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Although internal communication is perceived as one of the crucial elements for favorable internal evaluation of an employer brand (EB), the importance of internal communication for EB advocacy has been insufficiently theoretically problematized and related empirical evidence is almost non-existent. In this paper, the relationship between employees' satisfaction with internal communication and their perceptions of their employers' attractiveness is explored.

A questionnaire-based field research study was conducted on a sample of 3,457 Croatian employees. The Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire (ICSQ) (Tkalac Verčič et al., 2009) and the Employer Attractiveness (EmpAt) Scale (Berthon et al., 2005) were used for assessing internal communication satisfaction (ICS) and employer attractiveness (EA).

Findings reveal that respondents' overall satisfaction with internal communication in their organizations is significantly positively related with the overall attractiveness they assign to their employers, that all explored ICS dimensions are significant for the overall EA, and that each ICS dimension is significant for at least one EA dimension. The most relevant ICS dimensions for EA are “satisfaction with feedback” and “satisfaction with communication climate”.

A conducted large sample study is among the first quantitative empirical studies that proved that employees who are satisfied with internal communication are likely to see their employers as attractive. Moreover, findings point toward internal communication endeavors which add more value to developing an attractive internal EB.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why, despite the development of a hybrid investing logic, funding problems are so persistent for early-stage Cleantech ventures (“Cleantechs”). An institutional logics lens is adopted to analyze how key actors' perceptions and communications of the Cleantech value proposition shape information asymmetries (IAs).

A mixed methods approach draws on 82 Cleantech pitch decks and 31 investment guidance documents, and insights from interviews with 42 key informants and nine Cleantech CEOs and their investors.

IAs persist, first of all, because key investor and entrepreneurial actors combine different goals in the hybrid Cleantech value proposition. Interestingly, the analysis of Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs) as a critical communication tool reveals a further mismatch in how actors actually combine logics. The authors ultimately identify three emergent actor roles – traditional laggard, developer and boundary spanner – that present a framework of how the three most influential actor groups develop EPIs and via that a hybrid Cleantech financing logic to overcome IAs.

The paper enhances the entrepreneurial finance literature primarily by showing that in contexts of hybrid investing a more nuanced understanding of institutional logics in terms of ends and means is critical to overcome IAs. While prior works highlight goal incompatibilities, the findings here suggest that the (in-)compatibility of goals as well as EPI choices of the same actors is likely to be the key explanandum for the stickiness of IAs and the funding gap. The novel emerging role framework offers additional theoretical, policy and practical advances for hybrid logic development.

This study answers the call for research and theorising exploring ethical communication and brand risk from the African continent. The study's purpose was to identify the challenges that strategic communication practitioners face in enacting ethical crisis communication in South Africa.

The researchers conducted ten in-depth interviews with South African strategic communication professionals.

The dominant theme emerging from the study is the marginalisation and exclusion of the communication function in decision-making during crisis situations. Communicators were viewed as implementers, technicians and not strategic counsel. The protection of organisational reputation was done at the expense of the ethics and moral conscience of practitioners. Practitioners were viewed and deployed as spin doctors and tools to face unwanted media interactions.

The article sheds light on the concepts of ethical communication and decision-making in a multicultural African context using the moral theory of Ubuntu and strategic communication. It demonstrates the tension professionals experience as they toggle between unethical capitalist approaches and African values. The practitioner's role as organisational moral conscience is hindered, suppressed and undermined by organisational leadership's directives to use opaque, complex communication, selective transparency and misrepresentation of facts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify what attention science pays to CSR communication for the process of career orientation and employer decision-making by the critical sought after top talent.

The review is structured as a systematic literature review of the CSR–HRM intersection. In 11 EBSCO online databases one of several “CSR-terms” was combined with one of several “HRM-terms”.

Although CSR has long been recognized as a relevant factor for organizational attractiveness (Greening and Turban, 2000) and talent attraction and its importance is reflected in the ongoing “war for talent” (Chambers et al., 1998) in which (prospective) leaders are considered a critical human resource for corporate success (Ansoff, 1965), few contributions are focusing on successfully recruited future leaders/high potentials.

There is a knowledge gap about the importance of CSR in high potential recruiting, which influences both resource-strong decisions on the company side and the communication behavior of applicants. Companies only know about a general CSR relevance for employees and applicants. Accordingly, no attention-optimized CSR communication can take place. In the highly competitive battle for the attention of high potentials, this leads to undifferentiated communication formats. At the same time, high potentials may not receive the CSR information of interest to them from an employer at the relevant time and therefore cannot present an optimal fit in the cover letters and thus cannot prove themselves as ideal candidates.

CSR is not only an obligatory field of communication for companies, but also a special opportunity in recruiting the young value-oriented generations Y and Z. The research on CSR communication in the course of their career decision has not been covered in a review so far, the research situation is thus explicitly addressed for the first time and practical implications for the post COVID-19 employer brand and recruiting communication are addressed.

After deciding to become agile, many information technology (IT) units struggle; they underestimate the needed managerial expertise to alter their current culture toward an agile one, particularly when cross-cultural (f)actors are involved. Given that work values are the key to an organizational culture, the study derived a set of agile work values of culturally diverse IT professionals together with a set of well-known generic work values. Consequently, the authors illustrate that managers in charge of the transition to an effective agile culture must pay serious attention to the specific value constellations of its often highly diverse workforce.

A literature review resulted in an initial list of agile work values. Then, mainly through a Delphi round, 12 agile-specific work values were established. These were survey rated, along with the validated set of 18 generic work values, by 102 British and Indian IT professionals in a digital service and consulting firm that was requested by its client to become agile. The observations made in 14 feedback group-interview-type dialogs enriched the surveyed data further.

In the current exploratory study, four generic value dimensions were complemented by two agile-specific ones: team communication and shared responsibility. Among the British and Indian (on-site and offshore) workers, only 2 of the 30 current work values were shared while 7 significant value differences were found, explaining the noted employee bitterness, productivity losses and client disengagement. This situation was reflected in the many discrepancies between the professionals' ideal agile way of working and how their unit was currently functioning.

The multi-method study shows an over-optimistic approach to becoming agile in a common cross-cultural context; insights are gained on how to optimize agile ways of organizing IT work when British IT workers collaborate with Indian IT workers. It may benefit many agile practitioners and managers working with(in) cross-culturally mixed and partly remote teams.

The benefits associated with visibility in organizations depend on employees' willingness to engage with technologies that utilize visible communication and make communication visible to others. Without the participation of workers, enterprise social media have limited value. This study develops a framework to assess what deters and drives employees' use of enterprise social media.

Data were collected from 753 employees of a global company using an online survey. The response rate was 24.5%. The authors used structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized framework.

The results show that various fears by workers may deter or motivate enterprise social media use. This offers an alternative viewpoint for examining the consequences of communication visibility in organizations. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that the fear of accountability and the fear of losing uniqueness reduce enterprise social media use through increased codification efforts. The fear of missing out is directly and positively related to collecting behaviors on enterprise social media.

Expectations about participation in visible organizational communication environments are rising. However, as individuals may experience anxiety in such settings, the authors need to direct more analytical focus to the ways individuals manage communication visibility in organizing contexts and develop a deeper understanding of the consequences of fear in workplace communication.

The analysis recognizes that fear can play a key role in deterring or motivating workers' specific choices in navigating the challenges that occur when technology can make communication broadly visible. This study uses theorizing on communication visibility to bring together different fear mechanisms to predict enterprise social media use.

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.