Selling Issues by Selling Attitudes: Analyzing Three Components of Attitudes in Online Issue Selling

Abstract

Issue selling is an early phase of change initiation in organizations by which issue sellers draw others attention to and influence their understanding of issues. Although issue sellers initiate individuals attitudinal changes before organizational changes, previous studies have focused heavily on organizational changes. To approach issue selling fundamentally, it is necessary to examine attitudinal changes of individuals. Also, the previous studies have not reflected a shift in organizational communication to online interactive systems and are limited to face-to-face issue selling. If our research focus remains in face-to-face situations, we cannot capture current issue topics among organizational members.

In this regard, the present study explores issue selling behaviors in online settings by adopting an attitude-based approach, which underscores precedence of individuals attitudinal changes over organizational changes. Data was collected from online organizational bulletin boards, which guarantee the anonymity of their users. Issue selling postings were selected for analysis, and a number of Like on each posting was also counted to examine supportive responses.

The result indicated that online issue sellers sell issues with cognitive and affective components the most but with only behavioral component the least. Issue sellers used their affective components more when their issues were about human resources (HR) system. Interestingly, issue sellers used the behavioral components less when they found top management teams (TMTs) responsible for causing issues. It suggests that issue sellers still tend to inhibit the inclusion of behavioral expression for the issues, which TMTs are responsible for. In addition, it is indicated that the cognitive component increases supportive responses from recipients of issue selling and that affective and behavioral components have non-additive persuasive effects.

The current study provides a comprehensive analysis of online issue selling by exploring how online issue sellers use the three attitudinal components in their selling attempts. In addition, this study contributes to related research areas as it uncovers the importance of sensemaking in issue selling processes and limited effects of anonymity. However, this study only addresses supportive responses but not actual issue buying behaviors of issue selling recipients. Thus, future studies should address the effects of attitudinal components on issue buying behaviors.