Abstract:
As the world moves toward a globally integrated society, the strategic management
process is now more than ever in the spotlight. Organisations are required to have agility
in responding to social, economic, and technological challenges. This was evident
between the years 2020 and 2021, when organisations had to contend with and regroup
to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed structural flaws in how
organisations rally their resources to respond to change. This research study sought to
study the nature of the relationship between such strategic parameters that have been
deemed to contribute to how organisational resources interact to respond to change.
These were power distance dimension of organisational culture and the role it plays in
organisational communication.
The objectives of this research were to assess the relationship between power distance
and organisational communication within the strategy execution context. To achieve its
objectives, quantitative methodology was applied which enabled determination of the
relationship between the two constructs through confirmatory factor analysis. Data was
collected using a survey that was dispersed among a sample size of 223 respondents,
operating at different managerial and operational levels within Southern African private
and public sector organisations.
The findings of this research study confirmed the direct and inverse proportional
relationship between power distance and organisational communication. The findings
have significant implications for both business and literature as the research study closed
a glaring gap by confirming that power distance will either strengthen or attenuate the
effectiveness of organisational communication. This confirmation was comprehensively
done at both a construct and dimension level.
