eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Objective of the Study The objective of the study was to examine internal mediated communication and strategy communication within a multinational company from the perspective of a cross-border manager. The case organization of the study was a financial group operating in Northern Europe. Organized mainly by function, the company operates as cross-national organization and employs hundreds of cross-border managers (CBM), i.e. managers whose subordinates are situated in other countries than they are themselves. The study explored the perceptions of cross-border managers in order to answer the research questions: “In what ways do CBMs use communication media?“, “What media do CBMs prefer and why?”, “How do CBMs see their role in strategy communication” and “What are CBMs’ views on strategy communication?”.

Methodology and Theoretical Framework The source of data in the present mixed method single case study consisted of 3 semi-structured interviews and 65 responses to a web survey conducted among cross-border managers in the case company. The participants were Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. The theoretical framework of the study illustrated how a cross-border manager is both an active selector of channels for his communicative acts and at the same time a channel himself used in the cascading system to communicate strategy top-down in the organization.

Findings and Conclusions The findings of this study suggest that cross-border managers are capable users of a wide variety of communication media, who switch between tools without an effort and are eager to utilize also the most recent communication tools. The most preferred media, however, are the traditional options of email, mobile phone and face-to-face meetings. As receivers, CBMs also prefer the Internet and the intranet. It was also found that CBM's consider it as their responsibility to make sure their subordinates understand what the corporate strategy means to their department and everybody's tasks and duties. One of the main findings of this study was that CBMs would prefer the strategy to be communicated by the top management instead of their immediate supervisor. These findings were utilized in giving recommendations for the development of internal communications in the case company.