Search

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]

The unprecedented power of Big Tech corporations and the complexity of regulating them requires considering the role of news media as a corporate accountability mechanism. The aim of this article is to examine news media's watchdog role through a performative lens, extending it to the corporate context by looking at three manifestations of performance: media visibility, way of coverage, and sourcing patterns. Based on a longitudinal quantitative content analysis of 920 news stories on Big Tech from four media outlets (2000–2021) in the United States and Germany, we explain variances in the watchdog role taking an over-time, cross-country, and cross-political leaning perspective. Our findings suggest that Big Tech corporations receive little but increasing media attention over the years that is driven by events. Similarly, news coverage contains an increasingly strong presence of a detached watchdog role performance. A more interventionist watchdog role is also on the rise – even though marginally – and political actors are increasingly given a voice in news coverage. From a comparative perspective, our results show that Big Tech corporations are more visible in the US and across right leaning news outlets. US journalists exhibit a more detached approach, while German journalists perform a significantly higher interventionist performance. Corporate sources are overall prominent in the media arena yet dominate more in the US. In conclusion, US and German news media are critical but passive observers over Big Tech corporations and can therefore be labeled a tame yet increasingly growling watchdog when it comes to holding Big Tech accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the framing strategies lobbyists apply to influence public policy in a case on nuclear emission data in Switzerland. Framing analysis is at the heart of communication science and has been applied in lobbying settings, but framing theory has not yet been fine‐tuned to the specificities of public affairs research. This qualitative case study gives insights into the dominant frames seven actors ranging from corporations to nongovernmental organizations to public institutions employ to defend a legal court case in the nuclear power industry. The results of the document analysis and the interviews show that frames travel among diverse actors and only some are picked up by the courts, at times stating a position opposite to the one initially intended by the frame sponsor. A public affairs‐specific integrated process model of framing is presented that views the media in the role of a moderator in the framing process and pronounces the lobbying organizations' strategic goals, the different stakeholders as target audiences, and the outcomes of the public affairs process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we posit that corporate political activities (CPA) such as lobbying make use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to advance instrumental goals. We juxtapose the theoretical foundations of the normative concept of political CSR and the strategic notion of nonmarket strategy to show that they are in opposition conceptually regarding the role of corporations in public policy. Using a systematic theoretical comparison along seven dimensions, we discuss the juxtapositions and identify the common ground of the two theories. Building on examples from the alcohol industry, we describe how CPA uses instrumental CSR to advance goals in public policy—we call this politicized CSR. Hence, we illustrate the shift from political to politicized CSR, a misuse of CSR for purposes of CPA, and discuss consequences for the theory and practice of public affairs and CSR. [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]

Engaging in comparative lobbying research is a challenging task, because public affairs is complex and highly context‐dependent. Thus, qualitative case studies have been researchers' primary choice. However, the case method has been subject to much debate surrounding its rigor, in terms of reliability, internal validity, and generalizability, and particularly its potential for theory building. To propose a framework for researchers conducting lobbying case studies as well as for reviewers receiving such work, we apply a positivistic approach on case study rigor from management studies and expand the framework to tackle the specific challenges of comparative qualitative lobbying research. Thus, we expand the research framework by a set of variables specific to public affairs: We add enrichment for internal validity, contextuality, and comparability for external validity, interdisciplinarity for construct validity, and hypertext‐searchable databases for reliability. Thereby, we aim to transfer the lessons learned from management studies in terms of rigorous qualitative case studies to public affairs to help build novel and explanatory theory in the field and to provide guidance to researchers how to design a rigorous case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]