Delivering Bad News in an Organisation: A Literature Review

This literature review discusses the challenges faced by managers and leaders while delivering bad news in an organisation. It covers different theoretical perspectives, such as impression management theory, justice theory, and coping theory, and provides insights on how to handle such situations effectively.

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.

As stated by (Holt, Bobocel and Chen, (2021), delivering bad news is one of the toughest
role played by managers within an organization. In order to deliver bad news managers within an
organization should prepare themselves psychologically for explaining about situation to
organization. Manager should develop emotional stability within themselves which gives
positive approach to employees working within an organization. This makes managers handle
situation well with an outstanding approach. Through psychological aspect band news can be
delivered in positive manner making employees work with more effectiveness. Also the
perspective leads upon making managers attain stability over impact of bad news created within
an organization. Then documentation is required to be focused upon documentation through
which important information upon business gets circulated more effectively. Documentation
should be done in proper manner which makes important information marked out properly. In
this various activities of performance gets managed more effectively documents should be
maintained proper in case bas new is regarding employee’s dismissal. Further, proper
documentation should be done helping in making mangers circulated malformation more
effectively.
According to the views of Gold and Gold (2018), calibrating exceptions the badness of
any outcome is, in part, a function of expectations. The importance of expectations is found in
how managers say no to budget requests, a common type of bad news for managers to deliver.
Since saying no left them open as a target for blame, some managers focused their efforts on
minimizing the number of subordinate requests. These efforts involved calibrating the
expectations of subordinates about resource availability prior to any request. A similar
calibration process is central to realistic job previews. In the realistic job preview, employers
provide job applicants with information on the positive and negative aspects of the job. It helps
in developing various rules and regulations lead upon making mangers develop positivity which
makes business goals and objectives achieved in more effective manner.
According to the views of Dawson and et. al., (2021), Coalition building is based over creating
legitimacy related over failure, mangers seeking upon supporting and protecting key employees
of an organization if bad news impacts them drastically creating problem in working for them.
This based over factors like product quality problems and loss of major customer that impacts
organizations growth directly. Before delivering bad news to boss it is required to be sleeked
over key and powerful people making organization over arriving happening upon building

supporting internally making objectives of management achieved more effectively with proper
impact (Baran and Sanders, 2019). This make support build over political signal upon making
information to be conveyed upon delivering objectives in relation to management. Thus
managers should make information circulated with proper details making business environment
improved more effectively. Also management is able to deliver bad new with a positive impact.
Part 2
I have learnt how to deliver bad news within organisations and also understood different ways to
manage the delivering of such information to colleagues and co-workers. I have used Gibbs
model of reflection which is the most valuable model for providing personal experience on any
aspect or topic. In this particular report, I need to provide my personal experience as managers
who provide bad news to their employees. While addressing this qualitative analysis, I went
across various phases of delivering bad news . I got to know what challenges managers and
leaders have to face while conveying any bad news like demotion, non performance, no
promotion and many more.
Many employees of our organisation demand appraisal in their salary so that their needs
and desired can be fulfil. The top level managers of the organisation have appointed me as
manager which deals with those employees who demand appraisal. The role of me is to convince
the employees that company are not in a position to provide appraisal at a time with the help of
some bad news.
At the time when management assigned this duty to me I feel very uncomfortable that
how can I convince such types of employees in the organisation. There are many threats which I
have to faced that stroked from employees, leaving jobs and many more. But as the time goes
and I started gathered information in relation to this the things becomes easy and I am able to
convince the employees. At the last of this project, I have considerable level of confident that I
can solve another related problem. It is to be understood that delivering a bad news and
managing employees with a smile and continuously motivating them is not at all easy. There is
need for tackling this situation peacefully
There are both positive and negative aspect are present in this task. The positive aspect of this
project is that it helps me to develop different types of skills in my personality and the negative
aspect of this project is that I have to face criticism from employees which hurts very much.

In this particular report I have to convince the employees demanding appraisal from the company
which is a difficult task. It is required for me that I discussed various types of issues faces by
company with each employee. There have to interact with them softly and tell them that now the
company are not in a position to provide them appraisal because of COVID-19 pandemic. This
article stated that organisational leaders initiate bad news with a complimentary statement. This
makes situation less problematic to handle.
There are different types of skills, I have learned due to this task assigned by company. Such
skills are communication skills, interaction skills and many working skills are also present in
them which I developed while doing this projects. One of the negative part of this task assigned
by the management to me is that employees has negative thinking about me. It is very important
for me that I have developed effective relationship with the employees of the organisation so that
I can handle this type of image later. There is need for managing important tasks including bad
news delivery. I have concluded that employees must be raising voice and ask questions which
makes fairness created upon taking decision in more effective way. Through opportunity over
raising voice presentation of information making better decision to be taken helping in restricting
bad impact of bad news over an organization. In this various kinds of aspects in relation over
conflict upon information has been used making bad news delivered more effectively. It is
possible for me that I have developed different types of skills in my personality so that I can
solve these type of problems in my later life. It is very important for me that I have develop
effective negotiation skills so that I can make solve the disputes held between the employees in
the organisation. Practical situations must be properly managed and it should be ensured that no
employee is emotionally while delivering bad news.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it is concluded that delivering of bad news in organisation
requires proper framework. There are different phases involved in delivering of bad news
including preparation, delivery and transition. It is essential for leaders and managers to have
practical implementation of working in context of organisation as well as managerial role.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baran, C.N. and Sanders, J.J., 2019. Communication skills: delivering bad news, conducting a
goals of care family meeting, and advance care planning. Primary Care: Clinics in
Office Practice, 46(3), pp.353-372.
Dawson, R.M and et. al., 2021. “I Felt The Connection”: A Qualitative Exploration of
Standardized Patients’ Experiences in a Delivering Bad News Scenario. Clinical
Simulation in Nursing, 55, pp.52-58.
Gold, R. and Gold, A., 2018. Delivering bad news: Attitudes, feelings, and practice
characteristics among speech-language pathologists. American Journal of Speech-
Language Pathology, 27(1), pp.108-122.
Holt, L., Bobocel, D.R. and Chen, V., 2021. Delivering bad news fairly: Higher construal level
promotes interactional justice enactment through perspective taking. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 42(6), pp.708-725.
O’Rourke, S.R and et. al., 2020. The emotional and behavioral impact of delivering bad news to
virtual versus real standardized patients: a pilot study. Teaching and Learning in
Medicine, 32(2), pp.139-149.
Van Keer, R.L and et. al, 2019. Challenges in delivering bad news in a multi-ethnic intensive
care unit: An ethnographic study. Patient Education and Counseling, 102(12), pp.2199-
2207.
Yi, J and et. al. 2020. Oncologists’ Experience of Delivering Bad News in Korea. OMEGA-
Journal of Death and Dying, p.0030222820944087.