Verhoudingsbestuur met bestuurders van die landswye takke van SEESA : 'n gevallestudie

Abstract

Strategic corporate communication with employees can, in the form of high employee engagement, contribute to organisational performance and excellence because it contributes to reaching organisational goals. This can be achieved through relationship management with strategic stakeholders in organisations with a symmetrical worldview and two-way communication model in the corporate communication practitioner’s role as strategist. Strong relationships with stakeholders are characterised by trust, mutual control, relationship satisfaction and commitment. Within the context of organisations that are geographically spread further apart, organisational culture and centralisation/decentralisation plays an important role in the degree to which employee engagement can be established and contribute to organisational excellence. To research this topic in the national organisation SEESA, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with key role players in SEESA’s communication management and a qualitative content analysis of SEESA’s communication activities has been conducted. Self-administered questionnaires have also been used to determine nationwide SEESA managers’ perceptions of relationship management from the SEESA head office. This study has found that the SEESA head office had successfully established strong relationships with managers from nationwide branches and that relationship building strategies manifested in an informal way. The outcomes of strong relationships are present to some extent in these relationships, but the lack of a formal communication strategy prevents the corporate communication function to contribute optimally to organisational excellence. Organisational culture has been seen to facilitate two-way communication when no formal relationship building strategies are implemented.