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Since public sector organizations provide services to citizens but struggle with poor perceptions of their functioning, it is valuable to examine how their online responses to complaints on social media could impact their reputation. Yet, surprisingly little is known about effects of public organizations' webcare. Therefore, this study assesses the impact of the webcare's tone, response strategy and user's involvement on participants’ continuance intention and perceptions of reputation.

Two experimental studies (Study 1: N = 424; Study 2: N = 203) with an interval of one week were carried out to assess the effects of singular and repeated exposure to webcare by a Dutch public transport organization on the participants' continuance intention and perceived organizational reputation. Study 1 examined the effects of the webcare's tone (corporate vs conversational human voice (CHV)) and response strategy (accommodative vs defensive); Study 2 contained tone of voice and user's involvement (observer vs complainer). The effects of repeated exposure to the webcare's tone were also examined.

The results indicate that perceptions of CHV in webcare contribute to webcare as reputation management tool, since it leads to immediate higher reputation scores that also remain stable after repeated exposure. Furthermore, people's continuance intention increased after repeated exposure to webcare responses that were perceived as CHV, thus a natural and engaging communication style, indicating this is an effective strategy for customer care as well. No substantial impact was found for response strategy and user's involvement in the complaint handling.

The novelty of this study is that the authors assess the effects of the webcare's tone combined with response strategy and user's involvement in a public sector context with a sector-specific conceptualization of reputation and continuance intention measured after singular and repeated exposure to webcare.

Despite an increasing body of research on value co-creation through social media, service organizations still face difficulties in leveraging the potential of social media communication to facilitate value co-creation with multiple stakeholders. This article addresses this challenge by adopting a multistakeholder, communication perspective.

This article uses a conceptual approach and builds upon concepts widely recognized in the public relations (PR) literature to assess communication in multistakeholder social media-mediated exchanges.

This article discusses the role of social media communication in enabling value co-creation as well as the communicative challenges that come along with it. Moreover, applying PR academic insights to the service innovation and service recovery research fields, it advances theoretical propositions that predict how service organizations can successfully build upon the social media communication fundamentals – namely dialogue, engagement, social presence and conversational human voice – to trigger value co-creation with and among multiple stakeholders.

This article introduces selected relevant theoretical concepts from the PR field and develops novel theoretical propositions that are likely to make unique contributions to the service management field. The article also advances future research avenues that will help service and communication scholars together move the field forward.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of social media guidelines (SMGs), as well as their impact on control mutuality, a sub-dimension of the organization–employee relationship (OER). A total of two studies compare guidelines with a focus that is either predominantly incentive or restrictive. In addition, they investigate the moderating effect of guideline writing style and enforcement.

In total, two online experiments were conducted among Belgian employees. Participants read a social media policy manipulated in terms of focus (restrictive vs incentive) and style (conversational vs corporate; Study 1) or enforcement (signature requested vs not requested; Study 2).

Incentive guidelines increase employee branding behavior more than their restrictive counterparts, while also safeguarding employees' perceived control mutuality. However, solid SMGs will not compensate for an organization's bad reputation among employees. The guidelines' style and manner of enforcement did not seem to matter.

Communication executives can use our findings to draft SMGs in a way that increases opportunities (e.g. ambassadorship) and reduces risks (e.g. criticism) associated with employee social media use.

Prior research on SMGs is predominantly descriptive and focused on the organizational perspective. This research paper contributes to both theory and practice by studying the causal impact of these guidelines on employees.

The COVID-19 lockdown severely impacted organizations in the cultural and tourist business as their products all of a sudden “disappeared”. This study aims to explore if and how the unexpected and disruptive nature of the pandemic accelerated the development of new communication strategies on their social media.

The study draws on data from 24 midsize cultural institutions and tourist attractions in Denmark over the first two months of the lockdown in 2020. Approximately 900 posts on Facebook were collected and analyzed through the netnographic method. The analysis followed a two-layered qualitative approach. First, open coding to identify typologies and enable a comparison with established strategies from the literature review. Then, an exploratory examination was conducted across the typologies.

Nine different content categories were identified in the data and subsequently assessed and discussed in relation to the literature on strategies and dialogic intentions. This resulted in the emergence of two new overarching strategies: hope and host.

While hope is particularly relevant in crisis situations, the utilization of employees in the host role presents an opportunity for further development and engagement. Further, the results call for future research that breaks with the traditional quest for ideal strategies for the benefit of exploring the notion of “strategic doers”.

The identification of the hope and host strategies, along with the analysis of content categories and their alignment with various strategic intentions, contributes to the existing knowledge in this field. Further, the classic perception of engagement as driven by explicit interaction and dialogue is also challenged.

Engaging in webcare, i.e. responding to online reviews, can positively affect consumer attitudes, intentions and behavior. Research is often scarce or inconsistent regarding the effects of specific webcare strategies on business performance. Therefore, this study tests whether and how several webcare strategies affect hotel bookings.

We apply machine learning classifiers to secondary data (webcare messages) to classify webcare variables to be included in a regression analysis looking at the effect of these strategies on hotel bookings while controlling for possible confounds such as seasonality and hotel-specific effects.

The strategies that have a positive effect on bookings are directing reviewers to a private channel, being defensive, offering compensation and having managers sign the response. Webcare strategies to be avoided are apologies, merely asking for more information, inviting customers for another visit and adding informal non-verbal cues. Strategies that do not appear to affect future bookings are expressing gratitude, personalizing and having staff members (rather than managers) sign webcare.

These findings help managers optimize their webcare strategy for better business results and develop automated webcare.

We look into several commonly used and studied webcare strategies that affect actual business outcomes, being that most previous research studies are experimental or look into a very limited set of strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the dialogic theory of public relations can help strategic communication practitioners support and enhance the relationship between individuals and organizations.

This inquiry applied the dialogic theory of public relations by investigating leading media companies’ context-based strategic use of Twitter. Researchers conducted a qualitative content analysis of 1,800 tweets from 18 top-performing media organizations.

This study identified strategies, rooted in dialogic theoretical principles that media organizations used to engage stakeholders. Media companies employed strategies based on dialogic principles, including promoting organizations as industry and thought leaders, integrating social media, and using an interactive, synergistic organizational voice.

These strategies support the need to expand theoretical conceptualizations and use of dialogic principles to study online communication.

Findings offer practical strategies for practitioners managing organizations’ Twitter communication to foster engagement. In particular, practitioners should consider organizational context and subsequent content advantages.

Findings offer practical and theoretical contributions to the debate of interactivity.

This study aims to investigate the configurational effects of five rules – artificial intelligence (AI)-based hiring decision transparency, consistency, voice, explainability and human involvement – on applicants' procedural justice perception (APJP) and applicants' interactional justice perception (AIJP). In addition, this study examines whether the identified configurations could further enhance applicants' organisational commitment (OC).

Drawing on the justice model of applicants' reactions, the authors conducted a longitudinal survey of 254 newly recruited employees from 36 Chinese companies that utilise AI in their hiring. The authors employed fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to determine which configurations could improve APJP and AIJP, and the authors used propensity score matching (PSM) to analyse the effects of these configurations on OC.

The fsQCA generates three patterns involving five configurations that could improve APJP and AIJP. For pattern 1, when AI-based recruitment with high interpersonal rule (AI human involvement) aims for applicants' justice perception (AJP) through the combination of high informational rule (AI explainability) and high procedural rule (AI voice), there must be high levels of AI consistency and AI voice to complement AI explainability, and only this pattern of configurations can further enhance OC. In pattern 2, for the combination of high informational rule (AI explainability) and low procedural rule (absent AI voice), AI recruitment with high interpersonal rule (AI human involvement) should focus on AI transparency and AI explainability rather than the implementation of AI voice. In pattern 3, a mere combination of procedural rules could sufficiently improve AIJP.

This study, which involved real applicants, is one of the few empirical studies to explore the mechanisms behind the impact of AI hiring decisions on AJP and OC, and the findings may inform researchers and managers on how to best utilise AI to make hiring decisions.

Avatars have become increasingly prevalent on brand websites, yet their impact on consumers' use of these sites remains underexplored. The current study focuses on avatars, which are three-dimensional animated graphical web interfaces that verbally aid the brand stakeholders (e.g. customers, employees and suppliers). Avatars provide administrative and technical information through the brand website. Drawing upon the stimuli–organism–response (S-O-R) paradigm, this research examines the impact of avatars as an information provision and interacting tool (vs a traditional format) on consumers' perceptions, attitudes and behaviors toward a brand. It also investigates the roles of familiarity with avatar use and the language used by an avatar in shaping consumers' responses.

Across two laboratory experiments, the authors examined and confirmed causal relationships between the use of avatars (vs a traditional format) on a website and attitudinal and behavioral constructs.

We show that avatars (vs written information) had a significant effect on controlling information. The users in our experiments had greater control over the information provided when it was presented as text on a website compared to the case of avatars “telling” the information. Different languages and familiarity with avatar use also affected the consumers' hedonism in terms of website use.

We advance the understanding of avatar use in website design, particularly avatars' verbal interaction, in shaping consumers' cognitive, affective, attitudinal and behavioral responses and add important empirical evidence to the growing body of research and practices involving avatar use in interactive marketing.