Employee Communication Responsibility: Its Antecedents and Implications for Strategic Communication Management

Abstract

Although organizations increasingly acknowledge the communicative importance of employees, and increasingly frame communication as an employee responsibility, communication responsibility remains an unexplored topic in strategic communication research. To address this gap, this study introduces the concept employee communication responsibility and offers insight into factors influencing employees’ predisposition towards taking communication responsibility. Data were obtained from 4,726 employees working in ten Swedish organizations. Half the sample (2,244) was used for exploratory factor analysis that enabled the identification of a smaller number of factors to construct a model with four hypotheses, and half the sample (2,482) was used to test the proposed model through structural equation modeling (SEM). Hypotheses formulation was informed by previous research examining factors influencing employees’ communication. The study shows that all tested factors, internal communication climate openness, immediate supervisor communication, top management–employee communication, and perceived importance of communication significantly contribute to employees’ predisposition towards taking communication responsibility. Thus, the study provide knowledge useful to researchers interested in employees’ communication, and to strategic communication practitioners responsible for internal communication and employees’ communication.