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The purpose of this article is to examine the communicative factors that facilitate or hamper the development of an inclusive work environment with an emphasis on the communication about equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), while taking diversity characteristics of employees into account.

In total, 84 persons employed in Austria and Germany, who feature various observable and non-observable diversity characteristics, were interviewed following a problem-centered approach.

The results indicate that employees with (observable) diversity characteristics, who tend to feel less included, observe more excluding and marginalizing communication and practices in their organizations. Moreover, formal interpersonal communication appears to be more important to develop a highly inclusive workplace than informal interpersonal communication and other forms of communication about EDI.

The sample was rather imbalanced and comprised only employees in Austria and Germany, which limits the study's explanatory power. However, the findings stress the significance of formal interpersonal communication as the cornerstone of an inclusive workplace, which should be followed up in future research.

In terms of the development of an inclusive work environment the findings suggest that strategic (i.e. formal) organizational communication about EDI issues is key to increase the perception of inclusion.

This paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the importance of interpersonal communication as a key factor that facilitates, but also hampers an inclusive work environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how business-to-business (B2B), intercultural, interpersonal salesperson–customer relationships develop using the lens of identity management theory (IMT; Imahori and Cupach, 2005).

The research uses qualitative semi-structured interviews on 18 targeted relationships with customers from another culture conducted with business-to-business salespeople.

The findings indicate that our respondents' relationships moved from trial toward enmeshment and on occasion toward the renegotiation phase, as described in IMT. In the case of low cultural diversity between salesperson and customer, the relationships reached the trial and enmeshment phase. In the case of high cultural diversity between salesperson and customer, the relationships on occasion evolved toward the renegotiation phase. Salespeople's cultural intelligence (CQ) facilitates the development of interpersonal, intercultural salesperson–customer relationships.

The authors transfer IMT from the personal relationship development arena to B2B intercultural, interpersonal relationships, address a gap in the literature in the understanding of salesperson–customer interpersonal relationships in different contexts and develop a theoretical model to understand intercultural, interpersonal salesperson–customer relationship development across different levels of cultural diversity.

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

Purpose – The study is aimed to identify the openness, empathy, supportiveness, positiveness, and equality between mother and child as the key factors for successful children. If the parents are not able to give attention and love to their children, it will form feelings of insecurity and hatred towards themselves and to their surroundings. Similarly, if the parents are not able to create discipline in education, the probability of unclear future for their child will increase. A single mother has to endure a lot of problems and face the biggest challenge in their life; to be a single parent who must be able to hold multiple roles, that is as a father who works for a family living and as a mother who nurtures and educate her children. As a mother, she is required to be able to manage everything by herself; some of them include financial management, jobs, and nurture time for her children.

Methodology – employed in this study was in-depth interview to observe inhibiting factors that experienced by single parents in parenting pattern that they apply in nurturing their children.

Finding – Result showed that frequency and intensity play important role in creating openness, empathy, supportive attitude, positive attitude, and equality as well as automatically able to form inclusion, control, and affection between mother and children. The expected final result is the discovery of an ideal way of single parent role for their children.

Implications – the research results showed that frequent communication behavior and sufficient intensity are used to give children more confident in their activities at home or school environment and by which, the children will be able to reach success in their life.

Value originality – the research is the existence of communication pattern formed by single mother family and her children.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to get information on how the communication process transaction of commercial sex workers with customer occurs in province that practices Syariah law system.

Design/Methodology/Approach – A qualitative design using phenomenological approach with purposive sampling technique was utilized to obtain data. Subjects were female commercial sex workers with age around 16–45 years. The subjects were from district Banda Sakti and Muara Dua Lhokseumawe.

Findings – The result of study showed that subjects used interpersonal communication of self-disclosure through social media communication which was supported by verbal and non-verbal communication that gives an equal reaction. The type of communication used by commercial sex workers during the process of transactions were through face to face and media communication. However, it was found some barriers that interfere while doing interpersonal communication during the transaction, such as adjustment problem of subject, an error communication, and misperception between the subject and the customer that used their services.

Research Limitations/Implications – The study only focuses on how communication process of transaction occurs; therefore, it is important to do further research that focuses on how the Syariah law system impacts psychological attitudes toward commercial sex workers and how it will reduce the activity of commercial sex workers in Aceh, as well as how the communication occurs between parent and child that contribute them to become a commercial sex worker.

Practical Implications – Government should prevent commercial sex workers increase in Aceh as well as parents should more aware about their children’s activities outside home and be more communicative with their children.

Originality/Value – This paper gives information to the Aceh government to make further decision making and implement Syariah law system consistently and with commitment.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how media synchronicity facilitates the emergence of social exchange (i.e. trust and reciprocity) in organizations’ information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated interactions. A model of media synchronicity in organizational social exchange (MSiOSE) is proposed.

The paper has a design and review approach. The theoretical analysis is based on social exchange theory (SET) and media synchronicity theory (MST).

The authors propose that, in general, social exchange benefits from both asynchronous and synchronous communication processes. However, media synchronicity has different boundary conditions (i.e. pros and cons) in relation to the emergence of social exchange, determined in accordance with the mutually interacting patterns of trust and reciprocity predicted by SET. The authors provide testable theoretical propositions to support the analysis.

Social exchange is a critical business factor for organizations due to its well-known positive outcomes, such as the strengthening of social ties. The need for successful social exchange in remote work conditions is particularly emphasized. However, with regard to the communication and behavioral patterns that lead to social exchange via ICT, the theoretical understanding is limited. The study reveals previously unmapped heuristics between social exchange and physical media capabilities. Thus, the study's propositions can be used to study and analyze social exchange in the ever-changing media landscape. As a practical contribution, the study helps organizations to improve their communication strategies and use of ICT.

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the characteristics of good hospitality managers and the core causes that lead to developing such characteristics.

Using a qualitative inquiry approach, 93 line-level hospitality employees were surveyed online regarding their experiences about the characteristics of good managers.

The research findings revealed five key themes of good managerial characteristics, including interpersonal skills, communication skills, supervisory skills, leadership skills, and positive personality and professionalism. Additionally, the root causes of these managerial characteristics were also analyzed. The good managerial characteristics were perceived to have developed from having worked under either a great manager or a terrible manager.

This study advanced the literature on managerial characteristics by confirming several existing categories from the viewpoint of hospitality industry employees.

Human resource managers should be considerate of these findings in terms of recruitment, hiring, and training, development, and promotion of employees in their companies.

This is one of the first studies to analyze the perceived reasons behind the development of these characteristics.

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 study is to describe primary health-care managers’ perceptions of management competencies at different management levels in digital health services using the management competency assessment program as a framework.

A secondary analysis study involving 21 semi-structured individual interviews was conducted among Finnish primary health-care managers at different management levels (frontline, middle and senior). The deductive framework method was used to analyze the data.

Similarities and differences were found in management competencies between different levels of management. Competencies related to the use of digitalization were highlighted by managers at all management levels. Managers at all management levels were involved in developing digital solutions and supporting employees in using digital solutions in their work. Frontline and middle managers emphasized more issues related to day-to-day management and communication with employees, whereas senior managers highlighted the management of large entities.

In the secondary analysis, data were used for purposes other than originally intended. Therefore, the data are subject to limitations of the methodology applied and should be transferred to other contexts with caution.

Identifying the management competencies needed to manage digital health services is important to target managers’ training according to needs in the future.

The results could be used to develop the management of digital health services, as well as improve digital health services and their deployment.

Previous literature mostly examined managers’ informatics competencies and paid little attention to other management competencies. This study discusses more broadly the management competencies that digital health services require from managers at different levels of management.

Currently, online chat is in common use in e-commerce. By adding social interaction to the online context, companies hope to increase customers’ purchasing intentions. However, previous studies have not investigated how social presence is embedded in online business-to-business (B2B) chat conversations between buyers and sellers. Moreover, the functions of online chat in B2B sales have not been investigated.

The data was collected at a case company over the course of four years, from which the authors analyzed 157 online chat conversations between buyers (n = 157) and sellers (n = 9) with a theory-driven thematic analysis. In addition, data from the company’s customer relationship management system was collected to specify buyer types.

The results reveal that social presence was embedded in online B2B chat via buyers’ interactive, affective and relationship maintenance responses. Social presence differed depending on the type of buyer, with only existing customers having relationship maintenance responses. E-commerce B2B chat functions can be described as multiple and changing depending on the buyer–seller relationship stage.

Having data only from one case company limits the results to one type of industry.

The results can be used in sales training and when developing online chat services.

Results bring scientific utility to B2B sales and marketing research, as the authors build a bridge between social presence, the existing theoretical model on B2B buyer–seller relationship development and online chat as a communication medium. Other researchers may use this understanding when exploring B2B buyer–seller interaction in different digitalized communication media.