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Deliberate large-scale changes in libraries need an accompanying change management. One of the essential success factors of change management is the communication process, as insensitive communication, using e.g. ambiguous wording or inappropriate tonality can cause great damage throughout the change process. Expert interviews with library managers did show that this change communication does not have to be something elaborate and outstanding using all new technological possibilities, but can be kept simple as the most important factors are to give enough information and to get into a conversation, a personal dialogue with team members. The purpose of this paper is to show the details of a change communication style which enables leaders to cope with deliberate large-scale changes.

The empathic change communication style (ECCo-Style) will be analyzed and described on the basis of an extensive literature research as well as a qualitative research on practical experiences of leaders of different hierarchical levels of academic and public libraries during the change processes.

The leader’s own action – and with this his or her communication style – has a signaling effect on team members of which each leader needs to be aware of and which can be used to release an enormous pulse, especially during the change processes.

This ECCo-Style is newly designed.

This chapter attempts to broaden corporate communications and public relations research by introducing a theoretical foundation for the inbound (in contrast to the outbound) perspective of communication. The idea of organisational listening has recently been introduced by a small number of researchers. However, current concepts are mostly based on the relational paradigm of public relations. Listening is positively connoted in those concepts because it might help to foster mutual understanding, advance favourable relationships with stakeholders and support normative ideals of deliberation in democratic societies. This is not convincing from the point of view of communication managers who align their strategies and budgets to overarching organisational goals. The chapter aims to develop a new approach beyond the relational approach by linking corporate listening to corporate value. In a first step, current definitions and concepts of organisational listening are discussed in order to underline the need for a new approach. Secondly, the need for an inbound perspective of communication is explained by referring to Giddens’ structuration theory and its consequences for managing communications. Thirdly, corporate listening is conceptualised as a strategic mode of communication by referring to the overarching concept of strategic communication. Last but not least, the chapter elaborates on the value of listening for corporations and concludes with a broadened understanding of strategic communication.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss stigma and insensitive communication surrounding mental illness discourse amongst adolescents in the Polokwane Local Municipality against the background of a Foucauldian lens.

The literature reviewed included a discussion of perspectives on stigma and insensitive communication, contextualisation of the dual health–belief system in South Africa and the Foucauldian governmentality theoretical perspective. The methodology was based on a Foucauldian orientation and Geertz’ interpretivism. The methods followed to analyse the discourse were Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), coupled with Geertz' “thick description.” The data were collected from six focus group discussions, which consisted of a total of 36 informants.

The findings indicated the dominance of the biomedicine discourse, neoliberal rationalisations for self-care and the policy of deinstitutionalisation.

The implications for practice using an FDA approach combined with an interpretivist stance exposes the actions, institutions, possibilities for action whilst understanding core beliefs in a complex dual health and religious belief setting. The addition of Geertz’s interpretivism adds a cultural flare and insight, which adds to the depth of the analysis.

The complexity of beliefs, experiences and health choices calls for culturally sensitive discourse about mental illness and also highlights how discourse about individual conduct and self-care is embedded in the discourse used by adolescents.

There is a growing consensus about the role of communication in facilitating employees' acceptance of and support for organizational change initiatives. However, little is known about why communication breakdowns occur during change or how change recipients' cultural values can influence the effectiveness of communication in this context. The study addresses this gap.

The authors develop a theoretical framework that links four purposes of communication during change—disrupting, envisioning, legitimizing, and co-creating—to change recipients' cultural orientations. The authors also develop propositions that highlight how change agents' cultural sensitivity influences the relationship between communication purpose and the change readiness of change recipients.

The study implies that greater awareness and consideration of cultural values can reduce the likelihood of communication breakdowns and promote greater acceptance of and support for change initiatives. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of their theoretical framework for micro-level perspectives on change.

Although failures to change have in the past been linked to poor communication efforts by change agents, less is known about how or why communication breakdowns occur from the perspective of change recipients. The framework teases out issues related to the “what”, ‘how”, and “why” aspects of communication and offers prescriptions on the best approaches to communicate change.

Despite the rise of multicultural workforces and a recognition of the role played by cultural values in influencing leadership practices across cultures, theories of change have neglected these elements. Effective change efforts not only help enable economic and social renewal, they also enable the well-being of employees. Additionally, many change initiatives in the modern era have social implications (e.g. enhancing sustainability, inclusion and diversity).

A key contribution is a synthesis of different bodies of literature that have developed separately from each other. The authors offer some nuanced and counter-intuitive insights into what makes communication effective during change and identify culturally sensitive communication as an antecedent of change readiness.

In today’s aging world online communication is often viewed as a means to enhance social connectivity, and therefore well-being, of older adults. However, previous research on the influence of online communication on social connectivity largely disregards older adults, yields conflicting results and fails to assess the – debatable − causal direction of relationship. The purpose of this paper is to overcome these issues by developing four hypotheses related to who uses what, how, with whom.

The authors use a panel data study to test the hypotheses, including 302 older adults. Response rates are between 62 and 75 percent.

The authors find, first, that older adults differentiate between social connectivity with other village members, i.e., village connectivity, and connectivity with friends. Second, the impact of online communication varies among these two types of social connectivity. Where e-mail use has a negative impact on village connectivity, it does not affect connectivity with friends. Facebook use on the other hand has a negative impact on connectivity with friends, but not on village connectivity. The negative effects were not found among those older adults that were already well-connected on forehand, indicating a buffer effect.

Policy makers’ implementing online communication tools to strengthen social connectivity of older adults, may want to carefully select tools based on the type of connectivity they aim to enhance. Impact needs to be monitored.

The authors contribute by analyzing how characteristics of online communication tools, i.e., information richness and privacy protection, as well as social connectivity, i.e., geographical proximity and emotional closeness jointly shape older adults’ social connectivity.

This paper aims to promote better understanding of how the internet is used as part of crisis communication.

The internet may be changing the way PR operates in a crisis. It has been reported that the web has a significant role in disseminating information and that many‐to‐many online communication allows organisations to achieve “excellent” communication. However, it has also been suggested that in practice there is a need for more flexibility that the “excellence” model suggests. This study reports on data collected from in‐depth interviews with ten senior PR‐practitioners in order to understand their experiences and attitudes.

A range of attitudes are identified, informed by recent experience. Although participants indicated knowledge of and preference for two‐way communication with stakeholders, in practice they found this impractical or undesirable. This, their preference for existing approaches, and ignorance about the internet informed their views about online communication. The result was that some regarded the internet as inferior in terms of its ability to achieve “traditional” tasks and because of its potential for undesirable dialogue. When the web was acknowledged as useful it tended to be considered as supplementary to existing approaches. There was little recognition of the need for online dialogue.

This paper articulates a range of positive and negative attitudes towards the use of the internet for crisis communication, based on the experiences of senior PR practitioners.

Communication with people from different cultures, yet who may well speak English, requires sensitive listening skills and a strategic understanding of the organisation’s needs. The communication manager must win the confidence of senior managers to help them deliver business objectives in a multicultural environment.

It is a necessity in a dynamic business like communication management to relook at “ethics”, in light of the difficult times experienced by businesses and PR professionals, particularly in the Asia Pacific. To better understand ethics as applied in the industry, it could be helpful to classify the ethical issues that surround PR practitioners. The ten defined categories are personal, professional, political, cultural, racial/religious, trade/business, social, legal, financial and environmental. It is also possible to argue that “issues management” can be seen to also involve “ethics management”. Communications professionals should devote even more of their time and attention to this and raise professional standards in the process.

Much has been written about integrated marketing communications (IMC) but agreement on a precise definition is still lacking and, although interest levels seem to have reached fever pitch over the past few years, practical implementation, and evidence of the effectiveness of implementation, seem to be fairly rare. This paper sets out to investigate the sometimes confiding views of what the concept means and asks a number of related questions: what are the driving forces behind the growth of IMC, what is inhibiting its implementation, what is needed to make IMC a reality and what does the future hold for IMC?