It’s What’s Inside That Matters - How an MNC’s internal corporate communication can be designed to be effective and engaging

Abstract

With the increasing number of Multinational Corporations (MNCs), new managerial implications have arisen connected to internal communication. Previous literature has identified internal communication as one of the most important factors for organizational success. As a part of internal communication, Internal Corporate Communication (ICC) has been recognized to be of direct importance to employee engagement. Despite the organizational benefits that can come with engaged employees, companies today are struggling with creating employee engagement. For MNCs, the internal corporate communication entails an extra layer of complexity due to its dispersed organizational structure. Although engagement and the effectiveness of ICC are dependent on the employees’ perceptions of it, minimal attention has been given to the studying of what employees would like their organization to communicate. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate how employees of an MNC perceive the flow of ICC, and also contribute to the understanding of what can be considered as effective and engaging ICC. This has been achieved by conducting a single case study where 18 semi-structured interviews were performed with employees from eight different countries. The findings of this study show that the channels have different features making them more or less preferable in order to design effective and engaging ICC. Furthermore, the channels’ dependency of time was identified as a key factor for effective ICC. The study also shows that engagement was dependent on the amount of communication and could be fostered by content including future visions and success stories.