Developing Doctoral Student Communications at Aalto University School of Business

Abstract

In organizations it is crucial to ensure that communications reach the entire employee base. Diverse employee groups and differing employment contracts tend to further challenge the success of internal communication. This thesis examines a unique group of people within academia, doctoral students, and aims at developing communications targeted at them at the case organization, Aalto University School of Business. The objective of this research and development study is to meet the information needs of PhD students with a further aim of increased sense of community. A need for such a study was identified from the responses to a wellbeing survey where PhD students’ concerns regarding internal communication emerged. The scope of this thesis involves all the ca 200 students studying in the doctoral degree programme during the current study year 2019-2020 at the School of Business.

The key concepts of this study, which are internal communication, knowledge sharing, information satisfaction and sense of community, together form the common thread of the whole thesis.

The research was conducted using semi structured qualitative interviews after which a development meeting with key people was organized to further evaluate the findings and development ideas. Finally, instructions on how to improve the doctoral student communications were constructed based on theory, interview findings and the development meeting. The interview sample was fairly small comprising of five doctoral students; however, half of the School’s six departments were presented which is quite a good quantity. In addition, the sample’s heterogeneity is believed to be of satisfactory level as there was a good balance among students regarding gender, stage of studies and nationality.

The key findings show that the communication issues are complex and there is not a one simple solution. Communication taking place at different levels by different functions provides a challenge for integration. However, the characteristics and needs of different study fields further complicate doctoral student communications. Also, it was found that students perceive finding information difficult. The students voiced a clear and unanimous wish as to how they prefer to receive different information. A development plan was constructed based on the research and findings and it is now in the hands of the organization to decide which of the suggested improvements can be implemented.