Digital Business
September 15, 2026
Leadership, Communication, and Digital Technologies in Organizational Change Management
Jussara Coutinho; Ingrid de Matos Martins
DOI: 10.22167/2675-6528-202602248
Article derived from a Final Course Work (TCC), with content based on the student’s original work and adapted to the editorial format of the E&S Magazine with the support of the ResumeAI tool, an artificial intelligence solution developed by the Pecege Institute for textual synthesis and organization.
Abstract
Leadership communication in Brazilian beauty e-commerces was investigated in the face of external changes, such as generative artificial intelligence and increased competitiveness, and a strategic transition focused on profitability. The study aimed to analyze how leadership communication is structured and mobilized to promote employee engagement in change processes driven by external factors, enabling cycles of experimentation, learning, and continuous adjustment. A qualitative, applied approach was adopted through semi-structured interviews with five leaders of the organization. The data were treated by thematic content analysis. Preliminary results showed structured communication practices, such as agility, narrative transparency, formalization and documentation in Slack, and bi-weekly governance, which favored engagement by making decisions, priorities, and learnings visible. Recurring barriers and the relevance of senior sponsorship to sustain the pace of change also emerged. Experimental cycles, including an internal solution focused on creativity, indicated initial gains and reinforced the dynamic of learning and adjustment. It was concluded that leadership communication is decisive in converting the uncertainty generated by external factors into operational engagement.
Keywords: Beauty E-commerce; Employee Engagement; Artificial Intelligence; Organizational Rituals; Digital Transformation.
1. Introduction
In the contemporary digital era, organizational change is inserted in a volatile and dynamic context, exposed to frequent alterations. Change is not linear, but a process that requires control and monitoring by managers (Weick and Quinn, 1999). It is a process that can be frustrating and discouraging, with debated failure rates (Machado and Neiva, 2017). Thus, change management demands leadership attention in its forms of communication and in short cycles of experimentation, learning, and adjustment over time.
In the current scenario, companies, such as a Brazilian beauty e-commerce, face transformations driven by external factors. These include the rise of generative artificial intelligence, increased competitiveness, and strategic transitions focused on profitability. Such factors amplify uncertainty and ambiguity in the work environment (Carvalho et al., 2014), requiring organizations to perceive signals, capture opportunities, and reconfigure routines, a concept known as dynamic capabilities (Teece, 2007).
Leadership plays a crucial role in overcoming resistance and creating favorable conditions for new practices (Coelho and Costa, 2021). Leadership styles directly influence the acceptance or resistance of employees in change processes (Almada and Policarpo, 2016). Transformational leadership, for example, is considered effective in reducing resistance to change, by focusing on transforming followers to be encouraging and harmonious (Chukwuma and Zondo, 2024). More than overcoming resistance, leadership must practice “sensegiving”, organizing collective meaning and creating psychological safety so that doubts and errors circulate without punishment, an essential condition for learning and continuous adjustment (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991).
Communication is the main instrument for the successful implementation of changes, being fundamental to announce, explain, or prepare people for what will happen, as well as to alert them to the consequences of not changing (Christensen, 2014). It is the key to dealing with employees’ insecurities and concerns (Christensen, 2014). Communicational action strengthens trust and functions as a central link between strategic direction and daily execution (Wentz Forte et al., 2023). In this context, digital technologies, such as intranets, emails, dashboards, and artificial intelligence-based tools, mediate changes and influence engagement. Digital leaders need to develop competencies to integrate people, technology, and strategy (Tagscherer and Carbon, 2023), orchestrating a “communicative metabolism” that allows for perceiving signals, mobilizing decisions, and reconfiguring routines through narratives, rituals, and communication artifacts.
Given the complexity and non-linear nature of organizational change, and the amplification of uncertainty and ambiguity by external and technological factors, it becomes imperative to understand how leadership communication can mitigate these challenges. The ability to align the content, quality, timing, and structure of information is critical for leaders’ performance (Chukwuma and Zondo, 2024), as these factors are crucial for sustaining engagement and continuous adaptation. Effective leadership communication is, therefore, essential for converting uncertainty into operational engagement and enabling cycles of experimentation, learning, and adjustment over time. Thus, this study is justified by the need to investigate leadership communication as a determining factor in managing organizational change. In light of this, this project aims to answer: in what way is the leadership communication of a Brazilian beauty e-commerce structured and mobilized to promote employee engagement in change processes driven by external factors, enabling cycles of experimentation, learning, and adjustment over time?
2. Material and Methods
The study was qualitative in nature, adopting a case study approach centered on semi-structured interviews. The research investigated leadership communication in a Brazilian beauty e-commerce, focusing on change management tools and strategies, and guidance received in training.
Five e-commerce leaders were interviewed, four from the Merchandising area and one from Digital Transformation, selected by judgment due to their relevance to the object of study. The triangulation originally planned to increase the robustness of the study was not executed in this version, and no documentary corpus was formed.
The research script used semi-structured and open-ended questions, addressing themes such as leadership communication, digital technology use, and change management. The collected data were treated by thematic content analysis, combining a priori categories (such as leadership sensegiving, psychological safety, and voice/learning) with emergent categories.
The ethical aspects included the application of the Free and Informed Consent Form (TCLE), data anonymization, and institutional authorization for the use of internal documents.
3. Results and Discussion
The interviewed leaders operated at different hierarchical levels and strategic areas. The sample included everything from the management of large creation structures to specialized technological transformation units, as detailed in Table 1.
Table 1. Profile of the leaders interviewed in the beauty e-commerce
| Identification | Area of Operation | Time in Office | Team Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leader A | Digital Transformation | < 1 year | 6 people |
| Leader B | Merchandise Management | 2 years | 9 people |
| Leader C | New Business | 2 years | 3 people |
| Leader D | Trade Creation | 3 years | 45 people |
| Leader E | Creation | 2 years | 13 people |
Source: Original research results
The organizational landscape is marked by non-linear transformations. The main external vector of change reported was generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), which altered paradigms of creative production. Leader D expressed that “change in the end always generates insecurity… everything new is frightening.” Added to this was the strategic transition focused on profitability, which required Leader B to adapt the team to “let go of certain conversion levers without losing the client.” Such challenges require what Teece (2007) defines as dynamic capabilities: the organizational ability to sense signals, seize opportunities, and reconfigure routines.
Table 2 presents the main verbalizations extracted from the interviews, showing how each leadership articulates the challenges of structural and technological change in the daily lives of their teams.
Table 2. Leaders’ verbalizations on communication and change management
| Category of analysis | Identification | Interview Verbalizations |
|---|---|---|
| Use of tools | Leader A | […] with each new tool we implemented, we created a comparative matrix of strengths, gaps, whether it meets variation, whether it meets only scale, cost, and every week, every two weeks, we looked at that together and showed what was changing within this scenario |
| AI Integration into the routine | Leader B | We use Slack a lot to compile the main points we discuss. The team also uses it a lot in individual Gemini conversations to save some discussion points there. |
| Leader as an example | Leader C | I try to bring a lot of what I learned into practice, what I do to try to exemplify and make it a little closer to everyday reality for them. […] how we develop analyses, thoughts, things we don’t know in such depth and that we have a new speed of learning and access to information with artificial intelligence |
| Narrative and transparency | Leader D | … I really believe in this scenario of transparency, but in this scenario of transparency, of communication, for me everything starts with a very well-told story. How will I tell this story? […] What is the history behind this? What is the rationale? Why was this decision made? |
| Psychological safety and listening | Leader E | […] I have the ritual, the habit of pulling people in individually, at least once a month, to talk, so that people can talk to me individually about things that they sometimes won’t feel comfortable bringing up in a larger context […] |
Source: Original research results
Methodological orchestration and communicative metabolism
The analysis showed that Leader A operated with an “end-to-end” method, focused on operational scalability. The change was paced by a synchronous bi-weekly governance, considered indispensable for materializing progress. In the Merchandising fronts, Leader C highlighted the importance of an accelerated metabolism to avoid noise, seeking to “cascade information as quickly as possible… so they don’t hear something that is half-true.”
In contrast, in the Merchandising areas (Leaders B, C, D, and E), the rituals showed greater variation according to each leader’s individual style, resulting in occasional discontinuities under operational pressure. Table 3 details the methodological and communicative orchestration by area.
Table 3. Methodological orchestration and communicative metabolism
| Area of operation | Management and communication rituals | Support technological tools |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Transformation | Synchronous bi-weekly governance, comparative scenario matrices, and systematic decision documentation | Slack and generative AI internal product |
| Merchandising, Creation and New Businesses | One-on-one chat, temporary adaptation rituals, decompression forums, and agile information cascading | Slack, Task Kanban and climate survey |
Source: Original research results
As proposed by Chukwuma and Zondo (2024), aligning information quality and timing is critical in leaders’ performance. Leader E reinforced this need by seeking technical predictability before communicating with the team, being concerned with “organizing and structuring for them so that they have the least possible impact”. Leader B, on the other hand, highlighted the belief in “the professional’s autonomy to adapt to AI”, indicating that orchestration also depends on each collaborator’s individual interpretation of the scenario.
Sensegiving, transparency and psychological safety
Team engagement was sustained through narrative transparency practices, focused on explaining the “why” behind changes. Leader A utilized what Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991) call sensegiving, organizing collective meaning to make the strategy tangible in daily life. This practice was crucial in mitigating the fear of professional obsolescence in the face of AI, transforming the technology into a career booster rather than a threat.
To monitor the organizational climate, leadership used tools such as “Team Culture”, an internal climate assessment tool, which allows for real-time identification of drops in confidence indicators. Leader E reported that, during staff cuts, “the leadership indicator dropped”, allowing for frank action to reverse the breach of trust. Psychological safety was seen as the link to mitigate silence, identified by Leader B as the first reaction to discomfort. Creating open forums, such as Leader C’s lighter “start of the week” sessions, helped capture perceptions that direct communication often masks.
Impacts of the implementation of the internal generative artificial intelligence product
The efficiency of the methodological orchestration was proven by the results of the experimental cycle structured by the Digital Transformation area. Table 4 details the impact indicators of the implementation of the internal product for creating texts, videos, and images, showing a time saving of 70% in operational efficiency and a financial impact of R$ 2 million in efficiency, in addition to the adoption by more than 60 creative professionals.
Table 4. Impact indicators of the internal product for creating texts, videos, and images implementation
| Impact category | Achieved result | Methodological note |
|---|---|---|
| Operational efficiency | 70% time savings | Structured experimental cycle |
| Financial impact | BRL 2 million in efficiency | Enabling of complex advertising campaigns |
| Adoption and engagement | +60 creative professionals | Feedback-based governance |
Source: Original research results
This evidence reinforces Wentz Forte et al.’s (2023) view that leadership communication generates tangible results by strengthening the link between strategy and execution. Leader A highlighted that the initiative would not have progressed without synchronous recurrence and the materialization of learning.
Barriers and the need for senior sponsorship
Despite the technical success, the cultural barrier of the “it has always been done this way” logic persisted, especially in Merchandising routines. Almada and Policarpo (2016) highlight that leadership style is decisive in overcoming resistance. However, Leader A pointed out that operational engagement has limits if there is no senior sponsorship: “at times we could have relied more on this resource [senior leadership] and suffered less from some back and forths.”
The endorsement of executive directors confers another characteristic to change management, cutting months of effort to convince the areas. Therefore, as advocated by Tagscherer and Carbon (2023), successful orchestration requires digital leaders to develop competencies to integrate people, technology, and strategy in an inseparable way. Table 5 presents the behavioral indicators of engagement and resistance, as well as the management and mitigation strategies reported by leadership.
Table 5. Behavioral indicators of engagement and resistance reported by leadership
| Team posture | Observed behavioral signs | Management and mitigation strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Engaged | Curiosity, rise in conversations, frequently asked questions, proactive tests with new technologies, and participation in decision-making | Maintain radical transparency, create open forums, share strategic contexts and grant autonomy |
| Resistant | Silence in meetings, short answers, evocation of past failed experiences, fear of job replacement by AI, and reactive posture | Follow-up in one-on-one meetings, listening to insecurities, technical literacy, and practical tangibilization of change |
Source: Original research results
Leadership communication in the analyzed beauty e-commerce is a determining factor in converting the uncertainty generated by external factors into operational engagement. The research showed that the structuring of a “communicative metabolism”, composed of synchronous bi-weekly governance, narrative transparency, and systematic documentation, sustains the agility necessary for successful experimentation cycles. It was observed that, while the Digital Transformation area consolidated itself as a methodological vector focused on scalability and efficiency metrics, the Merchandising fronts demonstrated greater vulnerability to operational pressure. In these areas, engagement tended to be episodic, revealing that the absence of institutionalized rituals weakens the long-term sustainability of changes. The analysis highlighted that team silence and inertia are the main indicators of resistance, often rooted in the “it’s always been done this way” culture. To overcome these barriers, leadership sensegiving appears to be more effective when accompanied by explicit senior sponsorship, capable of conferring authority and permanence to strategic transitions. Finally, the integration between digital technologies and active listening rituals proved essential for preserving psychological safety and ensuring employee voice in environments of continuous transformation.
4. Conclusion
This study aimed to analyze how leadership communication is structured and mobilized to promote employee engagement in externally driven change processes, enabling cycles of experimentation, learning, and continuous adjustment in a Brazilian beauty e-commerce. It was found that leadership communication is a determining factor in converting uncertainty generated by external factors, such as generative artificial intelligence and the strategic transition to profitability, into operational engagement. The structuring of a robust “communicative metabolism” was observed, characterized by synchronous bi-weekly governance, narrative transparency, and systematic documentation on digital platforms. These practices favored engagement by making decisions, priorities, and learnings visible, driving the agility necessary for successful experimentation cycles. The effectiveness of this methodological orchestration was evidenced by the implementation of an internal generative artificial intelligence product, which resulted in significant gains in operational efficiency and financial impact, as well as broad adoption by creative professionals.
However, it was identified that while the Digital Transformation area has consolidated itself as a mature methodological vector, the Merchandising fronts showed greater vulnerability to operational pressure, with engagement tending to be episodic due to the absence of institutionalized communication rituals. The main barriers observed were the silence and inertia of the teams, often rooted in the “it’s always been done this way” culture. It was concluded that leadership’s sensegiving, although crucial for organizing collective meaning and creating psychological safety, is more effective when accompanied by explicit senior sponsorship, capable of conferring authority and permanence to strategic transitions. The integration between digital technologies and active listening rituals proved essential for preserving psychological safety and ensuring employee voice in environments of continuous transformation. As a limitation, the study, being a single case study without the initially planned documentary triangulation, offers in-depth insights but with restricted generalization. For future studies, it is suggested to investigate the impact of senior sponsorship on the institutionalization of communication rituals in different organizational areas and to conduct comparative research in other e-commerce contexts.
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Article originating from the Final Course Work of Specialization in Digital Business from the MBA USP/Esalq
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