Weeks five

Running head: BERRYS BUG BLASTERS 1

BERRYS BUG BLASTERS 9

BERRYS BUG BLASTERS

Destiny Hill

BSCOM/485

Michael Turner

May 10, 2021

Introduction 

Leadership change is one of the things that do affect the effectiveness of the company, especially when it does come to communication. The leadership change that this paper will look at concerning the selected company is the change of the management department heads. Specifically, this paper's company will look at the changes in political changes and the significant employment change that the company has witnessed in recent years. This employment came with brand new members of the company, and this did include foreign labor. These changes affected the company significantly; the communication fluency that was there was abruptly distorted. The line of communication, both vertically and horizontally, came to a standstill for some time. This all was attributed to the company's leadership changes (Wang, & Joshi, 2018). These changes affect the communication within Berry's Bug Blasters. The existing employees established a relationship with their superiors, and that reestablishing that relationship with the new leaders who were introduced now would become a process. This is because communication is cultivated over time, and communication can be easily affected by how the company's leadership does change over time. However, this rapport can be established over time. The fear of the communication lines being affected should not cause the company not to embrace changes, especially in leadership positions.

Dow Agro sciences is a pesticide company located in the united states that had been doing well for many years providing services that have to do with treating and giving out pesticides used to treat all types of pests. However, the company had recently changed its leadership structure in all departments in its different locations and companies. This affected the company as a whole in terms of the communication system and behaviors of both the junior and the senior staff involved. However, the company, after experiencing the effects in the communication systems due to the changes it made in its leadership positions, different strategies that the company implemented to make sure that they overcame the impact they experienced in terms of communication of the said employees.

The first thing that the company focused on was making sure that the bonding of all the employees, both the new ones, those who were introduced, and the existing ones, was to be established. The company, therefore, used different ways to make sure that this relationship was established. Some of the company's ways were first taking its employees to a retreat to interact and be free with each other more. This strategy helped ensure that the existing employees and the new ones were free from each other. The retreat established ad set out a foundation for both the employees to make sure that the affected communication was restored immediately. The company made sure the employees were put in teams, and these teams were created so that the team members, while they were working, had a good ratio of both new and the already existing employees. Grouping helped establish the relationship that was badly needed in reestablishing the communication that the company's employees initially lost after the leadership structure in different departments was changed and reshuffled.

Interpersonal communication ethics is different from the other forms of communication ethics since this does put much of its concern on the relationship between different persons. Interpersonal communication ethics usually do find it easy to identify the ethical requirement that is given to it to protect and at the same time promote the wellbeing of the relationships that are there (Solomon & Theiss, 2019). During a crisis, this is one of the things that affect a company most. Suppose the employees of a company do not have interpersonal communication ethics. In that case, overcoming a crisis will be very hard since overcoming a problem depends on the personal relationships that the employees have with each other or their seniors, both horizontally and vertically. Therefore, interpersonal communication ethics will help the company overcome a crisis if considered and taken heavily.

The perception of power, in many cases, is an abstract thing that both junior and senior employees do have. When employees or individuals in a certain way experience a sense of power, or even in some cases remember instances in which they felt powerful in the things that they did, then this usually changes instantly. Therefore, the perception of power in the way an individual thinks that power should be and how it should be used on them or how they should use them is the same. When a company is undergoing a crisis, the perception of power usually affects how the company usually overcomes or succumbs to the crisis. Therefore, in this case, if the leaders of the Berry's Bug Blasters company have a different and a misled perception of power. This may make the company leaders use this in a way that is not effective and, in the end, makes the company worse off with the crisis because they had a different perception of power. 

Communication during conflict is one of the essential things that any company, and in this case, the Berry's Bug Blaster company, should focus on when dealing with a crisis. the role that communication plays in conflict and crisis management is huge (Overall & McNulty, 2017). It has been observed that communications that are poor usually in most cases end up resulting in misunderstandings. If the misconception persists, this usually ends up bringing about conflicts in the company. Therefore, it is crucial in the middle of every crisis that the company faces. Communication between the employees and any person who is playing a role in the company should be concise and precise. This will ensure that the conflicts that may come about can be avoided as much as possible. The company should ensure that communication of the message that is intended to be communicated to the other individual should always be and obvious.

Intercultural and diversity conflicts usually arise due to the different ideologies that different people have concerning a specific subject (Dai & Chen, 2017). Therefore, in Berry's Bug Blaster company, the employees might have different views on how the leadership structures have been developed and changed in the various departments. Therefore, these differences in how different employees with other diversities and from different cultures may affect how a company may need to deal with the situation and the crisis that is there. Therefore, it is essential to ensure all the people in the company from different cultures and diversities are talked to and their views collected concerning the changes. This will help reduce the effect that intercultural and diversity conflict may affect the management of the crisis.

Communication climate is a term that is used to refer to the tone of the relationship as shown or expressed by the non-verbal and verbal messages between different people. Communication climate is in most cases brought about or created by how different people do feel about each other. Therefore, it is always important to know what views the employees of the company have towards each other in terms of what kinds of leaders they need and what kind of leaders they do not need. Understanding this will help any company overcome any crisis related to the change in leadership structure since the company will know exactly what its employees need in terms of leadership. Therefore it will try its level best to satisfy the needs of its employees by giving them the kinds of leaders they need. Therefore, the company must try its best to make sure that a positive communication climate is created. This can only be achieved if the company tries its best to ensure that all of its employees feel that the company values them.

Communication theories

There different types of communication theories that can be used by any entity in trying to manage any crisis that is related to communication. The first communication theory that this paper will look at is the communication accommodation theory. This is a theory that describes when individuals adjust or accommodate how they communicate to others (Downing, 2019). The changes that are seen or done in adapting others can either be through convergence or divergence. Convergence is used by the people who have less power for social approval. This theory tries to Berry's Bug Blaster. The employees should always seek to change their communication styles, either verbal or nonverbal, to accommodate each other.

The other theory is the constructivism theory. This theory states that cognitively complex people are more successful communicators since they possess the ability to develop and create sophisticated and customized messages that the main goal is to achieve and pursue multiple goals in terms of communication (Downing, 2019). This theory, therefore, does to the crisis management by the company in that the company should seek to have workers who are more cognitively complex since this will help the company. The employees have different ways of communicating, which will prevent them from being biased and only focus on one communication method.

Communication strategies

Different communication strategies can be used to make sure that there are no negative consequences in the company's crisis concerning the leadership changes that affect the company's communication. Some of these strategies include the company should focus more on the issue rather than the employees or the person (Wang, & Joshi, 2018). This strategy is crucial since it avoids taking everything personally. On the other hand, this strategy helps make sure that the employees express their own needs and opinions regarding the crisis that is ahead. This will bring positive outcomes out of the issue since the company would come up with different ways of solving the problem rather than control others.

Another communication strategy that can be used to create positive outcomes is the use of affirming responses. The leaders should always make sure that they respond to the employees to acknowledge their experiences, appreciating their input on the matter (Wang, & Joshi, 2018). This will help the employees see that they are valued and that their information is considered, and this will make them remain calm in the crisis, which is an essential thing to do in a crisis.

References 

Dai, X., & Chen, G. M. (Eds.). (2017). Conflict management and intercultural communication: The art of intercultural harmony. Taylor & Francis.retrieved from: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hTUlDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Intercultural+and+diversity+conflict&ots=nt9g0igw3o&sig=bpomLytHgvaOW1-NOy-QQk7qK0Q

Downing, J. D. (2019). Drawing a bead on global communication theories. Global Communication: A Multicultural Perspective, 56. Retrieved from: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6YWZDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA56&dq=communication+theories+&ots=xQqLFDLi9m&sig=bonchUBDvxjPgLRXxwU1sfQJgo4

Kristjánsson, H., Chiribella, G., Salek, S., Ebler, D., & Wilson, M. (2020). Resource theories of communication. New Journal of Physics, 22(7), 073014. Retrieved from: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/ab8ef7/meta

Overall, N. C., & McNulty, J. K. (2017). What type of communication during conflict is beneficial for intimate relationships?. Current opinion in psychology, 13, 1-5.retrieved from:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X16300045

Solomon, D., & Theiss, J. (2019). Interpersonal communication: Putting theory into practice. Routledge. Retrieved from: https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/books/mono/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9780203147832&type=googlepdf

Wang, J., & Joshi, G. (2018). Adaptive communication strategies to achieve the best error-runtime trade-off in local-update SGD. arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.08313. retrieved from: https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.08313