Development of internal communication policy in growth enterprise

Internal communication has an important role in an organization’s every action. It is affecting to the efficiency of processes as well as sense of community among the members of an organization. Even though internal communication as such is relatively much searched topic, developing internal communication and internal communication policy have been disregarded among scientific community. The objective of this research is to find out how to develop an internal communication policy when there are factors that are strongly affecting to that. The main theory is contingency theory which argues that there is no one universal way to organize an internal communication policy. There are some external and internal factors that affect to organizing such. In this research the growth is an external factor which has affected to the internal factor, the amount of tacit knowledge. The research is made for an IT company Aava Mobile Oy which needs development for three different internal communication channels: intranet, familiarization package and Common Coffee Break. The goal is to find the objectives of development for each channel. The research is a case study which is using qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and observation. The researcher was an active part of the working community which meant the observation was inclusive. The research philosophy is critical realism which means there is an objective reality but the knowledge is socially constructed. This research found out that growth has many impacts on the development of internal communication policy. The growth makes the organizational structure more complex than it was before which affects the flow of information and the amount of tacit knowledge. Internal communication can be measured in multiple ways, in this research the employee satisfaction was connected with the success of the internal communication policies. Employee satisfaction and the amount of tacit knowledge was also connected, less tacit knowledge within an organization equals more satisfaction among employees