Negative Information Communication:
What Can Leaders Do
Qiong Bu 1, Steven Ji-fan Ren 1 , Ming-jian Zhou 1
1
Center of Business Administration, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, China
(buqiong.doc@gmail.com, renjifan@gmail.com, mngzmj@gmail.com)
Abstract - This paper explores a relatively new subfield
of the communication in the organization: negative
information communication. We define negativeness of
negative information communication. Through case study
analysis, we identified several factors which managers may
consider important for negative information communication,
named explanation, fix and occasion. We also examined how
the leadership style of leaders (as senders) influences those
three factors. Besides, we proposed the moderating effect of
the negativeness on the relationship above. Implications and
future research are discussed.
Keywords - Communication, Leadership style, negative
information communication
I. INTRODUCTION
It may be an unpleasant but necessary part of
managers' job to deliver bad news to their subordinates [1].
An improper method dealing with this could cause
enormous damage, including the negative moods [2],
actions and the consequent decrease of performance [3].
One of the famous cases is Neal L. Patterson's case.
Patterson is CEO of Cerner Corporation, a Kansas Citybased medical software corporation. Patterson is infamous
for his e-mail flaming managers for not coming to work
before 8 am and leaving before 5 pm. In the e-mail,
originally sent to some 400 managers at the company's
headquarters, he complained managers were not working
hard enough. He said: "As managers, you either do not
know what your EMPLOYEES are doing or you do not
CARE. You have created expectations on the work effort
that allowed this to happen inside Cerner, creating a very
unhealthy environment. In either case, you have a
problem and you will fix it or I will replace you". Later on
one of the 400 managers posted the e- mail to Yahoo, and
the company's stock price fell by over 22% from a high of
$1.5 billion USD [4].
The negative information, the content of which has
potentially negative consequences for the recipient,
weighs more heavily comparing with other information
[5]
. That means people spend more attention on negative
information than neutral or positive information. However,
the definition and the measurement of the negativeness of
the negative information are rarely mentioned in previous
literatures.
During the process of negative information
communication, the sender is and should be responsible
for the negative information communication. In most
common situation, the sender holds the information which
is important to the receiver, while the receiver hardly
knows that. That is, the process is an asymmetric one, as
shown in Fig. 1 [6]. The information sender is in a
dominant position before and during the interaction. In
the context of the organization, the sender is usually the
leader. He/she has the authority of choosing almost every
changeable factor. However, the role of leader and
his/her leadership style is also rarely found in former
literature.
Thus, by the case study, we will:
1) offer the definition and measurement of the
negativeness of the negative information;
2) examine what factors the leader will choose to
reduce the predicted negative reaction of the subordinates;
3) examine if the leadership style can influence the
importance of the factors to the leaders;
4) propose the moderating effect of the negativeness
on the relationship above.
Sender
Receiver
Potential
Behavior
Change
Fig. 1 The asymmetric process of communication
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Negative Information Communication
Current studies in the field of communication are
mainly focus on the media [7][8], the communication
satisfaction[9] and so on. Other literature which discuss
the negative information communication disperse in the
field of marketing [10] or psychology [11]. However,
literature which studied the negative information
communication as a single subfield of communication
research are rarely found except the study of Sussman and
her colleagues [6]. They examined which medium could
increase honesty and accuracy during bad news delivering
process. Their focus is on message distortion and found
that e-mail is the most effective medium to reduce
distortion. Their study has given insights on how
electronic medium can help when delivering bad news.
But they didn't provide the specific roles of the sender
and the receiver. Their experimental research on the
undergraduate makes the conclusion not very convictive
in the context of the practical organization, especially
when the sender who dominates the communication is the
leader instead of the schoolmate. We believe that, the
leaders and their leadership styles also play a critical role
to influence the communication.
Interviews in Firm A were conduct two rounds. The
first round tried to collect the comprehensively related
information. Therefore, most part of the interviews was
free talk. Then the second round of interview was conduct
to confirm some propositions extracted from former
interview by focusing on some specific cases. Besides, the
interviewees were also asked to fill some necessary
questionnaires. All interviews were recorded to audio files.
B. Leadership Style
IV. CASE BACKGROUND
There are multiple researches on the leadership and
leadership style. The famous scholars have their own
standards on the classification of leadership, any of which
can describe one of aspects of the manager. Considering
communicating with people is a part of emotional
capabilities, we choose the Daniel Goleman's six
leadership styles [12].
Daniel Goleman proposed that emotional capabilities
are more important for leadership than intellectual
capabilities. He identified six leadership styles, namely
coaching,
pacesetting,
democratic,
affiliative,
authoritative, and coercive. This order of styles moves
from very democratic via supportive to authoritative.
Pacesetting and coercive is only suggested in cases of
emergency, because of their inherent thread for long-term
relationship between leader and follower [12].
Leaders may have more than one style, but the
Affiliative and authoritative style are two typical
leadership styles in practice. Affiliative leaders care about
the subordinates, and are willing to develop a warm
relationship with them. In another hand, authoritative
leaders care the performance more than people. They
probably order the subordinates instead of take counsel.
Thus, studying about these two styles is representative
and can be expanded to the other styles.
The leadership styles offer the principles of the
leaders' activities but can't be specific to communication
field. Therefore, the clarification of the role of the
leadership style in the process of communication is
necessary for the both fields of communication and
leadership style.
III. METHODOLOGY
The lack of related literature indicates that the study
of negative information communication in organization is
in its early stage, which is quite suitable for case study.
This method of study is useful to deal with the complex
information such as documents and interviews, and
expand the explanatory and predictive power of the
studied theory.
Eisenhardt [13] points out that the outstanding and
extreme cases should be chosen as the objects of case
study, in order to extend existing theory. Following this
principle, we choose Firm A as the background
organization.
Firm A which is seated in the north of China is a
support center to deal with clients' computer stoppage,
belonging to a multinational corporation. Their remote
consult engineers (RCE) are at the first line which can
connect with clients. Each team leader is responsible for
at least one support team servicing a unique product or
area.
We choose two managers and three cases as the
objects. The situation of cases and managers is shown in
TABLE I.
TABLE I
THE SITUATION OF MANAGERS AND CASES
Managers
Manager style
High
Negativeness of
cases
Low
Manager A
Affiliative
Case A
Manager B
Authoritative
Case B
Case C
A. Managers
Managers as interviewees were chosen carefully.
Firstly, we interviewed some subordinates privately,
asking their impression about their leaders. According to
this, we focused on three managers. To confirm the
leadership styles of managers, then we send the
questionnaires which based on Daniel Goleman's paper
[12]
to managers and their subordinates. And finally two
typical leaders were chosen.
1) Manager A: He is described as “a nice people”, he
cares about the relationship with subordinates, and easy to
get along. His and his subordinates' questionnaires show
that he is willing to create harmony and builds emotional
bonds, and his own summary about his leadership style is
“People come first.”
2) Manager B: He is a complex leader. His own
questionnaire and some subordinates' indicate he is
democratic, pacesetting, coaching and authoritative,
however, almost every subordinate's questionnaire
contains one sign of authoritative leadership style. Thus,
we consider him as an authoritative manager.
B. Cases
We select three typical cases in different levels of
organization and the information conveyed in these cases
has the different level of negativeness.
1) Case A: It's a technology support team for a data
warehouse (DW) software. Because the client group
continued losing, this DW software has exited the market
in the year of 2010, and corresponding support will finish
at the end of 2013. Manager A is responsible for this
team. While communicating with his subordinates, he
emphasized they could get another position as soon as this
team is dismissed, and the training plan was executed.
2) Case B: During the financial crisis in 2008, the
decision of cost control was executed in Firm A. However,
the policy didn't work well. At the end of next year, an email was sent to every employee, in which the employees
were asked to sign a voluntary agreement about pay cut.
Employees who weren't willing to sign this agreement
were persuaded by the direct manager and finally agreed.
Manager B reports some subordinates of him couldn't
accept this at that times, therefore he talked to them
separately. He chose a proper occasion, including single
room in the company, smoke point and the restaurant. He
prepared the explanation about the situation, and
encouraged the subordinates worked through the hard
time with the company.
3) Case C: There is a performance assessment each
month and quarter in Firm A. Managers usually need to
talk to the employees whose performance wasn't
desirable. Manager A and B conduct the communication
in the similar way. The conversation is usually in a single
room, just the manager and one subordinate. The
subordinate is asked to talk about his/her recent
performance, following optional praise. Then the manager
shows the data of performance, and tries to figure out the
reason of the undesirable consequence. The
communication usually ended with the encouragement
and the suggestion to improve.
V. CASE ANALYSIS
A. The measurement of negativeness
TABLE II
MEASUREMENT OF NEGATIVENESS
Measurement
Source
Duration
Time to take effect
Serio
usnes
s
shown in TABLE II.
1) Duration: We summarize this measurement from
the cases. In Case A, the dismissing of the team lasts
forever, that means the consequence of the negative
information continuously exists. In Case C, the
consequence mostly is mental and variable depending on
the receiver. But in general, it lasts shortly. Case B is
complex, because the pay cut is a one-off activity, it lasts
until the next pay rise, which is difficult to measure.
Duration indicates an aspect of negativeness: the duration
of the negative consequence, the longer the duration is,
the higher the negativeness is.
2) Time to take effect: We summarize this
measurement from the cases. In Case B and C, the time
from the communication happened to the consequence
take effect is short. In another hand, the team members
from Case A have three years to think about their future
career. The concept of time to take effect indicates the
time span from the communication to the consequence.
The larger the span is, the lower the negativeness is.
3） Seriousness: The concept of seriousness has two
meaning: boundary and damaged benefit, which are
considered by most interviewees. Boundary means the
individuals or groups involved, from individual to
organization. As stated before, Case A is related to a team,
while Case B is an organizational activity. Case C only
involves the subordinates who don't perform well. Thus
their respective boundary is middle, large and small.
Another aspect of seriousness is damaged benefit, which
sounds a little subjective. Although people value
something in their own opinion, the benefit damaged can't
be changed. We get the result about benefit damaged from
subordinates, in the assumption that substance or financial
benefit weights more.
The weight of the measurements is different: the
interviewees care the seriousness more. However, the
quantitative relationship is not available in this case study.
But we can get an equation with undetermined
coefficients as in (1).
N = α1D + α2T + α3（β1B + β2DB）
Measurement in cases
Case A
Case B
Case C
Case
Long
N/A
Short
Case
Long
Short
Short
Boundary
Intervi
-ew
Middle
Large
Small
Damaged
benefit
Intervi
-ew
Large
Large
Small
The word “negativeness” here means how negative
the negative information is. We believe that the
negativeness is the property of negative information.
However, there isn't a systematic measurement of the
negativeness at present. According the interviews and
case study, we summarize some measuring standard, as
(1)
All coefficients in this equation are between 0 and 1,
andα3 is greater than α1 and α2. N stands for negativeness,
D stands for duration, T stands for time to take effect, B
stands for boundary, DB stands for damaged benefit. The
specific value of negativeness depends on the scale is
five-point or seven-point.
B. The leadership style influences the importance of
factors to the leader
We got several factors which are considered by
managers before the communication, listing in the
TABLE III.
.
TABLE III
THE LIST OF FACTORS
Factors
Explanation
Sources
Manager A
and B
Fix
Manager A
Occasion
Manager B
Expression
Manager A
and B
The character
of
subordinates
Manager A
and B
Description
“You should make your pronunciation
reliable, so I will prepare some numeral
data to explain the source of the
information.”
“I will explain the fact in detail and
expect the acceptance.”
“There is a factor which I can't
summarize it to a word. It contains but
not only limited to the compensation; it
also refers to the suggestion and
possible help about the further work”
“According to the specific information,
I choose different occasions, which are
different from the media. They could be
all face-to-face, but in different places
and time, like meeting, personal
interview, conversation at the smoking
point or a restaurant. ”
“The expression is important, variable
by the specific circumstance.”
“I pay attention on the expression and
keep my eyes on the subordinates'
reaction”
“I must consider the endurance of the
subordinates, to decide the expression.”
“Understanding the feeling of the
subordinates is important.”
1) Explanation: it contains the reason and the source
of the information, the detail, the situation of others if it is
accessible and the data which can confirm the information,
such as a rank of monthly performance.
2) Fix: the compensation in another way, or the
suggestion to improve, such as a promise of further
promotion after the pay cut.
3) Occasion: the composite concept related to the
participant, the time and the place, such as the meeting,
chat in the company or in a restaurant.
4) Expression: the tone, wording or the nonverbal
language and so on.
5) Character of subordinates: the temporal mental
state, the endurance, the emotional intelligence and so on.
The character of subordinates is critical for the
successful communication. However, it's not a factor
which can be controlled by the manager. The expression
is controllable, but it's the dependent variable, depending
on the other factors like the character and the relationship.
Thus, we choose the remaining factors and imply them in
the cases, as shown in TABLE IV. The circle in the table
means that the factor is considered in the responding case.
TABLE IV
FACTORS IN CASES
Factors
Explanation
Fix
Occasion
Case A
○
○
Case B
○
○
Case C
○
○
By the interview, we also find that the leadership
style can influence the importance of factors to the leader.
The difference is shown in TABLE V. when the
communication isn't related the specific cases, both A and
B care about the explanation. But Manager A didn't
mention the consideration on the occasion. Manager B did
mention the fix, but only few times. According this
situation and their different leadership styles, we suggest
the proposition below:
P1: the leadership style influences the importance of
factors to the leader.
TABLE V
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FACTORS TO LEADERS
Factors
Explanation
Fix
Occasion
Manager A
○
○
Manager B
○
○
C. The moderating effect of the negativeness
Managers were asked to sort the factors in the order
of the importance in the different situation of negativeness.
The result (TABLE VI) shows that when the negativeness
is high, the factors which managers valued are
distinguishingly influenced by the leadership style, but
this difference becomes non-significant when the
negativeness is low. The order is also confirmed by the
cases, which can support the moderating effect of the
negativeness empirically.
TABLE VI
THE IMPORTANCE ARRAY UNDER DIFFERENT NEGATIVENESS
Negativeness
High
Low
Manager A
Fix
Occasion
Explanation
Manager B
Occasion
Fix
Explanation
Explanation
Occasion
Fix
Thus, we suggest the proposition below:
P2: the negativeness of the negative information has the
moderating effect to the relationship between leadership
style and the importance of factors to the leader.
Summarizing the propositions above, we propose the
model, shown in Fig. 2.
Negativeness
Explanation
P2
Leadership
Style
Fix
P1
Occasion
Fig. 2. THE PROPOSED MODEL
VI. DISCUSSION
Previous research suggests that the sender distorts the
negative information more largely if the media is face-toface (FTF) [6]. But the phenomenon in this study is not
supportive. Managers in Firm A choose to explain the
information as clearly as possible, instead of distort. That
is probably because of the organizational culture [14] or the
quality of professional managers. Whether or not, that
shows the different conclusion in an experimental or
empirical environment.
Another conclusion that may challenge the current
theory is about the media choice. Scholars suggest media
choice theories like media richness [15] and social presence
[16]
. But the study shows that when the information is
negative, leaders unlikely choose a single media except
the face-to-face. They consider the other media such as email may cause confusion or make the perceived
negativeness higher. In another word, the negative
information is conveyed by face-to-face in all possibility.
VII. LIMITATION AND FURTHER RESEARCH
Negativeness is an objective concept. It only relates
to the information itself and some macroscopic factors
like the culture. However, even the information with the
same negativeness can lead to different reaction according
to the receiver's personality. Thus, the concept of
perceived negativeness is also necessary for the further
research of the reaction of subordinates.
In this study, we didn't check all six leadership styles,
but focused on two typical styles. That offers a direction
for future researches to check more styles and related
factors. Besides, the study is conducted in a single firm,
lacking of comparison with other companies. Although
the cases and managers we choose are representative, the
study about multiple firms is still necessary. As shown
before, we didn't get the accurate coefficients in (1) in the
situation of interview. Confirm these numbers will be the
next step of research.
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