Communicating Change in Crisis : A study on crisis communication from managers' point of view

Sammanfattning: Change management is an area that is widely researched by practitioners and researchers. Despite the extensive number of frameworks and approaches of how to manage change, most of all change initiatives still fail. Since external crises often imply some form of organizational change, this thesis aims to investigate the questions: How do managers communicate change to their employees during a crisis & what do they communicate? To answer these questions, we conducted semi-structured interviews with six different managers with varying backgrounds. Prior to this, a review of relevant literature was conducted, and a theoretical summary was framed consisting of six different themes. These were, communicating a vision, sensemaking in communication, communication with honesty, communication frequency, communication channels, and communication models. The conclusion showed that communication frequency was one of the most influential factors together with honesty, whereas vision and models were considered less important.