Organization Hierarchy, Management Structure, Communication Methods

Week Five:

            In the PR Dept. there is a small hierarchy that is Lea Ann Scales is on top and head of everything, Kimberly D. Brothers-Caisse seems to be the second in charge and everyone else is below her at the same or maybe different levels.  I don’t spend a lot of time in the office with everyone there, so I’m not sure about the rest of everyone, but from what I’ve seen that’s how I would set it up. 

            The informal and formal management is a little hard to describe, because again I’m not at the office much.  It would seem that most of the formal management is done be Lea Ann Scales and at times Kimberly Caisse also helps out.  I know that Caisse and a few others meet formally to discuss what pictures to put up online and where, but when I meet with her it’s very informal. 

Usually I meet with Caisse and Chelsea (another intern there dealing with more journalism work).  We sit around in Caisse “office” and discuss how our work is going, what we have planned for the next week or two, and what kinds of ideas we may have for the social media outlets.  Like I said before, these are very informal meetings.  I believe that the informalness of our meetings is good because it allows me to feel more open and confident in sharing my thoughts and ideas for different events going on that I could take photos at or how I think certain things on the Facebook page could look.  I also believe that it allows Caisse to be more open with us as well and allows her to interact with us at a more friendly level then a boss level. 

Lastly, the PR Dept. uses email as their main communication outlet.  Sometimes we use face-to-face communication, during meetings and if I’m in the area and stop by to chat, but usually it’s all done via email.  I think that emailing is an effective way to communicate.  Usually I have very direct and simple questions asked in my emails, so it’s easy to send them out and get quick responses.  The only issue I’ve found with emailing is that at times Caisse is very busy at work and is not able to email me back right away.  With no one else to ask questions to it’s tough to have to wait hours or a day for a response.  I recently received her phone and was given permission to call that if I ever needed to, but I haven’t had the need yet.