How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication

Paul  Leonardi; Tsedal  Neeley; Elizabeth M. Gerber

Article | Organization Science | January – February 2012

How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication

by Paul Leonardi, Tsedal Neeley and Elizabeth M. Gerber

Abstract

Several recent studies have found that managers engage in redundant communication; that is, they send the same message to the same recipient through two or more unique media sequentially. Given how busy most managers are, and how much information their subordinates receive on a daily basis, this practice seems, initially, quite puzzling. We conducted an ethnographic investigation to examine the nature of events that compelled managers to engage in redundant communication. Our study of the communication patterns of project managers in six companies across three industries indicates that redundant communication is a response to unexpected endogenous or exogenous threats to meeting work goals. Managers employed two distinct forms of redundant communication to mobilize team members toward mitigating potentially threatening discrepant events-unforeseen disruptive occurrences during the regular course of work. Managers with positional power over team members reactively followed up on a single communication when their attempt to communicate the existence of a threatening discrepant event failed, and they determined that a second communication was needed to enable its joint interpretation and to gain buy-in. In contrast, managers without positional power over team members proactively used redundant communication to enroll team members in the interpretation process-leading team members to believe that they had come up with the idea that completion of their project was under threat-and then to solidify those interpretations. Moreover, findings indicate that managers used different types of technologies for these sequential pairings based on whether their motivation was simply to transmit a communication of threat or to persuade people that a threat existed. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory about, and the practice of, technologically mediated communication, power, and interpretation in organizations.

Keywords: Communication; Media; Information; Groups and Teams; Projects; Management Style; Power and Influence; Motivation and Incentives; Technology;

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Leonardi, Paul, Tsedal Neeley, and Elizabeth M. Gerber. "How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication." Organization Science 23, no. 1 (January–February 2012): 98–117.

Article | Organization Science | November–December 2019

Head, Heart or Hands: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change Over Time?

Sebastian Reiche and Tsedal Neeley

To understand how recipients respond to radical change over time across cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions, we conducted a longitudinal study of a mandated language change at a Chilean subsidiary of a large U.S. multinational organization. The engineering-focused subsidiary aiming to facilitate cross-border interactions embedded language acquisition experts to transition all employees from Spanish to English full time. We gathered survey data and objective fluency scores from the language change recipients at five points over a period of two years. Using variable and person-centered exploratory analyses, our results suggest that recipients’ negative affective responses to the language change precede their cognitive responses or self-efficacy, predicting their current language learning. Further, we find that recipients’ cognitive and affective responses over time differentially influence two future behavioral outcomes: intention to leave the organization and willingness to adopt the change. While cognitive rather than affective responses over time drive recipients’ intentions to leave, affective responses influence recipients’ willingness to adopt English. Finally, we show that change recipients followed three trajectories of cognitive responses and two trajectories of affective responses over time. We discuss theoretical and practical implications to the literature on organizational change, emotions, and language in global organizations.

Keywords: language; Communication; Change; Employees; Attitudes; Emotions; Globalized Firms and Management;

Citation:

Reiche, Sebastian, and Tsedal Neeley. "Head, Heart or Hands: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change Over Time?" Organization Science 30, no. 6 (November–December 2019): 1252–1269. View Details

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Eric Hawkins, director of engineering at AppFolio—a digital technology firm that offered cloud-based business software to small and medium sized companies—was shocked by an unusual request from his senior leadership team. Could Hawkins and one of his agile teams build a check scanner feature inside their management software? AppFolio’s founders had instructed to never build a check scanner; providing technologies to help businesses move into the digital era was a primary company goal. A scanner for paper checks would contradict the hard-won culture of software innovation and project self-selection that AppFolio and Hawkins’ teams lived by. Hawkins also worried that creating a new team to work on the check scanning project would cause workload and morale issues. But the sales team believed that this technology could close deals with larger, more complex property management companies, some with managers who wanted the check scanner feature. Several large-scale deals were on the line. Hawkins quickly assembled an agile market validation team and considered two options: hold fast to the company’s values and refuse to build the check scanner feature or capitulate and build a basic check scanner with minimum functionality. Engineers would likely consider this a “loser” project, yet sales might get a boost that could open a new revenue stream. Hawkins had to make his decision quickly.

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How Managers Use Multiple Media: Discrepant Events, Power, and Timing in Redundant Communication

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