Internal Crisis Communication and Affective Commitment in Ohio Small Businesses: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses had to deal with changing health orders and state-mandated guidelines as they worked to continue to stay in business and provide services to their customers. This situation created multiple crises as small businesses had to adjust quickly, sometimes significantly changing their business models. For small business leaders with limited resources, crisis planning, management, and communication may have been difficult. Through this qualitative grounded theory study, nine employees of Ohio small businesses were interviewed to learn about their experiences with internal crisis communication during the pandemic and how their perceptions of those experiences impacted their affective organizational commitment. Based on this research, I identified that employees had positive and negative perceptions of their employers’ communication and policy changes during the pandemic. Employees with positive perceptions of their employers’ communication described experiences that included high levels of affective commitment and positive communication practices prior to the pandemic. Employees that perceived their employers’ communication negatively experienced inconsistencies between the message being communicated and the policies being developed or felt unsupported or abandoned during the pandemic. To improve communication and commitment during a crisis, employers should work to build positive employee-employer relationships through transparent, symmetrical communication, implementing policies that show compassion towards employees, and building employee trust.

Keywords: internal crisis communication, COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio small businesses, employee perceptions