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The use of dialogues within and across organizations is on the rise. This increase is a tacit acknowledgement of the relational foundations from which new meaning is created and social innovations emerge. However, coming together for a dialogue doesn’t assure constructive conversation or transformative engagement. Dialogue participants, even when they are asked to “suspend assumptions,” are generally still embedded in the mental models and familiar frameworks that distance them from one another and prevent real generativity and novelty.

This paper proposes Appreciative Inquiry as an approach particularly conducive to creating public dialogues that are generative and transformative. It suggests that a community is best served by inquiry into strengths, assets and past successes. It further proposes that this mode of inquiry tends to produce positive emotional states, which expand the resources and pro-social inclinations of those in the dialogue. It offers five conditions that support generative and transformative public dialogue and explains how Appreciative Inquiry creates these conditions.

Consumer engagement has become a critical component to many brands' relationship and promotional efforts. Empirical studies have documented the psychological elements that can drive consumers to engage with brands. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding how consumer engagement is influenced by the social environment consumers are embedded in. Taking an egocentric network approach, this study explores the social network factors that affect different dimensions of consumers' online engagement behaviors with a brand.

An online survey with an egocentric network design was employed, and 263 completed responses were collected from college students in US. The dimensionality of consumer engagement was validated using exploratory factor analysis. The hypotheses were tested through three sets of hierarchical regression models.

The results suggest that consumer engagement with a brand was partially shaped by the attributes of consumers' brand discussion networks that emerge from their conversations about a brand with others in everyday life. Specifically, the size, heterogeneity, and density to consumers' discussion networks were associated with certain engagement behaviors.

This study introduces a novel type of network method known as egocentric network analysis to explore and investigate the social network antecedents to consumer engagement behavior. It advances the conception of consumer engagement as a dynamic process influencing and is influenced by consumers' social interactions rather than merely a product of their psychological mechanisms. The study contributes to a social network approach to examining and conceptualizing consumer engagement.

Chatbots represent one of the most relevant trends within the communication settings and the management of relationships with consumers. New generations, such as millennials are favourable to interact with chatbots instead of human service assistants as they recognise the benefit linked to the technological advancements. Based on these premises, the paper intends to investigate what are the main factors affecting the quality of millennials–chatbots relationships and the new generations’ attitude and intention of using them within a specific industry such as the fashion one.

In order to achieve the aim, an online survey based on Likert-scale items from previous research has been implemented to test developed hypotheses. Construct reliability and discriminant validity of the hypothetical research model has been tested. Additionally, a partial least square analysis technique has been used with a bootstrapping technique for evaluating the significance level of path analysis.

A total of 191 responses have been collected. Most of millennials have familiarity with the concept of chatbot (52.4%). Perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of chatbots positively influence the attitude towards using them by millennials. Attitude towards using chatbots positively influence the behavioural intention to use chatbots. Finally, also perceived trust and perceived risk affect the behavioural intention to use chatbots.

This study enriches the stream of research focused on investigating the acceptance of new technologies and their use for the development of high-quality relationships with customers. This study presents some limitations: the research model has been tested by using a convenient sample; then the study has been tailored for investigating millennials' perceptions in a specific industry; finally, the study focused on relational variables as determinants of using chatbots.

This study provides professionals operating in the fashion industry with practical and managerial insights relating to the perceptions collected among a precise customer cluster represented by millennials.

The paper investigates millennials' perceptions about chatbots within a specific industry related to the fashion system. Additionally, the paper explores at what extent relational variables such as trust and risk could affect the quality of millennials–chatbots relationship.

Online images can convey sensory-based elements affecting digital users' emotions and digital engagement. The purpose of this study is to investigate which image-based features are more effective in conveying and stimulating particular emotions and engagement towards organizations operating in the food industry.

An online experimental survey was implemented. Two image-based features, narrativity and dynamism were chosen. The stimuli comprise four images, one with high and one with low level of narrativity, and one with high and one with low dynamism, published by a food company on its official Instagram account. Food-identity, emotional appeals and digital visual engagement behaviours were measured. A total of 141 students between 19 and 25 years old of a European University completed the questionnaire. Data was analysed through SPSS software using t-test analysis.

Results show that both narrativity and dynamism impact digital users' emotions and it was found to impact digital visual engagement attitude. Food involvement was measured in terms of food identity impact the effects of specific image-based features on emotions and visual engagement.

The study focuses on only two visual social semiotics features – narrativity and dynamism – and therefore, only partially captures the potentialities of images in digital communications.

This study provides professionals with empirical evidence and insights for effectively planning a visual social media strategy.

This paper contributes to the stream of research in social media communications by investigating the visual social semiotic features of images published online by a food company.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Shell Nigeria’s Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) promotes corporate-community accountability as a basis for fostering sustainable community development in the Niger Delta.

Shell Nigeria’s GMoU stand-alone reports were analysed through the lenses of accountability and transparency theoretical frameworks to explore the extent to which GMoU, as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, is dialogically embedded and practised. Meaning-oriented content analysis was deductively used to isolate pertinent themes and generate findings from the background theoretical literature.

The authors find that Shell discursively appropriates the meaning of accountability and transparency in a manner that allows it to maintain its social legitimacy and the asymmetric power relations between itself and host communities whilst restricting communities’ agency to hold it accountable. Shell does this by interpreting the notion of participation restrictively, selectively deploying the concept of transparency and accountability and subtly exerting excessive control over the GMoU. Thus, the GMoU’s potential to contribute to sustainable community development and positive corporate-community relation is unlikely tenable.

Accountability and transparency are core and critical to corporate-community relations and for achieving community development CSR objectives, but are often taken for granted or ignored in the CSR literature on the Niger Delta of Nigeria. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by using accountability and transparency lenses to unpick GMoU model and contribute to studies on CSR practices by oil multinational corporations (MNCs) in developing countries. Indeed, the use of these lenses to explore CSR process offers new insights as to why CSR practices have failed to contribute to sustainable community development despite increased community spending by oil MNCs.

Applying universal ownership theory and drawing on a multiplecase study design, this study aims to analyze what drives institutional investors to engage with government entities and what challenges they find in the process.

The authors relied on document analysis and conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with representatives from asset owners, asset managers, investor associations and academia.

The authors identify a trend where investors conduct policy engagement to fulfill their fiduciary duty, improve investment risk management and create an enabling environment for sustainable investments. As for engagement challenges, investors report the longer-term horizon, a perceived limited influence toward governments, the need for capacity building for investors and governments, as well as the difficulty in accessing government representatives.

This research contributes to filling a gap in the literature on this new form of investor activism, as a growing number of investors engage with sovereign entities on environmental, social and governance issues.

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.

Recent studies suggest that many of today's students are highly proficient in their use of digital media and are developing new learning styles heavily dependent on social media and the Web. Theories of social learning seem to address these new learning styles, which are interest and friend driven, and occur in contexts that are outside of class and within the flow of students’ everyday lives. Social learning emphasizes participation, group interaction, and utilizing collaborative environments. This chapter explores how using social media, specifically class blogs (WordPress) and microblogs (e.g., Twitter) together, help achieve social learning. Internet-based learners have various levels of proficiencies, competencies, and adoption rates. Strategies and best practices are explored to address how social media can be utilized by educators to accommodate the heterogeneity of digital learners and engage new styles of learning.