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This study highlights the role of managers in workplace communication in a publicly funded health system in Aotearoa New Zealand, and positions issues surrounding intercultural communication in the system as a public relations dilemma. It also explores the significance of 'indirect' reputational effects, arguing that interpretations of managerial reciprocity and empathy demonstrate such effects, with consequent implications for the standing of the public health structure subsequent recruitment. In this research, trust and reputation were found to reside in networks, with managers seen as nodes of dysfunction: experience-based trust has its limits. While the paper identifies challenges, it also offers areas where indirect reputational risk could be mitigated through effective communication, especially by focusing on building trust through fostering collaborative and reciprocal relationships. In the New Zealand setting, nurturing intercultural workplace relationships and communication was found to result in improved outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public relations learning and teaching scholarship has been largely silent, to date, about international study tours as classroom-extending pedagogical initiatives. We address this gap in the literature by discussing two recent international tours built into a Master of Professional Public Relations degree. Melbourne, London and Singapore were the destinations of the first tour, while Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore were the stops on the second. We use autoethnography to give voice to our experiences - including challenges and successes - as the study tour coordinators. We argue that such tours play an important role in helping students appreciate the wider factors that impact diverse public relations practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study analysis, this paper examines how scientific testing was involved in both the triggering and the resolution of the largest food safety scare ever to hit New Zealand. The paper examines the practical applications for communicators dealing with food safety-based risks and discusses how when dealing with crises, they need to take into account lay publics' biases towards assurances of zero risk. This should be part of determining audiences' information needs and of calibrating the provision of scientific information, including information about necessary testing, in ways that meet these needs. Doing so will help build trust, including about the scientific method and the organisations applying it to determine not only the nature of a given risk but also to assess how best it might be mitigated. While distrust might surface in a risk-based crisis, communicators should focus on messaging that addresses uncertainty through providing consistent and credible information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activist groups have dual identities: the way they see themselves and the way others see them. Community opposition to coal seam gas and large-scale coal mining in Australia has highlighted this distinction as the radical "Lock the Gate Alliance" and others attempt to hold back the accelerating momentum of coal seam gas exploitation. This paper backgrounds CSG development in Australia and applies activism, social identity and risk scholarship to examine this alliance of highly motivated opponents in terms of its self-identified roles and responses to industry and governments. It explores implications for organizations confronted by radical activists who pursue a strategy of non-cooperation and questions the effectiveness of such an approach. The paper suggests that non-cooperation may limit activists' capacity to achieve their objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]