Communication within an Organization
Communication within an Organization
In the Volkswagen Emission Scandal of 2015, the Enviornmenal Protecton Agency brought into light the cheating device installed by VW cars into its diesel engines to cheat the performance of its results when tested for smoke emission. In recent years, the German car giant pushed for the selling of its diesel cars in the United States, and their campaign was backed by their claim about the car’s low smoke emissions. It was a moved that would have brought an enormous sales gain for the company, but its eventual detection resulted in the fall of the car market share, in addition to financial losses from recalling, fines and legal actions.
The hierarchy within the organization is one among the features of VW that was most influenced by communication. In a book chapter entitled The Nature of Communication in Organizations (Richmond & McCroskey, 2005), it was discussed that communication breakdown is a myth. However, as proven by the occurrence of the VW Emission Scandal, poor and faulty decisions occur due to the failure to communicate and to decide about a better option. It was not yet fully established who and where in the level within the level of management had initiated the idea of cheating the diesel engine emission. However, it was posited that the order came from a chain of managerial command that caused the approval to fit cheating devices into the cars’ engines. The decision to install cheating devices was a result of poor decision making within the company, which means that the people involved in the device installation failed to refer the matter to judicious individuals before they came up with their final decision. It was pointed out that right after the leaking of the scandal, the management board and head of VW’s marketing left the company, though the management reasoned that the process was related to organizational change, rather than to recent events.
The leadership approach was also among the factors that was affected by communication within the VW organization. An effective leadership approach can do so much to keep the idea of committing wrong doings at bay. The leaders must make sure that their approach puts considerable emphasis on the company’s organizational culture towards ethical and moral practices (Butts, n.d). As expected, the senior management has the most influence in seeing to it that the business environment contributes towards the promotion of ethical and transparent practices. It is to be noted that in the case of VW, the regulators previously raised their concern about the level of VW smoke emissions. However, it was dismissed by the company as mere technical issues and referred to the events as unexpected events. As it turned out, the executives and the managers were implicated for willfully misleading the regulating agencies, and this amounted to considerable loss to the company.
The process of management decision-making was also largely affected by communication. When the malpractices were detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, it is safe to assume that the VW management called in for an immediate decision as to how they will respond to the issue. There was the decision in the immediate recalling and setting aside of funds to defray the costs. As a means to gain back the trust of the VW customer, the management must come up with decisions that will eradicate the negative impact of the scandal to the image of the VW. They are now in the process of determining ways to make up for the negative impact of the scandal to VW sales.
References
Butts, J. (n.d.). Ethics in organizations and leadership. In Ethical organizations.
Richmond, V., & McCroskey, J. (2005). The nature of communication in organizations. In Organizational communication for survival: Making work work.
