Understanding and measuring formal communication quality for technology implementation: A test during the anticipation stage

Successfully introducing new technologies to employees remains a critical and challenging task for managers. Practitioner and academic research points to the crucial role of formal communication in the success of technology implementation. We developed a scale for measuring formal communication quality and assessed its influence using three samples of working professionals who were anticipating new technologies at work. Informed by the coping model of user adaptation, we examined the direct and indirect effects of formal communication quality during the anticipation stage of a technology implementation project on employees’ cognitions, emotions and intention to connect with colleagues in order to prepare themselves for the new technologies. The results validate our conceptualization of formal communication as a second-order formative construct with information quality in four content areas (i.e., what, how, why and when) as the first-order dimensions. Our findings affirm the role of formal communication as a managerial influence mechanism that positively affects an employee’s preliminary evaluation of a new IT during the anticipation stage. The evaluation of the new IT triggered emotions, and the emotions in turn motivated employees to seek opinions and camaraderie from others as a means of adapting to the new IT. Our post hoc analyses illustrate the dynamic nature of the relationship among formal communication quality, beliefs, emotions and coping intentions as the implementation unfolds. Our work contributes to the literature by improving the operationalization of formal communication quality, expanding the current understanding of seeking social support and revealing new insight about the temporal dynamics of the relationships in the nomological network during the anticipation stage. The validated scale of formal communication can be a useful tool for managers who wish to evaluate the effectiveness of their communication and to assess its impact on employees’ adaptation.