U01d1 The American Legal System Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

U01d1 The American Legal System - Essay Example The main basis of the common laws is based on the decisions that have been made in previous cases. During a hearing the judges make the decision on a case based on previous cases and previous decisions. It is also essential to understand that if a particular case has not been found in the common law, then the decision made by the judge on a case will become the law. Statutory laws on the other hand are the laws that are made by the government of the specific country. Here the governments play a major role in the law determination and they are also responsible for the development of punishments as well. These laws are made to basically meet the needs of the citizens, or to help in the formalization of the existing laws or even to resolve cases that are outstanding and need the government interference (Hillestad, 2004). Considering the health care systems, it is essential to note that the government has taken over the ‘driver’s seat’ for several organization and the hospitals that are run by the government now hold a monopoly in the markets. Here the local hospitals are given the rights to allow or not the starting up of other newer hospitals in the area (Schneller, Smeltzer, & Burns, 2006). Hospitals are given the right to prohibit any new competition in the markets and this in simpler words means that the local hospital tend to gain a monopolistic power in the industry. This is very similar to providing a company the legal rights to create higher levels of barriers to entry in the markets so that the new competition is completely eliminated. The laws those are present in the market at present are to a great extent the root cause for the several liabilities that have cropped up in the past. To ensure that the health care is improved and the issue of the health care is reduced, the governments needs to allow the health care organizations to be privatized instead of taking on the entire markets and also the level of laws and regulations need to be

FedEx's best Customer Services Practices Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

FedEx's best Customer Services Practices - Essay Example As the report declares FedEx was able to develop crucial customer value by making every courier transaction easy and fast, not only in terms of package deliveries but in terms of the comprehensive service to customers – from point of contact, point of sales to the actual client involvement in the delivery process. The move was borne out of the company’s experience in regard to the amount and sheer quantity of paper work that clients and FedEx employees alike must deal with – from the package forms, billing paper work and customer statements. The entire process became so tedious that it already became a burden. FedEx invested an exorbitant amount of money to computerize its operation and integrate the internet in its overall business strategy. This paper stresses that the system automatically calculates whether commitment to the customer was met by comparing ship date and service type to delivery date and time. In FedEx’s website, for instance, a customer can login to his account and access learn where his or her package, with several best practices options such as a link to an online customer service support. The goal is to create appropriate tools that enable front-line employees to improve their personal performance using the information in FedEx’s vast databases. This process is also characterized by the system’s capability to aggregate information according to location, geographic unit.

Impact of Chinas One Child Policy

Impact of Chinas One Child Policy China’s one child policy Maleka Rangwala Introduction It has become common to think in one mindset for a period of time before abruptly rethinking your outlook. This is known as a paradigm shift (Huntington, 1996). In recent times, democracy is a form of government sought for individual citizens.These citizens have the power and the right, to influence decisions made about how their country will be governed. It is portrayed as one of the best forms of government. But maybe democracy is not the answer towards better economic development. That is the null hypothesis of the paper that authoritarian rule is effective in achieving goals and regulating various imbalances’which is based on the uprising against dictatorships in various countries. I will use an example of china for an authoritarian regime. An authoritarian regime is where there is one ruler or small group of leaders that have the real power in political systems. The citizens have no voice in how they are ruled. Their leaders donnot give their subjects free choice. for example china has experienced this rule and experienced various effects. HISTORY OF CHINA In the second half of the twentith century population control became one of the most important growing problems, China chose to adopt an extreme measure of birth control known as the one-child policy. Two of the most consequential social experiments of the twentieth century were the Green Revolution which aimed at feeding the population and family planning programs were designed to curtail its growth. There were half a billion people starving or malnourished, and a billion who didnot have access to proper sanitation or education according to world population facts 1980. Also population increased from 1.7 billion to 3 billion in third world countries during 1950-1975. (rene). China could not keep up with the rapid demand for food and fuel for the increasing population having 8% fertile land and 20% of the world population. In the late 1970s, the chinese government had introduced various measures to reduce the country’s population growth rate. The most important measure which wi ll be studied in detail is the one child policy which said that couples in china could have only one child. In 1950 due to mao’s rule and his concept of increasing population to increase chinese workforce, the change in the rate of population was 1.9 per cent each year. (history of the one child policy) The governement had been encouraging people to have alot of children and nearly 4 children were born per household. At the same time, there was a food shortage that resulted in part from Mao’s failed economic-planning of the Great Leap Forward, where 30 million Chinese died of man-made famine and followed by a cultural revolution in 1966 leading to over a million deaths. (htt1).By 1970s the government realised that the current rates of population growth would soon become unstable and created the one child policy. In the begining malthus an economist whose theory will be discussed in detail later was viewed as an enemy and his theory was rejected by the soviets and chinese government. But as time progressed, they realised this and started propogationg the idea of late, long and few in 1970. By advising women to wait for a long time before having a baby and have few of them. As this change was going on a chinese scientist Song Jian took interest in the demographics and in Netherlands met Geert Jan Olsder who had recently worked on a game theory problem concerning population who saw population as an mathematical contraint problem and thought there could be optimum growth. listening to Olsder’s views and armed with The Limits of growth a 1972 malthusian work, Song took his findings back to the leaders in china and helped in influencing them to formulate this policy. A group of prominent social scientists which were put together by Deng Xiaoping who rose to power after the death of Mao Zedo ng and started a four fronted modernisation in agriculture, industry, national defence and technology, created an optimum solution for the population explosion taking into account the social costs and consequences. The chinese government also had signed an agreement with the united nations population fund in 1979 which gave 50 million to curtail population. This also influenced other western organisations to put their resources like Ford Foundation and International planned parenthood foundation. A theory which justifies this policy is the Lockean contractarianism which is a theory which covers the emphasis of the collective over the individual. While the policy may seem brutal to the induvidual, when a greater picture is taken into account it will benefit the community as a whole, hence benefiting the individual in a long run where one will live a life free from starvation and malnutrition without economic problems. This communitarian ideaology was from Jean Jacques Rousseau as the individual depends on the community for self identity, production of public goods, etc. (rene) POPULATION CONTROL Economic reasons From 1960 economic modules as well as social scientists have a great effect on policy making of various countries.Population needs to be kept in checked for various reasons. First being the orthodox view of supply of natural resources (non renewable) and capital being fixed, the demand would increase and the supply would not keep up and with and with increasing population development decreases. There is another theory formulated by Coale and Hoover in which they say that the economic growth could increase if their was low fertility than high fertility. Though this was later contradicted with saying that they assumed economic growth as a function of only capital growth and didnot take into account the changes in technology and labour quality through better schooling and health. (Hopkins). Social reasons Population overgrowth creates social problems like cultural conflicts. When a particular area is overpopulated, it leads to migration. Which not only puts pressure on land where people move in but also can start civil wars. One example of resource conflict is the case of the jordan river which passes through syria jordan and west bank israel where research showed that 37 actual military conlficts occured between the Arab neighbours and Jordan over the river and its tributtes water. (environment and social ills) It also puts pressure on basic facilities like medical and school. Political reasons and others Population expansion can also lead to political problems like curtailment of people, providing finance for the growing population by the government and growing taxes creating pressure on the poor and increasing the income gap. (htt) like Aristotle said that a large population would bring a â€Å"certain poverty on the citizenry, and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil†. He thought that with a population of over 100,000 people, most citizens would be excluded from having a voice in the goverment. (environment and social ills). To accomodate the growing population the green covers have been eliminated from the surface. This causes many environmantal as well as psychological problems like the Nature deficit disorder which is a hypothesis created by Richard louv in his book ‘Last child in the woods’ (2005) which says that children spend very less time outdoors and hence resulting in many bahavioural problems like attention disorders and depression, diseases like myopia and even obesity. Also a few common effects seen are cost of housing, length of your commute from home to work which wastes time and energy,etc. In order to accomodate the vast population various personal freedom of people are also taken away which become necessary like limits on water consumption, electricity, restriction on what people can do with their own land, etc. The environmental aspect also has dire need to be paid attention to as the extinction of species, habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, ozone layer depletion due to pollution, straine on oceans, etc. Hence the need to contain the population in china was a necessary step but the various aspects of implementation of the policy were not entirely ethical which will be covered below. IMPLEMENTATION AND ASPECTS OF THE POLICY The one child policy was established in 1979 and various benefits were offered to those who followed this rule in form of education, healthcare etc. Malthus an economist observed that population increases but at a geometric rate while food production increases arithematically and made a conclusion that because humans havenotall starved, economic choices must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices His theory advocated welfare reform. He also stated that recent poor laws provided an increased amount of money for a system of welfare depending on the number of children which only encouraged the poor to give birth to more children and had no fear that increased number of children would make eating any more difficult. Increasing number of poor workers would reduce labour costs and ultimately make the poor even poorer. Hence the providing of a certain amount of money to every poor person would lead to rise in prices and value of money. Thus with increasing popu lation supply would be stagnant and demand and price would keep increasing. . He said that there can be many ‘positive’ and ‘preventive’ checks in reducing population expansion which ranged from contraception to famines. china’s one child policy can be considered under this type of a check. Imagine if the growth rate was not checked at that time, china is already heading with the highest populated country. The chinese government showed statistics that the one child policy has prevented over 400 million births (announced in march 2013) and over the last 4 decades have aborted 336 million children, performing 196 million surgical sterilizations and inserted 403 million intrauterine devices. (history of the one child policy) THE AUTHORITARIAN RULE Though the implementation of the policy was unequeal and had several flaws. Those who had more than one child were fined and didnot receive any benefits. There were a total of 22 exeptions where the chances of having more than one child was allowed but if on didnot fall into this category then they had to face consequences like loosing their jobs, confiscation of their belongings. There are also cases where the roofs of their houses were removes and their windows and doors walled in. There were cases which claim that some women who were pregnant were forced to have an abortion and many women were forcibly sterilised. In 1983, 14 million women had abortions organised by family planning committees( many of them coerced). In 2009 there were 6 million. There were cases where the rich had paid off and were able to have a second child. If the poor were not able to pay the fine and had a child then they would be forced in an abortion. the policy was more strictly enforced in the rural regio ns. This policy was also partially responsible for the reduction in fertility rate which fell from 2.63 births per woman in 1980 to 1.61 in 2009. (unitedexplanations) Also the traditional preference of a boy child which exists still in many places even in India caused gender imbalances. There were large number of female babies who ended up homeless or in orphanages and killed in some cases. In 2000 it was reported that 90 percent of foetuses aborted in china were females. Today men outnumber the women by more than 60 million with the sex ratio being 118 boys to 100 girls. The one child policy put pressure on the rural households where families desire one son, who not only assist in household and difficult task but also in a broader perspective continue the male lineage. Also there is a theory where women who suffer from some sort of discrimination will try and prevent their child to undergo the same and hence avoid girl childs, instead of actually developing a more feminist perspect ive. DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION One of the major drawbacks of this policy was the acceleration of the demographic transition. The mid 20th century saw fertility decline and prolonged life expectancy, population reproduction in china transformed from phase of high fertility, low natural growth and high mortality to the modern pattern of population growth i.e. a phase with low fertility, low natural growth and low mortality. In developed countries this process was smooth and spontaneous when they experienced urbanization and industrialization was completed within less than 40 years in china which usually takes a century. (Dewen) The introduction of the one child policy was affected by the suggestion of the malthusian theory and has sped up the demographic transition since 1970s. Even though the demoraphic divident can be put to high utilisation it increases development at a diminishing rate and a stage in future will result in decline development and become a demoghraphic debt causing the 4-2-1 problem. As the first generation of law enforced only children came of age for becoming parents themselves one adult child was left to provide support for his parents and grand parents. Hence called the 4-2-1 problem leaving the older generation dependent on various funds, policies and savings. But there are various economists which say that this change was inevitable and would have occured at this pace without the policy also as seen in some East Asian countries like Korea, Thailand and Indonesia whose birth rates have also significantly declined just as fast as china’s with reasons being rising incomes and living standards which in turn lead to improved health services and reducing infant and child mortality. People have a perception that having many children leads to higher income for more education and dont necessarily help in their old age. It is true these are not the factors that governed the people in china, it was the policy but even if the policy was not implemented then maybe they would be following a similar pattern. EFFECT ON SOCIAL NORMS The one-child policy seems to have changed social norms. There are some norms which exist in the country which govern the birth process. According to a research placed in kenya there are certain barriers to family planning like how the men should be the ones to decide if they want to have a child and the females have to oblige and not protest, A family is complete when they have a child, a man is the one who earns and hence should be the one to make decisions. These were what governed the family plannings before the policy. Later the policy governed these rules. Another impact of the policy was that even after two generations of growing up alone, people expect to have only one child. In 2003 and 2008, the city’s family-planning bureaucrats (the Shanghai Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission) asked 38,000 men and women aged 20-45 about how many children they wanted. (Wilcox., 2013) They found the average ideal family size was just 1.07, with 81% of respondents say ing they wanted only one child and just 15% saying they wanted a second. Thus changing the social norms too. Lewin’s research suggests that an individual cultural habits are more pliable to change through group discussions and decision than through an approach to an individual. Hence he says that the success of the importance of family planning was due to the higher degree of personal involement than a passive recepient of information, the placement of weight behind two conflicting alternatives for or against, one displacing the other and following the norm and restricting deviation. This change could be achieved by unfreezing the old perspective and moving to the new change and freezing it there. He says that the leader need not impose the idea or authoritarian rule rather skillfully steer the group towards the idea. This is one theory which says that their could be various other checks and measure that the government could have implemented instead of this policy. CONCLUSION Hence when we look at the above theories and the various aspects of the policy we can say that the policy could be avoided or thought more carefully about the various social political and economic effects to it before implementing it and the various economic and social theories also suggest that this policy sped up various changes which could be changed gradually. Hence the use of the authoritarian rule could be avoided making the null hypothesis void as the changes required for population reduction could be acquired by various other methods and the authoritarian rule just added to speeding up the process which cause more ill than gain. The authoritarian rule not only changes the demographics but also affected the country socially and politically. Economic theories can be applied to non economic policies and should be added to a few as for overall developement and sucess of the policy one needs to see the various social, political and economic aspects and how the policy would affect it in its particular field. BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.ushistory.org/gov/13a.asp http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/population/managing_population_rev3.shtml http://www.unitedexplanations.org/blogs/china/2012/08/28/one-child-policy-in-china-pros-and-cons/ http://thinkingchinese.com/preference-of-a-son-a-tendency-preserved-mainly-by-women social norm reduced http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/03/chinas-one-child-policy prefernce theory http://psych.cf.ac.uk/esrcfertilitynetwork/pubs/PDR-Hakim.pdf china background useful for why policy implemented http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1116810/ lewins theory http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1653319/?page=6 malthus http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/malthus.htm http://cgge.aag.org/PopulationandNaturalResources1e/CF_PopNatRes_Jan10/CF_PopNatRes_Jan108.html demographic transition http://iple.cass.cn/upload/2012/03/d20120305105846273.pdf http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/05/china-s-one-child-policy-should-be-ended-quickly one child policy step by step http://geographyfieldwork.com/ChinaDemographicTransition.htm http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/15/us-china-reform-idUSBRE9AE0BL20131115 social norms https://www.c-changeprogram.org/sites/default/files/Gender_Norms_FP_Decision-Making_in_Tanzania_Oct_2009_FINAL.pdf https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/PDF/WP_61_Childbearing_preferences.pdf http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/lost-girls_593650.html?page=2# http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/04/the-academic-origins-of-chinas-one-child-policy/ http://howmany.org/environmental_and_social_ills.php social reasons for formulating policy http://www.bpastudies.org/bpastudies/article/view/21/50

Kurt Cobain :: essays research papers

Many people have their own theories about the 5th of April is 1994, for those of you who don't, know that this is the day Kurt Kobain's body was found in the garage of his home. Some critics have come to the conclusion that Kurt had tried to make himself a legend by killing himself. But such ideas seem to overshadow the tragedy of the death of one the most popular and influential musicians of the 1990's. (Melody Makers, web2.epnet.com 12/08/2001) There is no question of Kurt Cobain's death. Many people think he was murdered, many people think it is pretty impossible to shot yourself in the head with a shotgun, but truly it isn't. Kurt Cobain was found on the floor of his garage, when he was found he had been dead for some time from a single "self administered shotgun wound to the head." Around him on the floor were some personal possessions and a had written suicide note which read "I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven I've become hateful towards all humans in general" (Iain Shedden, "Smells Like a Dead Man"). Cobain had grown up in a small town named Aberdeen. Washington. His childhood was disrupted by the divorce of his parents when he was eight. The success of Nirvana gave Kurt the authority to be the "spokesman" of his generation. Nirvana's music gave way to hundreds of other underground bands, but with this success came the media's attention and the almost total loss of privacy that came with it (Kurt Kobain's Obituary). Kurt had secretly suffered from an illness that caused severe stomach pains for more that seven years, which caused him to contemplate suicide almost everyday. This constant abdominal pain led to deep "melancholic depression verging of schizophrenia, and frequent bouts of narcolepsy" (Kurt Kobain's Obituary). Doctors were of no help to him, so he found escape in heroin. For years he fought his addiction, but compared to the severe stomach pains, heroin was unimportant (Kurt Kobain's Obituary). Kurt Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, and their daughter, Frances, brought some real happiness into his life. But the media's constant prodding and increasingly frequent period of depression finally pushed him over the edge. In the end, death was the only thing that he saw that could relieve his pain (Kurt Cobain's Obituary). A famous photograph of Kurt Cobain after a concert in 1991 shows a disturbed young man trying to gain control of his life. Kurt Cobain :: essays research papers Many people have their own theories about the 5th of April is 1994, for those of you who don't, know that this is the day Kurt Kobain's body was found in the garage of his home. Some critics have come to the conclusion that Kurt had tried to make himself a legend by killing himself. But such ideas seem to overshadow the tragedy of the death of one the most popular and influential musicians of the 1990's. (Melody Makers, web2.epnet.com 12/08/2001) There is no question of Kurt Cobain's death. Many people think he was murdered, many people think it is pretty impossible to shot yourself in the head with a shotgun, but truly it isn't. Kurt Cobain was found on the floor of his garage, when he was found he had been dead for some time from a single "self administered shotgun wound to the head." Around him on the floor were some personal possessions and a had written suicide note which read "I have it good, very good, and I'm grateful, but since the age of seven I've become hateful towards all humans in general" (Iain Shedden, "Smells Like a Dead Man"). Cobain had grown up in a small town named Aberdeen. Washington. His childhood was disrupted by the divorce of his parents when he was eight. The success of Nirvana gave Kurt the authority to be the "spokesman" of his generation. Nirvana's music gave way to hundreds of other underground bands, but with this success came the media's attention and the almost total loss of privacy that came with it (Kurt Kobain's Obituary). Kurt had secretly suffered from an illness that caused severe stomach pains for more that seven years, which caused him to contemplate suicide almost everyday. This constant abdominal pain led to deep "melancholic depression verging of schizophrenia, and frequent bouts of narcolepsy" (Kurt Kobain's Obituary). Doctors were of no help to him, so he found escape in heroin. For years he fought his addiction, but compared to the severe stomach pains, heroin was unimportant (Kurt Kobain's Obituary). Kurt Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, and their daughter, Frances, brought some real happiness into his life. But the media's constant prodding and increasingly frequent period of depression finally pushed him over the edge. In the end, death was the only thing that he saw that could relieve his pain (Kurt Cobain's Obituary). A famous photograph of Kurt Cobain after a concert in 1991 shows a disturbed young man trying to gain control of his life.

Management and Keller Essay

The centre of the case is a problem between tow management member, Wolfgang Keller (managing director) and Dimitri Brodsky (commercial director). Keller is superior of Dimitri and he he’s not satisfied with Dimitri’s performance since he joined the company two years ago. Keller now is considering three options: firing Brodsky, helping him to improve his performance or reorganizing the company around Brodsky by splitting marketing and sales. Wolfgang Keller is 34 years old. He studied at Harward and University of Cologne. His first job was at a Gemran food manufacturer firm. First, he was a strategic planner there, but soon he became a general manager at an Ukrainian subsidiary and after he got promoted to be a general manager at a German subsidiary. He achieved his first big successes there and gained reputation in his profession. After 2 years he switched to the Ukrainean subsidiary of Kà ¶nigsbrau, a beer amnufacturer, as managing director. There he also made success by increasing the subsidiary’s earnings to â‚ ¬7 million per year. He made significant changes through restructuring the marketing strategy and hiring new top-management group. The top-management in Munich was also impressed by his activity. Recently, Keller spent two month in Brazil to manage a start-up joint venture. Kà ¶nigsbrau’s Ukrainean subsidiary was founded 12 years before Kà ¶nigsburg aquired it. After, a man named Vladimir Antonov took the title of chaiman. Keller could get his job, because his predecessor had bad relationship with Antonov, so he was transfered back to Germany. Keller’s relationship with Antonov is good, but Antonov misses being involved into daily operations. The strategy of the company is to consolidate and strenghten the company’s distributors by offering heavy support. The strategy also includes heavy advertising, quality services and high margins. In the Ukrainian liqueur market personal relationships and trust between the company and distributors is essential. Another challange is converting people from vodka and cheap beers towards premium beers. Keller’s intention was to strenhgten relationships and create personal contacts with the distributors. Dimitri Brodsky is 10 years older than Keller and he has a very different personality. He is a cultivated and intellectual person. Before this firm he was a commercial director at a Ukrainian subsidiary of a US toiletries firm, but he also has experience from the United States and France. He was hired to balance the young  managers at Kà ¶nigsbrau. He has a good but distant relationship with Antonov. The problem between Brodsky and Keller is the very different uptake about how to handle the employees and the business partners. Keller prefers closer relationship with the employees, because he thinks this helps them to be more loyal and enthusiastic. Furthermore, he doens’t avoid personal topics. With the costumers and partners he encourages the same attitude, because he thinks it’s very important and essential for a business relationship. Brodsky, on the contrary, prefers formality and distance. He also beleives in separation between the pesonal and professional life and he deals with the employees and costumers this way. The source of problem between h im and Keller is this different attitude. Keller thinks that Brodsky is just reluctant to take care of everyday business. However, Keller seems inpatient and action-oriented from Brodsky’s angle.

Internal Corporate Communication on Strategy

Internal corporate communication on strategy and employee commitment International Business Communication Master's thesis Michele Fenech 2013 Department of Communication Aalto University School of Business Powered by TCPDF (www. tcpdf. org) Internal corporate communication on strategy A CRITICAL COMPARISON OF and employee commitment EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCES IN THE CONTEXT OF INTRA-COMMUNITY SUPPLIES Master? s Thesis Master’s thesis Katharina ele Fenech ? MichWeber 26. 09. 2012 2013 Spring International Business International Business CommunicationApproved by the head of the Department of Management and International Business __. __. 20__ and awarded the grade ___________________ Approved in the Department of Communication / / 20 and awarded the grade AALTO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS International Business Communication Mater’s Thesis Mich? le Fenech e ABSTRACT 02-02-2013 Internal corporate communication on strategy and employee commitment Objectives of the stud y This Master’s thesis had three objectives. The ? rst objective was to examine the employees’ needs and preferences of the case company’s internal communication channels, speci? ally internal corporate communication channels that convey the company’s corporate strategy. The second was to investigate success of the internal strategy (corporate) communication by analysing the employees’ perception of their strategy knowledge. The third was to research the relation between internal strategy (corporate) communication (ISCC) and employee commitment. Methodology and theoretical framework The research method was a single-case study and the data was collected using a background study, semi-structured interviews and a survey. The qualitative data was analysed and emerging patterns were identi? d, whereas the quantitative data was statistically analysed using the R programming environment. The theoretical framework presents how internal corporate communicat ion conveys corporate strategy messages via rich and lean media, how the channel attributes affect employee preference and choice, and how the communication and interpretation of the strategy eventually result in commitment. Findings and conclusions of the study In the case company, top-down and primarily one-way internal corporate communication conveying strategy (ISCC) met the employees’ needs better than lateral and two-way internal strategy communication.The needs were recognised to include gaining strategy knowledge, gaining ability to use the knowledge, and reducing equivocality and uncertainty. Apart from the needs, the employees’ communication channel preferences and satisfaction seemed to be affected more with the channel accessibility and information quality attributes than with the richness of the channel. Internal strategy (corporate) communication (ISCC) was successful because the employees perceived to have corporate strategy knowledge. This strategy know ledge had a strong relationship with employee commitment, especially affective commitment.The main implication of this study was the recommendation that companies invest resources in internal strategy corporate communication (ISCC), because it was preferred by the employees at the case company, it corresponded to their needs and it contributed to their affective commitment. Key words: international business communication, internal communication, internal corporate communication, strategy communication, communication channels, communication channel attributes, media richness, corporate strategy, employee commitment I AALTO-YLIOPISTON KAUPPAKORKEAKOULU Kansainv? lisen yritysviestinn? pro gradu -tutkielma a a Mich? le Fenech e Sis? inen strategiaviestint? ja ty? ntekij? iden sitoutuminen a a o o ? TIIVISTELMA 02. 02. 2013 Tutkimuksen tavoitteet T? ll? pro gradu -tutkielmalla oli kolme tavoitetta. Ensimm? inen tavoite oli tutkia ty? ntekij? iden a a a o o tarpeita ja n? kemyksi? sis? is en viestinn? n v? lineist? eritoten sellaisista sis? isen yritysviestinn? n a a a a a a a a v? lineist? , jotka v? litt? v? t yrityksen strategiaa. Toinen tavoite oli selvitt? a sis? isen strategiaa a a a a a? a viestinn? n (ISCC) onnistuminen analysoimalla ty? ntekij? iden n? kemys heid? n strategiatiedosa o o a a taan.Kolmas tavoite oli tutkia sis? isen strategiaviestinn? n (ISCC) ja ty? ntekij? iden sitoutumia a o o sen v? list? suhdetta. a a Tutkimusmenetelm? t ja teoreettinen viitekehys a Tutkimusmetodi on tapaustutkimus, ja aineisto ker? ttiin taustaselvityksell? , haastatteluilla ja a a kyselyll? . Kvalitatiivinen aineisto analysoitiin ja kategorisoitiin, kun taas kvantitatiivinen aia neisto analysoitiin tilastollisesti R-ohjelmistoymp? rist? ll? . Tutkielman teoreettinen viitekehys a o a n? ytt? a kuinka sis? inen yritysviestint? viestii strategiaa joko rikkaan tai niukan median kauta a? a a ta ty? ntekij? lle, kuinka v? lineiden ominaisuudet vaikuttavat ty? ntekij? iden mie ltymyksiin ja o o a o o valintaan, ja kuinka viestint? ja strategian tulkitseminen lopulta johtavat ty? ntekij? iden sitoutua o o miseen. Tutkimuksen tulokset ja johtop? at? kset a? o Tapausyrityksen ty? ntekij? t pitiv? t parhaana vertikaalista ja enimm? kseen yksi-suuntaista sis? ist? o a a a a a yritysviestint? a, joka v? litti strategiaa (ISCC). Se t? ytti heid? n tarpeensa paremmin kuin hoa? a a a risontaalinen ja kaksi-suuntainen sis? inen strategiaviestint? . Tarpeiksi tunnistettiin strategiatiea a don saaminen, strategiatiedon k? tt? minen, ja moniselitteisyyden ja ep? varmuuden v? hent? minen. a a a a a Ty? ntekij? iden viestint? v? lineiden preferenssiin ja tyytyv? isyyteen n? ytti vaikuttavan enemm? n o o a a a a a v? lineiden k? ytett? vyys ja tiedon laatu kuin v? lineiden rikkaus. Sis? inen strategiaviestint? (ISCC) a a a a a a on onnistunut siin? ett? ty? ntekij? t kokevat, ett? he tiet? v? t yrityksen strategian. T? ll? stratea a o a a a a a a giatiedolla on vahva suh de ty? ntekij? iden sitoutumiseen, eritoten affektiiviseen sitoutumiseen. o o T? m? n tutkimuksen johtop? at? ksiin kuuluu, ett? yritysten pit? si investoida resursseja sis? iseen a a a? o a a a strategiaviestint? an (ISCC), sill? se on ty? ntekij? iden suosima, se vastaa heid? n tarpeisiinsa ja a? a o o a se vaikuttaa heid? n affektiiviseen sitoutumiseensa. a Avainsanat: kansainv? linen yritysviestint? , sis? inen viestint? , sis? inen yritysviestint? , stratea a a a a a giaviestint? , viestinn? n v? lineet, viestinn? n v? lineiden ominaisuudet, media rikkaus, yritys straa a a a a tegia, ty? ntekij? n sitoutuminen o a II Contents 1 Introduction 1. 1 Research objectives and questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Terminology of this study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. 3 Structure of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Review of Literature 2. 1 Internal communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 1. 1 Internal co mmunication matrix . . . . . . 2. 1. 2 Internal corporate communication . . . . 2. 2 Corporate strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2. 1 Strategy formation . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2. 2 Strategy implementation . . . . . . . . . 2. 3 Communication channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 3. 1 Media richness theory . . . . . . . . . . 2. . 2 Channel attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 4 Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 4. 1 Organisational Commitment . . . . . . . 2. 4. 2 Three-Component Model of Commitment 2. 5 Theoretical framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 6 8 9 9 13 15 18 19 23 30 32 41 43 46 50 55 61 61 62 63 64 66 66 72 80 83 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Methodology 3. 1 Research design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 1. 1 Exploratory and descriptive research purpose . . . 3. 1. 2 Quantitative and qualitative research strategy . . . 3. 1. 3 Case study method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 2 Data collection and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 2. 1 Background study, interview and survey techniques 3. 2. 2 Statistical data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 3 Reliability and validity of this study . . . . . . . . . . . . Findings and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 III 4. 1 4. 2 4. 3 4. 4 Description of the case company’s strategy and the internal communication channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 1. 1 Description of the company’s generic corporate strategy . . . . . 4. 1. 2 Description of the company’s internal com munication channels . Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2. 1 Strategy knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2. Employees’ ability to apply corporate strategy . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2. 3 The quantity of strategy information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 1 Media richness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 2 Preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 3 Information quality and channel accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 4 Satisfaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 5 Channel comparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 6 ICC versus non-ICC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 7 ICC channels ful? l the employee needs to varying extent . . . . . Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 4. 1 Affective, normative and continuance commitment . . . . . . . . 4. 4. 2 Strategy knowledge against commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 4. 3 ICC channels and commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 84 86 89 90 93 94 96 97 102 106 107 109 112 113 116 117 119 122 125 125 127 128 129 130 5 Conclusions 5. 1 Research summary . . . . . . . 5. 2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 3 Practical implications . . . . . . 5. 4 Limitations of the study . . . . . 5. 5 Suggestions for further research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV List of Tables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Important terminology of this study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Internal Communication Matrix (Welch & Jackson, 2007) . . . . . . . . Adjective-Pairs Used In Evaluating Communication Ch annels . . . . . Background material from case company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interview data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The stages of channel choice for the survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case study tactics for Four Design Tests (Adapted from Yin (2009, p. 41)) 7 14 42 67 68 70 81 Selected channels and their dimension of internal communication . . . . . 89 The employee channel preference comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 The top three employee channel preferences in terms of media richness and internal communication dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 The employees’ ranking of channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 V List of Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 The Shannon-Weaver model of communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949) Internal Corporate Communication (Welch & Jackson, 2007) . . . . . . . Types of Strategies (Mintzberg, 197 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strategy Implementation, a link between planned and realizing strategy . Media Richness Hierarchy (Lengel & Daft, 1988) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Media Selection Framework (Lengel & Daft, 1988) . . . . . . . . . . . A Three-component Model of Organizational Commitment . . . . . . . . The Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A box plot with annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A box plot with outlier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scatter plot without and with jitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scatter chart with Trend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scatter plot without and without outlier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Removal of outliers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The correlation between Affective, Normative and Continuance Commitment Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Theoretical Framework (Content) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The employees’ perception of their strategy knowledge . . . . . . . . Ability to apply strategy against knowledge of the strategy . . . . . . Having enough strategy information against knowledge of the strategy The Theoretical Framework (Media) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Media richness attribute scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richness and Richness Adjusted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Channel preference ranking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Information quality and channel accessibility scores . . . . . . . . . . The employees’ channel satisfaction scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ICC and non-ICC channel attribute comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . The Theoretical Framework (Commitment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overall ACS, NCS and CCS results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Commitment scales against Strategy Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . Knowledge affect commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 16 20 25 34 38 51 56 74 75 76 77 79 80 82 90 91 93 95 96 97 99 102 106 108 112 116 117 120 121 31 32 ACS, Strategy Knowledge and Employees’ perspective . . . . . . . . . . 122 The employees’ ? rst channel preference type with respect to strategy knowledge and ACS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 VII Chapter 1 Introduction In recent years, there has been a growing interest in internal communication in corporate communication research (Vercic, Vercic & Sriramesh, 2012).Internal communication can be described as any â€Å"communication with employees internally within the organization† (Cornelissen, 2011, p. 164). Not only does internal communication enable companies to have information and knowledge sharing between employees (D. Tourish & Hargie, 2004a) but it also satis? es and commits them (D. Tourish & Hargie, 2000), and gives them a voice to speak up (Morrison & Milliken, 2000). Internal communication is important, because it affects the bottom line of a company (Yates, 2006) and, quite simply, is a contributing factor to success (Argenti & Forman, 2002; D. Tourish & Hargie, 2004d).According to Welch and Jackson (2007), one of the recent internal communication theories is based on a stakeholder approach, where internal communication is divided into four interrelated dimensions according to identi? ed stakeholder groups: internal line manager communication, internal team peer communication, internal project peer communication and internal corporate communication. In their new approach to internal communication, Welch and Jackson (2007) concentrate on the fourth dimension, namely internal corporate communication. It is de? ned as â€Å"communication between an organisation’s strategic managers and its in1 ernal stakeholders, designed to promote commitment to the organisation, a sense of belonging to it, awareness of its changing environment and understanding of its evolving aims. † (Welch & Jackson, 2007, p. 193) The role of internal corporate communication is to convey corporate issues such as goals and objectives (Welch & Jackson, 2007). The internal corporate communication channels are mainly one-way channels, such as newsletters and the intranet. The aim of internal corporate communication is to reach four goals, which are belonging, commitment, awareness and understanding of the business environment.Welch and Jackson (2007) address speci? cally the formal and managed internal communication as opposed to the informal internal communication. Informal internal communication, also known as â€Å"grapevine†, includes the constant chat between people at work. The formal internal communication includes the managed company/work related communication. The new stakeholder approach to internal communication is important, beca use according to Welch and Jackson (2007), it broadens the previous approaches, which only looked at the employees as a single audience.The four internal communication dimensions give managers a tool to strategically communicate to different stakeholder groups within the company as well as to all employees at once. One of the corporate issues that internal communication conveys is strategy. Strategy has a multitude of de? nitions. Chandler (1962) created the basics for today’s typical strategy de? nition (Mintzberg, 1978; Mustonen, 2009), which is: â€Å"the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals† (Chandler, 1962, p. 3) Corporate strategy is important, because it aids the company to reach its long-term object2 ives and, therefore, affects the company’s long-term wealth (Al-Ghamdi, Roy & Ahmed, 2007). After the corporat e strategy has been formulated, it needs to be implemented, hence communicated, to the employees. The better the employees understand, accept and embrace the corporate strategy, the more successful the strategy communication is (Aaltonen & Ik? valko, 2002). Understanding the strategy objectives and the signi? cance a of everyone’s contribution has an effect on the commitment and work motivation of the employees (H? ? l? inen & Maula, 2004). a aa In spite of the wealth of research into strategy and strategy communication, there has been a call for more research on internal communication for more than a decade. For example, Argenti (1996, p. 94) points out that â€Å"no other corporate communication subfunction offers more of an opportunity for genuinely sought after research than employee [= internal] communication†. Even today, internal communication still calls for more research (Vercic et al. , 2012; Welch & Jackson, 2007). Welch and Jackson (2007, p. 94) call for fu rther research on â€Å"internal stakeholders’ [employees] needs and preferences for communication content and media† to improve internal corporate communication. Since the internal corporate communication concept is new, there has been little if any research in a corporate strategy context. Furthermore, internal corporate communication and its ability to contribute to the four goals, namely belonging, commitment, awareness and understanding of the business environment, hasn’t been studied much either. 1. 1 Research objectives and questions This Master’s thesis has three purposes. The ? st purpose is to examine the employees’ needs and preferences of the company’s internal communication (IC) channels, speci? cally internal corporate communication (ICC) channels that convey the company’s corporate strategy. The second is to investigate the successfulness of the internal strategy communication (ISC), speci? cally internal strategy corpo rate communication (ISCC), regarding the employees’ perception of their strategy knowledge. The third is to research the relation between internal strategy communication (ISC), focusing on internal strategy corporate communication (ISCC), and the employee’s commitment.The terminology 3 used in this study is described in Section 1. 2. Even though this study focuses primarily on the internal corporate communication (ICC) dimension, the other three internal communication dimensions, namely internal line manager communication, internal team peer communication and internal project peer communication, as well as the informal communication (non-ICC), are also taken into account in this study. This is because the other three dimensions are interrelated with the ICC dimension (Welch & Jackson, 2007); and, because informal communication adds an often used channel.This study looks both at the general internal strategy communication (ISC), which includes all four formal internal c ommunication dimensions and informal internal communication, and at Welch and Jackson’s (2007) more speci? c internal corporate communication conveying strategy (ISCC). Hereinafter, the general internal strategy communication (ISC) with the focus on internal strategy corporate communication (ISCC) is referred to as ‘internal strategy (corporate) communication’.Since, this study requires in-depth knowledge about a company’s internal strategy communication (ISC), it was deemed best to focus only on one company instead of looking at multiple companies. Also, since internal strategy communication (ISC) is con? dential, the case company prefers to stay anonymous. The chosen case company for this study is a Finnish daughter company of an international corporation. The daughter company is spread around Finland and has circa 350 employees. More information on the case company and the single case study method is presented in Section 3. . 3. The purpose of this stud y is transformed into one main and ? ve sub research questions. All of these research questions relate to the case company. The questions are as follows: Main research question: How does internal strategy communication, speci? cally internal strategy corporate communication, meet the employees’ needs and relate to employee commitment? Sub research questions: 4 1. What are the employees’ internal strategy (corporate) communication channel preferences? 2. How do the channels meet the employees’ needs? 3.How much knowledge do the employees perceive to have regarding the corporate strategy gained through internal strategy (corporate) communication? 4. How committed are the employees? 5. What is the relation between their commitment and strategy knowledge gained through internal strategy (corporate) communication? The main research question studies how internal (corporate) communication conveying the corporate strategy meets the needs of the employees. Also, it studi es whether the communication relates to the employees’ commitment towards the company. The ? e sub research questions are studying this main research problem more thoroughly. The ? rst and second sub research questions aim to identify what the employees’ internal strategy (corporate) communication channel preferences are and how the channels meet the employees’ needs. Internal communication media include different kinds of communication channels. On the one hand, it includes two-way internal communication channels such as performance appraisals, and on the other hand, it includes one-way internal corporate communication channels, such as newsletters and the intranet. The channel related needs will be identi? d from the literature. The emphasis in the ? rst and second sub questions is on the employees’ viewpoint on the channels and their characteristics. The third sub research question studies how much knowledge the employees perceive to have regarding the corporate strategy. It is assumed that strategy knowledge is gained and understood via several different ways, one of them being internal strategy (corporate) communication. The needs of the employees for internal strategy (corporate) communication are to receive the message, understand it, and gain the required strategy knowledge.The employees’ level of strategy knowledge and their ability to use this knowledge in their everyday work will help to determine whether the internal strategy (corporate) communication is effective and successful. The fourth and ? fth sub research questions investigate the commitment level of the case 5 company employees, and the relation between their commitment and their strategy knowledge. As has been discussed earlier, ICC leads to four goals, which are commitment, belonging, awareness and understanding of the business environment. Due to the scope restrictions in this study, only the ommitment goal is researched. The organisational commitment theory will be used to analyse how committed the employees are to the company. The gained strategy knowledge will be seen as a result of internal strategy (corporate) communication. Therefore, the employees’ strategy knowledge acts as a middleman in determining the relation between internal strategy corporate communication and the employees’ commitment. This Master’s thesis is well positioned in the research ? eld of International Business Communication, because this study is set in an international business setting researching communication.The Finnish case company is a subsidiary of a multinational company, with subsidiaries all over the world. There is close co-operation between the parent and subsidiary companies, providing an international setting for the business. This study explores internal strategy (corporate) communication in the ? eld of business. The speci? c interest is in the case company’s corporate strategy, how this company communicates t he strategy to its employees, how the employees perceive the communication and whether the communication relates to their organisational commitment. 1. 2Terminology of this study Since the ‘internal communication’, ‘internal corporate communication’ and ‘internal strategy corporate communication’ related concepts and terminology used in this study are very similar to each other, there is the potential for misunderstandings. In order to increase clarity of this study, a summary of the key terminology is provided. The terminology, the abbreviations and their descriptions are presented in Table 1. As can be seen in Table 1, the key terminology used in this study consists of variations about ‘internal communication’ and ‘strategy’.In each chapter, the ? rst time a term is mentioned, it is spelled out entirely with the abbreviation in brackets as a reminder. After 6 Table 1: Important terminology of this study Abbr. IC Desc ription Terminology Internal communication Internal corporate communication ICC Formal non-ICC Internal line manager communication Internal project peer communication Internal team peer communication Informal Small talk, corridor chats ISC Overall internal communication happening in a company. Could be both one-way or two-way communication.Includes all four formal internal communication dimensions and informal communication Predominantly one-way communication between an organisation’s strategic managers and its employees on corporate issues Other internal communication that is not ICC. It includes most two-way communication, formal and informal, on work related issues between all the employees (line manager to subordinate, employee to employee, project peer to project peer, team peer to team peer) of the company 7 ISCC Internal strategy communication Internal strategy corporate communicationFormal Internal communication conveying strategy information in a company. Could be bo th one-way or two-way communication. Includes all four formal internal communication dimensions and informal communication Predominantly one-way communication on precisely the corporate strategy conveyed from the strategic managers to all the employees more or less simultaneously Internal strategy line manager communication Internal strategy project peer communication Internal strategy team peer communication Informal Strategy small talk, corridor chatsOther internal communication on strategy that is not ISCC. It includes non-ISCC most two-way communication, formal or informal, on strategy between all the employees of the company that the abbreviation is usually used. However, in selected places, like Section 2. 1 on internal communication, the term ‘internal communication’ is spelled out instead of using the abbreviation IC in order to make the difference towards ICC more prominent. 1. 3 Structure of the thesis The four main sections in this Master’s thesis are the literature review, the methodology, the ? dings and discussion, and the conclusions. The literature review presents the most relevant literature for this study, including literature on internal communication, strategy, internal communication channels and commitment. The ? nal section of the literature review explains the theoretical framework of this study. The methodology chapter presents the research design, methods and data, and reliability of the study. The ? ndings and discussion chapter explains ? ndings on the internal strategy (corporate) communication channels, employee preferences and need ful? ment, employees’ perception of their strategy knowledge, and employees’ overall organisational commitment and its relation to the gained strategy knowledge. All of the ? ndings are discussed throughout this chapter. Finally, the conclusion chapter reviews the research summary, explains the practical implications of this research, presents the limitations of the stu dy, and proposes suggestions for further research. 8 Chapter 2 Review of Literature This chapter will review literature that is relevant to this Master’s thesis. All of the sections in this chapter ? st review more general literature on the topic at hand and then dive into the more speci? c theory or model that is of relevance to this study. The ? rst section presents research related to internal communication in general and, more speci? cally, to the internal communication matrix and the internal corporate communication (ICC) concept. The second section addresses the formulation and implementation of strategy. The third section highlights communication channels, in general, and then more speci? cally focuses on the media richness theory and communication channel attributes.The fourth section elaborates on commitment, organisational commitment and the threecomponent model of commitment. The last section presents the theoretical framework of this study. 2. 1 Internal communica tion The word communication is based on the Latin words â€Å"communis† and â€Å"communicare† (Wiio, 1977). â€Å"Communis† means sharing in common and â€Å"communicare† means to make common, hence communication is something that is being done together (Wiio, 9 1977). Wiio (1970) de? nes communication simply as the exchange of information between the sender and the receiver.One of the earliest ways to describe communication is the Shannon-Weaver model of communication, which includes more elements than just the sender and the receiver (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). This model is presented in Figure 1. Transmitter Information message (Encoder) Source signal Channel Noise Source received signal Receiver (Decoder) message Destination Figure 1: The Shannon-Weaver model of communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949) In Figure 1 the sender encodes a message, transmits it via a channel to the receiver who decodes the message.Along the way there is noise, which refers to any disturbance that could affect the reception of the message (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). What makes this communication successful, according to Al-Ghamdi et al. (2007), is that the information transferred from the sender to the receiver is understood by the receiver. For a long time now, it has been recognised that the Shannon-Weaver model of communication is outdated because it cannot fully grasp the complex process of human communication, nevertheless, it is one of the best known models (Bowman & Targowski, 1987).It is important to note that communication can be both internal and external (Cornelissen, 2011). Traditionally it was easy to distinguish between the internal communication between the employees in a company and the external communication to, for instance, customers. Nowadays, however, with the arrival of technology and new communication tools (e-mail, intranet, videos, online newsletters) the borders between internal and external communication have become fuzzy (Cornel issen, 2011). For the purpose of this study, it is assumed that internal communication can exist as its own concept separate from external communication.This study will only focus on the internal aspects of communication. Internal communication is important because it helps to share information and know10 ledge with everyone at the company (D. Tourish & Hargie, 2004a). It informs (Smith, 2008), satis? es and commits the employees (D. Tourish & Hargie, 2000), as well as, engages them (Kress, 2005) and gives them a voice to speak up (Morrison & Milliken, 2000). Especially in today’s rapidly changing business world, with all the downsizing, outsourcing and restructuring, internal communication is important (Vercic et al. 2012). It has emerged as a critical function, because organisational leaders need better management skills in regards to employees (Vercic et al. , 2012). Welch and Jackson (2007) argue that internal communication, speci? cally ICC, explained in Subsection 2. 1. 2, leads to commitment, and commitment leads to better performance (Meyer & Allen, 1991) and, therefore, internal communication is crucial for business success. It is the key to good management (Jay, 2005) and it produces better results (Smith, 2008).Internal communication affects the bottom line of a company, by decreasing employee turnover and increasing market premiums, shareholder returns and employee engagement (Yates, 2006), therefore, leading to success (Argenti & Forman, 2002; D. Tourish & Hargie, 2004d). The growing importance of internal communication is visible in many initiatives, for instance, the setting up of the Institute of internal communication in the UK, with the aim of understanding and studying the ? eld (Vercic et al. , 2012). Already in the 6th century St.Benedict said: â€Å"Smaller organisational decisions should be taken by senior individuals, but large ones should be decided as a group. Everyone’s voice must be heard to avoid murmurs and back-bit ing† (Smith, 2008, p. 10), which indicates that internal communication has existed for a long time and it is not only a phenomenon of today’s business world (Smith, 2008). Although the actual practice of internal communication has probably existed for quite some time, the concept itself is relatively new, having started in the US and spread from there to Europe (Vercic et al. , 2012) in the 20th century (Clutterbuck, 1997; Smith, 2008).Even though internal communication has been studied directly or indirectly by many researchers such as Argenti (1996); J. Grunig and Hunt (1984); Jefkins (1988); Kalla (2005); Quirke (2000); Smith (2008); Stone (1995); D. Tourish and Hargie (2004b); Wiio (1970); Wright (1995); Yates (2006), there has been a considerable gap in the academic research and understanding of internal communication (Welch & Jackson, 2007). This is highlighted with the following quote. â€Å"no other corporate communication subfunction offers more of an opportun ity for genuinely sought after research than employee [= internal] communic11 ation† (Argenti, 1996, p. 4) It is dif? cult to de? ne internal communication because it has several, often interchangeably used, synonyms such as change management (Smith, 2008), employee communication (Argenti, 1996; Smidts, Pruyn & Van Riel, 2001), employee relations (Argenti, 1996; J. Grunig & Hunt, 1984; Quirke, 2000), integrated internal communications (Kalla, 2005), internal public relations (Jefkins, 1988; Wright, 1995), internal relations (J. Grunig & Hunt, 1984), industrial relations (Smith, 2008), reputation management (Smith, 2008), staff communication (Stone, 1995), staff communications (D. Tourish & Hargie, 2004b) and transformation (Smith, 2008).These synonyms add to the complexity of de? ning internal communication. The term internal communication has been chosen for this study due to the interest in Welch and Jackson’s (2007) ICC concept; for details see Subsection 2. 1. 2. In addition, the term internal communication is preferred by corporate communication theorists such as Van Riel (1995) and J. Foreman and Argenti (2005). There have been very few useful and appropriate de? nitions of internal communication. De? nitions have either been very simple, for example â€Å"communication with employees internally within the organization† (Cornelissen, 2011, p. 64), or describing something else entirely. For example, a very widely used de? nition of internal communication is that of Frank and Brownell (1989), which more accurately seems to be a de? nition of organisational communication instead of internal communication (Welch & Jackson, 2007). â€Å"the communications transactions between individuals and/or groups at various levels and in different areas of specialisation that are intended to design and redesign organisations, to implement designs, and to co-ordinate day-today activities† (Frank & Brownell, 1989, p. -6) Appropriately, Welch and Jackson (2007) addressed this gap in the academic research and understanding of internal communication and rede? ned internal communication. Welch and Jackson’s (2007) de? nition is adopted for this study, because of the interest in ICC 12 speci? cally. The de? nition is presented below. â€Å"the strategic management of interactions and relationships between stakeholders within organisations across a number of interrelated dimensions including, internal line manager communication, internal team peer communication, internal project peer communication and internal corporate communication† (Welch & Jackson, 2007, p. 84) This section continues by explaining Welch and Jackson’s (2007) internal communication matrix with its four formal internal communication dimensions in Subsection 2. 1. 1. Then, Subsection 2. 1. 2 de? nes the internal corporate communication concept and its four goals (Welch & Jackson, 2007). 2. 1. 1 Internal communication matrix The internal commu nication matrix created by Welch and Jackson (2007) consists of four formal internal communication dimensions, which are the earlier mentioned internal corporate communication (ICC), internal line manager communication, internal team peer communication and internal project peer communication.The internal communication matrix helps to separate the ICC dimension from the other internal communication dimensions. Welch and Jackson (2007) take a stakeholder approach to internal communication. This is done in order to address the criticism and recent calls for research. L’Etang (2005, p. 522) criticises that â€Å"employees are too often treated as a single public† with respect to internal communication in a company. In addition, Forman and Argenti (2005) call for more research on employees as the target audience of internal communication.Welch and Jackson (2007) address these issues by differentiating stakeholder groups at the company, while at the same time still focusing on communication that reaches all the employees. Hence, Welch and Jackson (2007) take a stakeholder approach to internal communication. 13 According to Freeman (1984, p. 25), a stakeholder is: â€Å"any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the ? rm’s objectives†. Stakeholder theory, together with internal communication, add to the identi? ation of participants that form stakeholder groups at different organisational levels: all employees, strategic management, day-to-day management, work teams and project teams (Welch & Jackson, 2007). This implies the earlier mentioned four interrelated dimensions of internal communication (Welch & Jackson, 2007). These four internal communication dimensions in a management context form the internal communication matrix, which is visible in Table 2. Table 2: Internal Communication Matrix (Welch & Jackson, 2007) Dimension 1. Internal line management communication 2.Internal team peer communication 3. Internal project peer communication 4. Internal corporate communication Level Line managers/ supervisors Team colleagues Project group colleagues Strategic managers/ top management Direction Predominantly two-way Two-way Two-way Predominantly one-way Participants Line managersemployees Employeeemployee Employeeemployee Strategic managers-all employees Content Employees’ roles Personal impact, e. g. appraisal discussions, team brie? ngs Team information, e. g. team task discussions Project information, e. g. project issues Organisational/ corporate issues, e. . goals, objectives, new developments, activities and achievements As Table 2 shows, the four dimensions of internal communication are followed by the organisational level, the direction, participants and content of the internal communication, respectively. The level, direction, participants and content of the internal communication differ according to the internal stakeholder group in question. The ? rst dimension, inter nal line manager communication, is between the line managers and the employees of a company at the line manager/supervisor level.This communication is mainly two-way, between superior and subordinate with the content being, for instance, about employee roles (Welch & Jackson, 2007). The second dimension, internal team peer communication, is two-way communication between team members, employee to employee, with the content being team information (Welch & Jackson, 2007). The third dimension, internal project peer communication, is two-way communication between project peers, employee to employee, with the content being project informa14 tion.The difference here between a team and a project is that teams are work teams in departments and divisions while projects have a wider scope with dispersed teams (Welch & Jackson, 2007). The fourth dimension, ICC, is strategic one way communication from the strategic managers/top management of the company to all employees. This communication deals with corporate issues such as goals, objectives and achievements (Welch & Jackson, 2007). Internal line, team peer and project peer communication have been considerably researched by J. Grunig et al. (1992).Therefore, the focus of this study will be on ICC, which has been largely ignored to date. 2. 1. 2 Internal corporate communication The internal corporate communication (ICC) concept developed by Welch and Jackson (2007) is communication between the strategic top of the company and the rest of the company. It focuses on all the employees and, therefore, ? lls an existing void in research (Forman & Argenti, 2005). Internal corporate communication is predominantly oneway and includes issues such as company goals and objectives. The concept of ICC is presented in Figure 2, with the de? ition of ICC being: â€Å"communication between an organisation’s strategic managers and its internal stakeholders, designed to promote commitment to the organisation, a sense of belonging to it, awareness of its changing environment and understanding of its evolving aims† (Welch & Jackson, 2007, p. 186) Figure 2 shows that the strategic managers, who are situated in the circle in the middle of Figure 2, send corporate messages, shown as arrows in Figure 2, to all the company employees, who are situated in the circle depicting internal environment.Figure 2 also points out that internal corporate communication, where the strategic managers are sending corporate messages to the employees, leads to four goals, which are visible in the thick one-way arrows: commitment, awareness, belonging and understanding. In addition, there are four smaller double headed arrows between the internal environment and the external micro environment. These arrows imply two-way communication, which ex15 External MacroEnvironment Employees Commitment External MicroEnvironment Corporate Messages Understanding Strategic managers Awareness Belonging EmployeesInternal Environment Figure 2: In ternal Corporate Communication (Welch & Jackson, 2007) ists in the other three internal communication dimensions: internal manager communication, internal team peer communication and internal project peer communication. Finally, there is also an external macro environment in Figure 2. The double headed arrows in Figure 2 show that even though the main messages are predominantly one way, the strategic managers are still getting feedback and information from their employees in other ways, for instance, through internal team peer communication (Welch & Jackson, 2007).Welch and Jackson (2007) note that the one-wayness of the internal corporate communication concept can be criticised; however, it would be unrealistic to assume that the company could have face-to-face discussion with every single employee on every issue at hand. Therefore, it is important that the messages sent from the top are consistent and this could be done with mediated means of communication (e. g. external news rel ease, corporate television advertisement, corporate web site, internal newsletter).Internal mediated communication can be considered symmetrical: â€Å"if 16 its content meets the employees’ need to know rather than the management’s need to tell† (L. Grunig, Grunig & Dozier, 2002, p. 487). The channels of ICC are a focus in this study, which is to answer the call for further research highlighted in the following quote. â€Å"Research into employee preferences for channel and content of internal corporate communication is required to ensure it meets employees’ needs† (Welch & Jackson, 2007, p. 87) The aforementioned goals of the ICC concept are to increase commitment of the employees to the organisation, develop their awareness of the environmental change, increase their belonging to the company and develop their understanding of the changing objectives. Out of these four goals the commitment goal is of speci? c interest to this study. Commitment is like a positive attitude among employees (De Ridder, 2004; Meyer & Allen, 1997; Mowday, Porter & Steers, 1982) and a degree of loyalty towards an organisation (Welch & Jackson, 2007).It is de? ned as â€Å"the relative strength of an individual’s identi? cation with, and involvement in, a particular organisation† (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979, p. 226). Meyer and Allen (1997) identify three types of workplace commitment, namely affective, continuance and normative. Since the concept of commitment and Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three types of commitment are relevant for this Master’s thesis, they will be further reviewed in Section 2. 4. Belonging is described by Cornelissen (2004, p. 8) as â€Å"a ‘we’ feeling [–] allowing people to identify with their organizations†. Internal communication has an effect on this degree of identi? cation (Smidts et al. , 2001, p. 1052). The need to belong is a strong motivator for people (Baumeist er & Leary, 1995). Therefore, it has to be remembered that organisations could use a persuasive strategy to in? uence the employees (Cheney, 1983) or even use internal communication as a tool to try to manipulate employees (Moloney, 2000). Due to this Welch and Jackson (2007) point out that ICC has an ethical aspect.It is important for the employees to be aware of the environmental change, and understand how it impacts the organisation (Welch & Jackson, 2007), because the organisational environment is dynamic. This dynamic environment has three levels, namely macro, micro 17 and internal (Palmer & Hartley, 2002), which are also shown in Figure 2. These environments are subject to change, and change in the business world has been substantial in the past years for instance due to technology (Cornelissen, 2004).Due to these environmental changes and the implications they could mean, it is vital for the employees to be aware and understand the change (Welch & Jackson, 2007). In addition , to just plainly communicating the current situation of the organisation to the employees, the organisation should even communicate about the external opportunities and threats of the company. Effective internal corporate communication should enable employees to understand the constant changes the company is going through (Welch & Jackson, 2007), thus reducing employees’ uncertainty. In sum, ICC is of speci? interest in this study, because it hasn’t yet been extensively researched. Internal communication is important for companies, because it contributes to their success (Argenti & Forman, 2002; D. Tourish & Hargie, 2004d). When a stakeholder approach is taken, internal communication can be divided into four interrelated dimensions (Welch & Jackson, 2007). These dimensions together form the internal communication matrix (Welch & Jackson, 2007). Out of these four dimensions ICC is the strategic top addressing all the employees simultaneously about the company goals and objectives (Welch & Jackson, 2007).The goals of the ICC include giving the employees a feeling of belonging and commitment, as well as raising the employees’ awareness and understanding of the company’s changing environment (Welch & Jackson, 2007). 2. 2 Corporate strategy Corporate strategy is important, because it aids the company to reach its long-term objectives and, therefore, affects the company’s long-term wealth (Al-Ghamdi et al. , 2007). Understanding these objectives and the signi? cance of everyone’s contribution has an effect on the commitment and work motivation of the employees (H? m? l? nen & Maula, 2004), a aa which is a contributing factor to an effective company (Koch, Radvansk? & Sklen? r, y a 2011). 18 The origin of the word strategy comes from the Greek word â€Å"strategos†, â€Å"a general† (Bracker, 1980, p. 219), referring to skills of warfare (Cummings, 1993; Lahti, 2008). Furthermore, the Greek verb â€Å"stratego † stands for †plan[ning] the destruction of one’s enemies through effective use of resources† (Bracker, 1980, p. 219). The word strategy was originally linked to war and politics, and only after World War II was there a need to link the word to business (Bracker, 1980).The ? rst ones to connect the strategy concept to business were Von Neumann and Morgenstern with their game theory (Bracker, 1980), where strategy is the set of rules that players follow (Mintzberg, 1978). Chandler (1962) created the basics for today’s typical strategy de? nition (Mintzberg, 1978; Mustonen, 2009): †the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals† (Chandler, 1962, p. 13) Bracker (1980, p. 221) sums up many of the strategy de? itions to: â€Å"entails the analysis of internal and external environments of a ? rm to maximi ze the utilization of resources in relation to objectives†. Strategy quite simply put is a †plan† (Mintzberg, 1978, p. 935). This section continues by explaining the strategy formation with Mintzberg’s (1978) theory and a brief review on vision and mission related research in Subsection 2. 2. 1. Then, the strategy implementation is explained in Subsection 2. 2. 2. Issues covered include the importance of the implementation process, the de? nition, Aaltonen and Ik? alko’s (2002) a theory, the importance of managers in the process, some practical issues and the dif? culties of strategy implementation. Finally, the subtle difference between internal strategy communication (ISC) and internal strategy corporate communication (ISCC) is discussed. 2. 2. 1 Strategy formation The strategy process starts with the company’s corporate strategy formation. Mintzberg’s (1978) theory is one of the many theories that explains the theoretical strategy for mation. 19 A more practical view of strategy formation is found in research on vision and mission statements. Mintzberg’s (1978) theoryMintzberg (1978) developed a strategy formation theory, where there are two kinds of strategies, the intended and the realised. According to Mintzberg (1978), in the mainly theoretical strategy formation research, the majority of strategy de? nitions have one thing in common: they are a deliberate set of guidelines that determine future decisions. This type of a strategy is called an intended strategy, and it has the following three characteristics (Mintzberg, 1978). First, it is explicit. Second, it is created purposefully and consciously; and third, it is made in advance to help decision-making.Opposite to the intended strategy is the realised strategy, which is the actual strategy that is put into action. In order to expand the strategy formation research, Mintzberg (1978, p. 935) de? nes strategy as â€Å"a pattern in a stream of decision s†. He then claims that these two kinds of strategies, intended and realised, can be combined in three different ways, resulting in ? ve types of strategies, namely the intended, unrealised, deliberate, emergent and realised. These ? ve types of strategies and their relations are presented in Figure 3. Intended Strategy Unrealized StrategyDeliberate Strategy Realized Strategy Emergent Strategy Figure 3: Types of Strategies (Mintzberg, 1978) As can be seen in Figure 3, the intended strategy is to the left implying a starting point, and the realised strategy is to the right implying an end result. Mintzberg (1978) reasons that the intended and the realised strategy, at least theoretically, can be combined in the following three ways. First, intended strategies that get realised without anything left 20 out or added are called deliberate strategies. Second, intended strategies that do not get realised are called unrealised strategies.This could be caused by issues such as unreali stic expectations. Third, unintended strategies that get realised are called emergent strategies. These could develop over time, unintended, out of a pattern of continuous decisional behaviour. Mintzberg and Waters (1985) suggest that for a strategy to realise itself exactly as it was planned, three conditions need to be met. First, the strategy needs to be planned in detail, in a way that it can be communicated clearly. Second, everyone in the company needs to know it. Third, the strategy implementation is not in? uenced from outside of the company (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985).At least two out of these three conditions need communication, which emphasizes the role that communication plays in the strategy process, especially in the implementation, which is presented in Subsection 2. 2. 2. Vision and mission Vision and mission have been recognised as a part of the more practical view on the strategy formulation process for all types of organisations (Darbi, 2010; David, 1989). However, David (1989) argues that the strategy formulation process consists of not only the creation of the vision and mission statement, but also of the SWOT-analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and the identi? ation of the long-term objectives, to name a few. H? m? l? inen and Maula (2004) point out that it is common practice that a aa companies de? ne at least vision, mission, strategy (a more limited concept, not to be confused with the main corporate strategy) and value statements during their strategy process. These four components could be seen as the most central operational guidelines of a company (H? m? l? inen & Maula, 2004). a aa Vision and mission statements are important, because they in? uence strategy and organisational performance (Darbi, 2010).Vision and mission statements give direction and clarity to the employees; and create a common sense of purpose (Campbell, 1997; Ireland & Hirc, 1992; Klemm, Sanderson & Luffman, 1991; Matejka, Kurke & Gregory, 1993; Mullane, 2002). In addition, these statements also motivate (Ireland & Hirc, 21 1992), shape behaviours (Collins & Porras, 1991), develop commitment (Klemm et al. , 1991) and ? nally in? uence employee performance positively (Mullane, 2002). Vision describes the desired future state of a company (Darbi, 2010; H? m? l? inen & a aa Maula, 2004).The content and length of this description may differ (Darbi, 2010). In addition, G. Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (2008) argue that the vision should show how the company produces value for its stakeholders. A vision gives strategic direction to a company and, furthermore, is the foundation for the mission and other related goals (Darbi, 2010). â€Å"Vision statements are supposed to be challenging and ambitious yet workable enough to evoke employees’ ingenuity as far as its realisation is concerned† (Darbi, 2010, p. 96) A mission is the company’s current purpose (Darbi, 2010; H? m? l? inen & Maula, 2004). aa It answers the question: â€Å"what is our business? † (David, 2009, p. 85), and expresses the corporate strategy in terms of scope and value creation (David, 2009). The mission should convey the company’s strategic direction to the stakeholders (Bartkus, Glassman & McAfee, 2004). Hence the company should identify the most important stakeholders in their mission statement and assure that their needs are met (Mullane, 2002). The mission should speci? cally correspond to the values and expectations of the stakeholders (Darbi, 2010). The last two corporate strategy components presented are values and strategy.Values refer to the company embraced principles (H? m? l? inen & Maula, 2004). Strategy shows a aa how the company is going to achieve its vision and mission (H? m? l? inen & Maula, 2004). a aa This type of strategy is a more limited concept in the whole big corporate strategy process, and its purpose seems to be to show a practical way to reach the goals. It seems to b e rather confusing to have two separate concepts named the same, which de? nitely can be seen as a problem in the strategy implementation phase. This could potentially be solved by renaming the more limited strategy concept as something else.However, the word strategy has also many other meanings (Jones, 2008), and it has become a synonym for 22 different words. For instance, strategy could refer to a plan, a position, a purpose or a long term view (Jones, 2008) and in the adjective form of â€Å"strategic† even important or signi? cant (Alvesson, 2002). There is some criticism in regards to the usefulness and bene? ts of these vision and mission statements (Simpson, 1994). In terms of the content, for instance Simpson (1994) and Goett (1997) note that the majority of these vision and mission statements sound very general and are â€Å"rarely useful† (Goett, 1997, p. ). Hussey (1998) notes that there are semantic problems with vision and mission, therefore what someone thinks of as a vision, another one would say is a mission. Jones (2008) points out that the terms vision and mission have as many de? nitions as people want to give them and they are very overused. Collins and Porras (1999) go a step further and indicate that vision is one of the most overused words in the English language; it is also the least understood. In addition to the criticism against the content, there is also criticism against the process of formulating the vision and mission.Mullane (2002) noted that it is not really the content itself but rather the process of formulating the vision and mission, and how they are then implemented. These statements are seen as top management’s compulsory work that will inevitably end in the employees’ desk drawers or walls, forgotten. So, are the vision and mission statements useful after all? Well, the literature that supports the usefulness and relevance does outweigh the opposite literature (Darbi, 2010), implying that th e vision and mission statements are useful.However, the problem of not everyone knowing and understanding the vision and mission statements remains, and should be addressed with a well thought-out strategy implementation, which takes this into consideration. 2. 2. 2 Strategy implementation It is not enough if only the top management knows about the corporate strategy; it also needs the employees embracing the parts of the strategy that affect their work (H? m? l? inen a aa & Maula, 2004). Therefore, a successful strategy implementation is vital for any com23 pany (Aaltonen & Ik? alko, 2002). Strategy communication, being a major part of a strategy implementation, is important, because it is essential to operational ef? ciency of a company (Kagan, 2004; Roy, 2001). The more successful the strategy communication (Aaltonen & Ik? valko, 2002), the better the employees understand, accept and a embrace the corporate strategy and, hence, the more successful the strategy implementation. H? m? l? inen and Maula (2004) concluded from Juholin’s (1999) work that strategy a aa communication also increases work satisfaction.Strategy communication does not only affect culture, general well-being and performance, but when it is missing, there might be moral problems and weaker performance (Kazoleas & Wright, 2001). In H? m? l? inen and Maula’s (2004) viewpoint strategy implementation means those cona aa crete choices and decisions that employees do everyday at work. Noble (1999, p. 120) de? nes strategy implementation â€Å"as the communication, interpretation, adoption, and enactment of strategic plans†. Communicating strategy to the employees is a central part of strategy implementation (Alexander, 1985; Noble, 1999; Roy, 2001).Strategy communication, as part of the strategy implementation process, is both written and oral communication about the corporate strategy. It is usually communicated in a top-down direction (Aaltonen & Ik? valko, 2002). The com munication is about the responsibilita ies and tasks the employees need to know so that they can ful? l the corporate strategy (Alexander, 1991). Naturally, a strategy might need to be communicated to other stakeholder groups as well, such as customers, suppliers, partners, analysts, media, authorities, local community, NGO’s and competitors (H? m? l? inen & Maula, 2004).Steckel (2000) even points out a aa that companies commonly communicate the strategy to partners and customers and forget the employees. However, in this study the emphasis is put on internal strategy corporate communication (ISCC) and, therefore, the only receivers considered are the employees of a company. Aaltonen and Ik? valko (2002) developed a strategy implementation theory based on earlier a research (Mintzberg, 1978; Noble, 1999; Pettigrew, 1987). They adopted the strategy formation theory from Mintzberg (1978) and the strategy implementation components from Noble (1999).Aaltonen and Ik? valko’ s (2002) strategy implementation theory is a presented in Figure 4. 24 vision planned strategy Strategy implementation: communication interpretation and adoption actions realizing strategy Figure 4: Strategy Implementation as a link between