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The purpose of this paper is to: (1) identify strategies to (re)establish organizational legitimacy which dominates the literature; (2) propose and empirically illustrate an analytical framework that establishes the linkages between the dimensions of purposefulness, transparency and participation identified in this literature review as important resources in the creation of organizational legitimacy.

Based on a review of the academic literature, we propose a three-dimensional conceptual framework for understanding and studying strategic communication in contexts of high sustainability pressure. The empirical material we use for illustration is the letters from the chief executive officer (CEO) and the chairman published in the integrated annual report of a Danish company that is well known for its focus on sustainability.

The analysis shows that all three dimensions, i.e. purposefulness, transparency and participation, are present in this data, which the authors find supportive of the theoretical argument that strategic communication needs to encompass all three concepts in order to appear legitimate in contexts of high sustainability pressure.

In recent years, there has been an increased focus on strategic communication of sustainability. However, there is still a lack of general consensus of what is understood by strategic communication in contexts of high sustainability pressure. Overlapping concepts and dimensions make operationalization difficult. This, for example, is a problem for corporations who are increasingly asked by their stakeholders to account for their sustainability activities and engage in conversations of strategic significance to their sustainability goals.

Drawing on a unique case of a Web 3.0 recruitment campaign, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management.

The study draws on a reflexive dialogical research approach, which means that it is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand an empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic communication.

The study points toward a fundamental new approach to recruitment communication. The application of a Web 3.0 strategy entails what we term an open source recruitment strategy and a redirection of employee focus from work life to private life. These insights point toward ontologically challenging the basic assumptions of employees, work life and the employing organization.

The paper presents a single-case study, which prepares the ground for larger, longitudinal studies. Such studies may apply a more long-term focus on the implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and how they may be integrated into – or how they challenge – overall corporate communication strategies.

A turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Furthermore, the authors argue that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market.

This study indicates how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used in and fundamentally alter recruitment communication, and hence offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do.

The purpose of this paper is to link the authentic, communicative activities, e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutionalized practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. change management decisions and communication strategy (Steyn, 2003). Thus, the concern is with the relationship between institutionalized strategic management and the real-life strategic communication processes, thus advancing the understanding of the role of texts and discourses in the actual practice of strategic communication in an organizational context of strategic change processes.

The data are based on a large corpus of video-taped management meetings and organization-wide meetings in a large Danish public, knowledge-based organization. The method applied for studying the management discourse is a conversation-analytical approach (Sacks et al., 1974; Sidnell, 2010). This method has been chosen as it enables the authors to focus on micro-aspects of organizational practices (Nicolini, 2013) by investigating the interactional patterns that serve as resources for doing legitimation as an institutionalized practice.

The common denominator for the entire analysis is legitimation accomplished through the discursive use of distanciation and the analysis identifies three different discursive elements or micro-level strategies directly related to the concrete doing of strategic communication. First, legitimation is created by reference to the socio-economic context of the organization. Second, legitimation is generated by means of pointing to the abnormality of the strategic situation. And third legitimation is fostered by the use of idiomatic expressions. These different ways of accomplishing legitimacy are in a strategy-as-practice perspective related to the specific, in-situ communicative praxis and accomplished by the concrete actions of the strategic communicators, and thus the authors can position the instances of strategic communication at the organizational micro-level.

This paper studies at a micro-level how strategic actors use various discursive resources to legitimize strategic decisions and how these resources constitute the discursive basis of strategic communication as a managerial practice. The authors focus on the role of discourse in the legitimization processes of strategic managerial decisions analyzing micro-level instances of organizational communication. The paper thereby links the actor process activities (Langley, 2007), e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutional field practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. strategy and planning (Johnson et al., 2007).

Good stakeholder relations are crucial for the corporate image and reputation of modern organisations. One important management tool for use in successfully establishing good stakeholder relations involves management conversations. Until now these conversations have not been investigated extensively either in general or specifically within the field of corporate communication. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this developing field of research by presenting the results of a study of management conversations.

The paper investigates the ways in which various management conversations are used strategically in companies to benefit relations with stakeholders and the image or reputation of the company concerned. The conversations studied are recruitment conversations, job appraisal interviews, round‐table sickness leave conversations and dismissal conversations.

The paper shows that the companies involved are aware that such conversations should be used as tools for implementing their company strategy and values. However, the strategic potential of these conversations is not fully exploited, and specific crucial aspects like values communication are more prevalent in some conversations than in others.

The paper highlights the need to gain deeper insight into the correlation between various management conversations on the one hand, and management conversations and strategy on the other.

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualise employer branding in sustainable organizations at the intersection of branding, strategic human resource management (HRM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Based on an outline of current conceptualisations of employer branding, the paper discusses the strategic potentials of merging corporate branding processes, strategic HRM and CSR into a theoretical framework for reconceptualising employer branding as co‐created processes and sustainable employer‐employee relationships.

When organizations adapt strategies for sustainable development (including CSR), it affects how to approach stakeholder relations and organizational processes, including the employee‐employer relationship and employer branding processes. However, current employer branding conceptualisations do not comply with such changed corporate conditions. The suggested framework reconceptualises employer branding as an integrated part of a CSR strategy, thus offering a new way of approaching employer branding as supporting sustainable organizational development and long‐term employer‐employee relationships.

The proposed conceptualisation of employer branding implies a shift in focus from end result to process. As part of the process, organizations need to approach employees as corporate partners in order to co‐create employer‐employee values.

This paper suggests and discusses a new conceptualisation of employer branding, which appreciates co‐creation and employer‐employee dialogue as strategic processes for supporting sustainable organizational development.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges facing corporate communication professionals and researchers, and to introduce the issues presented in the papers from the CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2008 published in this special issue.

This paper presents a discussion of the issues raised in the special issue papers.

Discussion of the future of the corporate communication profession in the wake of the global fiscal crisis.

This paper implies several areas for further research.

This paper implies strategic knowledge of business processes and practice for effective corporate communication.

This paper articulates complex challenges facing corporate communicators.