Top – Down Communication During a Pandemic
Our presentation is about how top-down communication has been affected specifically during a pandemic. Leaders are responsible for creating an authentic work environment, whether it be for schools or businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic has been devastating all over the world, and leaders can lack communication between employees/students. The inauthenticity that leaders have been showing in terms of the pandemic has led to job insecurity and people not knowing what their futures would look like.
Akkermans, J., Richardson, J., & Kraimer, M. L. (2020, May 8). The COVID-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior. Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001879120300592
Akkermans, Richardson, and Kraimer report on how the Covid-19 pandemic causes both positive and negative career shocks. The pandemic is a disorderly effect that struck the world in all career fields, with some gaining job security and some losing that safe career choice. The authors describe this pandemic as a learning curve for what route employees will choose for the next global disaster, and how they will find job security without being laid off from a corporation. The switch to online environments has left employees stranded with a lack of leadership, short term, and long term. Disrupted by the pandemic, employees develop new technological, communicative, and behavioral skills from switching to online circumstances.
Anderson, C., & Thompson, L. L. (2004, June 24). Affect from the top down: How powerful individuals’ positive affect shapes negotiations. www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp. Retrieved February 9, 2022.
Anderson and Thompson address the issue of individuals in power affects their decisions and long-term outcomes for the better of their environment. The article sustains the knowledge and research of negotiations between separate parties and what that would look like when one party has power over the other. The main outcome from their research experiment that Anderson and Thompson were looking for was more positive effects that focused on the less powerful negotiators. They used emotion and excitement, as well as sensory subjects to accumulate a result for their hypothesis.
Fest, S., Kvaløy, O., Nieken, P., & Schöttner, A. (2021, July 27). How (not) to motivate online workers: Two controlled field experiments on leadership in the Gig Economy. The Leadership Quarterly. Retrieved February 2, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984321000199
While our focus is how a pandemic affects top-down communication within a workplace, it is especially important to look at how it affects an online workplace. After all, most places of work have reverted to some sort of an online setting. In this article, Fest does a terrific job explaining how in most online environments the relationship between a supervisor or boss and an employee often lacks meaning and a personable connection that in turns causes lack of employee motivation. Using the described information and other small details within the article, this will allow our paper to have quality information on online leadership and how it affects managers and their employees morale and performance.
Ibeawuchi, N., Nwagbara, U., Alhassan, Y., & Brown, C. (2021). Leading Change in Difficult Times: The Role of Effective Leadership in Confronting Educational Challenges of Coronavirus Pandemic. Economic Insights. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from http://ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=150806705&site=ehost-live
Effective Leadership not only can improve managerial skills but can also improve learning skills in education based settings. This article is beneficial since our project is about effective top-down communication in organizations during the pandemic. Leading through the pandemic and learning could “engender new strategies in educational institutions”. This paper gives insight to the advantages of leadership in schools during the pandemic, but also it’s challenges. It brings up important questions about how good leadership can lead to organizational success. Using this info bosses and leaders can come up with better ways of top-down communication to enforce a greater workspace and organization during a crisis.
Longmuir, F. (2021, July 5). Leading in lockdown: Community … – journals.sagepub.com. Sage Journals . Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17411432211027634
Schools in Melbourne, Australia were forced to move to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. School leaders were suddenly tasked with guiding their community through this unprecedented situation. The author of this article, Fiona Longmuir, interviewed eight school leaders on their responses and experiences during Melbourne’s first lockdown which lasted ten weeks. The interview identified four major overarching themes: connection to the community, crucial communication, care and compassion, and possibilities and potential. Although this article is from a school’s perspective, this applies when looking at how the pandemic has affected top-down communication. School leaders are at the top of the leadership chain and have the task of managing teachers, students and even parents. Having the experiences of the interviewed school leaders would greatly benefit businesses as they have similar hierarchical systems.
Potter, R.E., Zadow, A., Dollard, M., Pignata, S., Lushington, K. (2021). Digital communication, health & wellbeing in universities: a double-edged sword. Researchgate.Net. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachael-Potter/publication/354401704_Digital_Communication_Health_Wellbeing_in_Universities_A_Double-Edged_Sword/links/6136fdd62b40ec7d8bed6057/Digital-Communication-Health-Wellbeing-in-Universities-A-Double-Edged-Sword.pdf
Digital communication has effects on health, well being, and work environments in both negative and positive ways. This article illustrates the ways in which good management is important for digital communication and having a positive or resourceful impact on organizations. It is important to our project as we are focusing on the importance of communication, specifically top-down communication, during things such as the pandemic and managing online alternatives for education and working that have resulted from it. Strengths in digital communication, including “flexibility, collaboration and access to resources, a sense of continual accessibility and connectivity to work, information overload and interpersonal relationships”, are crucial for employees and organizations to succeed.
Zandan, N., & Shalett, L. (2021, January 6). What inclusive leaders sound like. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2020/11/what-inclusive-leaders-sounds-like
Zandan and Shalett began a research project that would demonstrate how inclusive leaders would sound to different racial groups based on the leaders’ speaking behaviors. Using speaking behavior that pertains to the audience is the most effective way of positive communication between a leader and their listeners. Leaders who address employees’ concerns head-on make the biggest impact in terms of respect from employees. Additionally, the analysis of inauthentic vs. authentic leadership comes into play when building connections with employees by showing vulnerability and motion when working through conflict.
Sophia Smith, Amy Oblander, Eian Snyder, Megan Ramirez, and Alex Yakabu