Corporate Communications: An International Journal

Hein, Antonia Z.; Elving, Wim J.L.; Koster, Sierdjan; Edzes, Arjen

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-07-2022-0070

Employer branding (EB) has become a powerful tool for organizations to attract employees. Recruitment communication ideally reveals the image that companies want to portray to potential employees to attract talents with the right skills and competences for the organization. This study explores the impact of EB on employer attractiveness by testing how pre-existing employee preferences interact with EB and how this interaction affects employer attractiveness.Design/methodology/approachA quasi-experiment among 289 final-year students was used to test the relationships between EB, perceived employer image, person-organization (P-O) fit and employer attractiveness, and the potential moderating variables of pre-existing preferences, in this case operationalized as locational preferences. Students are randomly assigned to four vacancies: one with and one without EB cues in two different locations: Groningen and Amsterdam. The authors used standard scales for attractiveness, perceptions of an employer and person-organization fit. The authors test the relationships using a regression analysis.FindingsResults suggest that if respondents have previous predispositions, then their preference can be enhanced using an EB-targeted strategy. Based on these results, the authors can conclude that EB and related practices can be successful avenues for organizations in the war for talent, particularly if they reaffirm previous preferences of potential employees.Originality/valueThe research is original in the way it provides empirical evidence on the relationship between EB and attractiveness, particularly when previous employee preferences exist. This is of value to employers using EB as a tool to influence employer attractiveness.

Marschlich, Sarah; Bernet, Laura

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-10-2023-0142

Corporations are confronted with growing demands to take a stand on socio-political issues, i.e. corporate social advocacy (CSA), which affects their reputation in the public. Companies use different CSA message strategies, including calling the public to support and act on the issue they advocate. Using reactance theory, the authors investigate the impact of CSA messages with a call to action on corporate reputation in the case of a company's gender equality initiative.Design/methodology/approachA one-factorial (CSA message with or without a call to action) between-subjects experiment was conducted by surveying 172 individuals living in Switzerland. The CSA messages were created in the context of gender equality.FindingsThe authors' study indicates that CSA messages with a call to action compared to those without overall harmed corporate reputation due to individuals' reactance, which is higher for CSA messages with a call to action, negatively affecting corporate reputation. The impact of the CSA message strategy with a call to action on corporate reputation remains significant after controlling for issue alignment and political leaning.Originality/valueCommunicating about socio-political issues, especially taking a stand, is a significant challenge for corporations in an increasingly polarized society and has often led to backlash, boycotts and damage to corporate reputation. This study shows that the possible adverse effects of advocating for socio-political issues can be related to reactance. It emphasizes that companies advocating for contested issues must be more cautious about the message strategy than the issue itself.

Valentini, Chiara; Sriramesh, Krishnamurthy

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-02-2023-0018

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.FindingsThe findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.Practical implicationsThis study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.Originality/valueThe study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

Sossini, Alessandra; Heide, Mats

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-11-2023-0158

This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.FindingsThis study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.Practical implicationsThe findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.Originality/valueThis paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

Dahlen, Øystein Pedersen

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-08-2023-0106

The main aim of this article is to broaden the notion of strategic intent in public relations. It also develops an understanding of the social value of what can be defined as the first modern health communication campaign in Europe based on strategic intents and the development of modernity.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on both historical research and empirical material from the Norwegian tuberculosis campaign from 1889 up to 1913, when Norwegian women achieved suffrage. The campaign is analysed in the framework of modernity and social theory. The literature on lobbying and social movements is also used to develop a theoretical framework for the notion of strategic intent.FindingsThe study shows that strategic intent can be divided into two layers: (1) the implicit strategic intent is the real purpose behind the communication efforts, whereas (2) the explicit intent is found directly in the communication efforts. The explicit intent may be presented as a solution for the good of society at the right political moment, giving an organisation the possibility to mobilise for long-term social changes, in which could be the implicit intent.Originality/valueThe distinction between explicit and implicit strategic intent broadens our understanding on how to make long-term social changes as well as how social and political changes occur in modern societies. The article also gives a historical account of what is here defined as the first modern health communication campaign in Europe and its social value.

Ågren, Malin

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-06-2024-0110

This study investigates how communication is used by a Swedish public authority to legitimate the responsibilization of preparedness, i.e. how the state encourages individual citizens to take more responsibility for their security.Design/methodology/approachA multimodal discursive approach drawing on multimodal narrative analysis of video clips and multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) is used to examine how the responsibilization of preparedness is legitimated in video material published on Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency's (MSB’s) YouTube channel.FindingsThe study finds that the responsibilization of preparedness is legitimated through an ongoing but evolving normalization of threat. The findings also show how responsibilization is legitimated in moralizing terms of individual contribution to society, which may indicate a return from neo-liberal values to more traditional Swedish collectivist values.Originality/valueThe study shows how communication around preparedness and responsibilization is discursively constructed and legitimated through multimodal features, while previous research has mainly focused on verbal or written communication.

Kropivnik, Samo; Vrdelja, Mitja

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-01-2024-0007

From a public health perspective, vaccination programmes significantly add to long-term, safe co-existence. However, because there is no social consensus about their benefits and risks, the promotion of vaccinations is difficult. Based on Kim and Grunig’s situational theory of problem solving (STOPS), including communicative action in problem solving (CAPS), this paper both proposes a model for identifying the involvement of mothers of young children in communication regarding vaccination and advocates for a novel approach to STOPS and CAPS data analyses.Design/methodology/approachThe methodological design develops empirical analyses of the data yielded by the STOPS model. Two approaches to determining associations between situational-motivational variables and communicative-action variables in random-sample survey data obtained in Slovenia in 2016 (N = 1704) are implemented – i.e. visual methods and multivariate agglomerative clustering algorithm.FindingsThe STOPS model has been confirmed and both data-analyses approaches have shown potential by clearly demonstrating associations and patterns in the data. Based on these findings, we conclude that they have the potential to be the norm in analysing STOPS models.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations of the study, which are still to be overcome, involve drawing on one sample in one country and testing only one set of indicators.Practical implicationsFrom an academic point of view, confirmation of both the model and the analytical power of the pragmatic data-analyses methods significantly add to communication studies. From practical and social points of view, relationships among attitudes and communication behaviour, as outlined in the exposed segments of the public, enable the improvement of every step in strategic-communication planning and implementation.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified need to establish a theoretical framework and methodology of segmentation in vaccination-communication studies.

Bohacova, Karolina; Heide, Mats

2024 Corporate Communications: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/ccij-07-2024-0122

This study aims to propose a novel theoretical model that connects leadership and followership styles. The primary objective is to develop and validate an instrument capable of measuring these constructs. The study then applies factor and correlation analyses to investigate the relationships among leadership and followership styles across diverse cultural contexts, represented by respondents from Armenia, Denmark, Germany and the United States of America.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a mixed-method approach, beginning with the development and validation of an instrument to measure leadership and followership styles. Following instrument development, factor and correlation analyses are conducted on data collected from 271 respondents from four different countries. This methodology allows for the identification of distinct leadership (autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire) and followership (compliant, collaborating and initiating) styles as well as the examination of their interrelationships.FindingsFactor analysis reveals three distinct leadership and followership styles. Autocratic leadership positively correlates with compliant followership, while democratic leadership shows a positive association with collaborating followership. However, no significant correlation is found between laissez-faire leadership and initiating followership. Notably, collaborative followership demonstrates a positive association with all three leadership styles. These findings provide insights into the complex dynamics between leadership and followership styles across different cultural contexts.Originality/valueThis study offers a contribution by introducing a comprehensive theoretical model that illustrates the relationship between leadership and followership styles. Its innovative approach includes the development and validation of a unique instrument to measure these constructs across diverse cultural backgrounds. By uncovering distinct leadership and followership styles and their correlations, this study provides valuable insights for both academics and practitioners.