Organizing: Informal Organization

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Informal organization is the unstructured communications and interactions employees develop among themselves within an organization.  This hidden informal organization is defined by the patterns, behaviors, and interactions that stem from personal rather than official relationships.

The informal organization can be broken down to the following:

◊Informal groups:  Groups which emerge naturally due to the response and common interests of the members of an organization who can easily identify with the goals and independent activities of the group (Businessdictionary.com)

◊Grapevine: The grapevine is the informal communication networks within the organization.   A casual form of information sharing typically used in personal conversations with friends or family members. Within a business environment, informal communication is sometimes called the grapevine and might be observed occurring in conversations, electronic mails, text messages, social media and phone calls between socializing employees. (Businessdictionary.com)

It’s important for management to understand the advantages and minimize the disadvantages of the grapevine within your organization.  The Managment Study Guide offers the following list:

Advantages of Grapevine Communication

  1. Grapevine channels carry information rapidly. As soon as an employee gets to know some confidential information, he becomes inquisitive and passes the details then to his closest friend who in turn passes it to other. Thus, it spreads hastily.
  2. The managers get to know the reactions of their subordinates on their policies. Thus, the feedback obtained is quick compared to formal channel of communication.
  3. The grapevine creates a sense of unity among the employees who share and discuss their views with each other. Thus, grapevine helps in developing group cohesiveness.
  4. The grapevine serves as an emotional supportive value.
  5. The grapevine is a supplement in those cases where formal communication does not work.

Disadvantages of Grapevine Communication

  1. The grapevine carries partial information at times as it is more based on rumours. Thus, it does not clearly depicts the complete state of affairs.
  2. The grapevine is not trustworthy always as it does not follows official path of communication and is spread more by gossips and unconfirmed report.
  3. The productivity of employees may be hampered as they spend more time talking rather than working.
  4. The grapevine leads to making hostility against the executives.
  5. The grapevine may hamper the goodwill of the organization as it may carry false negative information about the high level people of the organization.

This video offers additional information about informal networks within organizations:

This video offers insights to the effects of social media on communication: 

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