They certainly can. In this case, the message is coming from the top, but the message and the actions are literally disconnected every time a middle manager or team lead has to tell people about some foolishness coming from the top of the company. And when the person making the decision is also the communicator, they can still make meaningful rhetorical decisions such as whether to apologize for their inability to make a good enough decision, to compliment or threaten the existing employees, to attempt to reveal whether to make up for the actions taken in some way, and so on, in addition to less consequential decisions about tone that may affect different employees according to their communication preferences.

I recommend becoming willing to evaluate how bad decisions are communicated to the degree you evaluate good ones as the former exercise aids the latter.