Delivering Bad News in an Organisation: A Literature Review

Literature
review

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Part 1............................................................................................................................................3
Part 2............................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Delivering bad news is responsibility of managers and leaders. They have to patiently handle
and tackle situations where they have to tell some bad news to colleagues or juniors. There is
need to have a positive approach towards telling people about their lacking (Yi and et. al. 2020).
Managers have to adopt a proper framework in order to provide bad news in front of co-workers
or juniors. The following report discusses about analysis of literature review on the topic
“Delivering bad news in an organisation”.
Part 1
According to the views of Van Keer and et. Al, (2019), delivering bad news is essential
for the processing of any organisation as there are various situations where leaders have to face
decline in sales or no profit. There is major responsibility of leaders and human resource
representatives to deliver bad news to subordinates and employees. There is need for using small
talks or conversations for minimising discomfort of bad news. There are various types of
workplace bad news including not receiving a raise, promotion, change in work hours or benefits
and poor performance review. There are lot of theories involved in delivering bad news at
workplace. The theoretical perspective includes impression management theory, justice theory
and coping theory. According to the impression management theory, it is stated that self-
presentation is defined as subconscious and conscious process by which individuals attempt for
influencing perception of other object, people or event. This is done by regulating and
controlling data and information associated with social interactions.
As per the views of O’Rourke and et. al., (2020), in context of coping theory, it is stated
that delivering of bad news is regarding distressing for the individuals who deliver bad news. It
is essential to deliver concern and manage the providing of important framework used for
analysing challenges of bad news. There are lot of dilemmas which are faced while working in
the organisations and delivering bad news. One of this is blaming avoidance and accepting
responsibility. It is very essential for managers to avoid any type of negative consequence that
can occur while delivering of bad news. When managers try to avoid blaming then they can
easily manage different dysfunctional consequences that arise at workplace. Another dilemma is
honesty and truth versus full disclosure. This is seen that main challenge for dealing with bad
news revolves around managing and keeping employees engaged as well as motivated.