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This paper offers an empirical overview of European emergency managers' institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in risk and crisis communication.

The authors collected and analysed material including publicly accessible relevant legal acts, policy documents, official guidelines, and press reports in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia. Additionally, the authors carried out 95 interviews with emergency managers in the eight countries between September 2019 and February 2020.

The authors found that emergency management institutions' social media usage is rarely centrally controlled and social media crisis communication was regulated with the same guidelines as crisis communication on traditional media. Considering this study's findings against the backdrop of existing research and practice, the authors find support for a “mixed arrangement” model by which centralised policies work in tandem with decentralised practices on an ad hoc basis.

Comparative insights about institutional arrangements and procedural guidelines on social media crisis communication in the studied countries could inform the future policies concerning social media use in other emergency management systems.

This study includes novel, cross-national comparative data on the institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in emergency management in the context of Europe.

Although significant research has examined the concept of transformational leadership, few studies have explored the indirect impact of transformational leadership on individual and organizational outcomes within the context of crisis. Accordingly, this study aims to advance our understanding of the indirect impact of transformational leadership on school performance and principals' work alienation within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, this study contributes to this developing stream of literature by hypothesizing the indirect effect of two relational resources, namely employee trust and relational coordination, which mediate the relationship between transformational leadership, school performance and principals' work alienation.

This study draws on a unique sample of 634 principals from Irish primary schools navigating the COVID-19 crisis. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed using Mplus 8.3 to test the hypothesized model.

Mixed findings emerged concerning the mediating process of relational resources and their impact on transformational leadership, school performance and principals' work-alienation. In particular, support is found for the critical role of principals whose transformational leadership style can help increase school performance. However, evidence suggests that employee trust does not mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and principals' work alienation.

This study provides several practical insights for education professionals, policymakers and HRM practitioners across each phase of the crisis management cycle. Firstly, regarding the pre-crisis stage, educational institutions should invest in targeted leadership development programs that prioritize relationship-building and effective communication among stakeholders. Second, during crises, the study emphasizes the role of relational resources in mediating the impact of leadership on school performance. Moreover, the study illustrates the importance of proactively cultivating strong connections with stakeholders, fostering timely, problem-solving-based communication. Finally, in the post-crisis phase, collaboration with government stakeholders is recommended to inform recovery policies.

This study makes several contributions to the literature on leadership and crisis management. First, this study adds new insights suggesting how principals as leaders influence school performance during crisis. Second, by adopting a relational perspective, this study suggests two types of relational resources (i.e. employee trust and relational coordination), as the mediators between transformational leadership, school performance and principals' work alienation. Third, this study moves the existing research on leadership during crisis forward by focusing on the functional effectiveness of leadership while focusing on the principals' work alienation during the pandemic.

This study aims to examine how governing bodies demonstrated stakeholder engagement during the time of the COVID-19 crisis in South Africa.

This study uses a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 18 participants, comprising of preparers of financial statements, board members and management consultants/advisors. The study also relied on the analysis of articles on corporate webpages and publications produced by professional bodies on the economic, social and environmental impact of COVID-19.

The results of this study indicated that governing bodies demonstrated stakeholder engagement during times of crisis through transparent reporting, corporate social responsibility initiatives and active stakeholder inclusivity.

This study contributes to the body of research on stakeholder engagement during a crisis and provides evidence of the role stakeholder inclusivity can play in responding to a crisis. The findings will be useful in understanding the importance of stakeholder engagement during times of crisis. The study is one of the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to evaluate how stakeholder engagement principles can be followed by governing bodies during a crisis.

Since research has already shown that social distance affects the relationship between employees and the organization, this study (1) examines job-related resources that contribute to teleworkers’ organizational commitment and (2) works out how internal communication professionals can strategically address them.

A total of 50 problem-centered, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with teleworkers from Austrian and German organizations between March and June 2021.

The interview data resulted in eight job-related resources that contribute to teleworkers’ organizational commitment. By pointing out the communicative aspects of these resources, we discuss how internal communication professionals can strategically engage to maintain the connection between teleworkers and the organization despite the distance. It highlights the communicators’ role as a strategic communicators and networkers, as enabler and as key speaker for employees’ needs.

The data were collected during a health crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) in the context of Austrian and German organizations and refers to the perspective of employees for whom teleworking israther new.

The study provides in-depth insights into teleworkers’ expectations and entails clear implications for the practice of internal communication professionals to strengthen teleworkers’ commitment.

This paper conceptualises how managers psychologically experience and respond to crises via metaphor analysis.

This paper uses a discourse dynamics approach to metaphor analysis. Conceptual metaphors were analysed and developed into concept maps through 37 semi-structured interviews with senior managers from different portfolios within 16 public universities in South Africa after #FeesMustFall protests.

Five domains emerged, including (1) looming crisis, (2) crisis onset, (3) crisis triage and containment, (4) (not) taking action and (5) post-crisis reflection. These domains shape a framework for the crisis adaptation cycle.

This study suggests that organisations should pay more attention to understanding emotions in crises and can use the adaptation model to develop their managers. It shows how metaphors can help explain affective and cognitive experiences and how emotions shift and evolve during a crisis. Managers should be aware of early signs of the crisis and its potential impact on their business operation in the looming and recognition stages, analyse the situation and work collectively on possible actions to minimise losses and maximise gains.

This is a rare investigation into the emotions of senior managers in the public sector in a social movement and national crisis via unconventional research methods to advance cognitive appraisal theory in crisis management.

This study aims to outline the role of causal attributions in consumer responses to irresponsible corporate behaviour. Specifically, this paper presents a moderated mediation model that explains how four types of perceived motives behind an irresponsible action shape corporate blame and word-of-mouth recommendations.

To test the hypotheses, the study uses data from a large survey assessing consumer reactions to a real case of corporate socially irresponsible behaviour in the banking industry.

The findings show that market-, unethicality- and rogue employee-driven attributions increase corporate blame and subsequently make people more likely to spread negative comments regarding the culprit. The difficult situation of a bank, as a perceived reason for wrongdoing, does not reduce the blame attributed to the irresponsible organisation.

The literature offers little information on the attributions people make following egregious corporate behaviour; however, such cognitions can play an important role in stakeholders’ reactions to wrongdoing. This study therefore extends the understanding of how irresponsibility attributions affect consumers’ responses to misbehaviour. Given the empirical context, the findings might be particularly important for communication and bank managers.

While digital transformation holds immense promise, organizations often fail to realize its benefits. This study aims to address how policies for digital transformation benefits realization are translated into practice.

The authors apply a qualitative, comparative case study of two large, public-sector health care organizations in Sweden. Through document and interview data, the authors analyze the process of translation.

The study finds that practice variation is primarily caused by two types of decoupling: policy-practice and means-ends. Contrary to previous studies, coercion in policy compliance is not found to decrease practice variation.

The limitations primarily stem from the empirical selection of two large public health-care organizations in Sweden, affecting the study’s generalizability. Reducing practice variation is more effectively achieved through goal alignment than coercion, leading to implications for the design of governance and control.

Policymakers should, instead of focusing on control-related compliance, work to align organizational objectives and policies to decrease practice variation for successful benefits realization.

The study contributes to better benefits realization of digital transformation initiatives in health care. As such, the authors contribute to a better functioning and more transformative health care in times of increased demand and decreased supply of health-care services.

The study challenges conventional wisdom by identifying that coercion is less effective than goal alignment in reducing practice variation, thereby enhancing the understanding of policy implementation dynamics in health-care settings.