Business Communication Quarterly75(2) 208 –220© 2012 by

Business Communication Quarterly
75(2) 208 –220
© 2012 by the Association for
Business Communication
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DOI: 10.1177/1080569912441823
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441823BCQ75210.1177/1080569912441823Comm
unicating Negative Messages Business Communication
Quarterly
1Radford University, USA
2University of Delaware, USA
Corresponding Author:
Sandra L. French, Radford University, PO Box 6932, Radford,
VA 24142, USA
Email: [email protected]
Positive Organizational
Behavior: A Buffer for
Bad News
Sandra L. French1
and Tracey Quigley Holden2
Abstract

Most communication research on bad news messages focuses on
crisis communication,
where attention is often limited to image repair strategies. The
authors argue that
a key indicator of an organization’s effectiveness in
communicating “bad news”
messages is its organizational culture. Developing an
organizational culture that values
positive organizational behavior can transform the way that
“bad news” messages
are crafted and received in the workplace. In this article, the
authors demonstrate
how organizational leadership and practice from the positive
organizational behavior
perspective can assist with communicating “bad news”
messages, particularly during
organizational crises.
Keywords
bad news messages, crisis communication, positive psychology
Introduction: The Art and
Science of “Bad News” Messages
Research on “bad news” emerges across the spectrum of
communication. “Bad news”
for business appears in many forms—the announcement of
layoffs, poor financial
outcomes, crises of internal or external origin, and natural
disasters, among others.
The particular type of “bad news” is not at issue here but rather
the communication
practices encompassing the delivery of bad news. In this article,
we focus on what

Communicating Negative Messages
Communicating Negative Messages 209
positive psychology can teach business communication
professionals about dissemi-
nating bad news during an organizational crisis such as
unforeseen downsizing, lay-
offs, and acute organizational events.
In 1999, Locker examined the extant literature on negative
messages, including the
prescriptive practices from 57 textbooks. She found that the
conventional wisdom on
negative messages was contained in six principles—in effect,
the classic sandwich.
The most frequently suggested sandwich approach constructs
negative messages with
a prefatory buffer, the bad news, an explanation, and a closing
buffer, thus “sandwich-
ing” the bad news between pieces of additional communication
(Guffey & Loewy,
2011; Lehman & Dufrene, 2009). And yet, in Locker’s survey of
research in several
settings, she found that the sandwich approach was deemed “not
useful in the work-
place” (Locker, 1999, p. 9). Locker’s own research led her to
conclude that only two
pieces of the sandwich were valuable—the directives to “present
the negative as posi-
tively as possible, and offer an alternative or compromise if one
is available” (p. 31).
Responding to Locker’s assessment, Limaye (2001) agrees that

the conventional wis-
dom is flawed and directs attention to the opportunity costs and
psychological attribu-
tion processes of bad news as potential guides for rethinking
bad news message
construction. Limaye makes a compelling case for the value of
explanation in a bad
news message, claiming that the “price paid for nonprovision of
explanation is low-
ered employee morale, damage to employee satisfaction, and
loss of management
credibility” (p. 106). Although Limaye focuses on the
explanation offered by the
deliverer of the bad news and how tailoring that piece of the
sandwich can positively
influence the outcome, he stops short of a specific form or
guideline for producing
such a message.
More recent work in the construction of negative messages
validates Limaye’s
approach of incorporating explanation and extends this into a
preference for an indi-
rect structure—offering the explanation first. Jansen and
Janssen (2011) conducted a
series of experiments testing direct and indirect message
structures for comprehen-
sion, compliance, and evaluation of the writer. They found that
indirect messages were
better at preserving the “face” of the recipient and allowed for
the negative message to
be accepted more readily. Jansen and Janssen suggest that this
structure works because
offering the explanation first allows the reader to gradually
adapt to the sender’s think-
ing, as “the decision becomes a part of their cognitive belief

system even before they
actually read it” (p. 60).
The structure and design of bad news messages has evolved
considerably, but we
argue that there is more to the story. Bad news must be
delivered or dealt with in many
situations facing organizations. The suggestions of current
research focus almost
exclusively on the specifics of such delivery rather than the
handling of bad news
within the larger context of ongoing business operations. Ulmer,
Sellnow, and Seeger
(2007) point to the absolute certainty that bad news or crisis
will confront a business
and the need to develop, not only a contingency plan but also an
overall approach to
such situations. The conditions that precipitate the need to
deliver bad news or address
an organizational crisis can offer opportunities for renewal of
an organization, if
210 Business Communication Quarterly 75(2)
skillfully managed. The authors invoke the popularized (but
incorrect) meaning of the
Chinese symbols for crisis as “dangero us opportunity” to
underscore this concept.
However, Mair, Professor of Chinese Languages and Literature
at the University of
Pennsylvania, offers an explanation of the characters on his
website that better sup-
ports the position being advanced. Mair writes in Mair, Mair,
and Liqing (2009),

While it is true that wēijī does indeed mean “crisis” and that the
wēi syllable of
wēijī does convey the notion of “danger,” the jī syllable of wēijī
most definitely
does not signify “opportunity.” The jī of wēijī, in fact, means
something like
“incipient moment; crucial point (when something begins or
changes).”
From the business perspective, that is indeed the essence of
delivering or dealing with
bad news. This translation makes Ulmer et al.’s (2007) position
on bad news and crisis
communication practices even more on point—they conclude
that “effective commu-
nication skills are essential to creating positive, renewing
opportunities at these turn-
ing points.” (p. 4)
Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger ground their work in an approach to
leadership and
communication focused on positive values, virtues, and
optimism (Seeger & Ulmer,
2001; Ulmer & Sellnow, 2002). Such a perspective is radically
different from much of
the conventional wisdom concerning the delivery of bad news
and crisis communica-
tion within business research and practice. What makes the
difference is not just a shift
from a structural approach focused on messaging to a more
contextualized perspective
emphasizing organizational leadership and culture. This focus
on renewal and oppor-
tunity comes from an entirely different way of thinking about
business, leadership, and

communication. We suggest that this shift is consistent with the
tenets and insights of
the Positive Psychology movement.
The Positive Psychology
Movement: Bad News Gets Reframed
The positive psychology movement offers a new paradigm for
studying organizations.
Seligman, founder of the positive psychology movement,
developed a manual of
Character Strengths and Virtues (C. Peterson & Seligman, 2004)
specifically as a
“positive” counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders
(DSM). The positive psychology movement investigates the
“conditions, and pro-
cesses that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning
of people, groups, and
institutions” (Gable & Haidt, 2005, p. 103). All positive
psychology–related organi-
zational research shifts in perspective from a “disease”-based,
problem-solving model
as the most suitable approach to improved organizational
performance, to one in
which positive resources are identified and investigated (Linley,
Harrington, &
Garcea 2010). The overarching philosophy of Positive
Organizational Scholarship
(POS) is a marriage of positive psychology and organizational
studies. POS seeks to
understand how to cultivate excellence in organizations by
unlocking individuals’

potential. Specifically, through an investigation of “positive
deviance,” POS explores
the ways in which individuals use and develop strengths leading
to exceptional per-
formance at both the individual and organizational levels
(Linley et al., 2010). In
investigating extraordinary performance, POS often focuses on
the macro or institu-
tional levels of analysis (Youssef & Luthans, 2007) rather than
individual organiza-
tional actors.
A similar line of organizational research, positive
organizational behavior (POB),
is defined by Luthans (2003) as “the study and application of
positively oriented
human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can
be measured, devel-
oped, and effectively managed for performance improvement in
today’s workplace”
(p. 179). POB focuses more on individuals, or micro levels of
analysis. POB tends to
emphasize four core capacities: self-efficacy, hope, optimism,
and resiliency
(Donaldson & Ko, 2010; Luthans, Avey, Avolio, Norman, &
Combs, 2006).
“Houston, We Have a Problem . . .”:
Positive Psychology and Organizational Crises
As we stated previously, there are many types of “bad news”
messages experienced
in organizations, including layoffs, customer service problems,
and negative perfor-
mance reviews. Here, we focus on what positive psychology can
teach business com-

munication professionals about disseminating bad news during
an acute organizational
crisis.
Acute organizational events, or organizational crises, are
“specific, unexpected and
non-routine events or series of events that create high levels of
uncertainty and threaten
or are perceived to threaten an organizations’ high priority
goals” (Seeger, Sellnow, &
Ulmer, 1998, p. 233). The bulk of crisis communication
research focuses on problems
and failures: what organizations have done badly, how crises
have been poorly han-
dled, and what mistakes management has made (Small, 1991;
Ulmer & Sellnow,
2000). Crisis communication literature is largely based on its
own version of a “dis-
ease” model, expending most research resources explaining
organizational deficits
rather than organizational strengths.
We contend that an investigation of organizational strengths,
and what positive
communication behaviors exist when communicating bad news
during a crisis, should
focus on an organization’s CEO. According to Seeger and
Ulmer (2001), during times
of crisis, the CEO is usually the designated spokesperson and
“may also establish the
moral tone for the crisis response” (p. 369). CEOs are often
called up to establish
the facts of the crisis, make important judgment calls, and
communicate directly with
the media (Modzelewski, 1990).

Scholar and business consultant Gaines-Ross (2003) studies the
relationship between
CEOs, their personal reputations, and their companies’ success.
Coining the term CEO
capital, Gaines-Ross’s book of the same name cites a 1998 poll
of the general public indi-
cating that a CEO’s reputation accounted for 48% of a
company’s reputation. Gaines-Ross
argues, “The CEO must come to terms with the idea of being the
ultimate spokesperson for
the organization, the embodiment of the brand, and the official
storyteller who knits
together the company’s past, present, and future” (p. 39). Park
and Berger (2004) argue
that CEOs are the public face of a company, particularly during
organizational crises, and
as such warrant particular attention as the subject of crisis
research.
However, following the “disease” model, most current research
on CEO perfor-
mance during times of crisis focuses on what not to do. For
example, former Exxon
CEO Lawrence Rawl is often excoriated for his handling of the
Valdez oil spill, in
particular for his failure to publicize his personal trip to the
spill site (Modzelewski,
1990) and his attempt to avoid responsibility by blaming
Captain Joseph Hazelwood
(Small, 1991). More recently, BP executive Tony Hayward was
rebuked by public

relations professionals and the general public alike with regard
to the 2010 oil spill of
the U.S. Gulf Coast. When visiting Venice, Louisiana, to survey
damage and issue an
apology, in which he stated, “The first thing to say is I’m
sorry,” he told reporters.
“We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives.
There’s no one who
wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back” (“BP
Chief to Gulf
Residents,” 2010). Hayward’s gaffe reflects not only his own
communicative inade-
quacies but a broader problem for CEOs—the misperception of
what constitutes effec-
tive, positive communication. Research supports the prevalence
of this problem—in
1998, Coopers and Lybrand conducted a survey of CEOs,
middle managers, and non-
managers. The survey found that while “82 percent of CEOs
believe that they lead by
positive personal example . . . fewer than 40% of
nonmanagement employees agree”
(Steinberg, 1998, p. 70). Moreover, 95% of the CEOs claimed to
have an open-door
policy for the communication of bad news upstream, but more
than half of employees
believed the bad news messenger was running a serious risk.
Such a perspective does
not facilitate a strong business climate—in fact, such
communicative problems have
resulted in huge business losses, even failures (Steinberg,
1998). More recently, leader
communication has become an even more critical element of
business practice. The
current financial crisis has eroded employee confidence in
senior leadership from 51%

in 2004 to less than 20% in 2009 (Davis, 2010). What is a
beleaguered CEO to do?
Within the crisis communication literature, a handful of
“exemplary” crisis
responses from CEOs have been studied and applauded,
including Tylenol’s James
Burke and his handling of the cyanide tampering of 1982, which
Fortune magazine
described as “the gold standard in crisis control” (Yang &
Levenson, 2007). Other
models of effective crisis management include CEO of Malden
Mills’ Aaron
Feuerstein’s response to the 1995 factory fire (Seeger & Ulmer,
2001) and Milt Cole’s
response to Cole Hardwoods’ 1998 fire (Seeger & Ulmer, 2001).
Seeger and Ulmer
applaud these CEOs for their “virtuous” responses to their
respective organizational
tragedies. These exemplary cases involve a leader, usually a
CEO, responding quickly
and ethically to an organizational crisis.
In Locker’s 1999 article, she suggested that buffers should not
continue to be used
in bad news messages, particularly the closing buffer,
explaining that a bad news
message with a strongly positive end engendered negative
feelings. By combining the
insights gained from exemplary examples in crisis
communication research with the

underpinnings of POB research, we can create a new model of
offering bad news mes-
sages that can assist business communication professionals in
teaching students more
options for delivering bad news.
Working Toward a New Model
There are a handful of studies that have explored the
relationship between CEO per-
formance and positive psychology. Starting with a broad
perspective, Brockner and
James (2008) investigate when executives view organizational
crises as opportunities,
stating “crises have the potential to be a catalyst for positive
organizational change”
(p. 95). Focusing on when executives transition from framing a
crisis as a threat ver-
sus an opportunity, Brockner and James argue that in a crisis,
decision makers tend to
tighten control and rely on traditional ways of thinking about
problem solving in order
to reduce the uncertainty that accompanies a crisis. Traditional
ways of thinking
include viewing a crisis as a threat and responding by
restricting activities, for exam-
ple, enacting cost-cutting measures. They propose that
executives who are willing to
engage in reflection and learning are more inclined to view
organizational crises as
opportunities to enact positive change.
S. J. Peterson, Walumbwa, Byron, and Myrowitz (2009)
investigate the relation-
ship between CEO positive psychological traits and
transformational leadership. The
authors adopt a POB approach, exploring the concepts of hope,

optimism, and resil-
iency. Their research illustrates that CEOs rated as more
hopeful, optimistic, and resil-
ient are also rated (both in self-ratings and the ratings of their
followers) as engaging
in more transformational leadership behaviors. According to
their research, the key
constructs of hope, optimism, and resiliency are similar but
distinguishable. Thus, we
will examine these concepts in greater detail.
Hope
Synder et al. (1991) define hope as a two-pronged cognitive
construct, built from the
aspects of “pathways” and “agency.” Pathways reflect an
individual’s self-perception
of their capability to secure a plausible route to their personal
goals. The second
aspect, agency, relates to an individual’s motivation to proceed
toward goal achieve-
ment. Working in concert, these two components provide
individuals with the means
and motivation to achieve their personal goals. According to S.
J. Peterson et al.
(2009), “Those lower in hope lack the ability to conceive of
strategies to meet goals
and to overcome obstacles and the motivation to pursue the
strategies that lead to goal
achievement” (p. 350). It is theorized here that CEOs high in
reservoirs of hope will
find more creative strategies for dealing with crises.
Optimism
Optimism as a trait is the generalized expectation of an
individual that good things
will happen, despite potentially adverse circumstances (Carver

& Scheier, 1999).
Those possessing the trait of optimism tend to focus on the
good. Optimism has been
demonstrated to have a positive impact on work performance
(Luthans et al., 2006;
Seligman, 1998). Optimists differ in their interpretation of
positive and negative
events from those low in this psychological resource. It is
theorized here that CEOs
who possess the trait of optimism may instinctively navigate
crises more effectively.
Resiliency
Defining resiliency as “the capacity to modify responses to
changing situational
demands, especially frustrating or stressful encounters,” Tugade
and Fredrickson
(2004, p. 322) argue that one’s ability to use positive emotions
results in finding
positive meaning in negative circumstances. As a result,
resilient individuals tend to
rebound more quickly from negative situations. It is theorized
here that resilience can
help CEOs move past the shock and narrow thinking that often
accompany crisis situ-
ations and more quickly engage in creative and positive crisis
resolution. By looking
in depth at a CEO response to crisis, positive psychology offers
a new approach to
crisis management rooted in the psychological capacities of the
CEO.

CEOs and Resilience
The concept of resiliency is not unique to the positive
psychology literature. In organi-
zational science, resiliency can mean the maintenance of
positive adjustment under
challenging conditions (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 1999) and
the ability to recover
from unexpected events (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003). Resilience is
a dynamic capacity
of organizational adaptability that grows and develops over time
(Wildavsky, 1988).
Gittel, Cameron, Lim, and Rivas (2006) argue that positive
relationships at work are a
“prerequisite” to organizational resilience. In researching the
airline industry following
9/11, these authors portray Southwest Airlines CEO Jim Parker
as a model of strength
and virtue as they withstood heavy short-term financial losses in
order to avoid layoffs,
arguing that they were “taking care of our people” (p. 317).
Former CEO Herb
Kelleher was quoted as follows: “Nothing kills your company’s
culture like layoffs.
Nobody has ever been furloughed [at Southwest], and that is
unprecedented in the
airline industry” (p. 318). Kelleher’s statement reinforces our
argument that organiza-
tional culture should be a key strategic factor in the design of
bad news messages.
Organizational Culture and the Case of Malden Mills
For a prime example of the relationship between organizational
culture, POB, and
effective dissemination of bad news, we turn to the case of
Malden Mills. Henry

Feuerstein founded Malden Mills, a textile manufacturing
facility, in 1906 under the
name Malden Knitting, in Malden, Massachusetts. Originally,
Malden produced knit-
ted clothing items such as sweaters and bathing suits (“The
Many Lives of Malden
Mills,” n.d.). In 1956, the company, then led by Henry’s
grandson Aaron, moved to
Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Following a declaration of bankruptcy in 1981, the Feuerstein
family called for
Aaron’s removal from his position as Mill president. Aaron
resisted and restructured
the mill, creating Polartec and Polarfleece, an apparel fabric
developed from recycled
plastic (“About Polartec,” 2012). Clothing manufacturers,
including L.L. Bean, Lands
End, and Patagonia, purchased Polartec, a synthetic and
extremely warm and light-
weight material, in large quantities, to be used in winter
clothing and accessories. By
1995, Polartec sales were approximately $200 million, and the
Mill and its four divi-
sions employed roughly 3,100 workers. Feuerstein’s operation
was one of the few
U.S. textile companies that did not move its operations overseas
to secure less expen-
sive labor.
Then, in December 1995, just 2 weeks before the Christmas
holiday, Malden Mills

experienced a devastating fire that left three key buildings of its
eight building com-
plex, totaling more than 600,000 square feet, in ruins and
resulted in injuries to 36
workers (Goldberg, 1997). What makes this fire, later deemed
an “industrial accident”
unique, is a combination of several factors. First, being one of
only a handful of textile
manufacturers who had not moved operations overseas, Malden
Mills garnered deep
loyalty from its employees. For example, although the mill
workers were unionized,
the mill had never experienced a strike. Its employees are some
of the highest paid in
the textile industry. Second, the tiny New England town of
Lawrence, where the mill
was located, was dependent on the mill for economic survival.
Lawrence is rated the
23rd poorest community in the country (Mcgrory, 2001). The
Feuerstein family was
well established in the community and had a reputation for
fairness and generosity.
“The community loves him very much and it’s not hype and it’s
not the upper class,
it’s the people” said Julio Fernandez, a Malden Mills machine
operator (Goldberg,
1997). Third, the mill was a privately held family company, not
beholden to a group
of stakeholders. All these factors together helped set the stage
for Aaron Feuerstein’s
extraordinarily positive and resilient response to the fire.
Fire insurance payments for the mill were expected to be
upwards of $300 million,
and many feared the then 69-year-old CEO would either take the
money and retire, or

finally succumb to outside pressures and move the mill
operation overseas. Instead, on
learning of the fire and rushing to the mill, Feuerstein gathered
his workers in a local
high school gymnasium and said that the workers would all be
kept on at full pay for
the next 30 days (at a cost of more than $13 million) and that
they would even receive
a Christmas bonus. He also continued providing their health
insurance for another
30 days (Freedland, 1996). In addition, he stated that the mill
would definitely rebuild
and seek to put all its employees back to work as soon as
possible.
In September of 1997, a mere 21 months after a fire rated the
worst in Massachusetts
in a century devastated the mill, Feuerstein dedicated a new
$130 million factory and
rehired almost all of his workers (Goldberg, 1997). Feuerstein’s
actions were covered
by both local and national media. He received 12 honorary
degrees, and he estimates
that he received as many as 10,000 letters of support, many with
cash or checks for
the workers (Butterfield, 1996). Feuerstein was hailed as a
public icon of corporate
responsibility; President Clinton sent his congratulations on the
mill’s reopening. The
fire at Malden Mills has been covered by the media, featured in
a Harvard Business

Review case study, and studied by public relations
professionals. Although the story of
Malden Mills is truly extraordinary, what insights into
Feuerstein’s actions can posi-
tive psychology provide? Our conclusion will explore how
positive psychology pro-
vides insights into Feuerstein’s actions and the positive reaction
of his employees.
Conclusion
According to Dutton and Jackson (1987), the ability of decision
makers to cognitively
process complex organizational issues such as crises is directly
affected by whether
they frame the crisis as a threat or opportunity. Research
conducted by Milliken
(1990) demonstrates that framing issues as opportunities allows
decision makers to
feel more in control and less uncertain than when framing issues
as threats. The time-
sensitive and pressurized nature of organizational crises makes
it difficult for execu-
tives to see them as opportunities; however, we strongly believe
that organizations can
“buffer” bad news messages by cultivating a positive
organizational culture prior to
an acute organizational crisis. Organizations that focus on
appreciating and cultivat-
ing positive organizational traits such as hope, resiliency, and
optimism prior to a
crisis may be more successful in garnering employee support
during and after the
crisis. Following in the footsteps of Gittel et al. (2006), who
argue that managers must
maintain and enhance strong employee relationships (relational
reserves) during a

crisis to ensure commitment and productivity, we argue that
CEOs who actively pro-
mote a positive organizational culture, focusing on positive
organizational traits and
strong employee relationships, will build a reservoir of goodwill
that can buffer bad
news. Aaron Feuerstein’s building of a positive organizational
culture at Malden Mills
helped the company through financial crisis and resulted in deep
and abiding
employee loyalty, even in the face of layoffs. In our
contemporary business climate,
bad news and crisis events are almost de rigueur, and certainly
any CEO or senior
executive must expect to respond to such an occurrence. Davis
(2010) writes that as
the current financial crisis continues to affect businesses,
“What’s needed now is a
much higher level of leader presence: more intense, more
transparent and more
authentic than ever before” (p. 24). Davis also describes how
this leadership presence
is made manifest. She explains that “leader communication” in
this form demands that
leaders “show up, giving the straight story, providing context,
talking it through, and
keeping at it” (p. 24). This approach aligns strongly with Ulmer
and Sellnow’s (2002)
call for “optimistic discourse that emphasizes moving beyond
the crisis, focusing on
strong value positions, responsibility to stakeholders, and
growth as a result of the
crisis” (p. 362). All these authors have moved beyond the
“sandwich” prescription for
curing the bad news ailment and toward a more positive and
engaged leadership com-

munication practice as a core of a positive organizational
culture. Perhaps then, as
business communication professionals, we should be teaching
our students more
about POB and creating a positive organizational culture, one
where employees and
managers are resilient and optimistic, in order to more
effectively communicate bad
news. Just how might we incorporate such thinking into our
business communication
classes?
As business communication professionals, we believe we should
be teaching our
students more about POB and the processes involved in creating
a positive organiza-
tional culture; one where employees and managers are resilient
and optimistic, focused
on strengths as opposed to weaknesses. Including the precepts
of POB in our classes
serves not only as a conceptual frame for the effective
communication of bad news but
also expands the repertoire of broader communication and
organizational practices in
a more optimistic, resilient, and potentially successful
approach. We are not suggest-
ing that we abandon teaching the sandwich message of
delivering bad news wholesale.
However, we recommend that business communication teachers
stress that correct
construction of this “indirect approach” is not the only

consideration of delivering bad
news in an organization. Rather, we want our students thinking
about the broader con-
text of organizational life through which the message is being
transmitted and how
they might best respond to the specific business culture of their
organization. By work-
ing prior to an organizational crisis to craft a culture that values
positive psychological
traits such as hope, optimism, and resiliency, business
communication professionals
can contribute to the creation of a new kind of psychological
buffer. This new model
of incorporating lessons from positive psychology may help
organizations to guard
against panic during times of crisis and to provide a positive
framework through which
to “read” bad news, potentially making our workplaces more
optimistic, resilient, and
humane.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
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Bios
Sandra L. French is an assistant professor in the School of
Communication at Radford
University. Her research interests include organizational
rhetoric, the societal impact of com-
munication and technology, and leadership.
Tracey Quigley Holden is an assistant professor and director of
the Basic Course in the
Department of Communication at the University of Delaware.
Her research interests include
political and business communication as well as political
rhetoric and leadership.
Copyright of Business Communication Quarterly is the property
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Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940
16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
Essence of Corporate Communication 118
===============================================
====================
Vol. 16:4 April 2016
D. Nagarathinam, Ph.D., V. Ramkumar, Ph.D. and R. Vani,
M.A., M.Phil. (Eds.)
New Perspectives in ELT
===============================================
====================
Essence of Corporate Communication
N. Pratheeba
===============================================
====================
Abstract
Corporate communication revolves around the written skills of

the people involved in it.
Unlike creative writing, it needs to be specific and accurate. It
must be succinct and crisp
because people do not have time to read round about
circumlocutory writing in this age of
information overload. In addition to flawless language,
corporate communication ought to be
polite and courteous without being blatant. This paper attempts
to delineate the essential
approaches, namely, the ‘you approach’ and the ‘we approach’
that will help the writer to reach
the target audience in a seamless manner.
Key words: communication, business, corporate, vision, retail
communication, direct approach,
“you approach”, “we approach”, Bad News Messages
Introduction
Corporate communication revolves around the written skills of
the people involved in it.
Unlike creative writing, it needs to be specific and accurate. It
must be succinct and crisp
because people do not have time to read round about
circumlocutory writing in this age of

information overload. In addition to flawless language,
corporate communication ought to be
polite and courteous without being blatant. This paper attempts
to delineate the essential
approaches, namely, the’ you approach’ and the ‘we approach’
that will help the writer to reach
the target audience in a seamless manner.
Definition of Corporate Communication
The Financial Times defines Corporate Communication as a
management function or
department, like marketing, finance, or operations, dedicated to
the dissemination of information
http://www.languageinindia.com/
16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
to key constituencies, the execution of corporate strategy and
the development of messages for a

variety of purposes for inside and outside the organization.
Knowledge Vision for Corporate Communicatio ns defines it in
the following manner:
Corporate Communication is how you keep up a business on
message, with everybody speaking
the same language.
Communication is the life blood of all organizations. It is the
medium through which
companies large and small access the vital resources they need
in order to vibrate (Cees et.al
2007). Further, the communicator must know when and what to
communicate. This involves
analysis, judgment, counseling and planning - in addition to and
prior to communicating
(Newsom, 2014).
Types of Corporate Communication
The Internet technology has altered corporate personae and the
mode, channels and
methods of corporate communication and feedback. It has
minimized the power distance and
ushered in a new type of relationship between corporations and

their relevant publics. (Ihator,
2001) Corporate Communication can be internal or external,
vertical or horizontal, company to
client, client to company, company to service providers, service
providers to company and so on.
Internal communication is important for building a culture of
transparency between management
and employees, and it can engage employees in the
organization’s priorities. (Mishra, 2014) It
can be in the form of manuals, reports, proposals, memos,
magazine articles, business letters,
complaint letters, quotations, orders, and such. The essence of
Corporate Communication is such
that it is always formal in all respects. Understanding the target
audience lends a helping hand to
determine the tone and level of formality. It needs to focus on
the recipient's demands and
interests rather than that of the sender. Though corporates need
to talk a lot about their
company's profile, products and available service, it has to be
done in such a way that the needs
of the target readers are fulfilled. The executive staff are also
responsible for corporate
communications, since for most businesses, the real message

comes from the top rung of
administrators.
Effective Corporate Communication
16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
Corporate communication is both the newest and perhaps the
least understood. It is
related to the other sub-disciplines like management
communication, business communication,
and organizational communication. (Paul, 1996) Corporate
Communication can be termed good
if it follows the seven C's of communication, it has to be brief
and precise. It has to be factual,
unambiguous, accurate and relevant to both the company's and
target audience's needs and
requirements.

Corporate Communication should be objective, detailed and
well documented. In
addition to the above mentioned factors, it needs to be
homogeneous. Interpersonal Intelligence
serves as an essential Factor for Effective Corporate
Communication. In a nutshell, Effective
Corporate Communication explains the benefits of the primary
customers. It also helps to
establish credibility among the various user segments and the
company staff. Last but not the
least, an effective corporate communication invokes curiosity
about the company and products in
the midst of prospective customers and motivates them into
action. Rather, the purpose of
corporate writers is to influence public opinion and attitudes,
particularly among potential
investors, in ways that create support for organizational
practices or undermine opposition to
them. (Conaway et al., 2010)
The following approaches will help the writer to achieve his end
or drive home his facts.
It is equally applicable to all involved in corporate
communications.

Direct Approach or the YOU Approach
Executives employ a variety of communication methods,
including face-to-face
communication, to communicate with employees. The
executives’ chosen communication
strategies aim to build trust and engagement with employees.
(Mishra, 2014) Good News
Messages and Direct requests that do not require any convincing
can be classified under this
approach. It can be used in the following situations, but not
limited to documents regarding
claims and complaints, appointments, orders, reservations,
request for action and promotion and
inquiries about goods, people or services. It can start with the
main idea of request or any good
news. Devices for easy reading like bulleted lists, numbered
questions, brochures, catalogues,
news bulletins, can be used then and there. And stylistic
features that give more importance to

16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
the usage of the Second Person You pronouns rather than First
person Pronouns will lend a
professional YOU attitude to the document under consideration.
Prof. Hurley says, “A polite
closure that ensures a clear action (what action you want the
reader to take and when) and an
easy action (enclosing reply envelopes, phone numbers, fax, e-
mail IDs etc., will really work
wonders.”
Indirect Approach or We Approach
Bad News Messages and Indirect requests that do not require
any convincing can be
classified under this approach. It can be used in the following
situations, but not limited to
documents regarding refusal of claims, credits and complaints,
declining services and favour,
cancellation of already placed orders etc., and inquiries about
damaged goods, or unavailability

of services. It can start with the buffer paragraph of
appreciation, or any positive note. Devices
for easy reading like needed details, answers to relevant
questions pertaining to the document
under consideration can be used then and there. And stylistic
features that gives more importance
to the usage of First Person I, WE pronouns rather than Second
Person You pronouns will lend a
professional WE attitude to the document under consideration.
As mentioned earlier, a polite
closure that ensures a clear action (what action you want the
reader to take and when) and an
easy action (enclosing reply envelopes, phone numbers, fax, e-
mail IDs etc., are mandatory in
this approach also.
A judicious use of both the approaches mentioned above will
definitely lend a
professional look to the written document under creation.
Examples
Bus pass will not be issued unless you submit the No-Dues
Form.
As soon as the required documents are submitted by you, we

will promptly deliver the Bus pass.
Compulsory attendance effected a full auditorium.
Auditorium was full since everyone attended the meeting.
You have withheld the results of thirty students.
16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
We have not yet received the results of thirty students.
Your indifferent attitude has caused this problem.
A little more care would have avoided this problem.
The sentences in bold imply a impolite tone whereas the un-
bolded sentences imply a
more polite tone.

Five Golden Rules to Make Your Writing Rock
Most people know English when they hear it. It is everyday
language, free from the long
words, and technical terms, that plague the prose of scientists,
engineers, economists, doctors,
lawyers and writers in their specialized disciplines. (Newsom,
2014) The five golden rules given
below will definitely help make your corporate writing rock:
1. Follow the KISS principle in writing. (Keep it Short and
Simple.)
2. Be stringent with words by avoiding cluttering phrases and
neoplasms (redundant phrases).
Strunk and White advocated" using scissors on the manuscript,
cutting it to pieces and fitting the
pieces together in a better order."
3. Prefer right ordering and proper emphasis. Follow the basic
rule - adverb of manner is to be
followed by adverb of place and time.
4. Express Negative ideas with words that carry a positive
connotation instead of expressing it
blatantly.

How to express a negative idea (Bowen, 2006):
Negative ideas expressed blatantly Negative ideas expressed
politely
The results were bad. The results were not very good.
Their machinery is very old-fashioned. Their machinery is not
very modern.
The catalogue is very dull.
The catalogue is not very interesting.
16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
We got rather a cool reception.
We did not get a very warm reception.
We are dissatisfied with the service we have

received so far.
We are not very satisfied with the service we
have received so far.
We are unhappy with some of the terms of the
agreement.
We are not very happy with some of the terms
of the agreement.
We made very little impact on the society. We did not make
much impact on the society.
He takes no interest in what we do. He does not take much
interest in what we do.
There is no alternative. There are not many options available.
There is nothing we can do about it. There is something we can
do about it.
5. Be tactful by the optimum use of modal verbs and suitable
modifiers.
Statements perfectly consistent with what you know might be

inconsistent with what you
do not know. (Cess, et al., 2007) Usage of modals and modifiers
comes as a handy tool in such a
tricky situation. Strategic information packaging, gatekeeping,
timing and controlled reactive
communication become more difficult to manage in the
information age. (Ihator, 2001)
Being Tactful (Bowen, 2006)
Blunt statements Tactful statements
Your order is going to be late. Your order may be slightly
delayed.
We want you to reply at once. (would/grateful) We would be
grateful for an immediate reply.
You have made a mistake in the invoice.
(there/seem)
There seems to be a mistake in the invoice.
You still owe us Rs.35,000 You still owe us Rs.35,000
16:4 April 2016

N. Pratheeba
You have not given the discount you promised
us.
We do not seem to have received the discount.
Our tuition fee will go up from January 2016. There may be a
slight increase in tuition fee
from January 2016.
You have not enclosed the complete list as
requested by us.
You do not seem to have enclosed the
complete list as requested by us.
The delivery will be late due to some problems
in the computer.
You may experience difficulty in the delivery.
You have withheld the result of 50 students. We have not yet
received the result of 50
students.

You must use the new sports complex.
(whenever/need)
You may use the new sports complex
whenever you need.
Conclusion
Corporate Communication is an area that is very diversified in
nature. Adopting the right
mix of the We and You approach will certainly boost the image
and brand the image of the
company in the midst of prospective clients.
===============================================
======================
References
1. Conaway, Roger N.; Wardrope, William J. Do Their Words
Really Matter? Thematic Analysis
of U.S. and Latin American CEO Letters International Journal
of Business Communication April
2010 vol. 47 no. 2 141-168
2. 2. Paul A. Argenti Corporate Communication as a Discipline:
Toward a Definition

Management Communication Quarterly August 1996 vol. 10 no.
1 73-97
3. 3. Karen Mishra,Lois Boynton, Aneil Mishra Driving
Employee Engagement:
The Expanded Role of Internal Communications International
Journal of Business
Communication April 2014 vol. 51 no. 2 183-202
4. Newsom, D. & Haynes, J. 2014, Public relations writing:
Form and style, 10th edn,
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston, CA.
16:4 April 2016
N. Pratheeba
5. van Riel Cees, Cees B.M. Van Riel, Charles J. Fombrun.
Essentials of Corporate
Communication: Implementing Practices for Effective
Reputation Management. Routledge,
2007

6. Bowen, T. Build your Business Grammar Cengage Learning,
2006
6. Communication style in the information age Augustine S.
Ihator
Corporate Communications: An International Journal 2001 6:4,
199-204
7. www.lovewonder.sg1006.myweb.hinet.net/.../Strunk&White
8. www.lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=corporate-communication
9. www.knowledgevision.com/...knowledge-
vision/knowledgevision.../corp.
10. http://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/hurley/eng209w/index.htm
============================================
N. Pratheeba
Professor
Department of English
Kamaraj College of Engineering and Technology
Virudhunagar
Tamilnadu
India
[email protected]

http://www.knowledgevision.com/...knowledge-
vision/knowledgevision.../corp
http://www.knowledgevision.com/...knowledge-
vision/knowledgevision.../corp
mailto:[email protected]
Copyright of Language in India is the property of Language in
India and its content may not
be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv
without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for
individual use.
Journal of Business Communication
50(4) 362 –382
© 2013 by the Association for
Business Communication
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0021943613497053
jbc.sagepub.com
Article
Effects of Directness in Bad-
News E-Mails and Voice Mails

Frank Jansen1 and Daniel Janssen1,2
Abstract
In this study, we explore the effects of channel choice (e-mail
vs. voice mail) and
message structure (direct vs. indirect) on the receiver’s
perception of bad-news
messages. We conducted an experiment in which bad-news e-
mails and voice mails
were presented to participants who evaluated their response to
the messages via
a questionnaire. The results indicate that e-mail is more
comprehensible, while
voice mail is more persuasive and effective for maintaining a
personal customer
relationship. Furthermore, messages with an indirect structure
(explanation → bad
news) are valued more highly than direct messages (bad news →
explanations). We
also found interaction effects of channel and structure, the most
important being that
the preference for the indirect structure is limited to e-mails.
Keywords
medium, channel, e-mail, voice mail, direct/indirect message
structure, readers’
evaluations
Introduction
In the early summer of 2010, Apple’s iTunes store received a
complaint from one of
their customers, Eva. Eva’s daughter had downloaded a—
supposedly—free applica-
tion for Eva’s iPhone. However, a couple of days later, Eva

found her credit card had
been billed for €109.99. She decided to send an e-mail to
iTunes’ customer service:
1Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
2University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Corresponding Author:
Daniel Janssen, Communication Studies, UIL-OTS, Utrecht
University, Domplein 29, 3512 JE Utrecht,
Netherlands.
Email: [email protected]
497053 JBC50410.1177/0021943613497053Journal of Business
Communication[END SUBLIST][END SUBLIST][END
SUBLIST]Jansen and Janssen
research-article2013
Jansen and Janssen 363
My daughter has downloaded a free game on my iPhone
(Fishies) and now my credit card
will be charged for €109.99 euro. Now I see on my account that
the same has happened with
Blowfish (€89) which was supposed to be a free download as
well. So what’s going on here?
iTunes responded within 24 hours with the following e-mail:
Hi Eva,
My name is Sarah from Apple iTunes Support. I understand that
your daughter purchased
“Fishies” and you were charged €109.99 when it was supposed
to be free. I am sorry for any

frustrations this may have caused you, but I assure you I am
more than happy to look into
this further for you.
I have reviewed your purchase history and confirmed the actual
purchase of the app “Fishies”
was free; however, it was the purchase of “Chest of 1950
Pearls” which cost €109.99. This
is what is called an “in app” purchase. This means that your
daughter made the purchase
within the app (or within the game). Sometimes, in order to
advance to the next level in these
games, you need to make an app purchase, which in turn, costs
money.
( . . . )
Seeing your iTunes Store purchase history and order numbers ( .
. . )
I have refunded you in full for this purchase.
You will see a credit of €109.99, plus any applicable taxes, in
three to five business days.
( . . . )
I appreciate your understanding. ( . . . )
Take care,
Sarah
iTunes Store Customer Support
This e-mail conversation is interesting for a number of reasons,
two of which are the

expansion of the e-mail channel1 and the rise of new
conventions and subgenres (cf.
Baron 2000). It also illustrates how business and business
communication have devel-
oped. People buy goods online from virtual stores, pay
electronically with their credit
card, complain by way of e-mails, receive electronic (and
sometimes even automatic)
e-mail responses, and—in this case—get their money credited
back to their bank or
credit card account. And all this takes place in just a matter of
hours. This also applies
to other interactive channels such as texting and Tw itter, which
use the written
medium, and voice mail2 that uses the oral medium. Not too
long ago, customers in a
364 Journal of Business Communication 50(4)
situation like Eva’s had to write a complaint letter and would
then have to wait to
receive a letter back; this correspondence would have taken
weeks.
In many instances, e-mails have simply replaced letters. People
apply for a job not
by sending a letter of application or requesting a form, but by
sending an e-mail or
filling in a web form. The same people may get rejected not by
a letter, but by an
e-mail. The same goes for many other forms of business
communication: new chan-
nels replace old channels and old genres rematerialize within
those new media. This is

a gradual development that has been called “remediation” in
media studies (see, e.g.,
Bolter & Grusin, 1999). E-mail may well be considered the most
important new chan-
nel just because of its volume. As early as 2007, the research
firm IDC showed a dra-
matic increase of e-mail volume worldwide, rising from 31
billion per day in 2003 to
a whopping 97 billion per day in 2007. More recent data from
2008 shows that the
number of e-mail users has risen to 1.3 billion, while the
numbers of e-mails that were
sent, reached an estimated 210 billion.
The advantages of e-mail are numerous and often mentioned. E-
mail is fast and
cheap and readily available for almost everyone. Organizations
and their customers
can communicate all over the world at the speed of light
virtually for free. Seen in this
light the success of e-mail is understandable. Sarah’s e-mail
shows how powerful this
channel can be.
But in a way Sarah’s task was not too difficult. She had to
convey positive news to
Eva and positive news does not put much constraint on media-
choice. If you win the
lottery, you do not care whether people inform you by e-mail,
telephone, letter, or
whatever other channel. This situation may be totally different
in the case of bad-news
communication (Timmerman & Harrison, 2005). Would Eva be
as content with an
e-mail if iTunes had not refunded her or would a more
“personal” medium have been

more effective in that situation? The question then is: What are
the company’s other
options? Of course a face-to-face meeting would be the best
choice. All the empirical
evidence shows that mediated channels is no match for face-to-
face conversations
(Baltes, Dickson, Sherman, Bauer, & LaGanke, 2002). But in a
modern-day business
world face-to-face meetings are not always feasible. That leaves
two other possibili-
ties, namely telephone and voice mail.
In this study we compared e-mail to voice mail. We opted for
voice mail because
voice mail and e-mail are relatively new media. Furthermore,
they share an important
characteristic: voice mail and e-mail are noninteractive and
asynchronous channels.
Apart from this, they differ in one important dimension: e-mail
is a written medium,
voice mail a spoken medium. In the next section, we will argue
why a spoken medium
may be more effective for bad-news communication.
In this study, we focus on one genre, namely bad-news
messages, and on two chan-
nels, namely e-mail and voice mail. Our main goal is to explore
which of the two
channels is more effective for delivering unwelcome news to
customers.
Furthermore, we are interested in the effects of structural
directness on the recep-
tion of bad news. Giving an explanation for the bad news in a
conversation is more
effective when implemented in a prophylactic way (before the

bad news) than as a
remedy (after the bad news). The same applies to written bad-
news messages in
e-mails. Earlier research has shown that readers prefer to read
the explanation before
the bad news (Jansen & Janssen, 2011). The question is,
however, if listeners to bad-
news messages in voice mails have the same preferences.
In the next section, we will elaborate somewhat on the results of
theoretical and
empirical studies of channel choice and message structure in
order to give the research
questions and hypotheses in the next section a solid ground. In
the Method section, we
address the methodological issues for this study and explain
how our experiments
were conducted. In the Results section, we present the
outcomes; this is followed by
the Conclusion and Discussion section.
Bad News, Directness, and Media Choice
In this section, we will give account for our decision to focus
on bad-news messages.
After that, we will compare the two channels that we used in
our experiments—e-mail
and voice mail—in greater detail. Finally, we will explain why
we added structural
directness as a second independent variable.

Bad News
One of the major challenges in business writing is to
communicate a clear message
while keeping the client happy and preserving the image of the
organization (Bovée &
Thill, 2000; De Jong et al., 2002; Janssen, 2007). It goes
without saying that commu-
nicating good news, news that is favorable for the receiver, is a
simpler task than com-
municating bad news, news that conveys information with
unfavorable consequences
for the recipient, for example, denying an insurance claim or
rejecting a job applicant.
Good communication calls for a cooperative attitude from
senders and receivers.
However, in bad-news communication the interests of the
speaker and the senders
conflict which makes cooperation difficult and communication
more complex. Also,
the demand for clarity in the message may easily conflict with
the need to preserve the
organization’s image and the relationship between the
organization and its customer.
The proper balance between clarity and good relations is an
important theme in (lin-
guistic) pragmatics, especially in politeness theory (Brown &
Levinson, 1987).
Furthermore, bad-news communication induces an interesting
conflict of a more
psychological nature. Timmerman and Harrison (2005) observe
that managers often
dodge tasks that entail conveying bad news to their subordinates
(the so-called MUM
effect). And if not, they are inclined to distance themselves

from the news and the
receivers by choosing a channel that masks their lack of
involvement with the subor-
dinates, a strategy that is also predicted by the hyperpersonal
model (Walther, 1996).
It is exactly for this reason that e-mail is often the medium of
choice for bad-news
communication: avoiding the receiver. Although Timmerman
and Harrison suggest
that managers should resist these all too human inclination,
research tells us that many
senders prefer e-mail for delivering bad news (cf. Sproull &
Kiesler, 1986). What
we do not know is how medium choice in bad-news
communication affects the
receivers.
Handling bad-news communication is something every
communication specialist
should master. For that reason, bad-news or crisis
communication has become an
essential part of most courses in business communication all
over the world. From a
research perspective, it is thus essential to study effective and
less effective instances of
bad-news communication and the strategies that are used in it
(Jansen & Janssen, 2010).
Channel Choice: E-Mail Versus Voice Mail
In this paragraph, we will discuss the relevant differences
between the channels e-mail

and voice mail. This discussion will lead to two hypotheses : (a)
e-mails are more com-
prehensible and (b) voice mails are more personal.
If we compare voice mail and e-mail, we see similarities and
differences. E-mail
and voice mail are both relatively new channels, made possible
by the computer and
its electronic infrastructure. The most fundamental difference
between the two chan-
nels is that they capitalize on different media: e-mail on the
written medium and voice
mail on the spoken medium, which entails that receiving means
reading for e-mail and
listening for voice mails. The spoken medium is time-bound and
the written one space-
bound (Crystal, 2001).3 Listeners are, in a way, hostages of the
speaker. They have no
other option than to submit themselves to speakers, and to
process their words one
after the other. The permanence of texts gives readers more
freedom of choice: They
may access the parts of the message in the order in which they
appear in the text, or
they may not. They may peek ahead, reread (difficult) parts of
the text, and so on. By
consequence, it is more difficult to understand a complex
message in speech than in
writing (see Chaiken & Eagly, 1983; Unnava, Burnkrant, &
Erevelles, 1994). The
field study by El Shinnawy and Markus (1997) corroborates
these findings. El
Shinnawy and Markus report that their participants prefer e-
mail when the messages
contain, for example, numerical data that are difficult to
remember correctly. Therefore,

we expect the e-mails in our experiment to be more
comprehensible than the voice
mails.
The next difference between the two channels has to do with the
possibility to
transmit vocal cues. Spoken language conveys vocal cues;
written language does not.
Vocal cues are informative in their own right. They inform the
reader about stable
characteristics of the sender such as sex and age, and temporary
ones such as his or her
sincerity and emotional state (Scherer, 2003). It is highly
probable that receivers
appreciate this information because it helps them evaluate the
interpersonal aspects of
the message, especially in bad-news communication.
Apart from the possible direct relevance of vocal cues, they are
also indirectly rel-
evant: The voice contributes to a feeling of copresence and it
raises the risk of leakage
of unwanted emotions.
Written and oral media also differ to the extent that can convey
a feeling of copres-
ence. “Co-presence” and “social presence” are the terms for the
receiver’s perception
of the sender’s presence in the communicative situation (Keil &
Johnson, 2002; Rice,
1993). When receivers hear the sender’s voice, they will
experience him or her as
more present and thus more involved in the interaction than
when they read a text.

There is not much empirical evidence for these claims, but
research does show that
e-mailers are more self-absorbed and less interested in or
empathic with the receiver.
For example, Watts Sussman and Sproull (1999) found less
sugarcoating in bad news
transmitted by e-mails than in face-to-face and telephone
conversations (see also
Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, and Kruger, Epley, Parker, & Ng,
2005). We may thus
hypothesize that receivers appreciate a copresence affording
channel (voice mail)
more than a channel preventing it (e-mail).
Vocal cues are not only a chance for senders to communicate
more effectively; they
form a potential risk as well. In the previous section, we
mentioned Timmerman and
Harrison (2005) who concluded that the most suitable channel
for the receiver (in
terms of “interactional justice”) should be the one that is most
transparent in convey-
ing potentially ambiguous information about the sender’s
sincerity and involvement.
Receivers will wonder: Is the sender of this bad-news message
sincere for instance
when he expresses his sympathy? When the listener senses those
“emotional leaks” he
or she will be sympathetic toward the sender and more inclined
to accept the bad news.
Finally, the production process of the message in the two
channels differs. The

production of even a short message presumes that the sender
takes a series of steps:
generate, formulate, and articulate the message (Levelt, 1989).
For a literate person
this process is easier in the written medium than in the oral
medium. The permanency
of writing enables him to divide the composition process in
parts: making a draft first,
rethink the text, and revise it when necessary. This process
results in a polished pre-
sentation where all production problems have become invisible
in the final product.
Producing an immaculate voice mail is more difficult than
writing a flawless e-mail
(Dingwall 1992). In spite of all the possible preparations
(planning, making a draft on
paper), during the final act of speaking much can go wrong with
hesitations, pauses,
restarts, grammatical errors, and so on as a result.
On the other hand, in everyday conversation we are very
tolerant toward errors and
mistakes in oral communication. And the fact that receivers
know how difficult it is to
leave a decent voice mail may influence their perception. They
may evaluate voice
mail messages more positively than comparable e-mails.
At the end of this paragraph we summarize the differences
between e-mail and
voice mail that may be relevant for the receiver in Table 1.
Table 1. Differences Between E-Mail and Voice Mail.
E-mail Voice mail

Communication mode Writing/reading Speaking/listening
Access Divers Only linear
Vocal cues Absent Present
Copresence Low High
Emotional transparency Low High
Message production Easy Difficult
Direct and Indirect Structure
As mentioned earlier, we focus on “directness” as an element of
structure in bad-news
messages. A classic distinction in business communication
textbooks on bad-news
messages is that between direct and indirect structures (Bovée
& Thill, 2000; Janssen,
2007; Jansen & Janssen, 2011). In the indirect approach, the
writer buffers the news
by presenting reasons or explanations before the bad news. In
the direct approach, the
writer presents the bad news first and the reason later.
The direct structure may have a positive effect on the readers’
comprehension of
the message. Britt and Larson (2003) experiments showed that
complex sentences
(consisting of an embedded clause with a claim and a causative
clause introduced by
the connector because), in which the claim was presented first
were read faster than
those in which the reason was presented first. Furthermore, they
found that claim-first
arguments were recalled more accurately and in the exact or der

in which they had been
presented than reason-first arguments.
Jansen and Janssen (2011) found the indirect structure to be
more effective when it
comes to persuasion and effects on image. They found no
differences in comprehen-
sion. Indirectness seems to make a direct appeal to the
rationality of both the sender
and the receiver by giving the reader the opportunity to closely
follow the reasoning of
the writer.
Jansen and Janssen (2011) came to their findings by
experimenting with letters
and e-mails, written media. It is still unclear whether an
experiment with an oral
medium like voice mail would lead to the same results. Unnava
et al. (1994) found an
effect of presentation order in their experiments with oral
(radio) and written adver-
tisements, a primacy effect of the first argument in the radio
condition. They explain
this effect by stating that that the listeners process and
remember the first argument
and use it as a frame for the remainder of the arguments. In the
written condition the
readers did not have to capitalize on order because they could
reread the text, skip
parts, and so on.
Although there are substantial differences between our
experiment and Unnava
et al.’s we expect that directness has more effect in voice mail
than in the e-mail.

Research Questions and Hypotheses
Based on our review of relevant theories and research, the
following research ques-
tions and hypotheses can be formulated:
Question 1: Which channel, e-mail or voice mail, do receivers
of bad-news mes-
sages prefer?
Hypothesis 1: E-mail (messages) will be evaluated as more
comprehensible
than voice mail (messages).
Hypothesis 2: Voice mail (messages) will be evaluated as more
personal than
e-mail (messages).
Question 2: Which message structure do the receivers prefer:
direct or indirect?
Hypothesis 3: The direct structure (bad-news → explanation)
will be evaluated
as more comprehensible than the indirect structure (explanation
→ bad
news).
Hypothesis 4: The indirect structure will be evaluated as more
persuasive and
more personal.
Question 3: Is the preference for a structure independent from

the media? In other
words, is there an interaction between structure and media?
Hypothesis 5: The positive effect of the indirect structure will
be more promi-
nent in voice mail than in e-mail.
Method
Material
We created seven topics for bad-news messages in a business
context. The gravity of
the bad news was in all cases intermediate, from a cancelled trip
via an appliance that
turns out to be a total loss to the announcement that a student
having a part-time job as
a waiter will be given a different task. For each topic we
composed a primary message
and a secondary message that functioned as a replication and
manipulation check. For
instance, we wrote a message about the high repair costs of cell
phones and of a televi-
sion set, and about a cancelled flight and a cancelled railway
trip (see Table 2).
All e-mail messages followed the same format. This format
contained a salutation,
a neutral introductory sentence, and either the bad news
followed by three explana-
tions or three explanations followed by the bad news. Then the
messages ended with a
neutral statement, a greeting, and the name of the sender.
Table 2. Context of Bad-News Messages and the Specific
Topics.

Context of bad news Specific topics
1 Electronic gadget cannot be repaired Broken iPod
Broken watch
2 Holiday trip is cancelled Flight
Rail journey
3 Internal application is turned down For participation in an
(expensive) company course
For a higher position
4 A medical test failed and has to be redone IMR-scan
Taking blood sample
5 The repair costs of an electronic appliance are much
higher than first expected
Broken telephone
Broken television set
6 The application for an external job is turned down
Manager
Management trainee
7 A student who has a secondary job as junior waiter is
degraded to the function of dishwasher
In a pancake restaurant
In a gourmet restaurant

Example of a Bad-News E-Mail
This e-mail message regards/concerns your reservation of a
business class ticket flight
number CA 1773 for 15/2/2009 from Amsterdam to Toronto
(Canada).
Regrettably, we have to cancel this flight for the following
reasons: the airport of Toronto is
on strike that week. Besides, we expect extreme bad weather
conditions in Toronto where
the airport will be closed for all flights for four days. At the
moment, we are also encountering
some unforeseen technical problems with the airplane, which we
are trying to solve as soon
as possible.
We apologize for the inconveniences and would like to propose
an arrangement with you. You
are requested to contact Can Airlines for further information,
telephone number 020–340 74 24.
With kind regards,
Can Airlines
Jan-Peter de Vries, Client Manager
We presented the e-mails to our participants on a laptop
computer, in a realistic
e-mail-makeup. The mean length of the letters was 186 words
(minimum 180, max-
imum 191).
As far as the voice mails are concerned, their structure was
almost identical with the

e-mails:
Example of a Bad News Voice Mail
Good day, this is Remon Spaas of Telfort Repair service
speaking.
We have received your mobile telephone and examined it on
defects.
The battery of your phone is broken. Furthermore the display
has to be replaced because of
water damage. Besides this, the entire interior works has to be
cleaned.
For these three reasons, the costs of repair of your mobile phone
will amount to €315.
If you accept this estimate, please let us know by contacting our
client service.
The phone number is 0900–9596.
Greetings
The only difference with the e-mail is the position of the
sender’s self-identification.
As was mentioned in the introduction, the position of this
“internal” self-identification
in e-mails is conventionally at the end of the message, namely
in the signature. The
conventional position for self-identification in voice mails,
however, is at the

beginning, directly after the address to the recipient “Hi/hello,
It’s NAME of the X
company” (Goutsos 2001, Lange 1999, Knoblach and Alvarez-
Cáccamo 1992). For
reasons of ecological validity, we decided to follow this
convention, by inserting “This
is [NAME] speaking” directly after the salutation. After the
main body of the voice
mail text, the closing move consisted of closing and goodbye
formulas, and again, the
name of the sender.
Participants
Of the 1,133 participants in this second experiment 533 (53%)
were men and 600
(47%) were women. Given that fact that we used a 2 × 2 × 14
design (e-mail/voice
mail, direct/indirect, 14 different messages) this implies that we
had ±18 participants
in every condition. The participants were between 15 and 77
years of age: M = 27.0
(SD = 12.5). Randomization checks revealed that participants
were distributed equally
in respect to their gender and age across all the conditions.
Nearly all participants were
students of secondary vocational education schools, or had
graduated from these types
of school. They had a Dutch cultural background and were all
native speakers and flu-
ent readers of Dutch. Nobody was paid for his or her
contribution. As in the previous
experiment, we asked many participants to volunteer for the
experiments during a train

ride as they commuted to work; others were recruited by our
students in libraries, on
campus, at work, or at home.
Independent Variables
The first independent variable was channel. We presented our
participants with bad-
news messages in an e-mail or voice mail format. The second
independent variable
was the presentation order of the company’s decision (the bad
news for the customer)
and the explanation for it. The explanation included three
independent reasons. We
had two main reasons for inserting an elaborate argumentation.
By doing so, the
structural differences between the two conditions were as large
as would be accept-
able in a realistic setting. Furthermore, we wanted our
participants to process the
entire fragment instead of peeking ahead or scanning the
paragraphs until they found
the decision. To present realistic argumentation, we did a
pretest in which readers
other than the participants in the experiment evaluated the
plausibility of the explana-
tion. The text in both conditions was identical, with one
exception: in the decision-
first condition, the phrase announcing the upcoming reasons
was at the end of the
sentence; whereas, the phrase referring back to the reasons in
the explanation-first
condition was at the beginning of the sentence, as in the
following examples:
Example of the Decision-First Condition

The cost of repair of your mobile phone will amount to € 315
for three reasons.
The battery of your phone is broken. Furthermore, the display
water damage. Besides this, the entire interior work has to be
cleaned.
Example of the Explanation-First Condition
The battery of your phone is broken. Furthermore, the display
water damage. Besides this, the entire interior work has to be
cleaned.
For these three reasons, the costs of repair of your mobile phone
will amount to € 315.
Dependent Variables
The effects of the independent variables were measured with a
questionnaire by which
the participants could evaluate the messages (see the appendix).
First, the participants
gave a general assessment of the overall quality of the message
in the form of a report
mark (ranging from 1 to 10 as is the convention in the
Netherlands) for the entire mes-
sage. Then, they used the 7-point Likert-type scales and
semantic differential scales
(1-7) to evaluate the messages on

• comprehension; e.g., “I understand the message
completely” (Items 2, 14, 16,
17, and 19)
• agreement; e.g., “I can imagine this kind of decision”
(Items 3, 4, 10, and 12)
• positive sender traits, e.g., “The sender impresses me as
honest” (Items 11, 15, 22)
• attitude of the sender toward receiver (Items 8, 18, 22)
• image of the company, e.g., “My view of the organization
is positive/negative”
(Items 24, 25, 26)
In the last part of the questionnaire, we included a proposition
that we used as a manip-
ulation check for bad news (Item 27) and an open question to
test whether the partici-
pant had comprehended the message (Item 28): “Three reasons
for the decision are
mentioned in the message. What was the second reason in your
own wording?” The
answers to this open question were coded as 0 for no answer or
for reasons other than
mentioned in the message, and 1 for one or more reasons
mentioned in the text. This
question was placed toward the end of the list to prevent it from
causing the partici-
pants to attach more value to the arguments. Demographic
questions about the partici-
pants’ gender and age together with two background questions
about the estimated
importance of these kind of bad-news letters for the participants
and their experience
with this type of messages completed the questionnaire.

Design and Procedure
We opted for a between-participant design to avoid
contamination effects. Thus, all
participants evaluated only one message in one condition. The
procedure was as fol-
lows. After greeting and welcoming the participant, the
experiment leader presented a
written instruction:
Suppose you are a client of Telfort (a Dutch mobile phone
company) and you bought a
telephone with a subscription a year ago. As this telephone has
not been functioning well
recently, you have sent it to Telfort. A few days later you
receive the following message:
Next the participant had the opportunity to ask questions and
then the message was
presented to them onscreen. After the participant had indicated
that he or she had fin-
ished reading, the text was made invisible, and they received
the questionnaire.
Although there was no limit set to the reading time, most
participants spent only
3 minutes on the reading task (M = 195 s, SD = 152).
Participants in the voice mail condition were allowed to listen
to the message as
many times as they wanted, but almost no one made use of this
opportunity. It took the

participants less time to listen to the message than to read it.
The messages lasted
between 24 and 70 seconds (M = 43 seconds, SD = 16).
Manipulation Checks
Statistical analysis revealed that we could distinguish four
reliable clusters of proposi-
tions (the dependent variables) in the data: comprehension,
agreement, sender traits,
attitude of sender, and image of the company (see Table 3).
All have acceptable to good Cronbach’s alphas, with .61 being a
generally
excepted minimum for clustering (Field, 2009). Also, we
checked whether the par-
ticipants’ evaluation of the messages for each topic in the table
was essentially the
same, which they were for all clusters (p > .05). Subsequently,
we checked the
manipulation of bad news by analyzing the mean score for the
proposition, “The
message entails bad news indeed.” The mean score was 5.6 (SD
= 1.4) on a 7-point
scale, so we can safely assume that the participants considered
the message bad
news. Furthermore, the participants had sufficient prior
knowledge about the topics
in the messages (Item 32). The mean score for experience was
4.0 (SD = 2.1). The
participants did not consider the messages themselves to be
important (Item 31)
considering a mean of 2.5 (SD = 1.6). We found no effects of
channel and structure
on these three propositions (p > .05).

Results
As expected, the messages were not too difficult for the
participants. The results show
that 790 of the 1,133 participants (= 70%) correctly answered
Question 28 (see the
appendix). We also found no statistically significant effects of
channel or message
structure (p > .05) on the number of correct answers on this
question. So all messages
Table 3. Reliability of the Clusters of Dependent Variables.
Cluster Propositionsa Cronbach’s α
Comprehension 2, 14, 16 .64
Agreement 3, 10, 12 .78
Positive sender traits 11, 15, 22 .74
Positive attitude sender toward receiver 18, 21, 23 .68
Image organization 24, 25, 26 .86
a. The other propositions (5, 6, 7, 9, 13, and 20) could not
reliably be attributed to any cluster.
were relatively easy to understand, a conclusion that is in line
with the rather low result
for the proposition that measured the perceived level of
difficulty most directly,
namely Item 19 “the message is difficult”: M = 2.6 (SD = 1.1).
The short reading times
of the e-mails and the absence of requests to replay the voice
mails reported in the

procedure section point in the same direction.
The next question we need to answer is whether the channel, in
general, has an
effect on the evaluation of the messages (see Table 4).
The results are unambiguous. We see two distinct effects of
channel. First, the par-
ticipants find—as expected—e-mails more comprehensible than
voice mails. Second,
voice mail leads to more agreement, a more positive image of
the sender, a more posi-
tively evaluated relationship and a better image.
Is there an effect of message structure as well? Does a direct
structure lead to dif-
ferent evaluations than does the indirect structure? In Table 5,
we present the mean
scores of direct and indirect structures on all dependent
variables.
The effects of structure are less prominent than were the effects
of channel. First,
the scope of the message structure’s influence is narrower,
because structure only
affects agreement and sender image. Second, the effects we did
find are considerably
weaker, as the lower eta squares indicate. The direction of the
differences is identical
Table 4. Means Scores and Standard Deviations (SDs) for
Channel of the Clusters of
Dependent Variables (1 = Negative Evaluation, 7 = Positive
Evaluation) and Report Mark (1 =
Low Evaluation, 10 = High Evaluation).

E-mail Voice mail F p η2
Report mark (1) 6.2 (1.5) 6.4 (1.3) 5.9 .015 .005
Comprehension 5.7 (1.0) 5.1 (1.2) 64.4 .001 .054
Agreement 4.6 (1.5) 4.9 (1.3) 10.7 .001 .009
Positive sender traits 4.6 (1.2) 5.0 (1.0) 50.2 .001 .042
Positive attitude sender 3.9 (1.3) 4.4 (1.2) 33.7 .001 .029
Image organization 4.0 (1.4) 4.4 (1.4) 29.3 .001 .025
Structure of the Clusters of
Dependent Variables (1 = Negative Evaluation, 7 = Positive
Evaluation) and Report Mark (1 =
Low Evaluation, 10 = High Evaluation).
Direct Indirect F p η2
Report mark 6.3 (1.4) 6.3 (1.5) .011 ns
Comprehension 5.4 (1.1) 5.4 (1.2) .245 ns
Agreement 4.7 (1.4) 4.8 (1.4) 4.448 .035 .004
Positive sender traits 4.7 (1.2) 4.9 (1.1) 7.476 .006 .007
Positive attitude sender 4.1 (1.3) 4.2 (1.2) 2.160 ns
Image organization 4.1 (1.5) 4.5 (1.4) 2.123 ns
for all evaluative dimensions: the indirect structure (decision
last) is clearly valued
more highly than the direct (decision first) structure.
Finally, we tested whether we could find an interaction effect
between channel and
message structure. By way of multivariate analyses of variance
we evaluated if direct-

ness had a different effect in e-mails than it had in voice mails
(see Table 6 for the
results).
The results in Table 6 show no interaction effect on the image
of the organization,
but significant interaction effects on report mark,
comprehension, agreement, sender
traits, and attitude toward the receiver.
The results in Table 6 show that direct voice mails get a
significantly higher overall
evaluation than direct e-mails, indicated by the report mark. In
other words, the par-
ticipants appreciated to direct voice mail more than the direct e-
mail.
Statistical analysis revealed no significant difference between
the direct and the
indirect structure within the channels. E-mail is considered
more comprehensible than
voice mail and this finding is even more prominent in the
indirect messages where the
decision followed the explanation.
The other three clusters with significant interaction effects give
a slightly different
picture. As for agreement, directness has no effect in voice
mails (p > .05) but it has in
e-mails. Readers of a direct e-mail are considerably less
inclined to agree with the
decision than the receivers of indirect e-mail, F(1, 572) = 7.8, p
= .005, η2 = .014.
Furthermore, it turns out that a direct voice mail elicits mor e
agreement than does a
direct e-mail, F(1, 568) = 14.6, p < .001, η2 = .025.

As for the positive sender traits, the pattern is roughly the same
as for agreement
cluster. We see no effects of directness in voice mail. In the e -
mails, however, the
direct structure leads to a less positive evaluation of the sender
than does the indirect
structure, F(1, 572) = 16.7, p < .001, η2 = .028).
The effects of channel and structure on the attitude of the
sender toward the receiver
are completely in line with the results on two previous
dependent variables. Within the
voice mail condition structure has no effect (p > .05), but in e -
mail it does. The sender
Channel and Structure of the
Clusters of Dependent Variables (1 = Negative Evaluation, 7 =
Positive Evaluation) and
Report Mark (1 = Low Evaluation, 10 = High Evaluation).
E-mails Voice mails
F p Direct Indirect Direct Indirect
Report mark 6.1 (1.5) 6.2 (1.6) 6.4 (1.3) 6.3 (1.3) 5.9 .015
Comprehension 5.6 (1.0) 5.7 (1.0) 5.2 (1.2) 5.0 (1.3) 4.1 .043
Agreement 4.4 (1.5) 4.8 (1.5) 4.9 (1.3) 4.9 (1.3) 4.5 .034
Positive sender traits 4.4 (1.2) 4.8 (1.2) 5.1 (1.0) 5.0 (1.0) 11.7
.001
Attitude sender 3.8 (1.3) 4.1 (1.1) 4.4 (1.1) 4.2 (1.1) 7.7 .006
Image organization 3.8 (1.4) 4.1 (1.4) 4.4 (1.4) 4.4 (1.3) 2.1 NS

of a decision last e-mail is considered more sympathetic than
the sender of a decision
first e-mail, F(1, 572) = 8.3, p = .004, η2 = .014). The
superiority of voice mail over
e-mail is more apparent in messages with direct structures, F(1,
588) = 36.1, p < .001,
η2 = .06, than in messages with indirect structures, F(1, 581) =
4.7, p = .03, η2 = .008.
No other interaction effects were found; nor did we find a
significant interaction of
any of the dependent variables in relation to age or gender of
the participant.
Conclusion and Discussion
The outcomes of the experiment permit us to answer the first
research question about
the receivers’ preference for e-mail or voice mail? Hypothesis 1
stated that e-mail
(messages) would be evaluated as more comprehensible than
voice mail (messages).
Hypothesis 2 stated that voice mail (messages) would be
evaluated as more personal
than e-mail (messages). Both hypotheses are supported by the
data (see Tables 4 and
5). Our participants considered e-mail to be more
comprehensible than voice mail, and
valued the persuasive and interpersonal characteristics of voice
mail higher than those
of e-mail.
The second research question addressed the issue of message
structure. Which mes-

sage structure do the receivers prefer: direct or indirect?
Hypothesis 3 states that direct
structure (bad-news → explanation) would be evaluated as more
comprehensible than
the indirect structure (explanation → bad news). Hypothesis 4
reads—the indirect
structure will be evaluated as more persuasive and more
personal. Although the effects
of structure were more limited and weaker than those for
channel, our results support
the hypotheses.
Finally, the research question about the interaction of channel
and structure: Is the
positive effect of the indirect order more outspoken in voice
mail condition as
Hypothesis 5 stated? No, it is the other way around. Positive
effects of indirectness are
limited to the e-mail condition.
Before we discuss the theoretical relevance of our findings we
have to consider
some of the limitations of our study.
First, in our experiment we compared two channels and
excluded face-to-face. We
had good reasons for this. First, incorporating of an unmediated
condition in the design
would have been superfluous because we know beforehand what
the results would be.
All the empirical evidence shows that mediated channels are no
match for unmediated
communication, such as face-to-face conversations (Baltes et
al., 2002). Furthermore,
the instantaneous feedback possibilities of face-to-face
interaction would have resulted

in completely different and thus incomparable conversations. To
study the effect of
voice the vocal cues had to be held constant and in perfect
relation to the written cues
in the e-mails.
The messages in our experiments were—although divers—also
small and limited
to bad news of moderate gravity. This choice made our
experiment realistic on our
view, because no sender would leave a voice mail for more
serious bad news (e.g., a
dismissal or the death of a beloved one). However, we would
encourage experiments
on other types of bad news (e.g., turning down an invitation or a
marriage proposal or
refusing to lend a person a certain amount of money).
Furthermore, we would like to
encourage experiments with larger messages. Our voice mails
and e-mails consisted of
no more than an introduction, the bad news, the three
explanations, and a closing line.
This mini format—although realistic—may have had an impact
on the comprehension
results (see also discussion).
Also, we used only two channels for the bad news. Extending
the experiments to
other channels, in particular to other written media (e.g.,
texting, letters on paper, chat-
ting) would be interesting, especially to answer the question

whether the differential
effects we found should be ascribed to differences in channels
or to differences in
media (spoken vs. written).
The most important limitation in our study may well be the
following. All voice
mail messages were recorded by one single male speaker who as
an experienced,
authoritative speaker spoke fluently without false starts and
made use of pitch and
intonation patterns. It would be interesting to test a variety of
speakers (male-female,
high pitch-low pitch, slow-fast) to see if their voice mail
messages lead to different
results. Furthermore, the fact that the voice mails were
“optimal” (nice sympathetic
voice, no hesitations or errors) is defendable because it enabled
us to compare them in
a fair way with the e-mail texts, which were also flawless in
style and spelling; but the
absence of speech characteristics like hesitations and false
starts made the voice mails
perhaps less realistic. It would be interesting to repeat this
experiment with voice mails
with filled pauses and other speech characteristics.
And finally, the specific linguistic and cultural background of
our participants who
are speakers of Dutch in the Netherlands, may threaten the
external validity of the
results. We see no a priori reasons why the evaluation of the
two channels would be
influenced by cultural aspects, but the evaluation of message
structure may be culture-
specific. In Jansen and Janssen (2011) we explain why we think

the Dutch preference
for indirect structure is a fortiori valid for other cultures.
But if we assume that our conclusions are valid, how can we
explain the consistent
superiority of the voice mail message when it comes down to
establishing good cus-
tomer relations? In the first place we have to realize that the
eventual usability draw-
backs of voice mail were of little concern for our participants in
the experiments
because the messages, in their written and oral varieties, were
presented to them
directly. So the participants were not hindered by practical
shortcomings of voice mail
such as in-boxes that are to find or open on some telephones,
voice mail messages
often cannot be selected, voice mails may be “empty” because
the caller did not leave
a complete message, and so on. So the differential effects of the
channels in our exper-
iment can only be attributed to the difference in medium: oral
versus written.
An obvious explanation for the positive effects of voice mail
can be derived from
medium richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984): The possibility
of the voice mail chan-
nel to relay emotions by way of the human voice makes this
channel more apt for the
sender to show empathy with the reader. This is in line with
findings in Shapiro,
Buttner, and Barry (1994) that face-to-face and telephone
contact promote interac-
tional, interpersonal justice (Timmerman & Harrison, 2005).

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