Business Communication: A Literature Review on Delivering Bad News

This literature review examines the complexities of delivering bad news within a business context, highlighting its impact on individuals and organizations. It explores various strategies professionals employ to mitigate negative responses, including performance correction, blame management, and building support. The review also discusses the importance of a multiphase delivery process encompassing preparation, delivery, and transition. Furthermore, it delves into the methodologies used for collecting and analyzing information related to this topic, emphasizing qualitative approaches such as semi-structured interviews and the application of interpretivism research philosophy. The review concludes by underscoring the challenges inherent in delivering bad news and the significance of strategic functions in ensuring effective communication.

Literature review of a current business
concept and identification of an
appropriate methodology

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
PART 1............................................................................................................................................3
Explaining Bad News..................................................................................................................3
Impact of bad news on individuals..............................................................................................4
Delivery of Bad News: Multiphase procedure............................................................................4
Analysis of delivering bad news.................................................................................................5
PART 2............................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
In an organisation there are two types of news that include good news as well as bad
news. It is very common to understand that delivery of good news creates positive impact on
employees but delivery of bad news creates negative impact on workforce. There are many
organisations that have included delivery of bad news as the center of many organisational
procedure (Sobczak, Leoniuk and Janaszczyk, 2020). It has been identified that there is no
integrative framework that could help in delivering the bad news to all the employees. In the
current project, the piece of information is included that clearly describes how professionals
deliver bad news in their working organisation as duty of their occupation. This also involves
information that determines the strategic functions considered by management to decrease the
impact of negative response due to delivery of bad news. It also highlights the various dilemmas
faced by managers while delivering bad news (Maranna, 2019).
PART 1
An employee works in an organisation and has to see different types of news be it good
or bad. In an organisation life is punctuated by different kinds of bad news (Maunder and
Maguire, 2017). It is determined that bad news could be an almost regular or daily phenomenon
and it could be explained as feedback from supervisors for negative performance, bad customer
service, lay-offs of employees, termination of employees etc.
Explaining Bad News
Bad news is known as an important conceptual problem that has not received major
attention from management scholars. A review has been conducted how people behave in good
events as well as bad events. In this analysis, it has been identified that good news is referred to
be pleasant, beneficial and desirable. On the other hand bad news is referred as news that is not
good and totally opposite of good news (Stivers and Timmermans, 2017). In simpler words bad
news is unpleasant, harmful and undesirable for an individual. It is identified that bad news is
negative piece of information but the question involves is which aspect of the piece of
information explains the degree of badness. It is being identified that there are two common
approaches for studying bad news. One of the approaches is focussing on some kind of negative
information that generally individuals agree is bad news. This is the approach that includes
feedback for negative performance, termination of employees and job layoffs.

Another kind of common approach is asking the participants to explain the bad news.
This is the approach that is generally considered in qualitative studies for the delivery of bad
news. Some of the example of this approach are: regularly delivering bad news, blame
management and refusal of requests. These both approaches have provided very little attention
for the definition of bad news. According to the world of medicine, bad news refers to the piece
of information that puts negative impact on an individual's expectations for future. Another
definition that defines bad news refers to the news that negatively alters individual point of view
for the future.
Impact of bad news on individuals
According to Berkey, Wiedemer and Vithalani (2018), it has been identified that bad
news or events are more powerful as compared to good news or events. In simpler language it
could be said that bad events have negative impact and consequences on employees in an
organisation. Bad news wear off slowly than good news and events. It is also determined that bad
events are five times powerful in comparison to good events.
Delivery of Bad News: Multiphase procedure
There are many professionals such as law enforcement officials, doctors and coroners.
But managers are the individuals who are known as occupational delivers for delivering bad
news to their subordinates. The managers could use multiphase process for delivering bad news
to their employees. The three phases are: preparation, delivery and transition. In the preparation
stage managers could give advance warning to employees, providing the opportunity for voice
etc. In the delivery stage, manager could decide timing of the delivery, face management and
self-presentation etc. In the transition process, managers could engage public relations, providing
an appeal procedure etc. Basically these phases help manager to manage various bad news
activities and every activity is related with more positive point of view about the news, blame
and less anger, higher sense of fairness and higher approval of individual providing the news.
This is the phases that are included in framework for delivering bad news to people internal to a
company i.e. upward and downward. Bad news are not delivered externally in corporate annual
reports (Lavelle, Folger and Manegold, 2016).

Analysis of delivering bad news
The managers of an organisation could easily adopt strategic functions for delivering bad
news to their employees in a better manner so that the negative impact of bad news could be
reduced. One of the effective ways to deliver bad news is performance correction as it is the
primary function to track as part of public relations tasks (Grossman, 2021). In the performance
correction, activities are included such as creating a paper trail and this gives chance for
providing factual foundation for the purpose of behavioural change and the another way is
scapegoating in which manager could easily remove the person who is responsible for the failure
or any loss. Another way is blame management in which managers could focus on influencing
the casual judgement of receiver as an important function of blame management activities.
Another way is building support and commitment in which managers could provide opportunity
to employees and create more public relation activities.

PART 2
Methodology refers to the methodologies that are used for collecting and analysing
information in proper and systematic manner. In the present report also different type of
methodologies are also used which are explained below in proper manner. It is the particular
technique and procedure used for identifying, processing, selecting and analysing piece of
information related to the topic (Babii, 2020). Basically, this is the section that assists in
evaluating reliability and validity of overall gathered information.
Research Philosophy: Research philosophy is referred as belief that assists in finding out
appropriate method for examining information in systematic and proper way. The research
philosophy is mainly divided into three main parts that are: ontology, epistemology and
axiology. The researcher could use epistemology philosophy as it is the best philosophy to
evaluate gathered piece of information. It is also divided into three sub types that are: positivism,
interpretivism and critical realism. Investigator could choose interpretivism philosophy because
it helps in analysing qualitative information in systematic way without taking longer period of
time. Interpretivism research philosophy is focuses on piece of information that is in more theory
format.
Qualitative Methodology: Qualitative methodology is used for investigating culture that
include the analysis and collection of existing theoretical and text information. This includes
newspapers articles, letters and diaries, postcards, archival information etc. In simpler words,
qualitative methodology is defined as research method that is concerned about obtaining piece of
information through conversational and open-ended communication. Researcher has based upon
the whole report on qualitative methodology because it focuses on information that is in
theoretical form (Bairagi and Munot, 2019).
Qualitative data collection technique: Qualitative data collection techniques refer to the
techniques that help in collecting information that is available in theory and text form. There are
various types of data collection techniques that include: unstructured interview, focused group,
structured interview, diary studies and many more. For collecting the high quality information
for the present report, researcher could select semi-structure interview. This helps in gathering
great piece of information as interview has open-ended questions and this assists in collecting
opinions and views in detailed manner (Säfsten and Gustavsson, 2020).

Sampling: Sampling is the research methodology that facilitates in selecting particular
number of samples from the provided large number of population. It is not an easy task to
interview whole people respondents to gather information and for this sampling methodology is
used. It is being divided into two main types that are: probability and non-probability sampling.
Researcher could choose probability sampling because there is no specific requirement for
selecting respondents. Managers are chosen randomly without any criteria because they are the
people who are generally responsible in an organisation to deliver bad news in the organisation
(Devi, 2017).
Access: For conducting the report it is necessary to have access for primary as well as
secondary information. While gathering data from managers it is necessary to take access from
their working organisation.
Ethical considerations: Ethics are defined as a component that is necessary while
collecting data from any source. In the present report also researcher has made sure to take
permission before using any confidential information and do not harm chosen respondents while
collecting piece of information (Clarke and Visser, 2019).

CONCLUSION
From the above gathered information it is summarised that it is not an easy task to deliver
bad news to subordinates, superiors and high authorities. In this report different phases are
explained that could be used by managers in an organisation to present bad news in a better
manner. Some of the strategic functions are: blame management, performance correction,
building support and commitment, self-management etc.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Babii, A., 2020. Important aspects of the experimental research methodology. Вісник
Тернопільського національного технічного університету, 97(1), pp.77-87.
Bairagi, V. and Munot, M.V. eds., 2019. Research methodology: A practical and scientific
approach. CRC Press.
Berkey, F.J., Wiedemer, J.P. and Vithalani, N.D., 2018. Delivering bad or life-altering
news. American family physician, 98(2), pp.99-104.
Clarke, E. and Visser, J., 2019. Pragmatic research methodology in education: possibilities and
pitfalls. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 42(5), pp.455-469.
Devi, P.S., 2017. Research methodology: A handbook for beginners. Notion Press.
Grossman, L., 2021. The use of humour in order to deliver bad news in an efficient way.
Lavelle, J.J., Folger, R. and Manegold, J.G., 2016. Delivering bad news: How procedural
unfairness affects messengers’ distancing and refusals. Journal of Business
Ethics, 136(1), pp.43-55.
Maranna, S., 2019. Educating sonographers in attributes of “breaking bad news” to foster
positive emotional well‐being. Sonography, 6(4), pp.178-190.
Maunder, E.Z. and Maguire, D., 2017. Breaking bad news: the need for a coping mechanism in
paramedicine. International Paramedic Practice, 7(1), pp.3-7.
Säfsten, K. and Gustavsson, M., 2020. Research methodology: for engineers and other problem-
solvers.
Sobczak, K., Leoniuk, K. and Janaszczyk, A., 2020. Delivering bad news in the perspective of
patient rights. Pomeranian Journal of Life Sciences, 66(3).
Stivers, T. and Timmermans, S., 2017. Always look on the bright side of life: making bad news
bivalent. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(4), pp.404-418.