Communication and Institute Capacity Building
[Author]
[Institution]
Abstract
This paper evaluates the role communication efficacy has in guaranteeing effectual capacity building in institutions. It takes a global approach to institution communication strategies as it identifies techniques most successful for capacity building communication among education stakeholders. The stakeholders in question are internal and external with students, teachers, and parents having prominence. After consulting relevant peer-reviewed sources, its summation is that the ability to communicate strategies is relative to the efficiency of their implementation. Therefore, it identifies how best leaders can use communication strategies to enhance capacity.
Communication and Institute Capacity Building
1.0 Introduction
Leadership is not only about thinking and acting effectively. Instead, it is about the mentioned aspects and most significantly communicating them effectively. Effective communication (internal and external) is crucial for any organization’s productivity as it assures maximum returns with the least effort. It elevates and smoothens dealings between all stakeholders making innovation, production, and problem solving efficiently. Also, communication has relevance to stakeholder motivation and fulfillment as capacity building occurs. These qualities make it paramount that institutions have effective communication right from management to the grassroots to facilitate efficacy and competency. This document using sufficient academic peer-reviewed sources establishes the role of stakeholder communication in enhancing organizational capacity in institutions. Quantitative methods are used to predict communicative behaviors, while qualitative methods are used to understand them. As a result, it offers adequate strategies in the improvement of communication strategies in capacity building for all stakeholders.
2.0 Background
A journal of organizational management associated Levin’s “capacity building with a focus on results” with three pillar elements. The elements are accountability production through multi-level monitoring, developing career and performance, and cloning success. The text notes the successful implementation and improvement of these sectors is both divergent and subservient to cultural or Institution changes. As such, understanding and communicating this understanding goes a long way in support of literacy development both at home and at school. Also, it was found to increase the confidence of role performance in all stakeholders taking part in education or offering support (Dimmock, 2012).
A study on capacity building found that student performance was directly interlinked with a parent’s ability to take charge of their child’s future. It defined capacity building as Human Resource Development (HRD) (Baguley, Danaher, & Davies, 2014). HRD in education is a ratio between the contributions made by learning to universal development against its cost. The study questions focused on the parent’s knowledge of their child’s character traits, role models, and behavior. Also, the parent’s communicative culture, including non-verbal habits, listening skills, and peer relationships, were put into consideration. It concluded that the communicative behavior of parents and their ability to advocate for their children had a significant impact on the students’ education in terms of performance and flexibility. Also, parent capacity building had a direct effect on the performance of both students and institutions.
Furthermore, teacher capacity building was interlinked with a student’s performance by several of the consulted literature. Maslo and Cronhjort (2020) found that capacity building was more effective for teachers when encompassed in their initial training. This capacity-building includes smart learning for teachers, a global perspective on learning systems, ingraining of technology in their curriculum, and implementation of teacher policies that advocate work ethics. Kandiko and Mawer (2013) found that the promotion of teaching quality in education institutions entails the development of teacher expertise, curriculum description, and constant benchmarking. For institutions to genuinely advertise their Institution’s excellence in these sectors, they must have effective practices. Nevertheless, in the consulted secondary schools, students had limited to no knowledge of this kind, indicating a failure in external communication.
Another study found that teacher professional development occurred in three stages. First, there is the pre-service training where teachers attend colleges before they begin practicing. In the second stage, the teachers are inducted on a trial basis for the first few years of teaching. In the final step, in-service teachers are trained throughout their teaching careers (Stoll, 2009). A complementary study on teacher communication training found that many pre-service schools in the US do not offer sufficient training in speech communication. Consequently, many students across all institutions suffer a miscommunication deficiency as they struggle to be at per with their teachers. It highlights the significance of ascertaining clear goals, objectives, and assignments that enhance this quality in teachers (Lennie & Tacchi, 2013).
An analysis of student perception and institute actual performance across Europe found that institute reputation is a core factor in student enrollment and retention. Similarly, the institutional status is determined by beliefs and knowledge of its quality teaching (Zsigmond & Portik, 2017). This study was conducted in higher education institutions because students have considerable experience in matters education, hence are reputable sources of information concerned with reputation and actual experienced. The dismal number of high school students who knew of Higher Education Institutes within their regions signified a poor external communication strategy in the branding of the Higher Education Institutions (HIEs). However, the difference in perspective and actuality in institution culture confirmed a failure in the implementation of institution cultures by all stakeholders. Similarly, it signifies the institute’s failure in communicating the intended strategy.
Finally, a study on education policies in India and Africa found that external stakeholders, including government bodies and school governing bodies, were responsible for resource allocation. Education system management, performance reviewing, relationship building, and all intricacies of policy enhancement in many education institutes (Malyan & Jindal, 2014). Similarly, it identified the need to communicate the legislated strategies across all sectors, or their efficiency diminishes. Statistics in leadership communication shows that effective oral and written communication is a significant factor in the employment of managers because of its role in capacity building and efficacy in leadership (Northouse, 2019).
3.0 Critical Analysis
Communication was identified as a paramount feature in any strategy institutions intend to implement for capacity building. Organizational communication is how the institute represents, presents, and establishes its culture and climate. It is focused on how messages get sent and received among the organization’s stakeholders as common goals are chased. The structure and means of this communication occur contextually and change according to adopted organizational cultures. A study found that strategic communication, with the right capacity-building resources, enables the achievement of organizational strategic goals through deliberate and intentional action (Lennie & Tacchi, 2013). Also, tracking and reporting of information gained were confirmed as critical parts of the communication process. Since organization competency occurs when all stakeholders have the right knowledge at the right time, timely notification, meaningful consultation, and uncondescending participation become primary aspects of communication strategies.
Capacity building, on the other hand, deals with the acquisition of skills, resources, instincts, and processes necessary for meaningful adaptation within a robustly changing world. Stoll (2009) categorized capacity in three as internal, interpersonal, and organizational. All these levels of stakeholders must have necessary cultures, conditions, and structures to perform best. In this case, the main stakeholders are teachers considering they are the basis of all education systems in terms of giving instructions. Thus, the instructions facilitated must provide opportunities to improve in-place skills while also encouraging new ones. The paper concluded that capacity building was multifaceted as it was dependent on all the three forms of capacity. This interconnection makes it paramount that communication between the internal and external stakeholders has fluency and efficiency. Ensuring the interrelationship and synergy of all organization stakeholders is at per is the purpose of communication. Nevertheless, understanding how communication affects the stakeholders at different levels is paramount.
The identified stakeholders were national education policymakers, local education policymakers, curriculum specialists, parents, students, and teachers, and teacher educators. Internally, the students, teachers, and staff were identified as significant stakeholders. Externally, parents, all policymakers, and governing boards alongside teacher educators were considered the primary external stakeholders with parents leading the way. For these stakeholders to ensure efficiency in the sector, capacity building strategies have to be implemented within all areas of the education industry. Since all these stakeholders symbiotically exist, the vitality of ensuring smooth relations between them is utmost. Internally, the required changes for capacity enhancement must be communicated. Therefore, as advised by the consulted literature, enhancing communication strategies for the mentioned changes is the only way to ensure stakeholders uphold their end of the bargain. Each stakeholder requires tailored communication strategies to ensure maximum results.
On teachers and other subordinate staff, the emphasis is placed on understanding institution culture and elevating service provision. Studies consulted identified successful leadership as one that encourages employee proficiency (Northouse, 2019; Baguley, Danaher, & Davies, 2014). As such, the more employees are sufficient in their work and are held liable for any misgiving, their drive for success increases. Teachers must have the necessary resources in and out of class as they interact with students and their parents. For other school staff, they, too, must have training and resources on how to best serve in education institutions. This quality necessitates a need for employee training and governance hence a communication strategy with efficacy.
The basis of any effective communication strategy is the transparency of the process. Openness in communication occurs in both directions between the management, subordinates, and other stakeholders. With a transparent process, messages can be interchanged between parties, and specified actions are taken accordingly. Communication can be viewed from two approaches with internal and external strategies. The first approach is more conventional as it focuses on the exchanged information within the organization as its stakeholders interact. Such primary stakeholders in the education sector include teachers, staff, school management, and to some extent, parents. The directives from policymakers implemented within the organization similarly falls under this category. The second approach deals with communication as a single organization. The message the institute as a whole sends to the public domain, and its shareholders make up the most substantial part of this approach.
Organizational communication efficacy is concerned with knowing how to create and disseminate information, the ability to work with diverse individuals, knowing how to communicate in changing and complicated circumstances, and having the aptitude to communicate appropriately. Communication evolves with cultural changes, continuous research, and the betterment of technology. As such, the strategies recommended below follow these channels to help institutions better build their capacity, while also taking into consideration the societal changes that have occurred over the years.
4.0 Institute Communication Strategies in Capacity Building
The core strategy necessitates the enhancement of transparency in capacity building through communication. Educator training and monitoring must occur through communicative channels that are open to all other stakeholders. It includes continuous reports illuminating the progress of their training and the modes employed in this training. Also, the results of these training programs must be reviewed and published for public observation. Furthermore, the methods used in the training sessions must have the approval of all stakeholders. For this approval to occur, sufficient consultations must occur and opinions from the primary stakeholders considered. In adaptation, teachers must be informed on the relevance of adapting to technological changes. An effective way of doing this is by communicating through them hence ensuring the uninitiated teachers get necessary practice to have proficiency. Finally, teacher productivity must be notified so that areas with a deficiency can be improved.
For the management and internal or external governance, communication plays a role in policy creation, day to day activities, resource allocation, strategy creation, and implementation, and organization oversight. Unlike in prior years, communication in this sector has taken a technological route. To increase interpersonal relationships, the culture and hierarchy of communication here must focus on creating a fluent and efficient interpersonal relationship. As such, it must focus on eight primary traditions, i.e., network analysis, communication climate, rhetorical perspective, cultural perspective, information processing perspective, superior-subordinate communication, communication channels, and political perspectives. Therefore, for capacity building in this sector to occur, all these subsections must be well-reviewed and improved. Programs training workers and stakeholders on the Institution’s direction must be instigated. The management, on its part, must facilitate the environment and directives conducive for these measures of culture improvement to occur. Finally, multiple communication infrastructure must be installed to ease and assure information control in both directions.
Parents as stakeholders have significance in the productivity and performance of institutions. Thus, they must have training focused on building communication skills to promote and model child character outside the school setting. The training must focus on their interaction with both students and teachers. Training goals include positive relations with children, child discipline (aggressive, submissive, assertive, and when to use each), impacts of non-verbal communication, and their (active) listening skills. To better employ the communication training, they must first understand and identify character traits they want for their children, how to build trust with students and teachers, role models in student lives, and appropriate behavior for both children and other adults. As a result, they gain increased knowledge of how to best support their child to achieve the best education in both school and home settings. Surveys asking parents their opinions have importance in this communication strategy as they will help connect with parents while also making them part of the decision making for their children.
In terms of community, institutions that invest more in public relations through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and branding have a history of better capacity development. Since the productivity of education institutions is dependent on student registration and retention, these forms of communication with local and global communities enhance productivity. Therefore, intuitions must inform communities on their curriculums and teaching expertise through benchmarking and demonstrating their teaching methods across different forums. CSR can be employed through the sharing of resources such as buildings and student talent as a way of ingraining themselves within society. Also, elevating student performance and offering scholarships to locals helps in successful local PR management. Successful PR eliminates the issue of external communication challenges as the community becomes conversant with institution culture and strategy.
Finally, communication must consider stakeholder convenience. A good communication strategy recognizes that individuals and communities have different communication channels they feel comfortable with. Therefore, stakeholders must be allowed alternative communication infrastructure as a way of encouraging full participation. Consequently, the choices in infrastructure and ideas should not be judged. Instead, the administration should seek to understand the stakeholder’s preferences through feedback in the set channels. The input must contain the proposed solutions to stakeholder issues and a stamen encouraging further feedback with their opinions on the proposed solutions. Keeping records on all communication with the stakeholders further elevates service provision and capacity building evaluation.
5.0 Conclusion
Communication in institutional capacity building is based on relationship building between interacting organization internal members and any interested public parties. Thorough research on the subject identified transparency and efficacy as the building blocks for efficient communication in any organization. All stakeholders have to be incorporated in this communication to ensure all issues get resolved, and the company structure becomes stable. This sort of connection ensures changes in capacity building are positive and result in productivity for the Institution in question. Therefore, understanding how communication influences capacity building is the easiest way of ensuring organizational productivity.
6.0 References
Baguley, M., Danaher, P. A., & Davies, A. (2014). Educational learning and development: building and enhancing capacity. Palgrave Macmillan.
Dimmock, C. A. J. (2012). Leadership, capacity building, and school improvement: concepts, themes, and impact. Routledge.
Lennie, J., & Tacchi, J. (2013). Evaluating communication for development: a framework for social change. Routledge.
Maslo, I., & Cronhjort, M. (2020). Capacity Building in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Collective Capacity Building, 137–151. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004422209_012
Malyan, R. S., & Jindal, L. (2014). Capacity Building in Education Sector: An Exploratory Study on Indian and African Relations. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 157, 296–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.11.032
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Stringer, P. (2013). Theory. Capacity Building for School Improvement, 95–114. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-329-4_10
Zsigmond, I., & Portik, T. (2017). Communication Management in Educational Institutions. Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty: Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, 5(2), 27–37. https://doi.org/10.18662/lumenphs.2017.0502.03