INTRODUCTION Above Creative Events (M) Sdn Bhd (ACE) was chosen as our research company.

In this report, we will determine the organizational communication practices in ACE from management point of view and analyze its effectiveness. ACE is a one-stop events management company in Malaysia. ACE provides services in three main areas which are events management, artist management and destination management. Their services include whole events planning, decoration of stage and the venue, equipment rental, video making and post-events. Their mission is to be the top event company in Malaysia. ACE has a simple organizational structure. There are five departments which are Events& Sales Department, Operation Department, Administration &HR, Account & Finance Department and Legal Office. It divided into top and executive level. Top management is made up of Managing director, General Manager, Financial Director and Legal officer. For the executive level, there are Events Consultants, Events Associates and Events Coordinators.(refer to appendix I) LITERATURE REVIEW Organizational communication is the central binding force that permits coordination among people and thus allows for organized behavior, (Myers and Myers, 1982) and Rogers and Rogers (1976) argue that the behavior of individuals in organizations is best understood from a communication perspectives. According to Kathryn A. Baker (2002), effective communication is vital and crucial at every level of an organization as it plays an important role in building trust and respect within
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group, improving the performance, fostering learning, and accomplishing organizations goals. Furthermore, effective communication ensures employees are able to understand the issues and make decision wisely for effective change. Written, oral and body language are important communication tools to share ideas, and yet gather various points of view from a variety of perspectives. (Barbara Stennes, n.d.) Faulty communication in an organization can lower the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization as well as reduce co-operation and create subsequent ill feeling between employees.

Organizational culture is made up of attitudes, beliefs, experiences and values of an organization. Organizational climate is the process of quantifying the culture in an organization and perceived directly or indirectly by the employees which will influence employees behavior. (Pathak, 2011).

Scientific management focuses more on task performance rather than relationship with the employees. Management is responsible to select, train, and assist employees to perform their jobs properly. Human relations school focuses on the friendly and open relationship within the group. Task performance and relationship are equally importance. According to Mayos findings (2009), employees can be motivated by social needs such as social interaction, self-esteem, recognition, and a sense of belonging and security it. Human resource approach focuses on relationship among employees rather the task performance. To achieve organizational goals, this approach stated that individual labor is an important thing in an organization.

Formal networks focus on rules and regulations as well as persuasion instead of relationship. Organization prescribes who has the power in management to tell others what to do and also have the authority to reject employees ideas. Informal networks focus on sharing information and people will diverse types of information that related both to organization and to their friends or family.

An effective leader must have power that can influence followers on the expectations and behavior in the organization. Trait approach assumes that people are born with certain character traits that make them effective, they are intelligent and able to adapt in different environments. According to the leadership continuum model (refer to appendix II) first proposed by R Tannebaum and W. H. Schmidt (1973), leadership style approach range from autocratic to laissez-faire, and comprise several steps in- between. Situational leadership is based on task and interpersonal relationship behavior a leader must provide given the level of maturity of the followers.(refer to appendix III) Transformational leader provide clarity to their followers and motivate them through appeals to higher level needs and establishment of organizations vision.

METHODOLOGY Interview Question A list of questions is prepared and sent to the representative of ACE before conducting the interview. The set of questions consists of 45 open-ended questions and divided into six sections: Company general questions, company culture and climax, communication practice, communication network, leadership and decision making, and external relations. Division of

the questionnaire is to reach further understanding toward ACE. The list of questions is attached in Appendix IV. Data Collection This is a qualitative research where the data is collected by asking respondent to answer open ended in verbal form and observing the subject and environment of the organization. Data for this study was collected using face-to face interview and recorded in audio recording and written notes. Face-to-face interview allows us to ask follow-up questions as we can works directly with the respondent. The interview is conducted in Avelon Tower, Plaza Medan Putra, Bandar Menjalara where ACEs Sale department is situated. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive data analysis to find out what are the organizational communication practices within the organization. Sampling Face-to-face interview was conducted with the Events Manager of ACE, Micky Ng M.C. She is an experienced individual in handling overall objectives of the organization. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS Culture and Climate Organizational culture is the workplace environment that created from the interaction among employees in the organization. Employees in Above Creative Event (ACE) are preferred to wear smart and casual attire during the meeting with client due to the job nature. The dress code in the organization is depending on the situation they meet, employees are required to dress up according to opinion or status of the client and environment of the event. For example, they will wear formal during meeting whereas they will wear Baju Kebaya when
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meet Prime Minister. Punctuality is not emphasized in the organization and employees are allowed to come in late. Employees are also allowed to communicate in the language which they are comfortable with. However, English is still the main language used in contract and emailing. ACE practices open office system where employees can speak up to anyone directly within the office. These are their organizational culture which is deep-seated within the organization. The climax in this organization is flexible, friendly and casual. From the management point of view, the relationship among employees is like family. Employees will share their experiences and even playing games together. This kind of interaction is suitable in event companies as it is can trigger their creativity. Although employees are flexible within the organization, they are still focus on task and group performance. They have quarterly individual and weekly group performance evaluation. ACE focus on both task and relationship as they concern about the welfare of their employees such as providing gym services and badminton section. Communication Practice The communication practice of ACE is Human Relations School Approach which emphasize on both task and people. ACE focuses on the friendly and open relationship as well as the task performance within the group. Every employee has to follow the work chart in order to achieve ISO standard and expand their business into exhibition line and go abroad. Good meal and incentive trips such as Thailand and Korea will be provided as rewards for employees. Employees are provided basic benefits such as SOCSO and insurance especially for those who always outstation. Training courses such as team building and motivation course will be provided to employees to enhance their skills.
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Employees within the organization are always communicate through face-to-face despite the management or executive level as the organization emphasizes on the importance of both task and social content. The direction of the communication flow in organization is on both horizontal and vertical. Communication between departments is strongly encouraged, for example, weekly meeting among departments will be conducted to discuss the schedule of tasks. This helps to eliminate communication barriers. For example, the weekly meeting allows the Sales and account department, who always have conflict, to understand the performances of different departments which in turn reduce the misunderstanding. Moreover, they do not neglect the need for vertical information flow. General meeting will be conducted to communicate with the employees and announcements will be sent through email since the top management is situated in Malacca. However, they do not restrict upward flow of communication, when there is a conflict or problem is being faced among the employees, they can easily discuss with their immediate superior to seek out solution. Sometimes, top management will involve in the case but it depends on the seriousness of the issue. The style of communication used is mostly informal communication, interpersonal channel such as Facebook and phone is being used very often to communicate among employees. For formal communication, the sales person will send Purchase Order for the operation team to conduct the job or meet up personally as the factory is nearby their office. Communication Network ACE is using both formal and informal network. In formal network, top management has the authority to instruct people in executive level and make the final decisions. For the Sales department, they practice group work which 7 person divided into 3 groups and the
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team members are selected by the management team. All of them have to follow a work chart which is designed according to the trend of another company which got the ISO9001. Strong link is created among Ms. Ng and her team members as they are frequently interact with each other which in turn result in a change of behavior. For instance, every member in the team has the chance to become leader and handle project, Ms. Ng provides guideline for Mr. Han to become an independent leader. ACE also have informal network which is resulted from the formal network as interpersonal relationship has built up among the employees and the manager. They often disregard the formal status and prefer communication way that they feel comfortable such as joking. As mentioned before, the message flow through organization occurs both horizontally and vertically. For horizontally communication, they are using informal network such as through phone. For vertically communication which involved different hierarchical employees, they will more on formal communication such as annual general meeting and Memo. The problem of grapevine seldom occurs in ACE as they practice open office system, any information will be clearly transmitted to every member. This is to ensure all important information is provided openly to employees directly and quickly. Memo will be sent through email when there is a serious issue needs to be highlighted by the top management. Leadership and Decision Making The leadership approach used in ACE is situational approach, different styles will be used according to the situation. The leader in ACE is using participating style by encourages employees participate in decision making. For example, everyone will involve in brainstorming and the decision will be made based on majority. Although the ultimate decision is fall on the top management, employees have a chance to provide their opinions
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and ideas. This shows that the management team of ACE is focus on high relationship and low task in order to stimulate creativity among the employees. At times, the management team will pass the leadership to the capable staff. For example, recently Ms. Ng has passed a project KLK 23rd anniversary to one of her staff, Mr. Han and he has the responsibility to lead the whole team to conduct the event including call up for briefing, meeting and brainstorming. He has the total control of the decision on that project and guidance will be given. This shows that Ms. Ng is practicing delegating leadership style by emphasizing low task and low relationship. Communication's Interaction According to Miller, organizational communication is a complex interaction of process, people, message, meaning and purpose. In ACE, when there is a new trend in the market, the research team will collect the relevant information and pass it to Ms. Ng for compilation. The result will be presented once and every staff has to practice the presentation. This situation shows that organizational communication occurred within the organization. The process is occurred when ACE is developing strategy to approach client. The research team firstly finds out the new information and this message is evolved and generated into a new ideas. Generated idea will be transmitted to all employees. Organizational communication occurs between the research team, the event manager and also the operation staff who share both work and interpersonal relationships. The message of new event trend is being shared throughout whole organization via presentation. The meaning occurred is to discover new trend in the market and generated collected ideas into a new ideas for the organization. Furthermore, the purpose of this

organizational communication is to reduce the environmental uncertainty since all the employees know the new trend and practiced to handle the questions. External Relations ACE is still using the old style PR which is sending press kits, press release, annual report to the media. They take it seriously when handling the media calls. Therefore, event manager or Managing Director will respond to the media request depending on the situation. In order to enhance the reputation of the organization, ACE emphasizes on maintain relationship with the media which report the news about the company such as Lifestyle Magazine. They will maintain networks of contacts with the media by communicate with editors and reporters. Friendly tone will be using in the communication to ensure the good image of the organization. However, ACE does not research on the targeting media. They passively provide necessary information when requested. On the other hand, ACE is proactive in using the internet. They put much effort on monitoring their official website which allows them to respond the customer feedback and inquiries effectively. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMANDATIONS Conclusion As ACE is a small organization, it practices flexible organizational communication. The languages used is depends on the occasion and audience. For the communication network and process, they are more towards informal communication.

The effective communication within the organization and with the external audience is essential for a company to enhance their strength. ACE focuses on both task and relationship.
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The common communication tools used within ACE are face to face communication, email, phone-calling and social-networking websites despite the level. The top management of ACE believes that the message can only be transmitted clearly by face to face communication. To maintain the relationship with clients, the communication tools used are phone-calling, corporate website and email.

Larkin and Larkin (1994) suggest that downward communication is most effective if immediate supervisors communicate with their staff. However, it is found that the downward communication of ACE is effective as the open office system allows constantly communication between subordinates and immediate superior. This system also enhances the communication within the organization as it can prevent organizations grapevine. Recommendation

Although effective communication is being practiced, there are still improvements that could be made in ACE. Firstly, due to the advancement of technology, ACE can have teleconference with every department instead of having meeting once a week to notify them about the changes within organization and their prospect like daily target. It can improve organizational effectiveness and ensure message can be transmitted without delay.

The use of people-oriented management styles manage to control the employees well but the task performance may not reach the expectation without any clear reward or punishment. In our opinion, the punishment or reward that regard to their performance should be set clearly in order to discipline the employees and motivate them.

Moreover, ACE should proactive in contacting target media to determine the angle the reporter would take and provide them information they are interested in.
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12. Kathryn, A. (2002). Chapter 13: organizational communication. Retrieved July 29,

2011, from http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/doe/benchmark/ch13.pdf

APPENDIX I

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APPENDIX II Autocratic manager

Sole decision-maker

Sells decisions

Presents decision and invites questions

Presents tentative decisions subject to change

Presents problems, requests suggestions, and makes decisions

Defines parameters and asks for group decision

Allows decisions within parameters

Allows full freedom of action

Democratic manager

Figure 1 : Leadership continuum. Source: Sutherland and Canwell 2004: 175.

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APPENDIX III

High

Telling

Selling

Task
Delegating Participating

Low Low Relationship High

Figure 2: The Hersey snd Blanchard four general stylrs of situational leaderships

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APPENDIX IV A. General 1. What is your current position in this company? ~ Micky as one of owners, and event manager of the company. 2. How many people in your department? Do you have a lot of department? ~ This is sales department with 7 people, including Micky. Operation department included 22 people, at other places. 3. Does your department categories into top and low management? ~ We do not call top and low. We call in top and executive. Top is top management, managers. B. Culture and climax 1. What is common language being said in the office?(Mandarin/ English/ Malay/ Cantonese) ~ A lot, but is depend. We use English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien. If meet with customers, they also can use other languages, as long as they can capture the clients then is ok. But come in contract, officially things will come in English. 2. Do you emphasize on punctuality?(Any reward/ punishment for late comer) ~ No. Because of our job, we work overnight, outstation, or few days did not sleep well, if they come in work at 10am or noon is not a problem. 3. Normally do you guys practice group performance or individual? ~ Yes. We have individual evaluation. We also got group evaluation every week. 4. Do you have a concept for your company? Do you practice it?(Eco- friendly) ~ Company concept is youngster and creativity. As we can see our office is green colors. This means our company is talking about recycle and eco-friendly. 5. What are your main practices? (Goal and mission) ~ Our company vision is become the top event company in Malaysia. Not only in Malaysia, we also hope to be top in Asia, we do business in Singapore, Thailand and other Asia country. Our mission is normally talk about short-term, we set target, hit target, do charity, to do Give & Take. 6. Does your management pay attention to the well being of its employees or is it completely focused on task performance and profits? (people-oriented/task-oriented) ~ We treated ourselves very well. After big project, we will treat good lunch and good dinner for all staff. After few months we busy, we will go for trips like Thailand, Korea as rewards. ~ If have outstation job, we will buy insurance for them. If the job danger or quite difficult, we will offer them higher rewards. 7. Does a high level of employee participation characterize the culture or does the senior management make the most decisions? ~ Everyone can involve in the brainstorming. But the final decision is go on to the top management. We get the opinion from the staff, we will have discussion. We go for one round voting, then if the decision does not fulfill the top management. The top management will give reasons why the decision cannot be accepted and why the
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want to go to another decision. We respect our top management, top management also respect us. 8. What are the dress codes, the organizational processes and structures, and the rituals, symbols and celebrations? ~ Actually we are quite flexible for this, casual. We have uniform, out uniform is look like F1 t-shirt. We actually have many uniform, in many colors. We wear different colors of uniform during different events. For example, we wear black and yellow colors t-shirt during Maybank events. We also take into consideration when going for events, we in order to ignore sensitive issue like Bersih issue, that why we do not wear yellow colors during the Maybank events which the date is near to the Bersih. ~ Although we meet our client, we also will wear more casual, relaxing. But if when we meet the prime minister, we will more formal. Sometimes during the events, we will wear culture clothes like baju kurung, Indians clothes. So our dress code is depending. That why our clients like us so much. 9. What are the common used language and jargon, logos, brochures, company slogans, as well as status symbols such as cars, window offices, titles, value statements and priorities ~ We do have slogan.The slogan is creative and do not copy and paste. 10. Does your company provide any facilities for employee?(Gym/ book camp/ voucher) ~ Yes. We offer our staffs go for gym in the fitness in Tesco which is nearby, we do exercise every Thursday like playing badminton, swimming in order to build good relationship among the staffs. 11. What do you perceive about organization?(Good/ bad/ very good reputation/ equity/ very strict/ very casual./ Friendly) ~ The reputation is very good, especially our payment is good. Many people say the event company do not pay, but actually out company very good in payment master. We also have good clients, that why we not need like go door by door. Most of our clients find us from our websites, our websites is very strong. Our clients will introduce other clients to our company as well. 12. How can it be improved? ~ We expanding our business as well. We now more doing events like seminal, launching. Not only doing event, but we also try to go ourselves into application line. 13. Does your top management/ leader motivate the employees? ~ We treated them as family. Our company established at 2006. 7 of us actually 3 of us is work start from the beginning until now. Until now, only one is retried because of sickness. 14. Is your company more to task oriented or people oriented? ~ We like to have welcome dinner and farewell dinner. If any promotion or good place to eat, we will just go. Our clients also like us to eat at their place. During eating session, we will not talking and discuss about work and business. My concept is work smart. Although you want to go home at 3pm is ok, as long as you can give us see your performance. 15. Does your employee have any chance in decision making or all the decision are made by boss?
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16. If there new staff; how are they being treated? ~ We will have welcome lunch or dinner. 17. Do they come in a batch? 18. Do they have welcome dinner or anything? C. Communication practice 1. How e ffective are your executives, managers and supervisors communicating with your employees? ~ Very good. Face to face, sometimes is facebook. Some company will block facebook, twister, but our company does not do so. Actually we use a lot of facebook to communicate and to attract our clients as well. Our staffs communicate through phone, face-to-face, facebook. Announcement through memo is seldom, except that is a serious case when the top management wants to highlight. Normally the memo will also through the email. 2. What are the structures, systems and processes have your organization put in place to encourage and facilitate effective workplace communication flow? ~ We have weekly meeting, early of the week, end of the week. We will conclusion what we want to do in the week. This is to encourage do not have conflict within the department and with other department. Especially is sales and account department have conflict before, they cannot communicate well. Sales department normally try hard to earn money, but account department is give money to other people, so normally sales people will think why they earn hard, but you pay this money, we have this kind of problem before. Then we conduct weekly meetings is very good way to solve the problem. Sales department will report what is earn this week, what they do this week, then account department will assume what they will earn this week, what they plan to buy. 3. What are the communication barriers in your organization? ~ So far no. The staff will seek to the superior and the superior will discuss with him or her. If the problem still cannot be solved, the whole group will sit down and give solution. 4. How are human relations practiced in your organization? Does you practice work group norms tend to set standards of performance, examples: time-keeping, output, quality, attitudes towards customers & clients, dress codes? ~ We have our own work chart and all staffs need to follow the work chart. Other companies have the ISO standard and we try to follow the ISO standard. If we want to reach the ISO standard, we need to follow our work chart. 5. How do you normally reach the top management? What ways? (Through secretary?(how you reach secretary then? e-mail, call, msn)) ~ No, our top management is actually local in Malacca. Here is considered as the heart of the company. Our boss will come and visit us, but they less involve in events, but if come to the money management, yes they will involve. 6. Any procedures or protocol involves to reach top management
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7. If there is any issue, how does your top management communicate with the employee?(Meeting with all HOD, they convey the message to employee) ~ So far there is no big crisis involve. If there is necessary need to communicate with the employee, we will have meeting like annual meeting and general meeting, every staffs need to attend the meeting. 8. Then what about your communication between your staff?(msn/ facebook/ tweeter/sms/ SMS) 9. It there any conflict between colleague, how do you guys solve it?(Does we top management get involve too? ) ~ No. For my group is depending on the situations. I will just ask what happen between two, ask them just let me know and I would not pick who is right and who is wrong. Because when there is conflict, both of them also will think they are right. I will not try to disturb both of them, I will let them face-to-face, talk to each other, what is the problem. Actually there is less conflict happen. 10. What are the communications within your department or other department? ~ Normally is face-to-face. Sometimes, we have order note to other department, we give them paper what to do, what is that, the date and time. We also through phone or just go to the factory which is nearby so we just go there. We are in informal communication and also via email. 11. Hows your relationship with your boss? (Good? Normal?) 12. Any outing together?(Go to company trip or teambuilding activities) 13. How often do you guy interact?(Very frequent/ seldom/ once in a blue moon) D. Communication Network 14. What are the types of communication network? (formal/informal) 15. What are the types of communication method used? (face-to-face meeting and telephone to computational email, instant messaging and groupware) 16. How do you control organization grapevine and overcome the flow of gossip? ~ We seldom have gossip. What we want to talk, we will just talk. I believe our staffs all can accepted this styles. E. Leadership and decision making 1. What do the leaders pay attention to? Measure and control? 2. How do the leaders make decisions? ~ Is depended. If let say the staffs already come out with the proposal, the leader think that the outcome is not really good but still can accepted, we will just let the proposal go on. We let them try. We do not want let them think that we already make decision, then every times when they speak out something, we also will feel not good and not enough, they will feel disappointed. Next time, they will not give out good comments and good conditions. Normally we will let them go on their proposal, if feel that is no and will affect our company, we will stop that, then we will give explanations as well.
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3. How do the leaders communicate with the subordinates? F. External Relations 1. Who are your target audience? ~ External target audiences, of course are potential client, our current clients, repeating clients and suppliers. We also very well with the entertainer like DJ and celebrity. 2. What are the techniques used to communicate with external relations publics? ~ We use a lot of facebook. I believe facebook is a very good channel to reach the people that we really dont know. For example, we want to know one of the singers that we do not know. We know them and let them know us is event company, they will reply us because they also want to earn money. In facebook, we also have attracting photos of the events which can let our clients come to us automatic. 3. How does your organization overcome the conflict with the external relations public? 4. How do you reach out to your target audience?(Annual report/ advertisement/ television/ news) 5. What kind of research do you conducted before reaching out of them? ~ Yes. one or two people. They do research who is our potential client and what is their out coming event, so we will send them our companys profile or drop them email to tell them who we are. We also will entertain in the internet like business pages or business media. Staffs chat for sharing. Yes. For myself that is no office room, we are like open office. Everyone can communicate very well, we just shouting, everyone can heard and laughing. When we come to this new place, I just want two rooms which are meeting room and store room. Open concert of the office let everyone can communicate well, we very open and friendly, so we less gossip. If you have a private call, you can use meeting room. If there is meeting, then there is leader to brief them. We let everyone here have a chance to become leader. Although I am their leader, but I also will pass project to him or her, then he or her will become the leader. He need to have meeting, brainstorming about what to do, what concept, what entertainment for our clients. He invited us to the meetings, we need to attend the meetings, he will brief us. This means not you are leaders then you are leader forever, this is bored. New person will not good in talking and present, but we still will let them chances. I also will give them guidelines or say what we try to use this method will better or not. I will not straight say that the method is not good, will try to use another way to tell him. If has serious things, I will tell him privately to let him not feel badly or hurted. ~ We also have practice presentation. The research team will find the current fashion, current issues, then I will compound all and present. This all information will give to them. I also will let them present first before present to the clients. This is a prediction when you go out present, what client will ask, you will know how to answer.
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APPENDIX V

Ms Ng(Middle), the Event manager of Above Creative Event

The Sales department of Above Creative Event

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The meeting room of Above Creative Event

Ms Ng is explaining the past events they have done in Malaysia

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The entrance of Above Creative Event

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