Communicating Necessary Evils: The Role of Expressive and Diffusive Capabilities

Communicating harmful messages in order to accomplish organizational goals is an unfortunate, yet unavoidable part of organizational life. Because “necessary evil” messages are often of personal consequence to the receiver, it is important the communication process be designed in a way that will minimize harm caused to both messengers and receivers without compromising communication performance. This can be difficult to accomplish. When designing necessary evil communication, messengers may select from a variety of media with multiple features. In this paper, I distinguish between two types of media capabilities, expressive and diffusive, and explain how features of the media selected for message communication differentially affect the messenger and receiver, as well as the clarity and fidelity of the message. The objective of this paper is to explain how the psychological and physical challenges faced by the messenger and receiver affect the relationship between expressive and diffusive media capabilities and communication performance.