Wp 5.1: Should communications be formal?

Decision WP 5.1

Should communications be formal?

Decided characteristics Communication formality

Input characteristics Business activity (and formality, stability), organisation position, external agent, capability, location, basic task, communication, vertical division of work

Guidance This decision consists in selecting formal communications between actors.
Formal communications are easier to enforce, to monitor and to improve.
The institutionalisation of communications, by the implementation of formal communication channels, may contribute to assign a positive value to the communications within the enterprise culture, thereby encouraging people to communicate.
Formal communications are better suited to formal and stable business processes.
Formal communications per se usually increase reliability and traceability. They may also better justify investments which contribute to the improvement of communications in terms of efficiency, reliability, and security.
A strong vertical division of work requires formal communications up and down hierarchical levels of management.
Risks:
In informal, or unstable processes, formal communications may introduce a lack of flexibility in the processes and prevent the organisation from adapting them or treating special cases.
Formal communications may hit some psychological barriers, and may be not used. Actor capabilities to use formal communications must then be assessed and possibly improved.
Formal communications may put constraints on actors which decrease their efficiency; therefore the actors would have a negative attitude towards using them.

Example The measures of performance of the Car transfer process in EU-Rent must improve. It involves actors in different locations.
The analysis of the current work practices have shown that:
The branch managers are not always aware of the availability of cars in other branches because of communication difficulties (lack of institutionalisation, slowness, unreliability, work intensive task); communications are currently an obstacle to the proper performance of the Car transfer process.
Some informal groups of branch managers have improved their communications among each other; they have agreed on some rules of the game where they accept to spend time and money for communications because they believe that it will bring them benefits; statistically, the measures of performance of the Car transfer process are higher for those branch managers than for the other ones.

These two reasons justify to institutionalise formal communications between branch managers.

Input work products

Output work products

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Decided characteristics	Communication formality
Input characteristics	Business activity (and formality, stability), organisation position, external agent, capability, location, basic task, communication, vertical division of work
Guidance	This decision consists in selecting formal communications between actors. Formal communications are easier to enforce, to monitor and to improve. The institutionalisation of communications, by the implementation of formal communication channels, may contribute to assign a positive value to the communications within the enterprise culture, thereby encouraging people to communicate. Formal communications are better suited to formal and stable business processes. Formal communications per se usually increase reliability and traceability. They may also better justify investments which contribute to the improvement of communications in terms of efficiency, reliability, and security. A strong vertical division of work requires formal communications up and down hierarchical levels of management. Risks: In informal, or unstable processes, formal communications may introduce a lack of flexibility in the processes and prevent the organisation from adapting them or treating special cases. Formal communications may hit some psychological barriers, and may be not used. Actor capabilities to use formal communications must then be assessed and possibly improved. Formal communications may put constraints on actors which decrease their efficiency; therefore the actors would have a negative attitude towards using them.
Example	The measures of performance of the Car transfer process in EU-Rent must improve. It involves actors in different locations. The analysis of the current work practices have shown that: The branch managers are not always aware of the availability of cars in other branches because of communication difficulties (lack of institutionalisation, slowness, unreliability, work intensive task); communications are currently an obstacle to the proper performance of the Car transfer process. Some informal groups of branch managers have improved their communications among each other; they have agreed on some rules of the game where they accept to spend time and money for communications because they believe that it will bring them benefits; statistically, the measures of performance of the Car transfer process are higher for those branch managers than for the other ones. These two reasons justify to institutionalise formal communications between branch managers.
Input work products
Output work products