Internal crisis communication strategies in the banking sector of Ghana

Abstract

Organisational crises have become synonymous with the financial sector in Ghana in recent times, notably from 2012. Owing to many reasons, the Bank of Ghana merged Royal Bank, uniBank, Sovereign Bank, Beige Bank and Construction Bank into the Consolidated Bank Ghana (CBG) in 2018. There appears to be paucity on issues of internal communication from the perspectives of sense-making theory and situational crisis communication theory within the social constructivist perspective. The study sought to explore the gap within this area by studying the role of internal communication as a form of organisational crisis response strategy in the banking sector of Ghana, emphasising on the sense made of the communication processes, the communication channels employed and the response strategies of the banks. Using a case study design, interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis were conducted. The data gathered were thematically analysed. The findings were that the banks’ staff picked cues about the crisis from both internal and external sources, the banks employed face-to-face, electronic mails, intranet, social media, telephones and durbars to communicate the crisis internally, the banks employed the non-existing, distance and suffering communication strategies, whilst the sense made out of the crisis is that management and the BoG should both be blamed for the crisis that happened. The conclusions drawn from the findings are that internal communication was relatively poor in the banks. Management failed to communicate to staff about the crisis on time. This created a knowledge gap where management knew almost everything while staff knew very little. Finally, politics and mismanagement played a major role in the collapse of the banks.