Organizational Communication Theories and Strategies to Overcome Barriers in Vaccination Campaign

This report discusses the general theories of organizational communication, barriers to effective communication in vaccination campaigns, and strategies to overcome them.

Individual Report

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Discuss some general theories of the organizational communication.........................................3
Evaluate barriers of communication which prevent people from getting the vaccine.................4
Outline the government strategies in order to overcome the barriers..........................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
The organizational communication can be referred to as the broad field which encompasses
all the forms of the communication which can allow organizations like companies, non-profits
and the governmental agencies to grow, function and connect with the stakeholders and also
contribute to the society. It is very essential for the business or other organizations to have the
effective channel of communication as it impacts significantly very important areas of company
which includes perception of public, employee engagement as well as customer satisfaction
(Muhamad, Harrison and Yang, 2019). This report is based on the leaflet presented earlier
wherein the success of the vaccination campaign is to be informed to the prime minister. This
report will cover the general theories of the communication, barriers of communication and the
governmental strategies in order to overcome the same.
MAIN BODY
Discuss some general theories of the organizational communication.
The field of organizational communication has seen the immense growth in terms of depth
and scope from last few of the decades. There are many theories being brought in order to have
understanding of the organizational communication and its importance in the workplace. As the
vaccination campaign has been a success and this work is not solely on individual basis rather it
is a group work so the credit goes to the communication channel which was established among
the people in order to make it a success. Some of the general theories of the communication
which were used during the completion of this campaign are as follows-
 Weber’s Classic Organizational theory of the fixed structure: This theorist gives the
meaning to communication processes which happens within the organization. The
business has the clearly defined responsibilities and roles and hence, the communication
is structured, hierarchical as well as clear. There is no such scope for the confusion in the
messages which is being sent from the top management to the lower employees. The
work is allotted to the employees as per their seniority and capabilities so that the
effective communication channel is drown between senior and subordinate employees
(Ihlen and Heath, 2018). As per this, when there is fixed structure in organization, the
communication flows smoothly as per the structure and when it is hierarchical in nature,
it flows from top to bottom.

 Communication accommodation theory: As per this, the motivational results and aspects
of transference of the communication styles is covered in this theory between the two
people. the theorist has proposed that the people may transfer their style of
communication in two ways which includes divergence and convergence. the former
involves the people who have strong ethnic background to transfer their style by
divergence so that the importance of their identity in the group is highlighted while in the
latter, it involves the helpless people or powerless one who transfer the style of
communication by convergence when they require the social acceptance.
 Organizational information theory: In order to make the organization successful, it is
essential that all relevant as well as necessary information is with the companies and
related personnel so that their goals are achieved. As per this theory, the behaviour of
people and their productivity is affected by communication within the company. The
main aim of this is to decreased the doubts so that the relevant information is extracted
from extra ones (Lăzăroiu, 2018).
Evaluate barriers of communication which prevent people from getting the vaccine.
Regardless of the kind of communication. Be it verbal, written, non-verbal, visual or
listening, if the communication is not effective, the company and its related people may be prone
to the risk. Barriers are the obstacles or a problem which may come in the way of the
transmission of message and block process, either partially or completely. There are different
barriers to the effective communication which may be faced by the government at the time of its
successful vaccination campaign, these include the following-
 Physical: There are many aspects which may come in between the effective
communication channel which includes time and distance. When the vaccination
campaign was under process, there were issues faced by the people such as the physical
distance between the people who wants to communicate can also cause problems as it
will not allow the face to face or oral communication. When bookings were made for the
vaccine, there were problems faced at the time of making the booking as there was issue
in making the communication orally or face to face.
 Language: It is the main medium of the communication while the words are its tools.
The language proves to be the barrier at varied levels like semantic (meaning),
phonological (Pitch, pronunciation) syntactic (grammar) and many others. For instance,

at the time of vaccination campaign, there are jargon or the unfamiliar terminology like
the special terms which may be used by the people of certain field of work like doctors.
The information related to vaccine and what drugs are used in it may not be understood
by the people and become the barrier to the communication between government and
citizens of UK (Meske, Kissmer and Stieglitz, 2020).
 Psychological: This barrier is related to the mind. Communication is regarded as the
mental activity and the main aim of this is to create the understanding. There are many
psychological barriers which may come in between the way of the understanding. This
includes emotions regarding the communication. For instance, the emotions of the people
in respect of the vaccination campaign which may come in the mind of people even
before communication may take place. the emotion may be positive or negative and
people who are in perspective of the negative emotion about the vaccine which may be
effective or not may act as barrier to the effective communication.
Outline the government strategies in order to overcome the barriers.
There are different strategies which may be opted by the government in order to overcome
the above mentioned barriers. These include the following-
 Overcoming the differences in the language: In order to overcome the language
differences, meaning of the technical or unconventional terms must be explained. At the
time of vaccination, the necessary details relating to it must be communicated in the
natural, simple and direct language so that the people can have understanding of its use.
 Overcoming emotionality: One of the step to overcome the negativity of the emotions is
to increase the awareness of it to the concerned person. The government must try to make
understanding of the emotional reaction of people and prepare itself beforehand in order
to deal with the emotional encounter of people. the government must make awareness of
the vaccine to the people in advance so that there are no negative emotions flourished
during the campaign (Neill and Bowen, 2021).
 Overcoming physical barrier: This barrier can be overcome by the technological
advancement as it helps in reducing the gap of communication which may arise due to
distance and time. As UK is a big country so it is difficult for it to make communication
to each and every person so the government can make use of emails, newspaper,

websites, etc. to communicate the benefits of the vaccine so that people can get to know
about its details right from sitting at their homes.
 Overcoming psychological barrier: This may be difficult to overcome as it is difficult to
identify or address. These may be reduced by adopting the open minded and flexible
attitude. The government can train the employees to listen to the people attentively and
with empathy so that varied views and opinion can be understood and according to it,
strategy can be framed to make people understand about the benefits of taking the
vaccination of covid-19 (Wind, 2018).
Hence, it can be said, by using the above mentioned strategies, the government can overcome
the barriers of effective communication so that the vaccination campaign can be made
successful. By using these strategies, the government can spread the awareness regarding the
importance of vaccine so that more and more people are aware of it.

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from this report that communication plays an important role in the
working of organizations. There are different theories to it such as Weber’s Classic
Organizational theory of the fixed structure, Communication accommodation theory,
Organizational information theory, etc. which helps in making the understanding of the
importance of communication. There are barriers to communication such as language, physical,
psychological, etc. which may hinder the effective communication but government can make use
of some of the strategies like overcoming differences in language by using simple and plain
language, removing physical barrier by using technology, etc. so that the aim of communication
is fulfilled.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ihlen, O. and Heath, R.L. eds., 2018. The handbook of organizational rhetoric and
communication. John Wiley & Sons.
Lăzăroiu, G., 2018. Organizational communication and social order. Economics, Management,
and Financial Markets. 13(3). pp.148-153.
Meske, C., Kissmer, T. and Stieglitz, S., 2020. Bridging formal barriers in digital work
environments–Investigating technology-enabled interactions across organizational
hierarchies. Telematics and Informatics. 48. p.101342.
Muhamad, J.W., Harrison, T.R. and Yang, F., 2019. Organizational communication: Theory and
practice. In An integrated approach to communication theory and research (pp. 359-
374). Routledge.
Neill, M.S. and Bowen, S.A., 2021. Ethical listening to employees during a pandemic: new
approaches, barriers and lessons. Journal of Communication Management.
Wind, D., 2018. Assessing barriers and challenges of the integrated youth mental health care in
the Netherlands.