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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there are information leaks immediately before CEOs change and – if so – whether some investors take financial advantage of such prior knowledge. It thirdly investigates the ethical, practical and professional options for communication managers to deal with such situations. Design/methodology/approach: Working from sentiment theory of financial markets, the authors studied Internet search patterns for incoming CEO names and stock market movements immediately prior to the public mention or speculation of CEO change. Findings: The authors find that in nearly a quarter of CEO changes at Fortune 500 companies, the name of the future CEO seems to have been leaked. Additionally, nearly half of those companies also experience extreme, otherwise unexplainable movements in the stock market. Originality/value: This paper discovers the prevalence of extreme stock market movements for a company when the name of that company's next CEO has likely been leaked. Such leaks are an opportunity for unscrupulous investors, but they create ethical dilemmas for organizations. Communication managers typically respond by organizing tighter governance. However, to keep up with the speed of information and investments traveling through algorithms, organizing radical transparency could become an alternative instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media coverage of CEOs has significantly increased in recent decades, and many CEOs have come to accept that interacting with a dispersed audience via the media has become a leadership activity. However, the discourse about leadership communication is almost exclusively linked to growth. Very little is known about the presentation of CEOs in the media when their corporations are shrinking in value, or when the economy is in a downturn. News factor theory would suggest what the average consumer of business news already suspects: during an economic downturn, more CEOs become harbingers of negative corporate news and the personification of corporations in the media by the CEO is likely to be high. However, the information subsidy approach would suggest that the ability of a CEO to influence the scope of topics remains high because of an economic downturn. We categorised all articles pertaining to the CEOs of the 100 largest Western corporations between 2007 and 2010, and next content-analysed 1,362 articles pertaining to CEOs whose media presentation had high personification and/or broad scope. Personification in the business news seems to be inescapable for CEOs during a downturn, but only if their corporations are faring worse than the general economy. Meanwhile, the scope of topics included in business news about CEOs varies broadly and does not appear to be linked to value contraction of corporations. From the composition of the media coverage categorised here, corporate leaders can glean which topics serve to either broaden or specify their presentation in the business news media during economic downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the Confucian cultural background of students influences their perceptions of and reaction to the dominant public relations curriculum from the 'West'. Using focus groups of Asian students, three heuristics that affect the students' affinity to learn public relations are identified. Instructors working with students from a Confucian cultural background are advised to incorporate these heuristics when planning their curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to find out whether, which and how international corporations use their codes of conduct to guide employees double-bound by contradicting cultural norms. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws on integrative social contracts theory to content-analyse the codes of conduct of the "Fortune Global 500" and the "UNCTAD 100". Findings - The vast majority of international corporations' codes either does not acknowledge contradictions between equally binding norms, or lacks priority rules for employees to resolve them. Nonetheless, several codes of conduct describe how norms might contradict, give clear priority to one set of norms (local or corporate) and provide specific examples to employees of when and how to apply a priority rule. Practical implications - The paper identifies the 33 codes of conduct which can serve as best practices for international corporations' employee and corporate communication. Originality/value - Contradictions between cultural norms are unacknowledged or unresolved in communication practice and little explored in corporate communication research. This paper assesses the scope of this caveat in communication practice and offers solutions in the form of an existing normative theory and of newly identified best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]