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This paper offers a quick overview of Cameron's contingency theory of conflict management in public relations. It then applies the theory to three cases that occurred during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games that were taken from the policy position papers, notes, diaries and tape recordings of C. Richard Yarbrough, Managing Director‐Communications of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG). The areas analysed include: the moving of preliminary volleyball matches from one venue to another which was forced by conflict between gay activists and local politicians who passed an anti‐gay resolution — a sustained effort at accommodation that shifted to advocacy; conflict between the ACOG board of directors and the media resulting from the disclosure of ACOG executive salaries — a strong advocacy stance that led to compromise; and conflict threatened between ACOG and a minority minister who was disgruntled about an Olympic sponsor — a case of marginality too insignificant to bother with. The cases not only illustrate and support factors in the contingency theory, but highlight the impracticality and inflexibility of two‐way symmetrical or mixed‐motive public relations as models of choice.

Prevailing thought in academia holds that the ideal model of public relations is two‐way symmetrical. In this model, communication flows both ways between an organisation and a public while both are prepared to change their own behaviour. The result is posited as the most professional, ethical and effective practice. Contingency theory offers qualifications and reservations of excellence theory. One qualification is that dialogue between an organisation and a public may not be allowed for a number of reasons, such as legal constraints or moral convictions against compromising with a public. To build the contingency theory from the ground up, top practitioners are interviewed to learn whether six such proscriptive factors ring true in their experience. The implications of the findings for practitioners, educators and those interested in theories that help define professional practice in public relations are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe workplace disclosure dilemmas of individuals with hidden mental health conditions who have privately accepted their mental health condition (anxiety and/or depression), but have chosen not to disclose it in their respective workplaces.

Interviews were conducted with 15 individuals who experience anxiety and/or depression. These individuals work across diverse organizations and sectors in India (e.g. architecture and health care). Data were analyzed using qualitative methods.

Interviewees grappled with three dilemmas: professionalism versus authenticity (i.e. bringing only a partial professional self or the whole self to work), withdrawal versus participation (i.e. withdrawal from workplace interactions to conceal their condition or participation such that people could know of it) and personal privacy versus general advocacy (i.e. guarding one's privacy or engaging in advocacy for individuals who experience mental health conditions). Overall, findings suggest that the disclosure dilemma can stem from both one's internalized sense of a devalued self and by perceived contextual cues.

Findings imply that perceived contextual conditions that amplify threat of discovery and its anticipated consequences can lead to and reinforce the disclosure dilemma. As individuals internalize others' constructions of themselves, they self-police and do not interrogate assumed normality within their social contexts.

Employers can create inclusive environments. Present findings suggest some examples of inclusive practices such as the employment of dedicated resident counselors or counselors shared across organizations, training of stakeholders (including human resource personnel), allowing for selective disclosure (e.g. only to medical personnel) and cultivating informal support networks comprising similar others.

Such evidence-based research that can inform practices of inclusion for persons with a disability is especially important, considering that research on mental health conditions is conspicuous by its relative absence in mainstream management journals.

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. This law was intended to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities (PWD) in employment, public accommodations, transportation and other areas of life. However, the degree of impact in these sectors has not been studied in tandem. Addressing these sectors together is the primary objective of this paper.

Results are analyzed and presented regarding ADA impacts as well as which organizations provide advocacy services in support to PWD from survey data collected from 1,582 US participants in 2010 (N = 866) and 2015 (N = 716).

Results suggest that the ADA has had a positive impact on PWD, yet this law favorably affects people of certain demographics more than others. Moreover, people with and without disabilities have differing opinions on the impact of the ADA, suggesting that what is conveyed to the public and the impact of the ADA on real-life outcomes of PWD are sometimes misaligned.

The present study helps add to the current body of knowledge on the impact of the ADA by providing perspectives on advocacy services and impacts from a diverse set of PWD and their counterparts without disabilities.

Crisis planning, which symbolizes an organization's crisis preparedness and often conceptualized at the corporate headquarters, is increasingly decentralized to regional centers of global companies. These centers, in turn, synchronize their crisis master plans with its national units for expeditious management of localized crises. The purpose of this paper is to capture the decision‐making processes that practitioners at a regional center faced as they nurtured their master plan from conception to implementation.

The qualitative method is used. This is a case study of a Fortune 500 company with plants in every continent. The company has four regional centers, and the center under study oversees more than 20 national units or countries.

This study found a deep divide in attitude, expectation, and style between what practitioners and the dominant coalition regarded as necessary and sufficient measures in crisis planning.

Restricted access to more interviewees.

Studies like this, grounded in the practitioner's world, add rich layers of context to understanding how theory and practice can integrate. Given that in this study, corporate communications has been found to be regarded as an auxiliary, rather than ancillary, function in this study, this paper offers practical tips on what practitioners can do to transform organizational perception.

Such studies are rare because of the lack of accessibility to data. Practitioners are hesitant to grant access because of the highly sensitive nature of this topic, for fear of reprisals from their organizations, and an inadvertent revelation of organizational privacy and secrets.

Reviews the current social policy and its application as it relates to the education of students with learning disabilities attending US institutes of higher education. Attempts to differentiate between the legal rights and these students in primary and secondary settings versus those in higher education. Reviews the definition of learning disabilities and eligibility criteria in colleges and universities and gives an overview of common services provided to college studetns with learning disabilities. Summarizes the results of several follow‐up studies on students with learning disabilities who attend post‐secondary institutes.

Marketers are focusing on the need for customer advocacy to influence other customers and drive consumption. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether online or digital advocacy influences customer decision-making related to the purchase of travel and tourism services. This paper will also identify the categories of influencers that stimulate purchase for travel and tourism. Influencers do want to know the kind of information customers are looking for.

This paper is based on a primary survey of travelers to understand their degree of dependence on online reviews while making hospitality consumption-related decisions.

This paper looks at both influencer marketing and online reviews by consumers to understand consumption toward advocated brand. Influencers who are perceived as unbiased in their viewpoints are trending on social media. Consumers gain trust in reviews that disclose reviewer information, number of relevant reviews are present over a period and presence of both unbiased positive and negative recommendations related to the establishment and prices versus performance.

Marketers and influencers alike can gain from the factors influencing consumer trust toward online advocacy and reviewed information.

Research is relevant for all stakeholders as it highlights the fact that consumers are looking at online reviews and one does not have to be a famous personality to influence purchase. It is relevant for influencers, as it highlights reasons for trust and various information cues that consumers are looking for. Research also gives perspective to influencers to refine online strategy and gain trust of more followers.

The purpose of this paper is to extend current theories in crisis communication, by developing a more systemic approach to understanding the role of emotions in crises and the strategies organizations can use to respond. The authors' integrated crisis mapping (ICM) model is premised on a public‐based, emotion‐driven perspective where different crises are mapped on two continua, the organization's engagement in the crisis and primary public's coping strategy.

Content analysis was used to analyze 259 stories in US mainstream newspaper covering five different crisis cases.

The initial test suggests theoretical rigor. It found that publics involved in crises pertaining to reputational damage, technological breakdown, industrial matters, labor unrest, and regulation/legislation, are likely to feel anxious, angry, and sad. At the same time, they are likely to engage in conative coping.

Understanding publics' emotions in crisis is a rarely studied area. This model is arguably the first to suggest a framework of emotions. This study is the first of a series of tests to generate what Yin termed “analytic generalization” for the ICM model.

After the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in the state of Victoria, Australia, the State Government provided information and advice, short-term and temporary accommodation as well as financial assistance to bushfire-affected communities. A tension developed between quickly rebuilding housing and re-establishing known social and economic networks versus a slower and more deliberative process that focuses on long-term community outcomes. Whilst there was a widespread assumption that quick rebuilding would be beneficial, resulting in immediate pressure to do so, it became evident that many people were not prepared to, or even did not want to rebuild. Thus it became important to provide time and support for people to consider their options away from the immediate pressures to rebuild that are often inherent in post-disaster recovery processes. This became known as “holding the space” and included the introduction of interim supports such as building temporary villages and other supports which enable people to achieve appropriate interim accommodation without having to rebuild immediately. However, even two years after the bushfires a significant proportion of people remained undecided whether they wanted to rebuild or not. The post-bushfire experience pointed to a number of lessons including the importance of appropriate timing of post-disaster activities, careful targeting of financial assistance, need for developing better and lower cost interim housing options and pre-impact planning. Given the complex nature of rebuilding following a disaster, design professionals should focus not just on the final house, but also look at housing options that blur the distinction between temporary and permanent. Their designs should be quick to build, offer a good quality of life, be affordable for most and be flexible in design for future use.

Although extant studies have investigated the antecedents of negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM), they treated it as a unidimensional concept without classification. To bridge this knowledge gap, this paper distinguishes rational negative eWOM (RNW) from emotional negative eWOM (ENW) and leverages the consumer value framework to investigate their drivers in the context of peer-to-peer accommodation platforms (PPAPs).

This study collected data through an online survey of 437 PPAP users. Partial least squares (PLS) were used to validate the proposed hypotheses. Further, the path coefficients comparison method was adopted to distinguish the different impacts of consumer values on RNW and ENW.

This research showed that self-presentation exerted a positive impact on RNW, but its relationship with ENW was insignificant. Anger and regret were, respectively, positively related to ENW and RNW. Besides, altruism exerted a positive effect on RNW, whereas it had a negative effect on ENW.

First, this paper makes a fresh attempt to categorize negative eWOM into RNW and ENW. Second, this paper draws upon the consumer value framework to dissect varied motivations for posting RNW versus ENW on PPAPs. Third, this paper empirically verifies the differential influences that consumer values exert on RNW and ENW.