Summary
The process of formation of values can also be strengthened, if it is carried out based on an organizational communication strategy, through proposals for communication actions. It has been considered useful, then, to solve the scientific problem: How to strengthen the values of Responsibility and Honesty in the workers of the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella, through communication actions ?.
The research set out to demonstrate the importance of strengthening the values of a company to consolidate its corporate image and identity. Therefore, the objective of this research is: the development of a communication action plan to strengthen the values of Honesty and Responsibility. To carry out this research, theoretical and empirical methods were used such as: historical-logical, analysis-synthesis, systemic-structural-functional, surveys, interviews, and scientific observation.
A descriptive research methodology was used, with a qualitative design, using the informal procedure of personal contact with members of the internal public, and the group technique. The results of this research were evaluated, using the criteria of specialists, who considered their relevance. This research showed that the application of a communication strategy, based on organizational communication favors the process of formation of values in the workers of a company.
Abstract
The formation of values can be strengthened as well, if it is done, supported by an organizational communication strategy through communication action proposals. It was considered useful, then, to solve the scientific problem: How to strengthen the values of Responsibility and Honesty in Business workers from Mella Gastronomy enterprise, through communication actions? The research aimed to demonstrate the importance of strengthening the values of an enterprise to consolidate its corporate image and identity. So the objective of this research is the development of a communication action plan to strengthen the values of Honesty and Responsibility. For the realization of this research some theoretical and empirical methods were used such as: the historical and logical, analysis-synthesis, systemic-structural-functional, surveys, interviews,and scientific observation. We used a descriptive research methodology, with a qualitative design, using the informal procedure of personal contact with members of the internal public, and the group technique. The results of this research were evaluated by the criteria of experts, who considered its relevance. This research demonstrated that the implementation of a communication strategy, based on organizational communication favors the formation of values in employees of an enterprise.This research demonstrated that the implementation of a communication strategy, based on organizational communication favors the formation of values in employees of an enterprise.This research demonstrated that the implementation of a communication strategy, based on organizational communication favors the formation of values in employees of an enterprise.
Introduction
The objective of this research is the development of a communication action plan to strengthen the values of Honesty and Responsibility in a way that promotes a better image and identity of a company.
The current era is characterized by neoliberal globalization, a fact that conditions the sharpening of global contradictions that increasingly affect the very existence of the human race. These contradictions imply growth in all orders in the industrialized nations, in exchange for a greater backwardness in the so-called Third World countries. Undoubtedly, these phenomena have had a significant impact on the educational systems of the latter, as a new illiteracy has emerged: functional illiteracy; at the same time, the effects of this world order have favored the weakening and / or rupture of certain scales or hierarchies of values that were accepted and considered stable by society up to this moment. This phenomenon has been universally recognized as a "crisis" of values.
Some of the specific symptoms that identify this "crisis" of values were analyzed by Fabelo and others (1996); within them appear: perplexity and insecurity of the subjects about what is the true system of values that they consider essential and current and change of place of the values in the hierarchical system, giving priority to the less evident values in society.
The “crisis” in Cuba does not reach the dimensions of the rest of the Latin American countries subjected to the neoliberal economy, which does not mean that there are no manifestations of this crisis in Cuba, to which are added a set of specific factors of their social conditions. This situation forces us to prepare and fight to preserve the conquests of the Revolution. Among the fundamental factors are: the collapse of the socialist camp and the disappearance of the USSR, which altered the model of socialist society that existed until then, the permanent ideological aggression of imperialism, intensified today, and the conditions of the Special Period, manifested in Material deficiencies and unmet needs, which in many cases causes an obvious decrease in social and spiritual values.
The formation of values is an essential element within the educational process, for what they represent in the formation of the new generations. On this, García (1996) states: “From our point of view, having values means appreciating to a high degree the elements of our culture, human relationships, people, certain political and moral systems that affect the individual, the home, the school. and society in general. " (García, G. 1996, p. 59).
At the global level, there is talk of a crisis of values, and numerous international forums have served as the stage to refer to the importance of educating man in that sense since they sustain the society in which he lives and the meaning of this directly affects conservation of humanity itself.
Educating in values is an essentially ethical problem because this process incorporates both the properly philosophical reflection and the general patterns of conduct manifested in everyday life; In this sense, educating in values today means committing to ethical progress, considered as an evaluating criterion of social progress only if the social class that holds the power to carry an ethical model can guarantee the development of a real humanism, providing the principles, directions and forms of its development towards the rest of the social classes and groups, then it can be affirmed that there has been ethical progress; For this reason, the mediate purpose of the Cuban Project is the social personality, which shows the humanistic roots of this project.
Today it is an essential task to reaffirm and maintain values that have been formed throughout history such as: independence, patriotism, humanism, anti-imperialism, national identity, social justice, among others and to empower those that are basic also for citizen performance such as: responsibility, and honesty that constitute the central axis of this investigation because in the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella there have been manifestations that demonstrate the absence or deterioration of the same in its workers.
This can be seen with repeated violations of labor discipline, of the internal regulations of the company and is manifested, fundamentally, through abandonment of the job, diversion of resources evading procedures for the reception and storage of the same outside the established rules, high number of sanctions and other violations related to the use of cash on hand. The occurrence of these events affects the prestige of the organization, that is, the image deteriorates. All of the foregoing shows that in the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella there is a deterioration in the values of its workers, which negatively influences the image of the company, since the communication flows are not adequate, there are no links or bridges between chord groups for this function,their organizational culture is weak and workers are unmotivated.
Everything raised above reaffirms the importance of this investigation, since the company has suffered a deterioration of its image. If, in addition, it is taken as a starting point that it is a company, which has been working to consolidate its corporate image and identity, where several of its employees show the deterioration of elementary values, causing severe damage to the economy in a historical moment in which the top leaders call to produce efficiently, to improve the quality of the services provided, since the prestige of the company depends largely on its competitiveness in the market, and most importantly, the survival of the Revolution., and this can only be achieved with the conscious action of the workers.
This research is necessary because at present there is no program aimed at addressing the existing problems in the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella, nor previous research in this field that contributes to the comprehensive training of the personnel in charge of guaranteeing the highest quality of the products. services that are provided.
Business organizations are essentially human and, consequently, they live together people whose behaviors and relationships respond to a culture in which rites, guidelines and codes prevail that are manifested in attitudes that reflect values. These values are regularly sustained by deep-rooted beliefs, both in the individual and collective spirit, which often do not coincide with the new visions, with the new paradigms and with new ways of approaching the diverse and complex situations and social relations that modernity originates.
For Cuba, immersed in a process of economic recovery and orientation towards new markets, it is vitally important to promote in organizations the knowledge of shared values within their culture, which later translate into economic, technological and human development in the premises of the organizational culture so that in national companies and other organizational entities an advance in man's thinking is imposed, in such a way that values are placed at the center of all actions.
In the Cuban business sector, firm steps have been taken in the application of the Strategic Direction to face the demands and demands of the country, in which the commitment of the companies and producing entities, become the key to achieve success for provide economic solutions with greater efficiency and productivity in order to consolidate the Cuban economy. But this commitment is not effective, but rests on the basis of values clearly identified, grouped and contextualized in correspondence with the organizational strategy, hence the need to address the values arises since they only reach the level of the denomination and are not integrated from the strategic, tactical and operational point of view.
A practical contribution of this research constitutes a communication action plan to strengthen the values of Honesty and Responsibility in the workers of the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella.
The practical significance of this research is that it will contribute to strengthen the values in the workers of the Company Comercio y Gastronomía de Mella on the basis of communicative actions, which if applied by the management of the company will favor the solution of the problem of research raised, improving the communication that is established between men as a matter so necessary for the company and therefore raising the economic efficiency and the image of the company before its different audiences.
This in turn will allow raising the achievements of the Revolution in terms of the quality of services and compliance with economic technical plans, and the workers will carry out their difficult mission with greater care and efficiency, guided by the desire to meet the objectives of the entity based on awareness and compliance with the regulations established for the sector.
Development
Section I: Conceptualization of values
Conceptualizing the term of value is an arduous and complex task due to the network of sciences that share reflections and criteria on it and due to the ideological background that sustains the different epistemic perspectives in which it is constructed; Many are the concepts that have been given about values, both by Cuban and foreign authors and reveal the affiliation of their authors to a disciplinary field.
For Gilberto García Batista ´´values constitute general guidelines of conduct that are derived from experience and give meaning to life, promote its quality, in such a way that they are related to the fulfillment of the person and promote the good of the community and society as a whole «(García, 1996: 58). This definition focuses attention on the subjective.
For his part, Karl Mannheim points out, ´´ for me values are expressed above all as individual choices: I value things when I prefer this to the other. But values do not only exist on the subjective level as choices made by individuals, they are also given as objective norms, that is, as warnings that tell us: Do this rather than the other. They are in this case, most of the time, social creations that serve, like the traffic lights «(Mannheim, 1994: 29). This concept has a marked sociological character.
For Esther Báxter, the conceptualization of values refers to their different disciplinary plans, from the pedagogical point of view she states that: ´´ This training must be achieved as part of the general scientific education that adolescents and young people receive: As knowledge, as a product of recognizing its significance that is transformed in a personal sense and manifests itself as behavior «(Báxter, 1999: 9). This definition focuses its attention on the normative and the subjective.
In general terms, values are categories studied by axiology, a philosophical theory that conceptualizes the notions of the valuable, in the field of what is beautiful, aesthetic and true, as essences and qualities contained in human creations «(Báxter, 1999: 3)
Values, being potentially contained in human relationships and constituting a result of such relationships, cannot be developed outside of the person's spiritual world, they are highly complex combinations where the meaning of life and the remaining cosmovision criteria are mixed, therefore their structure appears integrated to other components of the personality such as needs, interests, motivations, etc.; at the same time they have their own existence, forming a system, with an internal mobility that allows one value to be part of the other.
Section II: Values in organizational communication
In the organizational field, the values define the fundamental character of each organization, create a sense of identity and set the guidelines for implementing its practices, policies and procedures. On the other hand, while organizational values are an adequate means to cope with turbulent environments, actually the emergence of these within the organizational culture can take generations. Therefore, the efforts of social scientists should focus on the creation of mechanisms or strategies to accelerate the emergence and fixation of such organizational values.
Of special importance for Cuba is the introduction of the values approach in the context of Strategic Management by Objectives and especially in companies that are immersed in the process of Business Improvement. But why focus on values? The Values Approach in Strategic Management by Objectives is a unique experience, currently applied in Cuba, which is intended to be extended to all companies in the country when they have the necessary conditions.
The Values Approach will allow the organization's worker to find out what the meaning of their work is based on the results that must be achieved collectively in order to foster a culture of commitment. The culture of commitment requires that the organization's strategies converge with personal strategies in order to encourage personal development with quality of life programs at work.
Defining end values is the first step in implementing the values approach in an organization. What gives coherence to an organization is precisely the clarity and consensus of its goals; or what is the same, of its ends. The final values are essential to make sense and unite the effort to direct the company in the long term. These make reference to the type of company that one wants to become, the dimension to be reached and the differentiation that is intended to be assumed. In fact, the values embedded in the vision define the company's essential strategic choices.
The purpose of this research is to fundamentally strengthen the values of responsibility and honesty in the workers of a company.
Honesty: it is expressed by acting sincerely, simply and truthfully. It allows expressing a critical judgment and being able to recognize their mistakes in time, place and appropriate way to contribute to their own, collective and society good.
It is that human quality by which the person is determined to choose to act always based on truth and authentic justice (giving everyone what is due, including herself).
To be honest is to be real, according to the evidence presented by the world and its various phenomena and elements; it is to be genuine, authentic, objective. Honesty expresses respect for oneself and for others. This attitude sows confidence in oneself and in those who are in contact with the honest person.
Honesty does not consist only in frankness (ability to tell the truth) but in assuming that the truth is only one and that it does not depend on people or consensus but on what the real world presents as undeniable and essential to recognize.
You have to take honesty seriously, be aware of how it affects any lack of honesty no matter how small. It must be recognized that it is a fundamental condition for human relationships, for friendship and authentic community life. To be dishonest is to be false, unjust, deceitful, fictitious. Dishonesty does not respect the person in himself and seeks the shadow, the concealment: it is a disposition to live in the dark. Honesty, on the other hand, colors life with trust, sincerity and openness, and expresses the willingness to live in the light, the light of truth.
Responsibility: It is the fulfillment of the commitment contracted before oneself, the family, the group and society.
An indispensable element within the responsibility is to fulfill a duty. Responsibility is an obligation, whether moral or even legal, to fulfill what has been committed.
Responsibility has a direct effect on another fundamental concept: trust. Those who are responsible are trusted. Faith and loyalty are placed in those who stably fulfill what they have promised.
Responsibility is a sign of maturity, since fulfilling an obligation of any kind is generally not something pleasant, as it involves effort. Responsibility can seem like a burden, and failure to do what is promised has consequences.
Why is worth responsibility? Because thanks to it, you can peacefully coexist in society, whether in a family, friendly, professional or personal level.
When someone falls into irresponsibility, you can easily stop trusting the person. The origin of irresponsibility is the lack of correctly ordered priorities. The responsibility must be something stable. Someone's irresponsibility can be tolerated occasionally. One can easily fall into irresponsibility at times. Trust in a person in any type of relationship (work, family or friendly) is essential, as it is a correspondence of duties. The cost of irresponsibility is very high.
Responsibility is a value, because thanks to it you can coexist in society in a peaceful and equitable way. Responsibility at its most elementary level is to comply with what has been committed, or the law will make it happen. But there is a much more subtle responsibility (and difficult to live), which is that of the moral plane.
Being responsible is assuming the consequences of actions and decisions. Being responsible is also trying to ensure that all acts are carried out in accordance with a notion of justice and compliance with duty in all senses.
Values are the foundations of social and personal coexistence. Responsibility is a value, because the stability of relationships depends on it. Responsibility matters, because it is hard to achieve.
What can be done to improve accountability?
The first step is to realize that everything that is done, every commitment, has a consequence that depends on ourselves.
The second step is to achieve in a stable, habitual way, that the acts correspond to the promises. If you promise to "do the right thing" and you don't do it, then there is no responsibility.
The third step is educating those around us to be responsible. The most difficult path, but one that is the best in the long run, is to educate the irresponsible. Living responsibility is not comfortable, nor is correcting an irresponsible person. However, you must make sure that everyone can live together harmoniously and do what is in their power to achieve it.
Through organizational communication and all its related matters, these values can be strengthened by implementing a communication action plan.
The study of organizational communication can be located in the universal field of the social sciences around three decades ago. This discipline focuses on the analysis, diagnosis, organization, and improvement of the complex variables that make up the communication processes in organizations, in order to improve the interrelation between its members, between them and the external public and thus strengthen and improve the identity and performance of the entities
The origin of the discipline is linked to the contemporary tendency to integrate communication areas that functioned in a disjointed way, such as advertising, public relations, internal communication and components of the marketing communication mix, among others. From isolated fields or independent actions, they become integrating elements of a synergistic communication approach with a positive balance for the coherence of the discourse and its effectiveness.
For the purposes of this work, organizational communication will be determined as a system or set of processes for the construction of symbols, shared meanings and exchanges of information, established between the members of an organization with themselves and with the external environment. A subsystem in interactivity with others that are part of a larger one: the organization.
Communication processes always involve interrelationships of people who share information with each other, through the construction, emission and reception of messages. The elements that make up these processes are the source, the message, the channels or media, the receiver, the effects and the feedback.
Organizational Communication is an effective way to strengthen values in people. The education of workers finds their own job as an ideal means, it is where they share with their colleagues their experiences, contradictions and where they find an answer to their aspirations and work demands, hence the importance of achieving the interrelation between personal values and of the organization as a premise to consolidate shared values.
Shared values are those that workers and the organization in general assume with high importance, they are goals shared by most of the people in a group that tend to shape the behavior of the group and that often persist over time, even over time. Although the members change, they mean strengths for the organization if the management knows how to use them to develop and expand behaviors and when there are differences between the significance given by the organization and that attributed by its members, it is called distanced-value.
Values are the foundations of the organizational culture, they provide a common sense of direction for all members and establish guidelines for their daily commitment, inspire the raison d'être of each institution, are explicit in the will of its founders as well as in the formalization of the mission and vision of the organization..
It is necessary that all members of the organization know the company's value system, so in its formulation they must be clear, shared and accepted by all, in that way there is a unified criterion that strengthens the interests of all, but that is not enough, it is necessary that educational projects are developed in organizations that integrate the characteristics of the place with the values of its members.
Transmitting organizational values is a very discussed matter, however there is a coincidence that it is not always achieved with originality and transparency, to transmit something you have to possess it and exhibit an observable behavior according to it so that it has credibility. In order for the values to be legitimized in the organization, they must be implemented, applied to decision-making, customer service, and all management; they are inculcated at all times and, in addition, newcomers and those who have been in the organization for the longest time must be trained; but above all, the manager must lead by example because nothing is more important than the power of the executive actions as a message of coherence and commitment to values.
The values for each company are differentiated by their identification and application, if the previous conception of the educational process is adapted, the systemic approach of the same is declared in which the social environment in which they are developed, the objectives, the contents, the methods, means and evaluation of the developed process.
The activities that are organized for this purpose require a critical sense so that the worker learns with a certain attitude of review and confrontation with what he already knew, possibly his criteria will change based on these new ideas, or perhaps he will remain with the previous ones.
Values cannot be instilled, but are revealed and forged through the entire educational process, where personal example is the best way to teach since it is demonstrated that when social leadership is done with one's own example, that it is “doing what is said”, it is exemplifying with behavior, it is a powerful teaching tool.
Nowadays, the social need for moral preparation oriented to numerous types of work activities has grown; Since the development of the economy has led all professions to be massive, seen in this way, the adequate fulfillment of productive or service functions foresees high demands on the qualification and competence of specialists who must combine professionalism with the ability to fully understand responsibility and be willing to irreproachably fulfill duty.
Due to the above, the fundamental objective of this research is the development of a communication action plan to strengthen the values of Honesty and Responsibility in the workers of the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella.
Section III: Action plan
Strategic communication action plan to strengthen the values of Honesty and Responsibility in the workers of the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella.
| Actions | Start date | Frequency | Responsable |
| Carrying out a comprehensive diagnosis to all workers about the organizational culture, and the needs for
internal and external communication, |
January 2011 | Weekly | Managing Director |
| Completion of a training course in skills and competencies in communication issues. | February 2011 | Monthly | Managing Director |
| Carrying out a workshop where the mission of the company and the individual responsibilities of each worker are discussed. | March 2011 | Monthly | Managing Director |
| Carrying out a workshop related to the issue of securities rescue | April 2011 | Monthly | Managing Director |
| Realization of radio and television spots on the redemption of securities in the company. | April 2011 | Weekly | Managing Director |
| Establishment of joint meetings to discuss the issue of securities rescue | May 2011 | Monthly | Managing Director |
| Publication of articles related to the rescue of securities through the written press. | June 2011 | Quarterly | Managing Director |
| Circulation of messages originated by the various media, with the aim of providing communication about
the shared values of the company. |
June 2011 | Monthly | Managing Director |
| Elaboration of graphic propaganda on the rescue of values, emphasizing Honesty and Responsibility. | June 2011 | Monthly | Managing Director |
| Performing morning skits about the need to strengthen values | Permanent | Weekly | Managing Director |
| Carrying out communication events aimed at external audiences, in order to maintain or improve the corporate image of
the company |
July 2011 | Permanent | Managing Director |
| Realization of exchange of experiences with the workers on the ethics, identity and image of the company. | September 2011 | Permanent | Managing Director |
Social impact
With the application of this communication strategy, the situation of this company has been positively transformed, the shortcomings that appeared in the initial diagnosis have gradually disappeared. Undoubtedly, the workers of the company demonstrate with their daily actions that these moral values have been strengthened. The rescue of the values in the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella, allows the achievement of an adequate image of the entity before its different audiences, and shows an increase in economic efficiency by 3%.
A socialization workshop was held to assess the effectiveness of the action plan prepared, 5 professors graduated in Social Communication from the subsidiary of the Universidad de Oriente of the Mella municipality participated, the Head of the Humanities department of this subsidiary, and the postgraduate deputy director and research from the same center. The assessments provided by the specialists demonstrate the validity of the research, recognizing its practical contribution to the dynamics of the communication process.
The specialists also recognized the didactic relevance of the action plan, as well as the feasibility of its application to respond to the current needs for improvement of the company and the strengthening of moral values.
Conclusions
Organizational communication is an effective way to strengthen values in people. The scientific study carried out offers a communication strategy, based on organizational communication that favors the process of formation of values in the workers of the Company of Commerce and Gastronomy of Mella and helps to consolidate the corporate image and identity of the company.
The specialists also recognized the didactic relevance of the proposal for strategic communication actions, as well as the feasibility of its application to respond to the current needs for improvement of the company and the strengthening of moral values.
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