Abstract
•A model was proposed to understand the role of internal communication on employees’ management of change during a pandemic.•An online survey was conducted with full-time employees in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic•Transparent internal communication encourages employees to adopt control coping strategy to proactively manage changes.•Transparent internal communication can reduce employees’ change-related uncertainty.•Transparent communication along with control coping strategy foster healthy relationships between employees and their organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses and organizations to implement changes to manage operational and economic challenges. Understanding how employees manage such changes during the process is critical to the success of organizations. Integrating the literature from transparent internal communication, the transactional theory of stress and coping, and organizational change research, this study proposes a theoretical model to understand the role of internal communication and its effects on employees’ management of organizational change. An online survey was conducted with 490 full-time employees in the U.S. during the second and third weeks of April 2020. The findings of this study demonstrate that transparent internal communication can help encourage problem-focused control coping, reduce uncertainty, and foster employee-organization relationships during organizational change. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
