Revista científica, arbitrada e indizada, bajo la modalidad electrónica.

 

Recibido: 22/03/2022
Aceptado: 03/03/2022

Perception challenges and barriers to communication in the canadian oil and gas sector

Karen Rodriguez
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
Alberta, Canadá
karen.rodriguezminero@edu.sait.ca
Yahoska Salazar
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
Alberta, Canadá
yahoska.salazar@edu.sait.ca

ABSTRACT

This article aims to examine, through an analysis, the Perception challenges and Barriers to communication in the Canadian Oil and Gas Sector, the investigation was guided by a postpositivist, qualitative, documentary approach, with bibliographic design, including literary review to know the state of the art of the categories studied, as well as the collection of information obtained from the bases of data, scientific journals, degree projects, institutional repositories, as well as the identification of objectives. It was based on postulates of Liew (2022), Nelson, Quick, Armstrong, Roubecas, Condie, (2020), Thomas (2021), Wang (2021), among others. The findings demonstrate Individualism based on personal performance creates a synergy with the very low power distance level where management relies on its employees for their expertise and communicates the information freely and in a respectful manner. Also, Communication, contributes to diminishing the barriers by accomplishing corporate goals in the way leaders address it depending on the nature of their teams, and allowing them to decode the correct ideas and objectives according to their roles.
Key words: Perception challenges, Barriers to communication, Oil and Gas Sector

INTRODUCCIÓN

What is the oil and gas sector? To understand this sector better, it is of value to first comprehend what is oil and gas. Oil is a thick black viscous liquid that originates from dead marine organisms that were buried under deposits of sedimentary rock on the ocean floor millions of years ago. With the passing of time, and “enough pressure and temperature” these organisms decompose and convert into oil (History, n.d.). Just like oil, natural gas was formed in a similar manner, with the difference that the process for these organisms to decompose and convert into gas is of longer duration and requires higher amounts of heat and pressure to cause further decomposition and turn into a gas versus a viscous liquid.
With Climate change and calls to action for industries to reduce the overall environmental footprint on the planet, the Oil and Gas Sector has been brought to the forefront of the public's mind. Therefore, it is no surprise that the industry has been under scrutiny for a period now.
The Canadian oil and gas industry is an important contributor to the Canadian economy, especially in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador and it has almost recovered in terms of production, employment and exports after experiencing sharp declines in economic activity as oil prices plummeted early in the COVID-19 pandemic, but the sector still faces some challenges despite the recovery of oil prices, such as uncertain near-term energy demand because of the potential for new waves of the pandemic, the cancellation of Keystone XL pipeline, carbon pricing and increasing demand for clean energy, which may prevent capital spending in the industry from rebounding (Wang, 2021).
Cenovus Energy’s (CV) - a Canadian-based energy company- history goes back to December 1, 2009, when Cenovus began its independent operations in Calgary Alberta after a separation between 2 companies, an oil company – Cenovus - and the other, a natural gas company - Encana -, which obtained its assets from the original merger Encana in 2002 from PanCanadian Energy Corp. discovered with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) commissioned by the Government of Canada and Alberta Energy Company created on share ownership with the Government of Canada to encourage Alberta’s growth (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
On January 1, 2021, Cenovus Energy acquired Husky Energy, which began as a small refinery operation in 1938 and grew to become one of Canada’s top integrated oil and gas producers (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
The acquisition launched the company to become the third-largest Canadian oil and natural gas producer, the second largest Canadian-based refiner and upgrader, and unites high-quality and low-cost oil sands and heavy oil assets with extensive midstream and downstream infrastructure (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
But how does the industry move forward and take a stance to communicate their message to the public and stakeholders that they are determined to make real meaningful change? How does the industry change public perception and work through their barriers to communication? (Buitrago & El Kadi, 2019)
Cenovus Energy is a perfect company to be studied as it has an immense potential to expand and tap into foreign markets that have not been explored yet by the company, and consequently, CV needs to identify organizational behaviour challenges and opportunities within their internal and external factors to recognize the perception and personality of all the parties that interact with CV and how the world sees the enterprise in terms of emotions, beliefs and values, the attitudes from and to the company, how CV manage their ethics and their Social Corporate Responsibility behaviour through a effectively and efficiently communication.

METHODOLOGY

The project that originated this article was done with postpositivist method, qualitative approach, documentary and bibliographical design, after understanding the literary review, the information as well as the identification and categorization of objectives. Documentation and information from various sources were taken into consideration, such as books, scientific articles, databases that brought together scientific journals, repositories, through which relevant information was compiled, working documentary observation with the matrix analysis of the categories, by means of a comparative critical review.
As pointed out by Pelekais et al., (2015), for whom speaking of documentary research refers to a study that demand for its development of a pre-existing condition have selected a topic in specific that needs to expand, for it to be done, it must have been defined and sufficiently justified for the purpose of exploring the reality of what is investigating in the sources consulted, also concern the need for accuracy, clarity, as well as the level of synthesis which must meet, so realized approach demonstrates relevance and total correspondence with what was analyzed. In this way, it is possible to respond to the objectives or purposes raised at the beginning.

Organizational challenges for today

Cultural Differences and Work-Related Attitudes

The company is considering expanding their business into China where CV might face some organizational challenges, culture differences and work-related attitudes that need to be identified and managed in order to penetrate the market. In this context, it is important to understand organizational behavior and the differences in the way of doing business in both societies, to get a better chance of having successful management cohesion. (Martinez & El Kadi, 2019)
According to Hofstede Insights (n.d.) shown in the Illustration 1: Country Comparison between Canada and China, there are some differences between Canada and China and the most significative dimensions that affect CV’s business operations is Individualism and Power Distance.

Figure 1: Country Comparison between Canada and China

Hofstede Insights. (n.d.). [Country Comparison between Canada and China] [Online image]. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/

Individualism

The score for the dimension of Individualism for Canada is 80, characterized as an individualist culture, here the expectation is that people look after themselves and their immediate families only. Similarly, in the business world, employees are expected to be self-reliant and display initiative, the hiring and promotion decisions are based on merit or evidence of individual’s performance (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). On the contrary, China scores 20, being considered a highly collectivist culture where people act in the interests of the group and not necessarily of themselves, and relationships with colleagues are cooperative for in-groups while they can be cold or even hostile to out-groups; also, personal relationships prevail over task and company (Hofstede Insights, n.d.).
The issue found on this dimension in relation to the Company expansion to China is the expected behavior of new employees in this new country, where there is a low score of individualism according to some studies. In this new scenery, managers who have been working in Canadian society must change the way the organizational strategy is presented making emphasis on in-group loyalty and unity paramount. Even though one of the CV’s values is teamwork, where they promote inclusivity, trust and empowerment, there is still a gap between celebrating together for someone else’s achievements and growing together, where everyone wins from the whole company progress.

Power Distance

The second dimension where the score has a considerable difference is the power distance which is defined as “the degree to which a culture accepts unequal distribution of power” (Nelson et al, 2019).
Canadian culture is marked by interdependence with a score of 39 where value is placed on egalitarianism. This is also reflected by the lack of overt status and/or class distinctions in society, hierarchy in Canadian organizations is established for convenience where superiors are always accessible, and managers rely on individual employees and teams for their expertise, the communication and share of information is free and respectful (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). On the other hand, China with a score of 80, believes that inequalities amongst people are acceptable. The subordinate-superior relationship tends to be polarized with no defense against power abuse by superiors. Individuals are influenced by formal authority and sanctions and are, in general, optimistic about people’s capacity for leadership and initiative even though people should not aspire beyond their rank (Hofstede Insights, n.d.).
The issue found on this dimension in relation to the Company expansion to China is that CV will need to place authority figures and some sort of hierarchy in order to obtain the results and goal they are looking for, as China needs to see who is in charge and a leadership/expertise to follow. China will obey the rules, otherwise, there will be consequences for non-compliance. If CV treats China as a Canadian company, managers will expect to have interdependent and proactive employees that work as equals, where everyone has a certain level of expertise to share and probably, that will not be the case due to its difficult changeable oriental to occidental culture.
Now that these 2 Hofstede dimensions that affect the expansion development have been identified and explained, there are some suggestions to mitigate these cultural differences.
1.- Recommended actions to avoid individualism and initiate equilibrium with collectivism are:

2.- Recommended actions to diminish the power distance:

Technological Innovation and Today’s Workforce

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic not only affected our health, but also our global economy. The pandemic not only brought us to our knees as individuals, but also organizations from the smallest to the largest of companies. In an effort to keep employees safe, organizations had to adapt and change their way of doing business. This involved re-evaluating where and how employees would be able to conduct their work in a safe environment. Out of this situation came great new positive outcomes for organizations to offer their employees.
Two of these outcomes that organizations have been able to implement are the use of virtual offices via remote log-in and the second is a modification of the typical normal work-week hours by way of allowing a more flexible schedule.

Virtual Offices or Teleworking

Virtual offices allow employees the opportunity to work from home and tie into meetings via virtual conference platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or even Google Meets to name a few. Whereas Teleworking provides employees with the opportunity to work from home like those using virtual offices, yet they are still required to come into the physical office on occasion as required by the employer.

Flex time of normal workdays

Flex time allows employees the opportunity to break away from the constraints of a regular Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm work week. Instead, employees can tailor their time to suit their needs so long as they have their work completed by a specified time. flex time can be achieved in the following ways:

Sait has been a notable example of using virtual offices. Students can continue to receive educational instruction without the interruption of classroom and building closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Class times are scheduled at a specific time twice a week via Zoom, Blackboard or Microsoft Teams. If a student needs to communicate with an academic advisor, this can also be achieved by scheduling a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting.
As a parent, it is important to be able to have the use of flex time to balance out more of a work/life balance. It was instrumental to have the availability of reducing hours to twice a week with the aid of diligently working with another part-time employee to successfully deliver the results the employer was seeking. For the employer, this was a great situation as well. The employer was able to have a more productive team and the department's productivity increased. Instead of having one mind tackle a matter, now they had two minds for the same cost. This provided different strategies and approaches to effectively resolve matters.

Personality and perception

Personality Assessments in Organizations: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

On the next section, the personality assessment Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) will be explained in order to comprehend how it can impact on a company’s leader’s personality and therefore, on the CV company itself.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® is an instrument designed to formally evaluate people, and provide descriptive profiles of their personality types, which can provide insights about their individual differences (Nelson et al, 2019).
Through a series of 100 self-reported questions, the MBTI identifies an individual’s preferences in four areas of personality. The combination of these preferences makes up an individual’s psychological type. Figure 2 shows these preferences (Nelson et al, 2019).
Figure 2: Table 3.2 Type Theory Preferences and Descriptions of The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Nelson D., Quick J., Armstrong A., Roubecas C., Condie J. (2019). ORGB (3rd ed.). Cengage Learning.
The leader from CV placed in this project as part of the personality assessment analysis is Alex Pourbaix.
As President & Chief Executive Officer of Cenovus Energy, Alex is responsible for establishing the strategic direction for the company and delivering strong financial, operational and sustainability performance. Alex took on the leadership role in November 2017. He is also a director of the company (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
After a deep examination into the classification of personality assessment, the team considered that Alex’s results would be placed on the Extroversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for the following reasons.

Extraversion

Part of being in the top ranks in a company, a CEO develop and spread positive emotions to the subordinates, and show traits such as sociable, publicly expressive, lively, interactive person, energetic, proactive, action oriented, out-going, friendly, among other characteristics that will make him the appropriate person to lead and work with a team with very strong interpersonal skills, adaptable to need situations and good decision-making person as having an active and assertive communication skills.
Due to his extraversion characteristics, Alex currently serves on several boards chairs such as Canadian Utilities Limited and the Business Council of Canada, and the Board of Governors at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) as Past Chair (Cenovus Energy, n.d). He is Board Chair at Mount Royal University and a member of the Business Council of Alberta (Cenovus Energy, n.d). He was previously Board Chair for the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and a board member at Trican Well Service Ltd (Cenovus Energy, n.d).

Sensing

Alex has over 30 years of experience working in leadership roles. In his previous role with TC Energy, Alex has headed up large energy infrastructure projects. He has served and currently serves on multiple boards. “He is Board Chair at Mount Royal University and a member of the Business Council of Alberta” (Alex Pourbaix, n.d.). Alex’s wealth of experience and career growth speaks to him falling into the Sensing Dimension. This type of individual is detail-oriented, practical, specific, concrete with the feet on the ground; qualities that are needed to excel in the business world. Ramirez & El Kadi (2021)

Thinking

Alex has earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Alberta which allows him to develop critical and reasoning thinking skills. This level of education also shows that he has clarity of his strengths in the work force and allows him to put these skills in the best areas, the subordinates and his equals. Judging from his background in law also allow the team to believe that he is a man that follows the rules and believes in justice which make him a good fit for a lead position where the interests are the whole company and not for only one member, as the politics applies equally and without exceptions.

Judging

His responsibilities as a CEO are being accountable for corporate development activities, capital allocation within the company and corporate strategy. For this type of role, he must be an organized and structured person, time-orientated and decisive.
The following section is to talk about social perception which is the process of decoding and interpreting data or information about someone and this process present barriers and biases that could affect how the person, group or thing is perceived (Nelson et al, 2019).

Bias and Barriers to Social Perception

Based on the personality assessment of Alex explained before, the team determined he is extraverted and uses sensing, thinking, and judging as his main behaviours. This leads the team to also believe that he not only uses these as a way of functioning, but also has these expectations for his staff. These expectations can bring selective perception as a perceptual barrier in the hiring process. Selective perception is when people tend to pay attention only to the information that supports their ideas but tend to ignore the rest. (My Educator, 2022). This could cause someone to view only the positive attributes and ignore the negatives which may not make them the best fit for the job. Such as previous years' performance evaluations or levels of education could be something that the leader is looking for but overlooking poor attendance and teamwork. Although this employee may have partial qualities that a leader is looking for, they may also have traits that do not make them a good candidate.
One problem that the company may develop as a result of perceptual barriers is discrimination, as perception is the interpretation of behavior, experience, information of a person based on the senses and past events. Even though a person tries to manage the appearance, align actions with the person to impress and ingratiate by self-presenting using one of these three personas: authentic, ideal or tactical which the process is known as impression management, the discrimination is beyond these actions (Nelson et al, 2019).
As the last part of the bias and barriers on the accurate perception model of the social perception, exist a bias in Integration and Confirmation named: “First-impression error” where not only the person is catalogued at first sight for your appearance and personality, but it is also judged and criticized more than one time in case the interaction is fluid and later, with the past of the time. Besides, in a situation where the leader is in a power role, this leader can impact the organizational environment and can influence the performance of the subordinates.

Emotions, attitudes, and ethics

Ethical Behaviour

Part of the strategic direction, a company must have a mission, vision and a statement of value and CV is not the exception.
Cenovus has the main purpose of energizing the world, to make people’s lives better (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
According to CV’s values, they are focused on protecting what matters by taking care of each member of the company, the community, and the environment (Cenovus Energy, n.d.). The integrity and transparency on their results, on how CV acts to respect and value diversity. By being better, CV always work hard to be alert to the changing needs and implement improvements. Finally, CV considers people the most important thing, by practicing inclusivity, trust, and empowerment.
CV’s strategy is focused on cost leadership and creates the best product’s margins in order to maximize the value of its shareholders by maintaining healthy and accurate balance sheets where the commodity price volatility must be analyzed and finally seek for price cycle’s opportunities in all the points (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
Cenovus also aims to evaluate its portfolios against dividend increases, repurchase sharing and maintaining optimal debt levels to acquire investment grade status on the following competitive advantages:

CV strives to keep true to its values. One of these values where CV has been successful is focusing on the community and its people as the most important part. According to CV, and based on the inputs of El Kadi (2020), they feel that the health of their business goes hand in hand with the health of their communities (Strong families and safe, sustainable communities, n.d.). Based on these values, CV has notably given of their time and financial resources to support charities that work with the most vulnerable, such as the children and those less fortunate and in need. Some of CV’s organizations that they have partnered with are:

CV strives to partner up with organizations that have common goals:

Persuasion and Attitude Change

The Canadian Oil and Gas industry has had a tough time garnering support given the state of global warming occurring on our planet. In an effort to sustainably mine and produce long-term clean energy, CV has co-founded Evok Innovations along with Suncor Energy and BC Cleantech CEO Alliance. “Evok is an independent, entrepreneur-led fund that offers mentorship, access to the oil and gas industry and development funding for early-stage clean technology companies” (Collaboration & partnerships, n.d.).
CV along with its partners are the source characteristics in this message. In turn, government regulators, industry leaders, environmental groups and shareholders are the target. The message is that this power energy producing conglomerates have united to tackle environmental issues plaguing the plant. They chose to enter into a partnership with environmentally conscious companies. They use industry-leading experts to provide guidance and best practices. By doing this, it instills credibility that the company is putting the environment at the forefront. In turn, this makes the message more attractive for the target audience to receive, therefore, making the message effective.
Real change is not accomplished by just words, it needs measurable actions to be carried out. That is why CV co-founded Evok. Evok has been responsible in investing to increase carbon capture, lower carbon fuels, develop and provide clean energy and a grid, and producing better more sustainable materials to name a few.
Change does not occur overnight; however, CV has taken a step in the right direction. But is this enough? According to the World Benchmarking Alliance ranking, CV ranked #61 out of 100 (Oil and Gas Benchmark, n.d.). CV still has a long way to go before they are fully seen as a responsible low greenhouse gas emitter and as a leading green energy producer.
Figure 3: CV’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) focus areas & targets

Cenovus Energy. (n.d.). [CV’s Environmental, social and governance (ESG) focus areas & targets] [Online image]. https://www.cenovus.com/responsibility/environment.html

Motivation

Businesses must promote and pursue the motivation of its employees in different ways in order to get the highest performance and best productivity results based on their efforts where the commitment and engagement are stronger as the efficiency and efficacy, reducing this way the cost of the company by providing the employees with empowerment to develop critical thinking and quick solutions to the problems they face, and to create a healthy and comfortable environment in the workplace (Nelson et al, 2019).
These needs are divided into two distinct categories:
The first one is the needs theory, which according to Nelson et al. (2019), people are motivated by fulfilling individual needs and will engage in certain behaviors to meet those needs either psychological or physiological.
Under this category exists several theories that support human needs coverage, but for the purpose of this case, Maslow’s needs theory and McClelland’s needs theory will be explained before being applied to the company.

Next figure 10 is shown to graphically describe these needs in detail.
Figure 4: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Grant J. (n.d.). [Maslow’s hierarchy of needs] [Online image]. Career Services, University of Pennsylvania. https://careerservices.upenn.edu/blog/2021/01/13/a-worthwhile-question-to-ponder-on-your-career-journey/

Now that both theories are defined, here is the relation on how CV motivates their people based on those perspectives:

In addition, Kerri’s team lead a series of workshops to share ideas to support build new purposes and values for the company, helping ensure they are building a culture that involves all the people who work at CV.

And the second is the process theory which describes individual motivations as being controlled by external environmental forces, this theory typically rely on data to improve performance metrics (Nelson et al, 2019).
According to the Equity theory, motivation is a function of perceived fairness in the social exchange (Nelson et al, 2019). CV for their part, develop and follow Human Rights Policy, Indigenous Relations Policy, NYSE Statement of Differences, among others that strengthen that employees’ inputs – emotional and personal investment, experiences, personality, attention- will be receive outputs – job satisfaction, recognition, benefits, awards, better salaries - from the company in return. On top of that CV tries to avoid the gender inequity, has Indigenous inclusion initiatives, has inside education programs without any distinction in the students/staff as well as indigenous scholarships, among other programs that constantly reduce negative inequity gaps (Cenovus Energy, n.d.).
If CV’s leader, Alex Pourbaix, was to implement a new motivation strategy to improve employee’s performance, as stated by Nelson et al (2019) the intrinsic and extrinsic recommendations based on the ERG needs theory, where Maslow condensed the original five needs into only three categories: Existence (physiological and physical safety needs), Relatedness (interpersonal safety, love, and interpersonal esteem), and Growth (self-actualization and self-esteem) and, focuses on what motivates someone to fulfil those needs, the suggestions are the following:
Both intrinsic and extrinsic suggestions derive from organizational motivation. As intrinsic incentive, social opportunities through friendships, teamwork connection, recognition and respect, personal and group value learning and growth, are an important key to provide job satisfaction and permanency in the positions within the company, avoiding in this case the alternative of seeking another job where they can fulfill the relatedness category every individual has as social beings. Therefore, the team suggests teambuilding activities, networking spaces, cross-functional work team projects, welcome and introduction to new members to the organization and verbal recognition rewards in front of the co-workers, constructive criticism, and clear feedback among each other's.
In the other hand, if an employee has the aspiration of a higher-level position, also the extrinsic factors will affect, on the positive side, pay raises/better salaries, time off, attractive bonus checks, rewards and extended benefits will reinforce their growth motivation and will stay. On the contrary, punishments and fake promises would affect CV’s work turnover due to lack of commitment and therefore the cost of hiring and training will increase with the passing of time, and finally bad reputation as workplace.

Communication

Communicating Through Technology

Companies need to develop effective and efficient ways of communication with their audience such as suppliers, clients, internal staff and future and potential business partners. CV has been maintaining a strong and close communication through Cenovus webpage under the New & Views section as well as the rest of their headings.
New and Views section is how CV separates its media by:

The digital native, as Nelson et al define in the book (2019), is someone who has grown up in a digital connected world, also known as Millennials, a generation from around 26-41 years old that born with technology and it is used to communicate freely not only face to face or with verbal and nonverbal communication but also with smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, computers, cars, internet, smart house features, smart offices, and everything that is digitally interconnected. In this context, CV has a good knowledge of how the world is changing as well as their industry and the importance of communication worldwide.
Communication is defined as “The process of understanding and sharing meaning” (Pearson & Nelson, 2000). Digital communication creates barriers when it comes to sharing and understanding the way we would if we were face to face, here 2 challenges of digital communication are found and analyzed.
The first challenge of digital communications is emotional barriers. When we are communicating digitally, we have emotional barriers leading to misunderstanding. There is no way to interpret tone, facial expressions, body language or any other physical cues that many people rely on to understand the emotional meaning of the message (GovLoop, 2020). Not having these cues can cause misinterpretations when it comes to communicating, causing unnecessary conflict in a workplace.
The second challenge of digital communication is information overload. When one is provided with a lot of information all at once, there is a greater chance of missing key details that may be crucial to the context of the message. With the advancement of technology, people now have a tremendous wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. However, this can be challenging at times due to the large volume of information that one has to sift through. Again, this can lead to missing key information needed to effectively complete a task.
Finally, one benefit of digital communications is increased productivity in the workplace. Being digitally interconnected allows the team to have access to work whenever they need and allows them to have more working hours throughout the day. This also opens the door for open communication that we would not have access to without these digital resources. Digital communications allow us to figure out the best ways to time manage a workload in the run of a day which increases productivity in the workplace. Besides, it is easier to implement and less expensive as there are more options and tools available to work with and because of the advance devices and detailed and specific programs that the technology is giving day by day, it saves money, time and afford since the prices are more accessible for most of the people.

Barriers and Gateways to Communication

As a part of CV strategic management, the company is committed to maintaining effective communication with all its stakeholders. Nevertheless, in all companies there are factors that block successful communications. The most recent barriers the company has faced are:

Cultural Diversity Barrier

Culture is defined as “the pattern of values, beliefs, and behaviours shared by a group” (Nelson et al, 2019). CV is a company that has its headquarters in a multinational diverse country. This can at times cause barriers among employees as all the diverse cultures and customs are being brought to work together as one.

Masculine vs. Feminine Communication Barrier

Feminine personalities are usually considered to be soft spoken, understanding, and empathetic. Whereas their counterparts are considered to be more direct, blunt, and cold at times with their communication preference. This at times can create conflict or misunderstandings among the two genders within the company. It can also create an uncomfortable work environment among the two groups.
Here are two gateways that CV can use to overcome above barriers of communication are:

Cultural Diversity Gateway

Make research, identify and understand who the audience is, which are the proper channels and the appropriate language for verbal and non-verbal communication; practice active listening and assertive communication instead of pre-judge and categorize stereotypes, seek and provide feedback and in the more positive way if possible; share knowledge and points of view so everyone can follow the idea and decode the data correctly; give everyone time to speak as everyone’s voice matters to increase sensitivity and awareness of cultural differences; employ diversity training among the employees.

Masculine vs. Feminine Communication Gateway

Understand the differences between the two and how it effects their communication; communicate any misunderstandings to resolve conflict efficiently; women can make an effort to communicate more direct while men can be more empathetic to ensure everyone is being understood.  Besides, CV must work toward cultural relativism by viewing the culture as its own context instead of seen it with ethnocentrism with their own and understand that each culture and company communicate differently, by keeping neutral position and do not impose one or another communication way will improve this barrier.

CONCLUSION

Even though the oil and gas sector has undergone scrutiny from stakeholders and the public in recent years for various reasons, CV has decided to take a proactive approach and set itself as an industry leader. One way CV has accomplished this is by ensuring that they have effective and efficient communication with their audience. By having a strong social media presence with active links to their various platforms. CV also ensures that they can provide a space to relate corporate views on topics affecting the industry, communities and the country. They have a dedicated section on their webpage under New and Views to elaborate further any new developments.
Having selective perception is critical for the company to ensure they are paying attention to both positive and negative attributes, in order to create an objective judgement. This means to be one of the most important perception challenges nowadays, where social and cultural barriers have an immense impact on the persuasion and attitude of management in organizational changes. Individualism based on personal performance creates a synergy with the very low power distance level where management relies on its employees for their expertise and communicates the information freely and in a respectful manner. This in turn, motivates teams not only with words but with actions.
Communication, hence, contributes to diminishing the barriers by accomplishing corporate goals in the way leaders address it depending on the nature of their teams, and allowing them to decode the correct ideas and objectives according to their roles. Providing the necessary tools, such as technology innovations, will give flexibility and closeness between each other in order to cover the company's needs and their employees, with fair perceptions of existence, relatedness and growth.
After the research of Cenovus Energy Company as a contributor in the oil and gas sector in Canada, an employee deciding to work for this company, can do so knowing that they would feel comfortable with the organizational culture, feel valued as their ideas and efforts will be encouraged and appreciated. Overall, Cenovus Energy is a great company to be part of.

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Revista Saperes Universitas
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Vol. 5 No. 2 / Páginas [125-147]
Mayo - Agosto 2022

 

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