Managing Emoji Language of Internal Business Communication in Clan Culture

Abstract

The lack of transmitted emotion and cues in virtual internal business communication could negatively affect trust level and relationships in organisations. Although, emojis are used to transmit emotion and non-verbal cues in business communication. Yet, misinterpretation of emojis i.e., emotions and cues, occurs due to the ambiguity of emojis, which could lead to misunderstanding and misalignment in business communication. This research aims to enable an accurate transmitting of emotions and cues in business communication through suggesting and developing an emoji syntax that sets up rules and guidelines for using emojis at the workplace. The emoji syntax is introduced in a clan culture company - Qudits: a swiss startup company - due to its main characteristics, such as encouraging open communication, flexibility, and the exploitation of technologies for people development. The research adopts pragmatism and interpretivism as research philosophy and follows the DSR approach. Furthermore, the research conducts a qualitative analysis. The data for this research was collected through three main ways; documents of Qudits, exploratory interviews with the executive and co-founder, and semi-structured interviews with all Qudits team members....