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The purpose of this paper is to explore how the excellent practice of public relations concerning strategic internal communication may help empower female employees to cope with workplace gender discrimination. It constructs and empirically tests a theoretical model that investigates the role of transparent internal communication on diversity and inclusion in shaping female employees' sense of empowerment, and that empowerment may affect how they cope with such problems in the workplace.

An online survey was conducted with 402 full-time female employees in large-sized organizations in the United States. Structural equation models were conducted to test the proposed measurement model and hypothesized model.

The findings of this study offer support for the proposed model that featuring transparent internal communication regarding workplace gender discrimination increases female employees' empowerment to tackle the problems, which in turn encourages them to adopt problem-focused coping and participate in collective coping behaviors.

Excellent internal communication not only facilitates organization-employee relationships as prior research widely demonstrated, but, according to the findings of this study, also creates a sense of empowerment among female employees, which encourage them to proactively address workplace gender discrimination issue.

Organizations should practice transparent communication regarding diversity and inclusion, ensuring employees receive sufficient information, clear guidelines, and opportunities to voice as well as aim to develop empowerment interventions that help employees address discrimination issues in the workplace.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is among the first empirical studies that present the importance of strategic internal communication, particularly transparent communication, in facilitating gender equality in the workplace.

Internal crisis communication (ICC) has become a burgeoning area of research in crisis communication. However, the importance of ICC as a tool to enhance employee positive communicative behaviour in crisis has not been explored. This study aims to develop a research model by drawing from the ideas of sensemaking and network theories. In addition, the study further examines how the elements of the proposed model drive ICC while assessing employee-related outcomes and the role of emotion exhaustion.

To assess the validity of the measurement and structural models, 316 employees from both public and private non-profit organisations in Pakistan were interviewed through online survey. The collected data were analysed using co-variance based structural equation modelling (CV-SEM).

The results of this research confirmed that mindfulness and internal listening positively affect employee perceptions towards internal communication during a crisis. Similarly, ICC positively influences employees' perception of loyalty, job insecurity and the organisation's reputation. The results also highlight the moderation roles of emotional exhaustion (EE).

The study suggests that applying ICC strategies will help crisis managers develop collaborative relationships with employees, which will help in identifying and managing a crisis. In addition, implementing effective internal communication in corporate practices and processes makes internal reputation and employee loyalty (EL) a reality and allows organisations to remain productive despite crises.

Through the lens of sensemaking theory, this research demonstrated that mindfulness and listening should be considered stimuli in organisations that can influence employees to be active communicators before and during crises. This study is the first to elucidate the essential outcomes for strategic internal crisis management that are often under-looked, such as emotional responses. The study also shows that sensemaking should not only focus on meaning-making in a crisis but also include emotional feelings that can wear out the meaning-making process.

For every organisation there are at least several publics, the support of which is critical to organisational success. Many scholars and practitioners have argued for the primacy of the employee public, because of the effect of employee attitudes and behaviours on the experience of customers, and the productivity and innovation of the enterprise. Organisations that accept this premise often respond with traditional employee communication programmes and techniques. This paper accepts the primacy of employees in the hierarchy of publics, but argues especially for the role of the frontline supervisor as the key to effective communication with an engagement of the employee population. The paper is in part a macro review of literature on the employee public going back 50 years. It comments on the new social contract between organisations and their employees. It documents business results that are associated with an involved employee public. It asserts that employee loyalty lies primarily not to the organisation itself but with the work unity – especially the immediate supervisor. The authors also examine behaviour that increases or reduces employee trust, and describe the necessary skills and support systems that organisations must provide for their supervisors in order to make them superb communicators.

The present study investigates the nature of newly formed organizations and how internal communication influences these entities, where change is inherent. Organizational life for government contractors is unusual in that employees experience routine changes to upper management, company values, goals and objectives every few years, which leads to the creation of a new consortium that is loosely coupled. Such research provides insight beyond the single-entity organization, which tends to dominate most public relations and internal communication literature.

Given the lack of research exploring consortia and internal communication to get beyond the homogeneous organization, an in-depth case study methodology was the most appropriate approach. A multi-site government contractor was chosen as the research site, relying on interviews and focus groups (n = 77) to collect data.

Effective internal communication practices are even more important for consortia, like government contractors, since employees of these organizations are guaranteed to experience frequent change. Therefore, communicating to the unknown audience, building trust in the absence of a prior connection, and preparing for the unintended consequences are imperative to navigating the complexity surrounding consortia forming and cultivating employee buy-in.

This study presents new, transferable knowledge of internal communication during consortia forming, where to be successful, internal communication needs anticipate the unintended consequences and develop a strategy around the uncertainty. Such strategy is about welcoming diverse voices and actively listening to their preferred needs. In addition, a definition of the unknown audience is provided.

This study aims to examine the effects of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal communication on employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior during a crisis situation, coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in particular. Integrating knowledge sharing research with internal crisis communication literature as well as self-determination theory, the mediating roles of employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction are also identified.

An online survey was conducted with 490 full-time employees in the USA across industry sectors during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Results suggest that diversity-oriented leadership contributes to transparent internal communication during a crisis and increases employees’ satisfaction of autonomy, competence and relatedness needs. Transparent internal communication also increases employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction, which in turn fosters their job engagement and knowledge-sharing behavior during the crisis.

This study is one of the earliest studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal crisis communication in enhancing employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior, especially in the context of COVID-19.

With a focus on millennial employees, this study investigates how employees engage in two types of employees' communicative behaviors (ECBs), that is, their voluntary communicative efforts to acquire and circulate tasks and managerial information (i.e. scouting) and to share and discuss positive and negative aspects of their organization with internal members (i.e. internal megaphoning). Through the lens of social exchange theory (SET) and symmetrical communication model, this study examines the effects of inclusive leadership and internal communication on active information behaviors of employees within their companies.

An online survey was conducted with fulltime millennial employees working across various industry sectors in the US.

Symmetrical internal communication influenced by inclusive leadership enhances employees' scouting behavior as well as positive internal megaphoning behavior. Positive and negative internal megaphoning with supervisors increases the scouting behavior of employees, whereas negative internal megaphoning with peers does not have a significant effect.

This study is among the first attempts to examine the effectiveness of leadership and strategic internal communication on millennial employees' diverse types of communicative behaviors.

Adopting a social capital theoretical (SCT) lens, this study aims to propose a conceptual framework of effective internal communication (IC) for the hospitality industry. The study explores how to enhance current practices and the suitability of social media as an augmentation to traditional IC channels.

A qualitative research methodology, consisting of 20 semi-structured interviews with hospitality employees, was adopted. Following a “reduction” and “interpretation” process, 16 themes related to effective IC were identified which informed a conceptual framework.

Characteristics of effective IC were identified in addition to IC benefits at both employee and organizational levels. Considering the limitations of current practices, the applicability of social media was explored. Requirements of effective IC suggest that new channels (e.g. social media) should be adopted to build social capital.

The study informs SCT from a meso-level (process) perspective. The articulation of an IC framework informs how social capital can be built through effective IC, providing a foundation for further empirical examination as to the impact of various channels on the IC process. Adoption of a case study design suggests that results and implications can only be generalized to similar environments.

The study details the characteristics of effective IC and its subsequent benefits, highlighting how social media can augment current IC practices in a hospitality organization.

Being a 24/7 labor-intensive operation makes employee communication to ensure service excellence challenging in the hospitality industry. Through the application of SCT and the exploration of social media in a workplace setting to enhance IC, significant theoretical and practical insights are realized.

The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to corporate communication theory by considering the evolution of employee engagement and the role of communication in enhancing employee engagement.

Despite its importance for organisation leaders, there is considerable confusion about the meaning of employee engagement. This paper aims to provide a degree of clarity on the concept by identifying stages in its evolution and discussing its definition.

Surprisingly, corporate communication literature has not yet adequately considered the concept. This may be due to confusion concerning the concept, and to concerns about overlaps with other constructs such as commitment. This paper tackles the gap in the literature with a proposed model of the role of internal corporate communication in enhancing employee engagement.

The article discusses linkages between engagement and communication which suggest research potential for the communication disciplines.

There are practical implications of the model proposed here since it encourages communicators to consider potential engagement effects of communication strategies and tactics.

The paper encourages communicators to consider the communication needs of employees.

This conceptual paper provides an overview of employee engagement literature with a novel contribution identifying evolutionary waves in the development of the concept. It suggests a definition of organisation engagement as a dynamic, changeable psychological state which links employees to their organisations, manifest in organisation member role performances expressed physically, cognitively and emotionally, and influenced by organisation‐level internal communication.

The new economy, or knowledge‐based era, not only brings with it additional challenges to the employee communication process, but also inspired solutions. Historically, employee communication has been constrained by the limitations of traditional media. The choice of media for the dissemination of information has increased over the years but none has had the potential to galvanise broad‐sweeping changes to the process as have intranets. To maximise the benefits for their organisations, communicators must become comfortable working with the new technology, progress up the technology‐adoption curve, learn to balance tech with touch, and be prepared to deconstruct previously held models of communication.

Rapport between service employees and customers has been suggested to be an important determinant of customer relationship management, yet existing marketing literature still lacks a sufficient understanding of how service employees’ nonverbal communication affects customer-employee rapport development in service encounters. The purpose of this paper is to fill this research gap by proposing and testing a model that explores how service employees’ nonverbal communication (employee affective delivery and behavioral mimicry) influences customer positive emotions and customer-employee rapport. The mediating role of customer positive emotions and the moderating role of store atmosphere in the process of customer-employee rapport development were also assessed.

Using an observational methodology in conjunction with a customer survey, multi-source survey data collected from 303 customer-employee pairs in the apparel retailing industry was examined through structural equation modeling and regression analysis.

Results showed that employee nonverbal communication positively influenced customer positive emotions and customer-employee rapport. The partial mediating role of customer positive emotions and the moderating role of store atmosphere in the process of rapport development were also confirmed.

Service firms should train and motivate employees to use nonverbal communication to develop and strengthen customer-employee rapport. The importance of customer positive emotions in the service process should be addressed in the customer-employee rapport development process. Moreover, service managers should also allocate firm resources to create a well-designed store atmosphere for target customers.

This research represents one of the earliest studies to explore and empirically test the influence of employee nonverbal communication on customer-employee rapport development in service encounters. The partial mediating role of customer positive emotions and the moderating role of store atmosphere on the relationship between employee nonverbal communication and customer-employee rapport were also proposed and confirmed.