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Some organizations are highly visible in the media. This media coverage informs employees about others' perceptions of their organization. Consequently, perceived visibility may be related to how employees think about their organization and how they construe organizational identity. This study empirically tests this proposition. It therefore combines aspects of Hatch & Schultz' model of organizational identity dynamics with mediatization to understand to what extent employees are sensitive toward their environment when forming an organizational identity. In two online surveys comparing employees' (N = 109) and a representative sample of citizens' (N = 1417) views on a highly visible Dutch public organization from the crime sector, we disentangle the identity-reputation process considering the role of perceived media impact. We further compare identity perceptions of two intraorganizational sub-groups. We find that citizens view the organization more positively than employees, which points to a misalignment between employees' and citizens' perceptions of the organization. In one of the two organizational sub-groups, the findings show that the larger the misalignment between construed reputation (how do employees think that citizens perceive their organization?) and actual reputation (how do citizens in fact perceive the organization?), the weaker employees' perception of identity. Furthermore, employees appear to be sensitive toward the media coverage of their organization and citizens' reputation perceptions. Yet, this environmental sensitivity does not impact on their organizational identity. We interpret this as a resilient identity, which represents the maneuvering of employees between their organizational identity perception (what they perceive as central, distinct, and enduring) and external stakeholders' (i.e., the media, citizens) perceptions of the organization that over time positively distinguishes what the organization is and will remain. • Citizens view the public organization more positively than members. • Members are sensitive toward citizens' and the media's evaluations. • Members perceive a strong identity with the organization and their group. • Identity is so strong that it isn't changed by citizens' and the media's evaluations. • We define this as identity resilience and discuss the concept for public relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development poses a grand challenge for society, addressed by organisations through their public relations activities. Grand challenges are complex by nature and call for nontrivial solutions whose effects show at the level of society. That is why studying public relations' contribution to grand challenges requires a macro perspective that accounts for the dynamic interaction between individual, organisational, and system levels in a digital communication environment. This paper offers a new paradigm to analyse organisations' significant and at times undue impact on grand challenges through public relations. It develops a framework inspired by complex adaptive systems thinking and adopts its ten properties for public relations: emergence, adaptivity, heterogeneous actors, nonlinear effects, feedback mechanisms, self-organisation, phase transitions, networks, scaling, and cooperation. The paper applies the framework to the example of sustainable development. It shows why research on grand challenges requires a holistic perspective and how it can help study digitally born communication phenomena. The proposed complex systems paradigm provides space for critical, social scientific, and interpretative research lines in public relations. Inquiries start from the grand challenge and study the communicative interactions between organisations and other actors from existing theory while accounting for the ten properties of complex adaptive systems. The paper outlines how future research can enrich the study of public relations and discusses its limits. • Proposes a complex systems framework for analysing the role of public relations in debating society's grand challenges. • Complexity theories help understand digital issue debates as emerging societal phenomena. • The complex systems paradigm allows to analyse digitally born communication phenomena. • Provides a holistic perspective to analyse organisations' significant and at times undue impact on sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, skepticism and mistrust toward companies often prevail among both stakeholders and scholars. However, the overall content quality of CSR reports has only sparsely evoked researchers' attention. Therefore, this paper focuses on the credibility of CSR reports, based on both human and software-enhanced quantitative content analysis of 237 CSR reports from 11 European countries. Credibility is conceptualized as a multilayered construct along CSR and communication theories, filling the theory void in the field. The influence of contextual (e.g., industry), format, and firm-level (e.g., size) factors on reporting credibility is also investigated. The results show that European CSR reports do not score high on credibility, leaving much room for improvement. The study finds that it is standardization and content that matter most for reporting credibility; external influences are secondary, at best. To be considered credible, CSR reports must first be understandable to their readers; in addition, credibility involves truth, sincerity, and stakeholder specificity. Voluntary standardization affects CSR reporting credibility positively, whereas regulation does not yet have the same positive effect. Based on the empirical results of the content analysis, we present a new two-phase-model of reporting credibility . For practice, we suggest that companies focus on the contents of their reports to render them more credible. To raise credibility levels consistently, policy makers can create a level playing field in CSR reporting regulation, as already initiated by several countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Studies on organization-stakeholder relationships online are business-centered. • New definition of relationships focuses on awareness and communication. • Emphasizes a PR-specific, communicative perspective on relationships. • Digital data points are underused in public relations research. • Meta-data indicate the beginning and end of a relationship. The digital age is a game-changer for the communication between organizations and stakeholders. Relationships are pivotal to public relations. However, their conceptualizations, measures, and normative assumptions have neither been analyzed systematically and across disciplines, nor have they been studied in light of the changing digital communication landscape. This article re-examines the relationship paradigm in public relations and marketing in an online environment. By means of a systematic review, it seeks to explicate communicative relationships between organizations and their diverse stakeholders, to review how they are operationalized and measured, and to illuminate their normative evaluations. This conceptual specification is guided by systematic sampling and content analysis of all primary research on organization-stakeholder relationships in the broader social sciences. Results of a comprehensive analysis of 74 articles suggest that studies overemphasize the business contexts, follow an instrumental orientation based on transactions rather than communication, and lack analyses of digital data. To explicate a PR understanding of digital communicative organization-stakeholder relationships, a definition is provided and a research agenda is offered on theory, measures, and blind spots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]