An organization, being made of the people, cannot remain free from the activities its people do to satisfy their needs while doing their works. One of such needs and an important one is the social need. In order to satisfy their social need, people interact with each other beyond what is warranted by the organization’s formal channels. Thus, they create their own informal channels as against the formal channels which are created by the organization’s structure. These informal channels grow over a period of time and may become strong enough to extend beyond just means of social interactions. The informal channels, then, may manifest themselves in following ways:
i) Pressure Groups: The people may use the informal channels to create the pressure groups. Such pressure groups exert the pressure to deter the authorities of the organization from taking the steps which are not liked by such people even if they are required in the best interest of the organization. People have tendency to remain in comfort zone, but that may lead to inefficiency and unproductivity in the organization. Hence, the responsible authorities may be obliged to bring about change in order to ensure efficiency and productivity in the organization. Such a change may entail the people to break the inertia and come out of their comfort zone, which may be resisted by such pressure groups.
ii) Parallel Authorities: The informal channels may become so strong that they may lead to creation of parallel authorities. These parallel authorities may compete with the real authorities of the organization and may become threat to their effective functioning. This tends to demotivate the functionaries of the organization and discourage them from taking bold and decisive steps in the interest of the organization, thus weakening the very fabric of the organization. Parallel authorities may also influence others to get distracted from their duties and responsibilities towards the organization thus denting the organizational productivity.
iii) Inhygenic Factors: The informal channels may also lead to development of inhygenic factors in the organization’s work environment such as sycophancy, crookedness, indiscipline, irresponsibility, dereliction of duty, lack of integrity, turpitude, arrogance, conceit, so forth and so on. Such inhygenic factors vitiate the work environment and hamper the productivity and efficiency of everyone and hence of the organization as a whole.
iv) Organization Culture: There could be development of an organization culture wherein people tend to act in the interest of individuals and against the interest of the organization, by-pass the system in deference to some individuals or to pursue their own preferences, show the loyalty to individuals instead of the organization, discriminate one person from other based only on their liking or disliking, be subjective in the approach, lose the sense of purpose, show predisposition in their decision making, etc. Such an organization culture, no doubt, saps the organization of all its vigour and energy, and acts against its growth and development.
v) Potential Threat: There could be tendency among the people to brush aside the organization’s mission, goals and objectives as these may be of little importance and may not find a place in the people’s activities carried out through the informal channels. When an organization’s mission, goals and objectives are not given due importance by the people, it may be a potential threat to very existence of the organization itself.
The Way-out
Informal channels, if unbridled, have potential to inflict all pervasive damage to an organization. Therefore, the organization must step in to check their growth before they can overpower the formal structure of the organization. For that to happen, the organization must do the following:
i) Empower its functionaries to enable them to discharge their duties and functions without getting distracted and daunted by the pressure groups. This would also allow them to drive the people towards the organization’s goals and objectives. Moreover, they can thwart the challenges and threats posed by the pressure groups. This can also discourage the harmful activities carried out through informal channels.
ii) Put the system in place and ensure its implementation. This would discourage any one to by-pass the authorities and indulge in activities inimical to the interest of the organization. Putting the system in place also ensures that people adhere to the set path of goal accomplishment without diverting to undesirable path.
iii) Enforce the organizational rules meticulously. This would ensure no one, what so ever his position be, can be above the organization. It would not allow any individual irrespective of his position or status to compromise the interest of the organization. This would also mean that every individual in the organization would be aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization leaving little scope for informal channels to compete with the formal organizational structure.
iv) Create an organization culture wherein everyone acts in sync with the organization’s mission, goals and objectives. The organizational culture plays a vital role in growth and development of an organization by aligning its people to the interests of the organization. Therefore, creating a healthy organization culture can be an effective means to drive the people to goal accomplishment of the organization and discourage the creation of informal channels.
v) Strengthen the organization structure. The very purpose of an organization structure is to define a channel through which its people can interact and communicate to achieve its goals and objectives and that no other parallel channels can crop up in the organizational set up. Therefore, an organization must make every endeavor to strengthen its structure and ensure that it is strong enough to function effectively and counter the threats and challenges from any other informal channels. It must not be just a formality. In fact, the stronger the organization structure is, the weaker would be the informal channels and the better would be the growth and development of the organization.