No Need to Know It All: Implications of COVID‐19 for Corporate Communication Research

Abstract

Research on corporate communications -the strategic use of public language to influence stakeholders -has flourished in recent years, but the COVID-19 pandemic highlights some shortcomings in corporate communication research. Three salient features differentiate pandemic communications from the typical communication setting studied by management scholars. First, the pandemic generated an extreme level of uncertainty, shared by both communicators and listeners. Second, the pandemic created information disorder, disrupting the normal manner of information processing and decision making. Third, the pandemic is characterized by a flood of information that overwhelms listeners. Our study explores these challenges and offers important insights that suggest the reevaluation of some existing assumptions and recommendations is in order. Shared UncertaintyPrior research has explored how firms can strategically choose the content of their communications to manage the information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders. Some studies have noted the benefits of withholding information, while others have demonstrated the advantages of obfuscation (e.g., Elsbach, 1994). An implicit assumption in these studies is that uncertainty is primarily a problem for listeners. Communicators are assumed to have superior knowledge, as well as an awareness of what listeners will interpret as good or bad. Thus, information asymmetry is beneficial to communicators.The pandemic, however, is characterized by an extreme level of uncertainty, shared by both communicators and listeners. What is believed accurate today may well be

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