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This study aims to understand how integration efforts at both communication and channel levels can foster customer engagement behavior in the retail sector from the perspective of employees.

Data were collected through 231 face-to-face questionnaires completed by frontline employees in shopping centers. A structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results highlight the importance of integration efforts as external stimuli for enhancing employees’ perceptions about customer engagement behavior. Findings extend the stimulus-organism-response model by predicting responses that go beyond employees’ behavior to predict customer engagement behavior. Results also confirm the mediating role of attitudes toward marketing communications and synergy realization in the proposed model.

Retailers should integrate their multiple channels and operate consistently and in coordination through them to develop employees’ perceptions about customer engagement behavior. Managers should regularly collect information from their employees as they represent an important touchpoint in omnichannel retailing.

There is a gap in the omnichannel retailing literature regarding how integration efforts at a communication level may complement integration efforts at a channel level for developing customer engagement. This study addresses this gap by adopting a novel perspective using frontline employees as a source of information for assessing customer engagement behavior. It extends knowledge about how customer engagement behavior may be developed and strengthened from the employees’ point of view.

Este estudio analiza, desde la perspectiva del empleado, cómo la integración de la comunicación y la coordinación de los canales de distribución fomenta el engagement de los clientes en el sector minorista.

Los datos fueron recogidos a través de 231 cuestionarios personales realizados a empleados de centros comerciales. Las hipótesis se contrastaron mediante un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Los resultados destacan la importancia de la integración para fomentar la percepción de los empleados acerca del engagement del cliente. Estos resultados extienden la aplicación del Modelo de Estimulo-Organismo-Respuesta para predecir no sólo el comportamiento de los empleados si no el engagement del cliente. Los resultados también corroboran el rol mediador de la actitud hacia las comunicaciones de marketing y la obtención de sinergias.

Los distribuidores deben integrar todos los canales y actuar de forma coordinada y consistente para mejorar la percepción de los empleados acerca del engagement del cliente. Se debe recabar información periódica sobre las percepciones de los empleados ya que constituyen un importante punto de contacto en la gestión omnicanal de los establecimientos comerciales.

Este estudio aborda un gap existente en la literatura acerca de cómo los esfuerzos de integración a nivel de comunicación complementan los esfuerzos a nivel de canal para fomentar el engagement del cliente. La novedad de este estudio reside en estudiar estos aspectos desde la perspectiva de los empleados.

本研究旨在从员工的角度了解沟通和渠道层面的整合工作如何促进零售部门的顾客参与行为。

数据收集于购物中心一线员工所填写的231份面对面问卷。应用结构方程建模方法来检验所提出的假设。

本文结果强调了整合工作作为外部激励对于提高员工对顾客参与行为的认知的重要性。研究结果通过预测超越员工行为的反应来预测客户参与行为, 从而扩展了刺激-机体-反应模型。结果还证实了对营销传播和协同实现的态度在所提出的模型中的中介作用。

零售商应该整合其多种渠道, 并通过这些渠道持续协调地运作, 以培养员工对顾客参与行为的认知。管理者应该定期从员工那里收集信息, 因为他们是全渠道零售的一个重要接触点。

在全渠道零售业的文献中, 关于沟通层面的整合工作如何补充渠道层面的整合工作以发展顾客参与的问题, 存在研究差距。本研究通过采用新颖的视角, 将一线员工作为评估顾客参与行为的信息来源来解决这一差距。它扩展了关于如何从员工的角度发展和加强顾客参与行为的知识。

This study focuses on managers' perceptions of employees' communicative role in social media, and explores the changes in the contractual nature of employment relations in mediatized workplaces in which the boundaries of professional and private life are becoming more fluid.

A qualitative approach was employed to explore this relatively new phenomenon. The data, comprising 24 interviews with managers responsible for corporate communication and human resources in knowledge-intensive organizations, was thematically analysed.

The analysis shows that employees' work-related social media use creates new types of exchanges and dependencies between an organization and individual employees, which relate to employees' representation, knowledge and networks.

The study is among the first to examine the exchanges and dependencies in an employment relationship that emerge from increased use of social media for professional purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical analysis, which consists of interviews with executive trainee programs of three international companies. The results of this analysis offer answers to questions currently being discussed in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, namely, on the effects of CSR communication on top talent attraction.

The study uses structured interviews to analyze the communication perceptions and expectations of (n = 15) top talents when making employer decisions. It compares these with the expectations and intentions of HR managers responsible for programs and communications (n = 15).

The study found that HR managers only partially reflect top talents’ specific communication expectations. In addition to the program-specific CSR content, corporate communications have an overarching optimization potential in the communication mode and information architecture. It is particularly striking that future executives proactively seek CSR content in hiring and access corporate and brand communications for this purpose.

The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which made a digital interview setting necessary and did not allow to react in detail on every physical signal. On top, the study has only 30 participants (15 HR/15 talents) from three different talent programs.

The study identifies practical, gender-specific and industry-specific implications for corporate communications regarding content and mode of communication. Companies should specify concrete measures for recruiting future executives, but they can also indicate efforts and first initiatives, thus setting a more decisive stage for an aspiration.

The study is characterized by its unique data set. Only a few companies have explicit programs for the development of future executives. The study also examines HR managers’ communication planning and expectations and future executives’ effective communication perceptions and perspectives.

This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.

The empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.

This study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.

The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.

The findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.

This paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

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.

Organisations have recently become more aware of the importance of their employees and their contributions to organisational success (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008). Employee engagement is one of the contributors that has been recognised to have several positive outcomes for organisations. This study was conducted in order to explore how different employee-related concepts affect employee engagement. Its purpose was to determine whether internal communication can influence employee engagement by insuring employees perceive a fulfilled psychological contract, as well as adequate organisational support. A total of 3,457 employees from 26 different organisations completed a survey that measured internal communication satisfaction, employee engagement, level of psychological fulfilment and perceived organisational support. To test the relationship between these variables, mediation analysis was conducted. Two research models with internal communication satisfaction as a mediator between the relationship of psychological contract fulfilment and engagement, and perceived organisational support and engagement were tested. The results show that internal communication satisfaction is a significant mediator of both the relationship of psychological contract fulfilment and engagement, as well as the relationship between perceived organisational support and engagement. This indicates that internal communication could be used in order to manage psychological contract fulfilment and perceived organisational support with the intent of increasing employee engagement, and consequently, overall organisational performance.

The study examines the psychometric properties of internal communication satisfaction questionnaire (ICSQ), an instrument originally developed in Croatian. A need for a contemporary instrument validated among a non-English-speaking population of employees who use English as their second language motivated the authors to translate the scale.

ICSQ was validated on a sample of 507 employees of a large Croatian subsidiary of a multinational bank, where English is the official corporate language.

ICSQ displayed satisfactory levels of psychometric properties, retaining the psychometric properties of the original version of the instrument. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed the acceptable model–data fit of the eight-factor model. Additionally, findings supported the reliability and construct validity of the English version of the instrument. Good internal consistencies of all eight internal communication satisfaction (ICS) dimensions and the total ICSQ and an adequate level of scale homogeneity according to the inter-item and inter-total correlations were found.

In order to generalize the study’s results to other business areas and industries, the study should be replicated in other contexts. Additionally, construct validity was tested by applying cross-sectional design, and therefore, no conclusion can be drawn on the causal direction of the relationship. Finally, the discriminant validity of ICSQ was not tested and should be examined in future studies.

The resulting 32-item instrument, in English, can be used for empirical and practical purposes in improving internal communication.

The study confirms that internal communication is a multidimensional construct and should be measured as such.

The purpose of this empirical study was to test whether presenting organizational change in a way that enhances employee self-worth will result in increased employee support for the identified change. In doing so, we developed a new measure, which includes a novel baseline element.

Items were developed, and then categorical validation data were collected through an online cross-sectional survey in which 222 respondents (adults over 18 years of age, and at least 6 months tenure) participated.

Within the items, we framed the activation of self-worth bias as requests for employee comments regarding change efforts. Results indicate there is a difference between asking for employee comment on change efforts, compared to asking for employee comment on change efforts and also providing feedback considerate of that input.

This study explores and presents a convergence between behavioral economics, management and applied psychology research – using both self-worth bias, and organizational change management communications; no other such comparable study or analysis could be found during the preparation of this research effort. Furthermore, a novel measure and innovative method is presented for developing and measuring self-worth bias during organizational change management communications.