Sustainable Business Communication Management – are Negative Messages to be Avoided or just Communicated Properly?

Implementation of organizational communication, and education on managing communication processes and their correlation to business success are central to sustainable business management. In this regards, negative messages as part of business communication may have poor outcomes and it is widely and wrongly considered that they should be avoided. However, negative messages are an essential element of every business organization, they cannot be avoided and are of high importance for leading sustainable management. This is why an educated and thoughtful approach to communication is required. The main goal of this article is to determine the notion of negative messages, as well as to present the extent of negative messages in the everyday communication of an organization, and emphasize the importance of acquiring skills necessary for a direct and indirect approach to the communication process

A Must Lie Situation: Avoiding Giving Negative Feedback

We examine under what conditions people provide accurate feedback to others. We use feedback regarding attractiveness, a trait people care about, and for which objective information is hard to obtain. Our results show that people avoid giving accurate face-to-face feedback to less attractive individuals, even if lying in this context comes at a monetary cost to both the person who gives the feedback and the receiver. A substantial increase of these costs does not increase the accuracy of feedback. However, when feedback is provided anonymously, the aversion to giving negative feedback is reduced

Beliefs and actions: How a shift in confidence affects choices

Confidence is often seen as the key to success. Empirical evidence about whether such beliefs causally map into actions is, however, sparse. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the causal effect of an increase in confidence about one’s own ability on two central choices made by workers in the labor market: choosing between jobs with different incentive schemes, and the subsequent choice of how much effort to exert within the job. An increase in confidence leads to an increase in self-selection into uncertain ability-contingent payment schemes. This is detrimental for low ability workers. Policy implications are discussed

Confidence and Career Choices: An Experiment

Confidence is often seen as the key to success. Empirical evidence about whether such beliefs causally map into actions is, however, sparse. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the causal effect of an increase in confidence about one’s own ability on two central choices made by workers in the labor market: choosing between jobs with different incentive schemes, and the subsequent choice of how much effort to exert within the job. Using a hard-easy task manipulation to shift beliefs, we find that beliefs can be shifted, which in turn shifts decisions. In our setting, the beliefs of low ability individuals are more malleable than those of high ability individuals. Therefore, the treatment induces an increase in confidence and detrimental decision making by low ability workers but does not affect the outcomes of high ability workers. Men and women react similarly to the treatment. However, men hold higher baseline beliefs, implying that women make better incentive choice decisions. Policy implications regarding pre-labor market confidence development by means of feedback and grade inflation are discussed.JEL: C91, D03,M50,J2

Punishment’s Role in Voluntary Contribution : An Experimental Analysis on the Elements Influencing Contribution and Punishment

How do we know what we know? How do we react to what we know of what has happened to us? How do we choose to decide to act based on those reactions? Where would we end up after all that process? Many studies have been conducted on the subject of human behavior and as we have seen, it is a multidimensional concept. Every decision we make has deeper roots and causes than meets the eye. When those causes are proven, they are considered to be understood and justified. However, those remaining to be proven are still feared or considered to be random. We also know that analyzing and considering the reasons and root causes behind our actions could improve our personal lives as well as our lives in society. Boundaries, rules and policy makings would all improve as the knowledge and understanding grow. This thesis analyzes some of the elements influencing voluntary contribution and punishment using laboratory experiment sessions, a questionnaire and data from real life board gaming sessions. The results show that the participants make decisions based on various reasons that were caused by their past experiences in the games, their current situation and the future goals and ideals they have. Whether in a person's own decision making process or judgments over actions taken by others, contribution was mostly considered as good. It was rewarded and low contribution was punished. Punishments were mostly considered as good when they were justified in a participant’s mind as serving justice and were considered as cruel when they were not considered fair. Many elements in the experiments’ and causal board gaming sessions caused emotional reactions that resulted in various decisions being made. Generally, knowledge and experience in the situations a person ended up in helped them navigate through emotions and make more satisfying decisions

Strategy Map Effects on Managers' Strategy Revision Judgments

Managers make strategy revision judgments, which are judgments that affect how well the firm can revise its strategy when new information comes to light. Using two studies, my dissertation examines how formatting the firm’s strategy as a strategy map affects two types of strategy revision judgments. First, I study middle managers’ judgments on passing along new information to upper management. Second, I study managers’ judgments of the relevance of new information and the appropriateness of the firm’s strategy. In my first study, I find that middle managers are more likely to withhold new information from upper management when they feel that information would be less impressive to upper management. Middle managers also tend to punish their subordinates with less positive performance evaluations when the subordinates provide them with such less impressive information. However, middle managers with sufficient experience who receive a strategy map are more likely to pass along such less impressive information to upper management than those with comparable experience who do not receive a strategy map. In my second study, I find that receiving a strategy map improves managers’ judgements of the relevance of new information. I also find that receiving a strategy map improves managers’ judgments about the appropriateness of the firm’s strategy in light of this new information. However, I find this latter effect depends on whether it is easy to understand the cause-and-effect relationships depicted in a strategy map. Finally, in an extensions chapter, I propose three neuroimaging studies that extend the above studies. One of these neuroimaging studies more fully describes the motivation, theory, and method of the study. This study approaches the relationship between strategy maps and strategy revision differently, extending prior research that suggests a strategy map leads workers to better allocate effort between short-term focused and long-term focused activities. I hope to provide evidence on the neural processing, and thus the thought processes, that underlie this prior finding. Such evidence would improve practitioners’ predictions of how long the effect would persist over time, which informs practitioners about whether to revise the firm’s strategy to include a strategy map