Managerial communication practices and employees’ attitudes and behaviours

Abstract

Purpose – This study is a part of two sequential studies (quantitative and qualitative) carried out to study the impact of managerial communication on employees’ attitudes and behaviours. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach – Using the critical incident technique, this study explores the effects of managerial communication practices on employees’ happiness, job performance, commitment, absenteeism, and turnover intentions. Totally, 101 employees in three manufacturing organisations in eastern India narrated critical incidents related to happiness and superior performance, unhappiness and inferior performance, absenteeism, and the desire to stay or quit. The incidents were further content-analysed. Findings – Results revealed that collaborative approach, respect and recognition, flexible working arrangements, trust, clear direction, autonomous and challenging tasks are important indicators to make employees happy and drive them towards superior performance. Contrarily, the dominant nature of the superior and more bossism than required, humiliation, biased approach, and lack of flexible working arrangements are detrimental to employees’ performance. Collaborative approach, respect/recognition, person-job match, autonomous and challenging tasks, flexible working arrangements, brand image, and location near hometown are the propellers for continuing service in organisations. Contrarily, hierarchical/dominant approach, humiliation, lack of respect and recognition, biased approach – different rules for different people, monotonous and boring assignments, and uncompetitive pay are the propellers for not continuing service in organisations. Humiliation, lack of flexible arrangements, and overwork are the causes for employees’ absenteeism. Research limitations/implications – This study is not without limitations. First, there were some critical incidents with apparent overlapping content areas. To overcome this situation, the authors decided to give preference to the primary theme emerging out of an incident. Second, the observations made in this study were limited to descriptions of what happened in only three organisations. This limits the ability to generalise the results. Practical implications – Organisations can train supervisors to develop people-centric communication practices, communicate with respect and recognition, implement flexible working arrangements, improve job design, involve employees in important decisions, offer them with autonomous and challenging tasks, so that employees realise their full potential and become happy contributors to their organisations. Originality/value – The study attempted to capture employees’ lived experiences and provided them with narrations of situations that are commonly and uniquely experienced.

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