Navigating Relationship Tensions: Role of Paradoxical Mindsets and Response Repertoires in Managing Employee–Organization Relationships During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Situated within an interpretive approach, this study examined senior corporate executives’ discursive construction of tensions encountered while managing employee-organization-relationships (EORs) over remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic and the strategies employed to manage these tensions. In-depth interviews with 17 communication and employee relations executives from the Fortune, Forbes, and LinkedIn best employer lists for 2021 and 2022 revealed four key tensions: organizational identity (people and planet versus profit), dialogic (one voice versus many voices), diversity (exclusion versus inclusion), and boundary (work versus home). Our interviews also revealed corporate internal crisis communication (ICC) strategies to navigate these tensions, such as empathetic leadership communication and purpose communication. Participants foregrounded transcendent (more-than) strategies alongside selection (either-or) and balance (both-and) strategies. Implications for theory and practice across employee relationship management, ICC, and tensions in a post pandemic world where change, uncertainty, and remote work persists are discussed.

Keywords

tensions internal crisis communication employee-organization-relationship EOR relationship management Covid-19 pandemic paradox

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