Coursework 3 – Internal Communications

BM1202 March 2020

Introduction

The internal communications function is essential in any organisation. It is particularly important in a

large and diverse organisation, and there are some particular issues in an organisation where
employees are geographically spread. Within an organisation internal communication is essential to
ensure that staff have a shared and accurate understanding of what is happening, and the
consequences of a failure in internal communication can be very severe indeed.

A – Characteristics of an internal communications manager

The 21st century leaders report (Chartered Association of Business Schools, 2018) focused on skills
and capabilities where employers felt that there was a shortfall in the abilities of recent graduates
from undergraduate business management, and related, courses. It is striking for its emphasis on
interpersonal skills and the need for teamwork and communication to be recognised as things which
need to be taught. Perhaps most memorable is the reference to ‘having difficult conversations’. A
readiness to have difficult conversations is undoubtedly a valuable personal characteristic for an
internal communications manager, but even more than that they should be able to facilitate difficult
conversations among other staff within an organisation. They need to create an environment in
which this can be done without, as far as possible, such conversations spiralling out of control into
personal insults and conversely without setting up barriers such that staff feel inhibited from
expressing their views.

An important ability for an internal communications manager is to use social media effectively. This
spans both technical skills and an ability to understand the use of different channels and to convey
messages clearly. This is a particular aspect of internal communications which has become
increasingly important in recent years. Over the next ten years it is unlikely that the importance of
social networks will decrease but the sort of networks used, especially within organisations, can be
expected to change in ways which cannot easily be predicted, so agility in the use of digital networks
is important. Westerman et al (2015) include in their discussion of how businesses can be
transformed through digital technology the example of Pernod Ricard, a French drinks company, for
whom creation of an enterprise social network was one of the principal initiatives during a period of
transformation.

Stemming from the use of electronic tools is a skill in using analytic data. One of the benefits of using
electronic communication is that it is easy to generate large amounts of data about who is reading
what, and what messages are acted upon within an organisation. This is already very valuable to
businesses and the analytical tools available can be expected to improve over time. Concurrently
employees are likely to be increasingly worried about the growth of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff,
2019) and sensitivity to the issues surrounding digital ethics is an important personal characteristic.

A final skill which is useful for somebody working in internal communications, and could well
become even more useful over the next ten years, is to use visual media in a compelling manner.
Infographics and video clips are examples of the sort of means of communication that rely on
images. As more and more data has become available data visualisation has evolved as an important
skill in its own right and one with considerable relevance to internal communication within an
organisation.
B – Internal communications, BP, and the Quinn framework

An interesting example of a large business with a strong reliance on internal communication is BP, a
major multinational oil company. Like most others in the sector BP is split into distinct ‘upstream’
(exploration and extraction of oil and gas) and ‘downstream’ (transporting and trading oil and gas
and producing a range of products derived from the raw material) businesses, each with their own
structures and requirements.

While BP is a very long-established business it is particularly notable because of the major

Deepwater Horizon oil spill which occurred in the USA in 2010. The causes of this were complex but
they were exacerbated by lax regulation and the connection of a range of different partners with
whom BP worked (Neill and Morris, 2012). The case study from Marketline (2012) emphasises the
tightening of BP’s internal processes, especially around safety, in the aftermath of the oil spill.

Looking at BP in terms of the Quinn framework as summarised by Boddy (2016) the closest fit for BP
for much of its existence has been as an internal process organisation. This is one oriented towards
continuity and one based around clearly defined structures and processes. In a multinational
company such as BP there are additional challenges, within which the internal communications
manager places an important role, in ensuring that these are applied in a global workforce. This is
particular true of the upstream business where the workforce is scattered around the world but
tends to be concentrated in particular places where oil and gas are found.

In the Quinn framework an internal process organisation is biased towards consolidation and
continuity. In the competing values centralisation of management is important, even for an
organisation whose staff are geographically dispersed, as is maintenance of the current system.
Arguably BP had allowed the organisation to lose sight of this before the Deepwater Horizon
disaster. So the challenges facing an internal communications manager in this context are to do with
ensuring that staff in many different parts of the organisation, and in many oilfields and petrol
stations and refineries around the world, all buy into a common set of procedures and approaches.
In a large organisation this needs to be much more than simply imposing a set of rules. Staff around
the world need to buy into the company’s approaches to doing business and, when there are serious
environmental or other consequences of something going amiss, to be aware of these.

C – The internal communications manager and the drones scenario in Millcaster

For the 2020 version of the Millcaster simulation the second round was based on a decision around
drones. Even though the internal communication function is not specifically mentioned in this round
it is clearly pivotal to the events leading up to it. For one thing, an important piece of context
mentioned in the scenario was that the values on which Millcaster Global Industries draws had
recently been revised in consultation with over 10,000 employees. This could only be achieved with
the collaboration and participation of the internal communication function and it would be quite
reasonable to suggest that the success of this exercise reflected the effectiveness, or otherwise, of
the internal communications.

Internal communication is also key to the rapid investigation which is described within the scenario.
One of the challenges facing the internal communications function (and this is the case even though
in the scenario as presented in course material there was not a team member allocated to internal
communications) is to ensure that there is a shared understanding across the business of the nature
of the products being sold and their applications. It is apparent from the events in this scenario that
the understanding was not as clearly or accurately shared as would have been desirable.
In a situation like this staff a dealing with topics which could become emotive – such as the potential
military applications of the drones – and where there is scope for wild rumours to spread. Part of the
internal communications manager’s role should be to keep these effects manageable, and this is
especially challenging in a context where many channels of communication are outside the control
of anybody within the business. For instance there is nothing to stop staff creating WhatsApp groups
which bypass the company’s official channels for internal communication completely and which
could be used to spread messages which are at best inaccurate and at worst actively subversive. One
of the most difficult tasks for the internal communications manager is to monitor and control the
sort of sentiment that staff have about the company and to do this using the sensitivity and
awareness of ethical issues mentioned in part A above.

There is an implication in this scenario that internal communications is only associated with
communicating negative or discouraging messages, for example about inappropriate use of the
technologies. One of the other challenges should be to find a way to promote positive and
motivating messages around innovation even if this is not necessarily the occasion to do it.

D – Peter Drucker’s relevance to internal communications

Peter Drucker is often regarded is the pioneer of management as an academic discipline with a
practical application. In the Practice of Management (Drucker, 2007) he proposed a number of
elements which have since become very widely accepted, such as Management by Objectives.
Subsequently he identified the idea of knowledge as a key business resource and of the knowledge
economy, a concept which has become increasingly relevant as organisations have developed in
ways that their competitive advantage stems from their distinctive accumulated knowledge.

Both Management by Objectives and the sharing of knowledge are aspects of an organisation which
can benefit from effective internal communication.

Drucker developed the idea of Management by Objectives following the second world war in
conjunction with practising managers, notably at the General Electric Corporation in the USA
(Greenwood, 1982). This approach differed from earlier approaches to management in that
previously it had been assumed that managers were working towards well-established and
understood objectives, so little thought was given to what these objectives should be or how they
could be disseminated. Drucker proposed that managers should identify objectives first and then
determine how best they should be achieved.

Good channels for internal communication enable managers to discuss objectives with one another
and to develop them over time. Internal communications also has a part in ensuring that the climate
within a business is right to explore and review these objectives. They are also key to enabling the
sharing of knowledge, and given that firms increasingly identify themselves through knowledge
which can be hard to define and identify, Drucker’s concept of the knowledge economy has proved
even more relevant to contemporary business than it looked in the past (Bang et al, 2010).

A business such as BP provides an interesting example of both the effectiveness and the barriers to
building the sort of knowledge economy favoured by Drucker. In the upstream business particularly,
around exploration and extraction, success often depends on a mixture of ‘gut feeling’ and rigorous
analysis, for example in knowing where to find oil. Both of these depend on accumulated experience
and also on recognising where to find people with particular expertise. So a multinational business
such as BP will place a considerable emphasis on building a knowledge base which is accessible to
staff from around the world, and responsibility for maintaining this and the accuracy of the
knowledge therein comes down to the internal communications manager.
Conclusion

Throughout these discussions of the internal communications function, the importance of sharing
knowledge comes across as a common theme. As businesses have evolved, and become increasingly
complex and increasingly reliant on using new technology, internal communications managers have
needed to deal with a range of subtle issues such as managing reputation and rumour. And as
businesses become increasingly differentiated through knowledge, the internal communications
function has come to be at the centre of a business’s ability to create and share the knowledge that
it needs to thrive.

The internal communications function can also influence the way that businesses respond to
unexpected events, as can be seen in the drones scenario with Millcaster. It can overcome barriers
of space, for example by encouraging BP staff from around the world to share knowledge and to
adopt common processes around safety in particular. And as communications develops it is a
function that demands a clear awareness of ethical issues and the personal abilities to deal with
these.
References

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accelerating thoughts of Peter F Drucker. Management decision 48 (4) 616-627

BP (2020): Our business model. Available at https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-

do/our-business-model.html (accessed 6th March 2020)

Boddy D (2016): Management – an introduction Harlow, Pearson

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Drucker P (2007): The practice of management Revised edition (the classic Drucker collection)
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