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Research summary: The attention-based view (ABV) has highlighted the role of organizational attention in strategic decision making and adaptation. The tendency to view communication channels as \"pipes and prisms\" for information processing has, however, limited its ability to address strategic change. We propose a broader role for communication as a process by which actors can attend to and engage with organizational and environmental issues and initiatives and argue that such a view can significantly advance understanding of strategic change. On this basis, we offer suggestions for future research on communication practices, vocabularies, rhetorical tactics, and talk and text in shaping organizational attention in strategic change. We also maintain that this enhanced view of the ABV can help advance research on dynamic capabilities, strategy processes, strategy-as-practice, and behavioral strategy. Managerial summary: To further enhance our capabilities to manage strategic change and renewal processes in organizations, we need a better understanding of how to manage organizational attention. In this article, we highlight the importance of understanding the role of communication and discuss the use of different communication practices, vocabularies, rhetorical tactics, and talk and text as possible levers that can be used to dynamically shape organizational attention. We call for further research to advance the understanding of how these levers can be used to influence the ways in which different sets of strategic issues, initiatives, and action alternatives are handled. We believe that such an enhanced view of organizational attention can enable the development of new, improved strategy practices to manage strategic change and renewal processes.

This paper offers a theory of communication visibility based on a field study of the implementation of a new enterprise social networking site in a large financial services organization. The emerging theory suggests that once invisible communication occurring between others in the organization becomes visible for third parties, those third parties could improve their metaknowledge (i.e., knowledge of who knows what and who knows whom ). Communication visibility, in this case made possible by the enterprise social networking site, leads to enhanced awareness of who knows what and whom through two interrelated mechanisms: message transparency and network translucence. Seeing the contents of other’s messages helps third-party observers make inferences about coworkers' knowledge. Tangentially, seeing the structure of coworkers' communication networks helps third-party observers make inferences about those with whom coworkers regularly communicate. The emerging theory further suggests that enhanced metaknowledge can lead to more innovative products and services and less knowledge duplication if employees learn to work in new ways. By learning vicariously rather than through experience, workers can more effectively recombine existing ideas into new ideas and avoid duplicating work. Moreover, they can begin to proactively aggregate information perceived daily rather than engaging in reactive search after confronting a problem. I discuss the important implications of this emerging theory of communication visibility for work in the knowledge economy.

PurposeThe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak thrust a spotlight on organizational leaders and the challenges that employees face during periods of organizational change. The purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of empathetic supervisor communication on employee turnover intention and the mediating role of affective trust toward supervisors and employee–organization relationship (EOR) quality. Informed by the social exchange theory and EOR literature, the authors develop a model in which affective trust toward supervisors and EOR quality mediates the relationship between empathetic supervisor communication and employee turnover intention.Design/methodology/approachThis study recruited 417 employees based in the USA through an online panel operated by a professional survey company. Data collection that followed a quota sampling procedure lasted for about three weeks in October 2020. The authors used structural equation modeling to test the study hypotheses.FindingsThe findings of this study indicated that the extent to which supervisors adopted empathetic communication during organizational change had considerable repercussions on their supervisees' affective trust toward supervisors, relationship perception toward their organizations, and ultimately, their turnover intention.Originality/valueThis study is among the first that identifies empathetic communication as a pivotal force in driving employees' positive relational and behavioral reactions, reinforcing the growing expectation of supervisors in fulfilling communication functions during organizational change. Moreover, the authors contribute to understanding change management as an activity rooted in and enacted through communication between supervisors and subordinates. In addition, this study contributes to the organizational research of empathy during change.

The argument proffered in this paper is that use of enterprise social networking technologies can increase the accuracy of people’s metaknowledge (knowledge of “who knows what” and “who knows whom”) at work. The results of a quasi-natural field experiment in which only one of two matched-sample groups within a large financial services firm was given access to the enterprise social networking technology for six months revealed that by making people’s communications with specific partners visible to others in the organization, the technology enabled observers to become aware of the communications occurring amongst their coworkers and to make inferences about what and whom those coworkers knew based on the contents of the messages they sent and to whom they were sent. Consequently only individuals in the group that used the social networking technology for six months improved the accuracy of their metaknowledge (a 31% improvement in knowledge of who knows what and an 88% improvement in knowledge of who knows whom). There were no improvements in the other group over the same time period. Based on these findings, how technologically enabled “ambient awareness”—awareness of ambient communications occurring amongst others in the organization—can be an important antecedent for knowledge acquisition is discussed.

Extant communication theories predate the explosion of digital formats and technological advances such as virtual reality, which likely explains their predominant focus on traditional and format-level (e.g., face-to-face, email) rather than digital or characteristic-level (e.g., visual cues, synchronicity) design decisions. Firms thus lack insights into how to create and use emerging digital formats, individually or synergistically. To establish a holistic framework of bilateral multiformat communication for relationship marketing, this article reviews communication theory to establish a foundation for understanding multiformat communication and to identify any gaps (e.g., AI agents, simulated cues). The authors then review bilateral communication research in light of the identified theoretical gaps, to inform their framework. Finally, by decomposing these formats according to six fundamental characteristics, they predict how each characteristic might promote effective, efficient, and experiential communication goals, in light of distinct message, temporal, and dyadic factors. Ultimately, these combined insights reveal an overarching framework, with characteristic-level propositions grouped into five key themes, that can serve as a platform for academics and managers to develop multiformat communication theory and relationship strategies.

Our research examines how knowledge professionals use mobile email devices to get their work done and the implications of such use for their autonomy to control the location, timing, and performance of work. We found that knowledge professionals using mobile email devices to manage their communication were enacting a norm of continual connectivity and accessibility that produced a number of contradictory outcomes. Although individual use of mobile email devices offered these professionals flexibility, peace of mind, and control over interactions in the short term, it also intensified collective expectations of their availability, escalating their engagement and thus reducing their ability to disconnect from work. Choosing to use their mobile email devices to work anywhere/anytime—actions they framed as evidence of their personal autonomy—the professionals were ending up using it everywhere/all the time, thus diminishing their autonomy in practice. This autonomy paradox reflected professionals’ ongoing navigation of the tension between their interests in personal autonomy on the one hand and their professional commitment to colleagues and clients on the other. We further found that this dynamic has important unintended consequences—reaffirming and challenging workers’ sense of themselves as autonomous and responsible professionals while also collectively shifting the norms of how work is and should be performed in the contemporary workplace.

The concept of guanxi (i.e., a close and pervasive interpersonal relationship) has received little attention in the literature on online marketplaces, perhaps due to their impersonal nature. However, we propose that computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies can mimic traditional interactive face-to-face communications, thus enabling a form of guanxi in online marketplaces. Extending the literature on traditional guanxi, we herein introduce the concept of swift guanxi, conceptualized as the buyer’s perception of a swiftly formed interpersonal relationship with a seller, which consists of mutual understanding, reciprocal favors, and relationship harmony. Integrating theories of CMC and guanxi, we develop a model that explains how a set of CMC tools (i.e., instant messaging, message box, feedback system) facilitate repeat transactions with sellers by building swift guanxi and trust through interactivity and presence (social presence and telepresence) with sellers. Longitudinal data from 338 buyers in TaoBao, China’s leading online marketplace, support our structural model, showing that the buyers’ effective use of CMC tools enable swift guanxi and trust by enhancing the buyers’ perceptions of interactivity and presence. In turn, swift guanxi and trust predict buyers’ repurchase intentions and their actual repurchases from sellers. We discuss the implications of swift guanxi in online marketplaces with the aid of CMC technologies.

Purpose Although the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has been estimated to be up to 56% in the last decade, the adoption rate of AI for communication activities is still low. The lack of in-depth literature on the subject, and the limited sharing of the experience gained by companies, limits the creation, dissemination and consolidation of understanding in this area. The purpose of this study is to solve the problem of the absence of knowledge, identification, skills development and introduction of an innovation (such as the AI in the business communication) in the company, with the principles of knowledge management (KM). Design/methodology/approach This study adopts the perspective of KM to provide guidelines for the definition of standards and facilitate the introduction of AI in business communication. Findings To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to relate the perspectives of business communication, AI and KM, activating a virtuous circle between KM and AI. At the centre of the proposed model are people, processes and technologies, based on which KM represents the ideal perspective to define the implementation of AI. This is primarily from the perspective of augmented intelligence, owing to the inability of AI to completely replace humans in the business communication processes, as it lacks, among others, emotional intelligence. Research limitations/implications This study finds in KM a possible strategy to solve the problems faced so far in applying AI in business communication processes, providing a model capable of transforming and adapting itself to the context, thanks to the open approach. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by linking the introduction of emerging technology (AI) in a specific process, such as business communication, from the KM perspective.

In this study, we examined the relationship between workplace negative gossip, as perceived by the targets, and proactive behavior by focusing on the mediating role of the target's emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of the target's traditionality. Our results from dyadic data on 234 supervisor–subordinate relationships in China revealed that (1) workplace negative gossip was negatively related to proactive behavior; (2) emotional exhaustion mediated this relationship; and (3) traditionality strengthened both the relationship between workplace negative gossip and emotional exhaustion and the indirect effect of workplace negative gossip on proactive behavior via emotional exhaustion. Our findings have a number of theoretical and practical implications for the research on mistreatment and proactive behavior.