Organizational change, as in merger, is a situation where uncertainty is high. Employees worried about many things changes will affect them, especially regarding job security. In an educational institution that went through merger recently, 95 employees mention that communication (29,55%) is one of the problems that hinders the organization from effective functioning. This includes lack of: trust, coordination, open communication, role and job descriptions as well as policies clarity.
Communication is an important factor in effective leadership especially during organizational change. One of the qualities of an effective leader is the ability of establishing good communication with the environment, including the employees or people within the organization. Leader’s success depends on the success of their subordinates in executing the job, thus the leaders need to establish effective communication with their subordinates. Transformational leadership is identified as the effective type of leadership in context of change. Survey showed that 78 structural position employees, perceived their immediate supervisor in the transformational leadership dimensions as follows: challenging the process (mean 19.69), inspiring shared vision (mean 20.96), enabling others to acts (mean 21.73), modeling the way (mean 20.3), encouraging the heart (mean 20.30). The survey told us that leaders, represented by immediate supervisor, need to communicate their leadership behavior more effectively to their subordinates.
Factors perceived as hindrance and less effective perceived leadership behavior might be related to how daily communication is conducted in this organization: necessary information regarding any changes only disseminate after the emergence of triggering event (s), using policies or principles that need to be adhere by all the members of organizations when confronted with rumors/conflicts, only certain parties have the information which are important to all employees. Thus more appropriate communication strategy should be considered to improve more effective communication among leader (s) and employees.