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CURRENT ASPECTS REGARDING COMMUNICATIONWITHIN THE ROMANIAN LOCAL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

Bene Florina Maria

University of OradeaOradea/Romania

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Society may be regarded at in different ways: as a multitude of individuals, institutions andconcrete activities, of roles and relations, of rules and senses. Seen from this angle, society

reveals the importance of communication having a series of implications which permit acommunicative analysis of the society in general and of the public system in particular. Efficient

communication is the key to success of a modern local public administration. Within theorganization, it strengthens the employees trust in the organizations mission and vision,

connect them to the work place realities, feeds the developing process of the respective entity,eases the changes needed to progress and contributes to the employees change of conduct,

uniting them within the group. On the outside, the organizations image, the discovery of newopportunities and the relation with the society greatly depend on how well this continuousprocess of communication is being conceived.

Key words:public information, communication process, empathy

The provisions of Law 215/2001 of the local public administration, present the vital functionof the local public administration authorities from Romania to solve and manage, on behalf

of and to the benefit of the local collectivities they represent, the public issues within thelaw. By local public administration authorities there are understood to be the local councils,

the county councils and Bucharest Municipium General Council as deliberative entities, andmayoralties, the presidents of the county councils and the general mayor of Bucharest as

executive entities. The organizations underwent interesting variations in numbers anddimensions in past times, depending on the problems they had to answer and on how their

utility was perceived by the public.

Within the activity developed by the public institutions, communication holds a really

special place, this being the main method to relate to citizens, to inform all structures about

the scope, attribution and results of the measures and activities performed.

PublicCommunication represents the form of communication that accompanies the activityof public institutions to the end of satisfying the general interest. The conveyed messages

contain public use information. Thus, public communication must bring to the citizens

knowledge the existence of the organizations from the public sector, their attributions andmanner of operation, the legality and opportunity of the adopted decisions. At the sametime, through public communication it is intended to reveal the populations needs and

desires so as the public institution by virtue of their role and attributions to meet met for ageneral interest. The role of public communication is to convince that through the


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institutional politics realized as well as through the public decisions adopted, the general

interest is pursued, thus obtaining the citizens approval. [6, p.132].

The citizens make contact with the local public institutions and, as a consequence, they need

to know how to address for the satisfaction of a legitimate interest, what documents they

need to fill in and what procedures there would be to follow. The local public institutionshave the obligation to make available to the public the information of practical

characteristics, the rules they must observe during procedures and to facilitate them theaccess to the local public services. [2, p.52].

Due to the economic crisis and to the legislative context poorly adapted to the Romanian

specificity the public institutions fail to direct sufficient money for the formation andinstruction of employees, especially for improving their communication abilities, because

investment in human resources is a long term investment, much too costly for a publicinstitution insufficiently financed from the state budget and which doesnt work for profit

from which to afford the professional training of its employees.

The diversity of causes determining the difficulties and perturbations related to the

communication process implies the obligation to exist in the respective system a fewpossibilities to adjust, adapt and transform [1, p.11]. the central element of the adjustment isrepresented by the feed-back which allows the receptor (e.g. the citizen) to express reactions

and to the emitter (e.g. the public clerk, the spokes person of the public institution, theprefect, etc.) to record them. The ability of the communicator to properly answer to the feed-

back is determining for the efficiency of communication. [6, p. 128].

The way the communication process goes on influences not only the efficiency of the

message conveying. Modern conception in the field of communication takes into

consideration as well the reaction of the interlocutors in the communication process. Theaim of communication within an organization or in the relation with the citizens is to gather

and disseminate information so as to act on them following up the communication.

The public institutions managers must communicate their employees information about thework they have to carry out, about their conduct and the way they would benefit as one with

the organization of the developed activity. Citizens want their own problems solved and thepublic clerk must comprehend the specific problems of each and every individual before

solving them. So, the efficient transmission is nothing but the limited target in acommunication process; at all times the process of communication wants to contribute in

synergy to the encouragement of some reactions, conducts and activities. Its no use tocommunicate correctly an exact message if it doesnt have to power to trigger the feed-back

reaction.

At the micro-level of social life, that is with the local collectivities of more reduceddimensions (municipalities with 0-4999 inhabitants), the aspects regarding communication

between citizens and local authorities differ from the situation of bigger collectivities; in thisrespect, Homans [4, p.112] has formulated the hypothesis according to which if the

interaction frequency between two or more persons increases, so does the mutual sympathy

between them, and vice versa." This is not entirely true for the bigger collectivities becauseit depends on the groups dimensions. The larger the group, the more restrictive become,

from the physical point of view, the diversity and frequency of communication.


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At this micro-level of social life we find the reflection and expression of some fundamentalelements of the social life, such as: marking the frontiers, establishing the social distance,

occurrence of normative cohesion between those who think alike and feel mutual attraction;

positions differentiation; exercising power and influence. Thus, the three factor

combination, physical proximity, common preoccupations and alikeness, represent apowerful force that determines initiation of communication and development, based on it, of

a social relations structure, even of a local structure. The change of the communicationstructure is closely linked to the social changes. The principles established for groups must

be altered to fit new social categories along with the necessity of introducing new factors,but what happens within small groups finds correspondence in a way or another, at the

macro-social levels. [5, p.111].

Social class and status represent a factor that unites or differentiates, encouraging orimpairing the development of communication and interaction. To this factor others add up,

also bound by territoriality such as religion and race. The same area may be inhabited bydifferent populations from all points of view and where such differences are important to

people we usually discover strong segregation tendencies. These appear where "the

communitary planning" tried to mix different income groups in the same living space [3,p.34] and are frequently recorder in the cases of racial differences or ethnical ones.

In the institutional communication, if we consider the link between the internal and externalrelation, it may be carried out by certain participants from the external network acting as

relays or contact points. They are intensely preoccupied by the institutionalized activitiesand strategically placed to establish contacts both ways, remaining simple members of the

public. In the field of social security there are volunteers and members of some pressure

groups. In the case of public institutions we speak about "leaders of opinion". The

intermediaries have an informal role and the main component concerns communication: theformal system waits for them to transmit the information starting from the center and furnish

information in exchange while the members of the public also expect to get informationfrom the same. [5, p.133].

The institutional communication maintains informational interchanges between institutions,

governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations (foundations, and non-profitorganizations) and last but not least, with the sub-system of the social global system,

national and international. The flexibility of institutional communication as well as itssustenance before the shocks coming from different activity fields (economic, social-politic,

competition) takes us to the conclusion that such type of communication has the capacity toreact under the ensemble of stimuli, be them positive or negative.

Gabriela Popescu notifies that at present we witness a process of communication adaptation

to the existent society conditions. In order to secure a proper intra and extra institutionalcommunication, it is necessary that the institutions obtain information about the needs of

different social groups and categories, needs continuously changing and whose solvingimplies the continuation of some progress, especially of social character.

Public information represents the base of external communication, being a source ofextracting information which is to be processed and put to the base of starting special

programs. Public information is focused on gathering, processing and conveying in a certain


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interpretation form of the public information. An important characteristic of public

information is the active memory of the organization the database available to it, whichit periodically upgrades and permits it to have a certain institutional behavior towards the

come up issues, at a given time on the social level. [5, p. 228-229].

Public institutions have the possibility to process public information and distribute themunder the form of communicational products. An important role is played by the audio-

visual and media. They get materialized in columns, studies, books, written press and audio-visual releases, radio and TV shows.

The success of information distribution depends on the availability of the already existing

channels either institutionally organized or those belonging to mass-media and to othersources of information with authority and credibility, or the informal social contacts. The

degree to which a target population is implied in the used communication cannels networkdepends on the degree of social integration, interests, relevance and utility of the subject, or

on the possessing of the equipment necessary to receive the broadcast programs. Mass-media deals with transmission of news public character information of immediate interest

and relevance, but there also exists a secondary transmitting network, as a result of the fact

that those first to receive the information through the mass-media pass it on to others whomthey have personal contacts with.

The more relevant and interesting the news to many, the more rapid and wide itstransmission and the contacts network more further from the existing structures. There is a

risk to using the media as a means to convey information to public institutions especiallywhen that is the only way used. There is the risk to deform the information, in the sense that

there were some cases when the media fabricated or maintained actual the old news,

especially when the public administration is to be put in a bad light, the media being

confronted with a lasting urge of subjects for fear not to loose the clients. News dontalways illustrate reality as it is, being more like arbitrary, culturally determined, versions of

"reality" according to the publics expectations and tuned in to meet the needs forproduction and distribution of modern media systems.

In the communication process, the public clerk-citizen relationship is the substance of the

public administration act. The communicational units, respectively the public clerk (asemitter) and the citizen (as message receptor) have clear objectives. The emitter seeks to

inform, convince, guide, capture interest, be efficient and the receptor will do their best topay attention, understand and store. Communication with the citizens is done by:

speeches, audiences, informational activities, debates, sessions of communication,investigation programs, cultural-educational activities, participations in contests, own

publications (newspapers, magazines, leaflets, etc.) displays at the seat of the institution,transmission orally or in writing of diverse information to and from the management and

specialty structures of public administration institutions[6, p.134].

Communication secures a social-economic efficiency generating effect. The organizationboard is meant to develop and maintain a live, efficient and correct system of

communication capable of sustaining the adopted strategy under the ever changing

conditions with rapid and unpredictable evolutions. Due to coordination, the synchronizingof actions is facilitated, communication is assured and the transmission of decisions and of

the feed-back between the management echelons are also secured, for the development of


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efficient activities, capable to contribute to the realization of the established objectives. The

efficiency of local public administration depends both on the communication system and thequality of decisions, and on the level of transposing them into practice.

The affirmation according to which there isnt communication without effects is true

although it depends on the perspective of what is considered to be an effect. The dynamic

nature of the communication process causes difficulties to those studying it, due topermanent mutations and the immense difficulties to register or restitute the event after it

occurred. [5, p.35].

One of the difficulties in the development of an efficient communication process isgenerated by the cognitive dissonance. This presumes the selection of the informational

sources in conformity with the own convictions of the implied entities in transmitting andreceiving the communicated message.

Alexandru Nedelea observes the fact that the cognitive dissonance phenomenon is very

common in the public administration. Thus, when a group gets together to discuss certainissues, it is ascertained that, from mayors, county councils presidents, to general managers,

local or county councilors, as the case may be, each of them finds the group where the

others share the same vision on things. When the meeting begins and the group membersexpress their opinions, they hear the same points of view but in different words, leaving themeeting more convinced of their outlooks, which are similar to those of the others.

In addition, among the public clerks there is also a psychological mechanism manifesting

itself, acting in the sense of rejecting and deforming the information and realities whichdont correspond to the own convictions. There are also situations in which public clerks

proved completely opaque, non-receptive of the facts presented to them in the process of

communication between citizen and public administration institution. There are frequent

situations when the clerk gives the impression that he listens, although in fact he is notpaying any attention. He is just polite, staying calm until he gets to speak, time during which

he repeats in mind his own arguments. His response is almost completely inappropriate withwhat the earlier speaker spoke about, completely ignoring the points of view presented by

the citizen. As a result, such obvious rejection implies a real communication problem to berecognized as such. [6, p.129]. Communication is much difficult when opinions differ but if

the mutual aim is the problem solving, each of the two parties will become more receptive tothe opinions different from their own. In order to reduce the influence of communication

barriers and even to eliminate them, the informative material must be elaborated accordingto the receiver, the adequate communication style being a necessary condition for an

efficient communication. Of course there isnt an all around appropriate style for all peopleor situations, be they predictable or not. According to the nature and scope of the message

the clerk will adapt their style to the characteristics of the recipient, the particulars ofmessage conveying, the subject of communication, choosing the most suitable to attain their

communicational objectives.

One possible way of solving communication problems is empathy. It may be defined as asympathetic intuition, affective identification as transposing. It is different than sympathy

this being a conscious emotional state meaning "feeling with", whilst empathy means

"feeling in", aiming towards, living the others affective life. Empathy builds a bridgebetween those involved in the act of communication, helps the clerk to better understand the

given situations, to decipher the subtleties of the citizens problems. There are situations


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when it is blocked by manifestations of domination, manipulation tendencies, undermining

or refuse to communicate by one of the parties. Ignoring the influence of emotions on theprocess of communication and on its efficiency may have negative effects both on

conveying the respective message and on the relationship between the parties involved.

Empathy helps a more profound communication and may respond to the causes of problems,

obtaining a communication beyond words. Empathy and active listening should be the mainingredients in the relationship citizen-public clerk. Thus, it is obtained at great length, an

increase of the communication activity efficiency of the local public administration and ofthe degree of its involvement in identifying citizens problems, needs and expectations

solving them in the most fruitful way possible, thus obtaining a brand image of the localadministration much improved by cutting off the negative mentalities generated by the

relationships in the past with certain public institutions. All of these, bringing as a result thecitizens change of opinion, with a rational characteristic, due to the fact that the subject

restores the coherence of its universe, logically reinterpreting the new data that have markedtheir existence. Their opinions and impressions referring to the public administration and its

image acquire a new dimension. The image of a local public administration institution isgiven by the aspect and conduct of its clerks, the competence, professionalism, way of

getting involved in solving the citizens problems, their degree of keeping informed and also

the own advertising through the means of communication. Anytime, anyplace theadministration is the value of the people forming it.

Communication being an overt system, influenced by various situations and conditions,there is a group of disturbing factors whose effects obstruct the efficient communication

process and in order to eliminate them, as much as possible, there are various strategies andtechniques available. Inefficient communication causes misinformation, conflicts, relational

problems, professional dissatisfactions and stress, thus the organizations in general by the

adopted communication policies and each and every public clerk by own attitude, action and

conduct, may proceed towards an efficient communication.

Holding on to multiple advantages, communication is a significant strategic resource ofmaintaining and/or increasing performances, of creating, maintaining and improving the

relationships with the citizens, mass-media, the non-governmental organizations(foundations, non-profit entities) as well as with other institutions from a central, local or

international level.

References

[1] Chiru, I, Comunicarea interpersonal, Editura Tritonic, Bucharest, 2003[2] Coman-Kund, F- Politica de comunicare extern a colectivitilor locale, Editura Economic,

Bucharest, 2000[3] Heraud, Brian, J., Social class and the new towns, Urban Studies, 5, 1968

[4] Homans, C. George, The Human Group, Routlege & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1951[5] McQuail, Denis, Comunicarea, Editura Institutul European pentru Cooperare Cultural- tiinific

Iai, 1999[6] Nedelea, Al.- Marketing n administraia public, Editura Didactica si Pedagogica, Bucharest, 2006

[7] Popescu Luminia Gabriela - Comunicarea n administraia public, Editura Economic, 2ndedition, revised and supplemented, Bucharest, 2007, p. 228, 229


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[8] Law no. 215/2001 of local public administration, published in the Official Monitor no. 204/2001

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