as a friend and work together for the progress.

Theories of Organizational Communication

• Weber’s Classic Theory of Fixed Structures: The widely respected management theorist, Max Weber talked about bureaucratic organizations to define organizational structure and communication processes within the organizations.

Here in Weberian theory shows, a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities and their hierarchical, structured, and clear communication process. There is no scope for confusing messages being sent from the top and organizations have rigid machine-like structures (Chaney and Martin, 2007). Here the organizations allocate works according to capabilities and seniority determined by fixed notions.

But in the case of Fishy restaurant, this is not the perfect model of communication. As their communication process is not very rigid.

• Tompkins and Cheney’s Organizational Control Theory: Tompkins and Cheney’s organizational control theory is an extended version of the Weberian theory. This theory holds four kinds of control processes on how the organization can exercise power within the companies. They are simple, technical and can be bureaucratic as well.

The organization’s progression is very simple to pure bureaucratic (Dulek, 1993). From technical to clearly identified the purpose of the organization’s mission and vision. Here the control and communication are more than the Weber model. So, the model is also not much suitable for Mr. Fishy’s organization.

• Deetz’s Managerial Theory: The organizational structure and models reflect the changing organizational norms and how organizational communication and organizational control happens with political and economic interests (Dulek, 1993).

The highlight of this theory focused on the democratic aspirations of the people and the power centers. This combination is not available in other models. They need to recognize the managerial class is to represent the natural evolution of the organizational theory of control and communication.

So Mr. Fishy restaurant can follow the rules and regulations of the communication according to this model. It will be very beneficial and helpful to erase the problems of the organization and maintain good relations with the employees.

Conclusion

Employees’ productivity and effective internal communication can easily bring satisfaction in the workplace. It is important to understand the different characteristics of organizational communication and the impacts of effective internal communication for overall success (Hunter, 2014). So for Mr. Fishy restaurant, it is mandatory to resolve their communication conflicts and make employee’s relationship and bonding better for the betterment of the organization and their goal fulfillment.

References

1. Bovée, C.L., and Thill, J.V. (2018). Business communication today. New York, NY: Pearson Education.
2. Chaney, L.H., and Martin, J.S. (2007). Intercultural business communication. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
3. Dulek, R.E. (1993). Models of Development: Business Schools and Business Communication. Journal of Business Communication, 30(3), pp.315–331.
4. Hunter, A. (2014). Business communication. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
5. Jeannette Wortman Gilsdorf and Vik, G.N. (1999). Business communication. New York: Primis Custom Pub.
6. Locker, K.O. (1998). The Role of The Association for Business Communication in Shaping Business Communication as an Academic Discipline. Journal of Business Communication, 35(1), pp.14–44.
7. Stegman, J.D. (1988). The Importance of Managerial Communication. The Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication, 51(3), pp.25–26.
8. Swenson, D.H. (1980). Relative Importance of Business Communication Ski Lls for the Next Ten Years. Journal of Business Communication, 17(2), pp.41–49.

Written by

Md. Shadequr Rahaman

Email: [email protected]