In Latin origin, the word, oracle, from “ōrāre” that means “to speak” about the future foretold by the gods. In the modern world, an organization has many gods to whom the management and leadership should listen and adapt. These are strategic publics or strategic constituencies. An organization depends on the strategic publics to acquire and mobilize resources and attain legitimacy; otherwise, they will inevitably perish.
In this reality employees become an oracle, more precisely, many oracles in most successful firms and institutions. In a recent study I conducted with Soo Hyun Park and Arunima Krishna, we found evidence that leading corporations know how to motivate employees to engage with their economic, task environments (e.g., customers, business partners or rivals) and social, institutional environments (e.g., angry customers or publics, governmental regulators) and to speak up about the present and future of their respective businesses.[i]
Preventive-Consequence of ECBs: Strategic Value of ECBs in Risk Management
Employees are one of the most strategic publics for an organization; they create organizational competitiveness not merely as the nuts and bolts in the organizational architecture but also as micro-actors translating macro strategies and enacting organizational value system and norms. All employees routinely perform expected procedures and contractual operations based on their training and expertise. In so doing, what they engage in, in essence, are communicative interactions with members of various strategic constituencies. They listen and talk to, read and write, search for and select important signals from a sea of data and a herd of people. Through these communicative interactions they have the potential to learn information valuable for the survival of their organization.
In 2011 I proposed three new concepts about employee communication behaviors (ECB) with Yunna Rhee. These are megaphoning, scouting, and microboundary spanning.[ii] In brief, megaphoning is the generation and transmission of information about an organization and its behaviors with evaluative judgment (positive or negative evaluation of the organization and its performance) by strategic publics to those other external strategic constituencies. Scouting is the voluntary search for information related to the organization from the external environment and the subsequent sharing such information with the relevant organizational actors. Such information may relate to business opportunities, or risks and potential problems requiring management attention and action. Microboundary spanning is the extent of nonnominated, voluntary communication behaviors or bridging efforts by employees to transmit positive information for one’s organization, to search for and obtain valuable organization-related information from internal and external constituencies, and circulate the obtained information within their organization with relevant individuals and functional groups.
According to the introductory study, when the management makes symmetrical communication efforts they are able to cultivate good organization-employee relationship, which will in turn increase positive megaphoning and decrease negative megaphoning. Likewise, symmetrical communication and the resulting relationship quality increase scouting (i.e., voluntary environmental scanning efforts) among employees. Finally, symmetrical communication management and good quality relationships will motivate employees to show more microboundary spanning activities. These ECBs overall provide invisible informational assets for better risk management as individual employees volunteer their time and effort toward identifying potential threats and preventing them from devolving into an issue or crisis.
Our study further identified the strategic importance of employee when an organization faces crises or issues. We investigated the communicative actions of employees whose organizations had recently experienced a crisis or threatening issues. It was found that when employees perceive a good relationship with their organization they are more willing to speak up for the organization and engage in positive megaphoning – becoming voluntary advocates for their troubled organizations. In contrast, our findings also revealed that employees with poor relationships with their organization were doing the opposite – remaining silent when observing inaccurate or unfair accusations or even speaking against their organization and condemning their management in times of crisis. They are then some of the most formidable adversaries as they tend to have more credibility with external publics for their unique positions as insiders. As such employees leak business secrets and problems during crises, their organizations are exposed to greater risks. Being oblivious to the destructive power of ECBs and poor employee relationships is disastrous.
[i]In 2012 I guest edited a special issue on “strategic values of relationships and the communicative actions of public sand stakeholders” (vol. 6 (1)).In the special issue, a list of studies on strategic values of communicative actions by various strategic publics such as employees role in crisis manageability.
[ii]These phenomena are not exclusively employee-related phenomena but commonly found in other types of strategic publics. There are extended applications and use of megaphoning, scouting, and microboundary spanning. For example, consumer megaphoning and consumer scouting are new areas of study and also megaphoning by diasporas and microboundary spanning by within-border foreign publics (e.g., international students).
Jeong-Nam Kim is an associate professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University.
