Employee External Communication Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis: Case-study of a State-Owned Company

Abstract

A crisis can trigger employees to engage in external communication behavior. However, the inconsistency of the findings of studies on megaphoning behavior suggests the relationship depends on the type of crisis. With the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, this study aims to examine the influence of employee-organization relations and symmetrical internal communication on employee external communication behavior. Data were collected from 400 employees of a state-owned company in Indonesia and analyzed using PLS-SEM. The result shows that good relations between employees and organization can encourage employees to stand up for the company, reduce employee’s intention to share negative communications, encourage employees to recognize crisis as a serious problem, can make employees feel more involved and less constrained in resolving the problems. Employees who feel that they could recognize the crisis tend to spread positive information and restraint from sharing negative information. Meanwhile, those who feel that they were involved in the crisis and less constrained in solving the problem do not influence their interest in spreading positive or negative information. The study finds that symmetrical communication between employees and their companies may encourage employees to spread positive information, but it did not affect their interest in disseminating negative information. Keywords: Employee-