Browsing by Subject "muutosviestintä"

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.