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The modern corporation is evaluated by many measures that go beyond profit, which was the emphasis for years previously. Today’s corporation is weighed against expectations of many stakeholders, including not just customers but employees, investors, the government and even the public at large with no discernible financial or other tie to a company. As such, corporate boards necessarily must be concerned with more than financial performance, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the increasing emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. Given that public relations scholars and practitioners have long been concerned with stakeholder relationships, social responsibility and other non-financial indicators, it would make sense that public relations has a more obvious presence on corporate boards.

This study examined the 25 companies in the Fortune Modern Board 25 to determine how many board members had a background or expertise in public relations that would contribute to the leadership necessary for the concerns of the modern corporation, and whether the boards had a committee designated to public relations or related functions.

Results show that there are few corporate boards that have public relations represented prominently in either their members or committees. The same is true for executive leadership teams. Public relations or communications executives do appear to play some role in ESG, CSR and DEI reporting, but often there are staff members with those specific titles and roles.

The study was limited to 25 corporations on a Forbes list that ranked them as best in communicating ESG, CSR and DEI. The method examined publicly available literature which was revealing to the research questions, but more could be learned by interview or survey with CCOs.

The study shows the current presence of public relations capacity in terms of members of corporate boards, corporate committees and among the C-suite is not significant. Also, rather than PR as a function owning modern concerns of DEI, ESG and CSR, there are professionals with specific expertise in those areas who are responsible for those corporate issues.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), ESG (environmental, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) have recently been stressed as important for corporations to measure and report. The role of the public relations profession in managing and/or communicating in these areas is important to consider in terms of public expectations and satisfaction of communication on these subjects.

This paper is unique in integrating public relations theory and practice with board theory and the current management concerns with ESG, CSR and DEI. Little if any previous research has considered which professions are in charge of communicating on these concerns.

This study of job advertisements for internal communication practitioners aims to investigate the signals that organisations are sending the profession about what is required of these roles. The concept of corporate voice – the “voice” of the organisation – is problematised to explore tensions in vocality. The aim is to support communication practitioners to navigate multi-vocality in the evolving professional context of digital communication technologies and changes in the workplace.

This qualitative study considers the role of voice in corporate communication practices and offers insights into “digital disruption” and the discursive pressure of employers' priorities on the profession and its practices. Job advertisements for internal communication practitioners were examined during 6-month periods in 2018, 2020 and 2022, which was a significant time of change for the profession with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualitative content analysis of 514 internal communication job advertisements identifies that control and consistency are valorised, and continue to dominate descriptions of internal communication skills and responsibilities. The digital affordances that communication practitioners rely on has not changed significantly and a preference for “broadcasting” is evident.

This study provides insights into how Australian organisations shape and sustain univocal corporate communication practices, and the incompatibility of narrow configurations of voice with emerging organisational challenges such as social connectedness.

This paper reflects on antecedents that may cause academic fields to decline or stagnate. It uses a hermeneutic review to consolidate and critique the Internal Marketing (IM) field. Seminal studies of IM and its related construct Internal Marketing orientation (IMO) are identified. IMO is then juxtaposed with contemporary studies from a communications journal identified as core as part of the hermeneutic process.

This study critiques the IMO literature in a hermeneutic review. It draws on the auto-ethnographic tradition to compare IMO with contemporary, related communications articles.

Two antecedents are addressed. There is interest in IM but less so in IMO. Aspects from the IMO literature align with two broad areas, namely customer-centric and company-centric communications. Some IMO aspects have been developed further therein.

This paper recognizes further research opportunities for IMO and communications scholars with a greater focus on boundary spanning employees in national, sectoral and organizational settings. Being conceptual means it lacks empirical testing; being hermeneutic means it contributes to methodological plurality.

Despite having potentially profound organizational effects, IMO lacks awareness and adoption. Recommendations are made throughout to facilitate the adoption of improved communications apropos improving IMO.

The paper identifies employee/employer benefits of adopting good internal communications (IC). IM(O) provides a rationale for sound IC practices.

This paper partially addresses the paucity of research into IMO including BSEs. It improves conceptualization by consolidating the key IMO research on the development and measurement of the construct, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses within the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to assess online corporate communication around commitments to sustainable development goal (SDG) 12, sustainable production and consumption.

Guided by legitimacy theory, a qualitative directed content analysis was conducted on 13 companies' webpages (81 webpages, 78,947 words).

Companies broadly failed to communicate about all 11 SDG 12 targets, neglected to consistently address multiple stakeholder groups, missed opportunities to provide concrete evidence of progress and relied on a mix of substantive and symbolic legitimation strategies.

SDG 12 has been under-researched and this paper is one of the first to offer an in-depth analysis of corporate communication regarding SDG 12.

This paper aims to seek the perceptions of potential future corporate managers and directors on the issues raised in the literature, especially recent articles in the corporate communications literature, concerning corporate board gender quotas. It focusses on the Czech Republic, where research on board gender diversity is sparse.

The study is part of much more comprehensive research into board gender diversity. It adopts a questionnaire approach, with this paper focussing on 13 research statements. A Likert Scale of 1–4 (Strongly Agree; Agree; Disagree; Strongly Disagree) was applied to the perceived views expressed. The questionnaires were completed by university students at a public university in the Czech Republic during March–April 2023. A pilot questionnaire was conducted in February 2023, resulting in minor changes being made. The data is analysed using SPSS and MedCalc® statistical software.

There is overwhelming opposition to quotas, even from women. The opinions expressed by the respondents to this research, in many respects, support the literature, but there is unmistakable evidence of gender bias. Regarding the positive female benefits of quotas, male respondents disagreed; regarding the negative issues of quotas, male respondents agreed more than their female counterparts.

The research findings have important implications for how women recruited through quotas may be received onto corporate boards – what challenges will they likely face? Some current female candidates for directorship, who would have been selected on merit and perceived as such by their male counterparts, may now be hesitant to apply for such positions if they are seen as being appointed due to quotas. Therefore, the selection procedure must continue to be based on merit and seen as such.

One of the important aspects of the paper is that it focusses on a country that has, until recently, resisted pressures to implement mandatory corporate board gender quotas; in this respect, it has a corpus of originality and value. The Czech Republic and other European countries will also be affected by the recent EU law on gender balance or corporate boards. The paper also highlights the perceptions of potential future directors on various issues of board gender quotas.

This study is concerned with the dynamics of the internal communications at Netflix following the release of The Closer and the public debate that followed, testing Netflix's long-standing reputation for promoting diverse content and supporting a progressive organizational culture.

Using the circuit of culture (CoC) as a theoretical framework, this study applies a case study approach to analyze internal communication and strategic public relations in addressing this crisis.

This study's findings illustrate that by failing to interpret two of the five moments of the CoC, production and identity, Netflix negated the very values that constitute its brand. These findings have implications for how public relations' long-standing focus on two-way symmetrical communication is problematic, especially in the workplace.

The findings situate how the exertion of power within an organization, particularly in moments of identity and production, problematize the role of two-way symmetrical communication within an organization in crisis.

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.

A 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.

The 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.

Communicating 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.

Fake news stories have become a central element of crises that corporate public relations practitioners have confronted. Whether such stories are rumors, outright lies or deliberate attempts to discredit corporations, they have the same impact and require specific strategies for public relations practitioners to effectively respond. The purpose of this study is to uncover strategies to manage crises that arise from fake news and if and how these strategies differ for other corporate crises.

In this multi-method study of 21 in-depth interviews and a 8-person focus group with senior-level corporate public relations practitioners, authors explored decision-making strategies for responding to fake news crises. Transcripts of interviews and the focus group were thematically analyzed.

Results reveal insights regarding how public relations practitioners determine if and when to respond to fake news crises in corporations; what response strategies public relations practitioners have the autonomy to employ for fake news crises in corporations, and how public relations practitioners control media narratives during fake news crises in corporations.

The findings guide public relations practitioners to craft an autonomous decision-making process and effective online listening strategies—establishing a watchful waiting approach—and determine if the fake news issue is a passing moment or movement swirling into a crisis.

Few studies have examined the perspectives of crisis communication experts about minimizing and managing fake news crises. The study identifies opportunities for future research focused on crises originating from fake news and disinformation.

This study aims to examine the role of different forms of corporate social advocacy (CSA) in shaping individuals’ attitudinal and behavioral intentions towards companies taking their public stand on controversial socio-political issues. With an online experiment as the research method, this study tests whether depicting nonpolitical or political behaviors in CSA messages increases individuals’ positive behavioral intentions.

This study uses a single factor between subject online experiment. A total of 135 US young adults were recruited through a Qualtrics online panel. Three social media mockups were created to manipulate three levels of actions in CSA messages (no action, nonpolitical action and political action). Participants viewed one of those social media posts depicting presented actions to counter anti-LGBTQ + legislation in the USA and answered questions about values-driven motives behind CSA, brand preference and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) intention.

Participants displayed higher levels of brand preference when they viewed CSA messages depicting the company’s political action intended to repel anti-LGBTQ + legislation. Participants showed more positive WOM intentions towards the company when they perceived its political actions as more values-driven.

The findings of this study offer practical insights to companies when designing CSA messages and strategies. The results of this study indicate that the presence of political actions in CSA communication increases individuals’ positive behaviors towards companies. The results also suggest that depicting altruistic motives behind CSA leads individuals to talk about companies more in positive ways.

This study is one of the early studies investigating the impact of various forms of CSA on individuals’ attitudinal and behavioral intentions to companies practicing CSA. This study provides practical implications on how to effectively appeal individuals’ favorable attitudes and behaviors towards CSA. In particular, this research presents the importance of action aspects in individuals’ attitudes toward corporations’ CSA messages.

This study aims at proposing and testing a model delineating how and when the quality of a special B2B professional service, investment relations (IR), would drive corporate intangible value.

This study employs a proprietary dataset on voting records of an annual investment relations (IR) awards event and the corresponding company-level archival data for analysis. Regression analysis is used to test hypotheses.

IR service quality not only directly enhances corporate intangible value, but also indirectly boosts it via information transparency. While competitive intensity does not moderate the relationship between IR service quality and corporate intangible value, its moderating effect on the relationship between information transparency and this value is negative.

The findings advance academic understanding of the mechanism and boundary conditions underlying the complex and dynamic relationships among IR service quality, information transparency, corporate intangible value and competitive intensity. Future research endeavors to verify the present findings in other service and/or geographic settings would help establish their external validity.

The findings advise companies to expand the traditional role of IR by taking it as a powerful communication and relationship marketing tool to improve their visibility and attract investors.

The findings suggest that superior IR service would strengthen the company’s social bonding with institutional investors and effectively signal to them its commitment to good corporate governance practices.

Matching a proprietary dataset on IR voting records with the corresponding company-level archival data over a five-year period to investigate the performance implications of IR service quality within the Hong Kong context rectifies methodological limitation and geographic confinement of prior IR research.