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This article explores the accepted notion of promoting goodwill in a negative message through an “indirect” approach (which delays the rejection by providing buffers). There is a death of empirical work on this proposition. The present project has theoretical as well as managerial implications for organizations communicating internally and externally. The most significant findings suggested that (1) the goodwill of recipients of negative messages can be promoted by providing them with alternatives or solutions to their problems and (2) the placement of rejection had little correlation with recipient self-perceptions as well as their perceptions of the sender of the rejection message.

Scant research exists about explanation in negative messages. An important cause of this is the lack in extant literature of theory or conceptualization of explanation. This commentary provides two conceptual frameworks for thinking about explanation in negative messages: opportunity cost, from economic theory, and attribution, from marketing theory. Both frameworks help define the situations in which explanations for rejection should be provided to the targets of bad news. When applications are solicited, for instance, opportunity costs incurred by targets of bad news should be offset by senders with an offer to provide explanation. The construct of attribution is adapted here to suggest that senders of negative messages can benefit by supplying reasons for their denial of requests because, in the absence of the reasons, the rejectees will attribute motives and create reasons, thus depriving the senders of their control over the explanation portion of the messages

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Two assumptions underlie the teaching of international business communication. First, perceptual variations exist within a country, and they sharpen even more across countries and cultures. International business communication students need to be aware of such differences on substantive issues. Second, critical pedagogy maintains that making students think and revisit their worldviews through an encounter with discomforting or decentering ideas is a valuable teaching and learn ing tool. Exposing students in my class to controversial propositions caused them to demonstrate a gamut of reactions from agreement and disagreement to anger, pity, disbelief, and a sense of discovery