Browsing by discipline "Fonetiikka (Puheviestintä)"

Nowadays it is impossible to deny the importance of organizational communication and business strategy. During recent years it has been understood, that these two areas are strongly linked together it is impossible to fulfill a strategy without communication. Also research in these fields has developed into the same direction. It has been widely acknowledged, that strategy implementation and organizational communication are an important part of all employees work particularly in expert organizations. However, there is only little research of strategy communication from employee perspective. This master's thesis explores employee views on strategy and strategy communication in an expert organization. The research area is approached through two research questions. The first explores employee views on strategy communication meetings, special events that were held in spring 2009. The second research question surveys the strategy knowledge and understanding of the employees as well as their attitude to the strategy. Also willingness to work according the company values is studied. The study is done using a survey method: a questionnaire is tailored to the needs of the organization. Both structured statements and open questions are included in the survey. The gathered data is analyzed using statistical and qualitative methods. The target organization is an expert company operating in five countries. The survey was sent to company's Swedish employees in June 2009. As a result a data with 313 responses(44.4 % of employees in the country) was gathered. As the result of this study the strategy communication meetings can be regarded as successful events. Thanks to this, also strategy knowledge and understanding of personnel showed quite good levels. A positive attitude towards the strategy and the values was also noticed. In the analysis besides the overall views, also views of different respondent groups were compared. In statistical tests it was noticed that managers and persons involved in the strategy process knew and understood the strategy better than average. Ages and working units also had some influences to the views. The results of the study reinforce the strong link between strategy and communication in the target organization special communication meetings have been a way to create strategy knowledge, understanding and positive attitudes towards the strategy. Also the strong role of top and middle management is emphasized in the study. Common strategy communication problems were found as well. Employees were proved to be interested in the strategy and willing to work according the company values in their work. Communication will be essential also in the implementation phase a central requisite for success is to understand communication as a way to implement strategy.

The aim of the study was to describe persuasive performance and its impressions in Communications Agency Deskis 'Oma Puheenvuoro' concept's news videos. Persuasive performance was explored in a new context from the fields of television and internet media studies. The new concept was web television. The theories and studies were chosen to fit with the context and persuasiveness. The purpose was to find out how persuasive performance is in online videos and what kinds of impressions does persuasive performance create. Persuasive performance and its implications were evaluated based on six Communications Agency Deski's news videos. The evaluation was done by an evaluation panel that consisted of communications professionals. Two evaluation measurements were created for the study. The first measurement measured persuasive performance in the online videos by thirteen statements which were divided in to four performance skill areas. The other measurement weighted the impressions of the performance by seventeen statements. Both measurements had open commentary options with the purpose of deepening the study results. The evaluation panel evaluated the performances persuasive and the impressions of the performance positive. Argumentation and content skills were seen as more persuasive than speech structure and articulacy skills. Relevance, credibility and consistency were evaluated as persuasive impressions of performance where as compelling, pleasant or interesting impressions were not seen as persuasive. Based on the results a conclusion can be made that the persuasive performance in online television can be studied by comparing the level of persuasiveness compared to the impressions of performance. The results indicate that certain features in online television context influence the persuasiveness. The results of this study contribute to enhancing the persuasive performance in online television shows.

The topic of this Master's Thesis is the manifestations of power and dominance in superior-subordinate relationship. The aim is to identify verbal and nonverbal communication behaviours that constitute dominance in these relationships. The central concepts are control and countercontrol attempts identified by Dyadic Power Theory (DPT). Destructive communication in work settings, supervisor-subordinate relationship and power and dominance are the key dimensions of the research's theoretical background. The data used is a secondary data, originally collected by the LEAR research project. The project looked into the phenomenon of leadership by fear in Finnish organizations. The data consists of narratives of how workers have been intimidated at work. 89 narratives were selected for this research. The analysis was followed through by using qualitative content analysis methods. Control and countercontrol attempts identified by DPT were used as a base for the analysis. The findings demonstrate that control attempts were mostly supervisors' attempts to control the subordinates. Five control categories were identified: Restricting professional participation, information as control, mental and physical subjection, threatening, extended control, and emphasizing one's own competence. According to the analysis, countercontrol attempts were rarer. A few categories were identified, however. Countercontrol attempts were manifested through direct defence, third-party defence, and by controlling the employment. The research was conducted in a special relational context of conflict and fear. It should be considered how the low-quality supervisor-subordinate relationship affects the manifestations and the quality of control and countercontrol attempts. Power and dominance have mainly been researched in communication and interpersonal research by using quantitative research methods. More qualitative research is needed, especially in Finland.

Employers are constantly increasing their interest towards communication competence and computer-mediated communication. The use of different kinds of technological applications in organizations and educational institutions is growing. The research on these applications is extensive, but is mostly quantitative and focused on synchronous (same-time) communication and learning results. The goal of this thesis was to find out adult students' thoughts and experiences of computer-mediated communication and computer-mediated communication competence in the virtual online classroom. The thesis was a qualitative case study, and it was carried out for a Finnish specialized vocational institute. The data for this thesis was collected by interviewing seven adult students, who had taken part in a virtual online classroom session in the fall of 2013. The class was deployed by using web-conferencing solution, Adobe Connect Pro. The interviews were implemented as theme interviews and the themes were partly based on Spitzberg's (2006) model of computer-mediated communication competence. The data was analyzed by using data-driven content analysis. The results indicated that adult students' perceptions and experience of computer-mediated communication were mainly positive and the use of different communication channels was diverse. The results indicated that the requisite communication competence in the virtual online classroom consisted of knowledge about communication context, skills to communicate in task-oriented and relationship-oriented ways and motivation to learn to use new computer-mediated technologies. In addition, instructors' communication competence was seen important in enhancing the interaction of the virtual classroom. The findings also provided information of students' user experiences of the virtual online classroom; its benefits, challenges and suggestions for improvement. Technology and connection problems in particular were seen as a challenge because they were seen to decrease interaction. This thesis provided information about computer-mediated communication competence in the context of new learning technology. The results can be useful for different kinds of organizations and educational institutions in planning, developing and using virtual technologies in distance education.

The purpose of this thesis was to find out how interaction situations are described in books that cover Pekka Haavisto's and Sauli Niinistö's campaigns for presidential election. It was also studied, what kind of an impression about the communication competence of Haavisto and Niinistö was given in the books. The approach for the analysis is exceptional, since it would appear that the interaction during the campaigns has previously been studied from speech and political communication's point of view in only other contexts, like in radio or television. Campaign literature has also been studied only slightly. In the research, two books about the 2012 presidential election were used as the data. So called SPEAKING-model, which is a tool to describe ways of talking and originally meant for comparing them, developed by Dell Hymes, was used to support the content analysis. Based on the research, an image of both of the candidates' typical interaction situation was compiled. The results also demonstrated that both of the candidates seem skillful and flexible communicators. Judging by the descriptions of the interaction situations, the candidates were especially able to adapt into different situations and tried to achieve open dialogs with different kinds of persons.