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PurposeThe present study investigates the nature of newly formed organizations and how internal communication influences these entities, where change is inherent. Organizational life for government contractors is unusual in that employees experience routine changes to upper management, company values, goals and objectives every few years, which leads to the creation of a new consortium that is loosely coupled. Such research provides insight beyond the single-entity organization, which tends to dominate most public relations and internal communication literature.Design/methodology/approachGiven the lack of research exploring consortia and internal communication to get beyond the homogeneous organization, an in-depth case study methodology was the most appropriate approach. A multi-site government contractor was chosen as the research site, relying on interviews and focus groups (n = 77) to collect data.FindingsEffective internal communication practices are even more important for consortia, like government contractors, since employees of these organizations are guaranteed to experience frequent change. Therefore, communicating to the unknown audience, building trust in the absence of a prior connection, and preparing for the unintended consequences are imperative to navigating the complexity surrounding consortia forming and cultivating employee buy-in.Originality/valueThis study presents new, transferable knowledge of internal communication during consortia forming, where to be successful, internal communication needs anticipate the unintended consequences and develop a strategy around the uncertainty. Such strategy is about welcoming diverse voices and actively listening to their preferred needs. In addition, a definition of the unknown audience is provided.

This paper conceptually draws the connections between complexity theory and employee engagement. Instead of the tendency to adhere to a binary, dichotomous approach, complexity theory helps move employee engagement forward as a process that is rooted in multiplicity, intricacy, and variance. This approach provides a more sustainable future for employee engagement scholarship by reimagining the ways in which scholars investigate the phenomenon. In providing future research suggestions rooted in complexity, scholarship and practice can transition away from prescriptive, normalized processes and solutions for employee engagement to welcome various approaches that lead to more fluid and organic understanding. The goal is to set a standard of encouraging employee engagement scholars to challenge how they explore employee engagement and to welcome new and innovative ways of examining the phenomenon to provide a sustainable and enriching scholarly conversation.

This study sought to understand the lived experiences of employees by taking a co-creational approach to examine how employees make meaning of employee engagement. Phenomenological interviews (n = ...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the internal processes that can enable firms to identify and effectively respond to brand crises, with various groups coordinating and cooperating with each other, and also propose a guiding framework relevant for both managers and researchers. Design/methodology/approach A grounded theory methodology was adopted. Data collection included open-ended interviews with 13 executives representing the integrated marketing communications (IMC) function, the integrated corporate communications function and external agencies supporting firms while navigating crises. Findings Results revealed a three-stage process of internal coordination efforts during crises: sensing or scanning the environment and gathering insights regarding crises, informing or disseminating these insights throughout the organization to create transparency and responding or reacting to the event via a coordinated effort. Research limitations/implications The framework does not directly incorporate input from consumers or customer contact employees, both of which may be relevant. Practical implications Findings offer direction for managers to establish processes that prepare for and potentially reduce crises’ negative consequences. In addition, this study reveals the importance of decision-makers being vigilant regarding social media’s influence on such a process. Originality/value The conceptual framework moves beyond previous brand crisis research, provides insight into the processes firms use to successfully manage crises and reveals the relevant factors related to internal coordination.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the comprehensive, ongoing role of communication in an enterprise crowdfunding context, which has been largely overlooked. Design/methodology/approach A large public higher education institution in the Southeastern USA was chosen as the case study unit to illuminate an enterprise-wide crowdfunding program using a proprietary, in-house platform, compared to commercial sites like Kickstarter that do not let organizational leaders strategically plan and manage the platform and its communication functions. Such autonomy provides a richer landscape for studying organizational members’ communication and communication management related to an enterprise crowdfunding program. Findings The case study identified communication-related challenges to the fundraising program’s success such as limited project leader and funding recipients’ commitment to communicate with their social networks about the projects. Internal communication and conflicting expectations, largely ignored in current crowdfunding research, were seen as critical to program effectiveness. Originality/value This study adds scholarly and practical depth to knowledge of enterprise crowdfunding, a relatively new phenomenon in nonprofit and higher education fundraising. While not generalizable to all settings, findings can offer transferable guidance for organizations seeking to engage internal stakeholders related to new and innovative fundraising programs that require their active buy-in and participation.

Community emergency response has received researcher’s attention within the academic and professional risk management and communication community. Such studies help residents to be as safe as sound science, professional emergency management (including risk migration), and public communication can accomplish. Once designed and implemented, emergency response campaigns are monitored to determine what strategies work best to inform, alert and motivate vulnerable populations to make wise preventive (precrisis) emergency responses. Framed as such, this study reports data from a quasi-longitudinal analysis of community emergency management communication in one of the USA communities most at risk for chemical release/exposure. It probes the protective action decision-making motivational efficacy of a spokes-character named Wally Wise Guy. Previous research has demonstrated that knowledge of Wally and its protective response (including shelter-in-place) messaging is a strong predictor of community members’ preferred protective action and willingness to engage in such action once alerted to do so. This current study uses narrative theory, augmented by nudge theory, to further examine why Wally’s advice is useful in community emergency response. In specific, it asks whether Wally, a turtle spokes-character, nudges citizens to know and comply with emergency management advisories to shelter-in-place as notified.

Crowdfunding has gained popularity as a fundraising strategy for reaching an online “crowd” of contributors, with many making small donations and promoting the project online to social networks. Universities are exploring crowdfunding as a strategy to connect with non-traditional donors beyond alumni – including students. While higher education institutions may hope to include students given their perceived comfort with online giving and crowdfunding’s focus on small gifts, scholars have not examined students’ perceptions about such activities. Adopting the Existence Relatedness Growth (ERG) theory, this study uses a survey to explore factors that motivate or hinder students’ supportive behavior intentions through a crowdfunding mechanism, specifically donation intention and word-of-mouth (WOM) intention. Suggestions are made for universities to develop communication that creates a philanthropy culture and engages students as potential donors.

As digital and social media continue to grow in terms of usage and advertising expenditures, the advertising industry has been forced to develop innovative strategies. One such strategy is influenc...

While employee engagement has been primarily explored within the business, human resources and management disciplines, public relations research has more recently taken an interest in furthering its understanding and acknowledging how public relations can serve an organization’s internal communication as a foundational component of the field. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how public relations can serve an organization’s internal communication by better understanding how employees perceive and experience engagement. Following a phenomenological methodology (n = 32), this study utilized zones of meaning as a conceptual foundation (not a literal interpretation) to examine the process related to the complex, shifting and shared meaning of zones of engagement and how zones of meaning are products as well as drivers of engagement, which offer a new way to conceptualize employee engagement in public relations, shifting to a deeper comprehension and understanding. The findings show that employee experiences align more to Kahn’s (1990) initial personal engagement model than other public relations models. The psychological conditions of meaningfulness and safety from the original employee engagement model emerged as important factors in defining the employees’ shared-meaning lived experiences. In addition, this study offers a new definition of disengagement, which is similar but unique to the scholarship on negative engagement. The findings provide a framework for public relations scholars who work to further refine the understanding of employee engagement and for practitioners who develop public relations strategies for internal audiences, and advances the conceptual foundation of zones of meaning in public relations scholarship.

Society’s attempt to understand and communicate about risk is perhaps the world’s oldest topic − the rationale for human existence and survival (Douglas, 1992). This paper takes critical stock of public relations scholarship and practices in the daunting complex that has become known as the infrastructural approach to risk communication. This approach blends critical judgment of the community structures where risk is discussed and the discourse in which it is analyzed as the foundation for risk governance needed for fully functioning societies. The critical lens of hegemony and postmodernism reveals how an increasing amount of risk communication scholarship and practice has evolved into a new professional, industrial, and societal hegemony that often marginalizes risk bearers and risk arbiters as a nuisance in an otherwise modern and elitist approach to risk control through which risk communication becomes a “priced commodity.” Such commodification can empower organizations to take further risks because of the perceived confidence that its robust risk management programs and risk communication teams, including public relations, can control the dialogue and thereby help protect it from business continuity failure. The great challenge is whether risk communication and management ultimately favors the interests of elites over, and even to the marginalization and subjugation of, the interests of risk bearers and arbiters, ignoring the experiences of inequalities over the life span.