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The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of if and when leaders should communicate bad news to their stakeholders. Previous research in the crisis communication literature has highlighted the need to communicate quickly and persuasively to minimize losses; however, the authors argue that such tactics assume certainty in negative outcomes and tend to generate predominantly one-way, company-centric communication. In this paper, the authors propose that under conditions of uncertainty (i.e. when the bad news has an unknown outcome or cause) different communication strategies are needed.

Drawing on the stakeholder theory, the authors argue that organizational decision makers have a clear moral obligation to share bad news with affected stakeholders. The authors then review the existing approach to crisis communication and discuss its limitations under conditions of uncertainty. Finally, the authors develop a set of scenarios to guide the communication of bad news under conditions of uncertainty.

The authors formulate a framework to guide leaders on how to communicate with stakeholders when the nature of the bad news is uncertain and open to multiple interpretations. The authors propose a situational approach for responding to stakeholders that emerges from the context of the bad news.

The authors propose a situational framework for communicating bad news that overcomes the current limitations of extant crisis communication strategies under conditions of uncertainty. This involves balancing existing crisis communication recommendations with a more collaborative sensemaking approach.

We review previous research on intergenerational conflict, focusing on the practical implications of this research for organizational leaders. We explain how the interaction between the interpersonal and intertemporal dimensions of intergenerational decisions creates the unique psychology of intergenerational decision-making behavior. In addition, we review the boundary conditions that have characterized much of the previous research in this area, and we examine the potential effects of loosening these constraints. Our proposals for future research include examination of the effect of intra-generational decision making on intergenerational beneficence, consideration of the role of third parties and linkage issues, investigation of the effects of intergenerational communications and negotiation when generations can interact, examination of the role of social power in influencing intergenerational interactions, investigation of the interaction between temporal construal and immortality striving, and exploration of the ways in which present decision makers detect and define the intergenerational dilemmas in their social environments.

We explore how cultural factors at both socio-economic and psychological individual levels affect the present generation's beneficence toward future generations in organizations and society. We examine how socio-economic mechanisms may influence the present generation's focus on the future consequences of their decisions. In addition, we examine how self-construals in different cultures might result in different mechanisms underlying the reduction of psychological distance between generations in different cultures. Implications of our cross-cultural analysis to intergenerational decision making within the context of group research in general are discussed.

Susan Brodt (PhD, Stanford University) is E. Marie Shantz associate professor of organizational behavior and associate professor of psychology at Queen's University. Her research examines aspects of effective work relationships and how psychological and organizational processes help or hinder their development. She is currently studying the dynamics of interpersonal trust – trust building, violation, and repair – and how factors external to a work relationship (e.g., personal blogs) can facilitate trust development and repair. Her work has been published in numerous scholarly as well as practitioner-oriented journals. Susan has served on Editorial Review Boards of several scholarly journals and has held leadership positions in both the Academy of Management (Program and Division Chair, Conflict Management Division) and the International Association for Conflict Management (Program Chair, Board of Directors). She is also an experienced executive educator and consultant on such topics as negotiation, executive leadership, interpersonal trust, and managing global teams.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between stewardship behaviour and perceived goal congruence. Using local governments, the paper introduces collectivism as a moderating variable to ascertain whether the mixed views in the stewardship behaviour-perceived goal congruence nexus is due to variations in collectivism.

The paper espouses a cross-sectional descriptive and analytical design. The authors use structural equation modelling to investigate hypotheses. Using proportionate and simple random sampling procedures, a sample of 310 respondents were drawn from local governments in Uganda of which a response rate of 72.6 per cent was obtained.

The findings show that stewardship behaviour and collectivism are significant predictors of perceived goal congruence. Furthermore, the magnitude effect of stewardship behaviour on perceived goal congruence depends on collectivism; implying that the assumption of non-additivity is met.

Only a single research methodological approach was employed and future research through interviews could be undertaken to triangulate.

Variations that occur in stewardship behaviour create variations in goal congruence in local governments. It is confirmed that collectivism technically strengthens the link between stewardship behaviour and perceived goal congruence: suggesting that indeed collectivism could establish a maximal impact on the stewardship behaviour—perceived goal congruence link.

This is one of the few studies that focus on testing the interactive effects of collectivism on the relationship between stewardship behaviour and perceived goal congruence in local governments in Uganda.