Search results

This paper aims to explore the role of employee engagement for competitiveness. In particular, the role of employee communication to create engaging workplaces.

Two field surveys were conducted to assess, which are the most relevant leverages that contribute to create engaging (or disengaging) workplaces in Italy: the first one on a statistical sample of large companies, the second one on a snowball sample of employees.

Italian companies often miss the opportunity to create engaging workplaces and to exploit the potential of employee communication to foster employee engagement.

Further research could focus on a survey on a sample of managers and employees belonging to the same company.

Companies should pursue an inclusive relational approach, using employee communication appropriately.

The study develops and tests a model showing the linkages among managerial approaches and engaging workplace contexts and examines the role of employee communication to foster employee engagement.

The time is right for renewed and updated attention to the relationship between public relations (PR) and human resources (HR) departments in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. For too long, conflict between the two practice areas has obscured opportunities for collaboration which benefits organizations and stakeholders. This chapter offers theoretical underpinnings for examining an interdepartmental, cross-unit working relationship between HR and PR – and advances a vision for why it is needed now.

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on a growing phenomenon in communication practice: employees speaking voluntarily for, about or on behalf of their organization, hereafter labelled as corporate ambassadors. The goal of this qualitative study is to analyze the role of corporate ambassadors within an organization and explore the perceived benefits and risks from three perspectives: the communication department, other departments such as marketing or human resources, and corporate ambassadors themselves. The research is based on an interdisciplinary literature review and 25 qualitative in-depth interviews with employees in one large, internationally operating German organization. By combining the theoretical and empirical insights, a conceptual framework that depicts the benefits (e.g., joy, increased trust, positive impact on reputation) and risks (e.g., work stress, lack of integration, loss of quality) of integrating corporate ambassadors into the overall communication of the organization was developed. In addition, this chapter suggests two typologies that help to distinguish between different roles of communication professionals and of corporate ambassadors. The contribution of this study is to lay a groundwork for further discussions about corporate ambassadors in the field of corporate communications. The chapter outlines directions for future research and implications for practice on how the framework can be applied in organizations.

This paper sought to understand the communication activities of employees who were required to work from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors examined the relationship between these individuals' efficient and interrupting communication with their peers in other locations and with individuals who were colocated with them at home. The authors also investigated these workers' job engagement and willingness to speak out about organizational issues.

This paper drew upon a survey of 579 employees via an online panel.

Efficient communication positively predicted employees' job engagement, whereas interruptions negatively predicted job engagement. Additional analyses showed that efficient communication was positively associated with job engagement, which in predicted a higher level of employee voice. Managers showed significantly higher levels of job engagement and voice than nonmanagers.

Recommendations are made for communication managers to cultivate job engagement and to manage interruptions with home-based employees.

Scholars with an interest in job demands and resources have not fully examined how interpersonal communication shapes job engagement and voice scholars have often overlooked teleworkers' communication needs. This study adds depth to the communication management literature in both areas.

The chapter develops a typology of eight different expected employee communication roles based on literature in public relations (PR), corporate communication and related fields. As PR professionals are increasingly taking on a coaching and training role, and communication technology has made employees more visible and approachable, employees more and more take on active roles in the communication with external publics. While PR professionals’ roles are conceptualized fairly well, no framework exists that describes the many communication roles that employees play in contemporary organizations. In the chapter, it is found that employees externally (1) embody, (2) promote, and (3) defend the organization. In addition, employees use communication to (4) scout for information and insights about environmental changes, and (5) build and maintain relationships with stakeholders. Internally, employees use communication to (6) make sense of information, (7) initiate and stimulate innovation, and (8) criticize organizational behaviour and decisions. The typology highlights that employees increasingly fulfil the tactic communication roles as producers and executers of corporate communication as social media have made them more visible and approachable. The communication roles require considerable tactical skills and resources on the part of employees, which they may not always possess sufficiently. PR professionals can play a coaching role in terms of helping employees frame content and communicate in a manner appropriate for the organization, the context and the media. The chapter can help PR professionals and scholars understand the changed role of PR professionals, as well as the changed relationships between organizations and their environment, in the context of dissolving organizational boundaries.

Communication with employees during times of crisis has become a crucial aspect of crisis management for building organizational resilience knowledge. Thus, explaining how internal crisis management promotes positive employee behaviour has become imperative. This study aims to investigate the relationship between internal crisis communication, job engagement, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour towards the Environment, Communicative behaviour for sensemaking and sensegiving and organizational resilience.

An online survey was conducted with 483 full-time employees in Pakistan. The structural equation modelling technique was employed to assess the study's hypotheses.

The findings of this study demonstrate that internal crisis communication can boost employee job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment, sensemaking and sensegiving, which will also have a downstream effect on organizational resilience.

The findings of this study indicated that effective internal communication can aid managers in making well-informed decisions, coordinating response efforts and disseminating vital information to relevant stakeholders. As a result, this study contributes to the literature on internal crisis management by incorporating employee behavioural intention towards the environment. It provides managers and practitioners with knowledge on managing employees during a crisis.

Surprisingly, the conservation of resource theory (COR) does not explain communicative conduct (sensegiving) and environmental (e.g. organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment) components. This research combines the tenets of COR theory that have yet to be researched with the employees' environmental responses element. The mechanisms of cognition and communication were also ignored in earlier studies. This study sheds light on the process through which higher levels of job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment and the capacity for comprehension (e.g. sensemaking) and meaning-transmission (e.g. sensegiving) ultimately help organizations navigate the crisis successfully.

There is growing scholarly interest in the use of penalty in employment contracts which reduce employees' pay if the employee's performance does not meet a pre-specified performance threshold. Prior accounting research has focused exclusively on the effect of penalty on employee performance. In this study, the authors extend earlier research by examining how penalty affects the employers' wage offers. Prior research suggests that employers' generous wage offers in employment contracts are normally translated as trust by employees who in turn reciprocate with higher effort. The authors present a theory that predicts penalty reduces employers' wage offers. Then, the authors propose unrestricted communication between employers and employees as a potential moderator for the negative effect of penalty on trust and reciprocity.

The authors implement a controlled lab experiment with a 2 × 3 experimental design (Penalty: Present and Absent; and Communication: None, One-Way and Two-Way).

The authors develop their predictions by utilizing insights from motivational-crowding and organizational communication theories. The authors hypothesize and find evidence that employers' ability to penalize employees can reduce employers' motivation to offer generous wages. As a result, reduced trust demotivates employees to provide high effort. However, the authors find that a two-way communication moderates the negative effect of penalties by restoring trust, thereby, increasing reciprocity. Finally, the authors find evidence that relationship-oriented messages explain the moderating effect of communication.

This study is subject to limitations inherent in all experimental studies. The decisions in the study experiment are less complex than those found in practice. Moreover, there are significantly higher costs and potential benefits to shirk on effort in practice. The authors encourage future research on other organizational features that would influence the generalizability of their theory and results. Nonetheless, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on trust, reciprocity, gift-exchange contracts, managerial controls and communication.

This paper has several important implications for theory and practice. The authors show that the presence of penalty may not automatically result in increasing employees' effort level, contrary to traditional economic theory predictions. This effect is driven mainly by the crowding out effect of a penalty on employers' desire to signal trust. Therefore, the presence of an open communication channel may become an important tool to reverse the psychological effect of reduced trust when penalty is present. Therefore, the study's findings contribute to the trust–reciprocity literature on how management control system influences employers' and employees' behavior. These findings are especially germane given the trend in the workplace toward establishing open communication at different levels within the firm hierarchy. The study also contributes to the literature on trust–reciprocity as critical informal controls and social norms in accounting practices (Bicchieri, 2006; Stevens, 2019), shedding light on how firms may influence employees' reciprocity in management control practices and induce them to act in line with the firm's objectives by opening communication channels.

Prior accounting research document that penalty in employment contracts increases employee performance due to loss aversion. The study, however, demonstrates that the positive effect of penalty is not sustained in a gift-exchange contract. Specifically, the study's experimental results provide evidence that the availability of penalties can psychologically change the way employers perceive their decisions on offering generous wages (i.e. trust) and consequently reduce employees' reciprocation of high effort levels. Yet, the authors propose a two-way communication as a restorative mechanism for the lost trust. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak thrust a spotlight on organizational leaders and the challenges that employees face during periods of organizational change. The purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of empathetic supervisor communication on employee turnover intention and the mediating role of affective trust toward supervisors and employee–organization relationship (EOR) quality. Informed by the social exchange theory and EOR literature, the authors develop a model in which affective trust toward supervisors and EOR quality mediates the relationship between empathetic supervisor communication and employee turnover intention.

This study recruited 417 employees based in the USA through an online panel operated by a professional survey company. Data collection that followed a quota sampling procedure lasted for about three weeks in October 2020. The authors used structural equation modeling to test the study hypotheses.

The findings of this study indicated that the extent to which supervisors adopted empathetic communication during organizational change had considerable repercussions on their supervisees' affective trust toward supervisors, relationship perception toward their organizations, and ultimately, their turnover intention.

This study is among the first that identifies empathetic communication as a pivotal force in driving employees' positive relational and behavioral reactions, reinforcing the growing expectation of supervisors in fulfilling communication functions during organizational change. Moreover, the authors contribute to understanding change management as an activity rooted in and enacted through communication between supervisors and subordinates. In addition, this study contributes to the organizational research of empathy during change.

This article explores how employees in a public sector organization (PSO) make sense of the introduction of a social intranet and new employee communication roles. The aim is to understand employee sensemaking and how sensemaking influences the change process within the organization.

The article is based on a case study in a Danish PSO with 30,000 employees. The empirical material includes strategic documents, online observations and seven focus groups with employees conducted before, during and after the introduction of a new social intranet.

The employees found that making sense of the purpose with the social intranet is difficult. A managerial approach to change communication could easily result in employees' frustrations and concerns being dismissed as signs of resistance to change. From a communication perspective, the findings reveal that the employees engaged in seven different sensemaking enactments.

Change cannot be understood simply as something that employees are for or against. Instead, a change process should be perceived as a set of communication processes or sensemaking enactments happening in interactions between employees that can act in favor of, against or neutrally toward change.

Managers and communication professionals can interact with the seven sensemaking enactments, and some tentative initiatives are suggested in the article.

The article explores the employee perspective in a change process in a PSO and identifies seven employee sensemaking enactments highlighting that change happens in communication processes.

Organizations generally seek to achieve higher productivity and performance from employees but leave out the vital roles of engagement and communication. Employees' role at the micro, meso and macro levels cannot be ignored in organizational growth. However, the question remains: how to engage employees to reap performance benefits? This study examines how leaders' support and communication increase subordinates' engagement and performance by applying social exchange theory (SET).

Dyadic data of 249 full-time (middle-level) employees and their leaders were collected from the Indian automobile sector through a survey. After achieving the goodness-of-fit indices, the hypothesized framework was analyzed.

The authors found that employees who perceived support from their leaders were engaged, which consequently adds to their performance. Similarly, the results of moderation analysis highlighted that internal communication is a crucial factor in engagement.

By measuring employee engagement across three dimensions (cognitive, emotional, and physical), this study adds to the business communication literature and calls attention to human resource professionals to update the organization's policies to enable managers to engage their subordinates for better performance. Organizational development specialists can improve internal communication, which further enhances the relationship between leaders' support and engagement.

This study advanced the literature by discussing the marginally discussed role of internal communication in the nexus of engagement–performance. Additionally, this study contributes to our understanding of the engagement–performance nexus as an outcome of leadership.