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The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore under which conditions Tweets of infomediaries (i.e. ordinary users having few or no followers on Twitter) might nevertheless promote a negative sentiment toward a corporation to the point of having a negative impact on the corporation's outcomes.

The empirical study is based on a unique database that combines a sample of one year of Twitter conversations about an Italian bank and its daily business performances (i.e. number of closures and openings). The relationship between these two is analyzed using autoregressive time series models (VAR).

Findings indicate that a tweet affects a bank’s outcomes only when embedded in a larger conversation about the bank, rather than simply repetitively shared. These findings contribute to two debates within bank marketing literature. First is the debate about the role of infomediaries in banks' outcomes, as it urges to reconsider the way banks' online reputation is conceptualized and measured. Second is the debate on opportunities and threats of social media for the banking industry, as it indicates that negative sentiment expressed by the general public influences not only stock markets but also directly banks' outcomes.

This study allows managers and corporations to understand what to do when conversations of unknown individuals become threatening for the company. To influence such situations, the company should identify not only the actors that are influencers but also the communications that have been popular in the past for their brand or the brand of their competitors and monitor the conversational volume and broadness.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the natures, histories, similarities and differences of, and between, corporate communication and corporate marketing.

The modus operandi of the article is to map these two territories and, by this means, afford assistance to scholars and practitioners within the communications and marketing domains who share the authors' intellectual and instrumental interests in these two territories. As such, the article seeks to provide a general introduction to the nature of these two fields along with their bases and rationales.

Whilst there are significant differences between corporate communication and corporate marketing, the authors also found similarities in terms of the importance accorded to identities (an identity‐based view of the corporation can be significant here) and are mindful of the impact of ethics and note common grounds in their analytical focus. Both areas are also inextricably linked by virtue of their foci on corporate‐level concerns rather than product‐related concerns that have, for the main, predominated vis‐à‐vis traditional modes of communication/PR and marketing.

From a theoretical point of view the paper invites to explore the synergies between these two disciplines. From a practical point of view practitioners are invited to rethink their communications under the lens of corporate marketing and corporate communication.

The contribution of the paper is to provide an extensive literature review of the two fields that uncovers the theoretical backgrounds of both disciplines, their nature and analytical focus. Also, the value is to compare these two fields one with the other.

Organizational legitimacy is a central concept in institutional theory and in the more recent stream of communicative institutionalism. Within this scholarship, there exists an elaborated understanding of how macro-level actors, such as news media, influence individual judgments at the micro-level through a top-down communication process. However, little is known about the upward process by which individual propriety judgments influence validity judgments of news media at the macro-level. In this paper, we propose that this upward process of the legitimacy loop is facilitated by the degree to which expressed propriety judgments by individuals create thematic broadness, which bridges stand-alone conversations. Through a study investigating a post-scandal phase in the financial sector, we show how propriety judgments in social media become pre-validated at the meso-level prior to their validation by news media at the macro-level. The presented theoretical framework and empirical insights based on time-series regression analysis provide new knowledge about the multilevel process of organizational legitimacy formation in a digital age and extend our understanding of how a consensus is revealed at the meso-level.

This paper presents the results of exploratory research aimed at understanding how firms operating in regional clusters use the clusters' collective identity in their external communication and combine it with the communication of their individual identity. In particular, the paper aims to detect different behaviors among different types of firms.

A quantitative exploratory content analysis is performed on the websites of the wineries of the Franciacorta wine cluster (Italy). A two‐step cluster analysis is used to identify differences in identity communications.

The results suggest the existence of two groups manifesting different patterns of identity communication. Larger firms communicate their individual identity through symbols, but they consistently communicate collective values. The other group (on average smaller firms, but including some of the biggest) seems to exploit collective identity symbols, without giving prominence to collective values.

This study provides an understanding of how companies communicate collective symbols and values promoted by cooperative institutions; this understanding can be beneficial for future developments of collective branding projects.

This research contributes to broadening the debate on cluster identity as a strategic resource by adopting a communication perspective as well as providing empirical data on how different types of clusters' firms actually combine a collective cluster's identity and their firm's identity to shape their external image.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of strategic communication during a change management process within the internationally famous Ferrari corporation. The aim is to show that strategic communication, through its main components, can be a pivotal lever that supports continuous improvement and helps drive organizational success.

The change management process at Ferrari is described and interpreted through the framework of the entrepreneurial organization theory (EOT), from which the four components of strategic communication are derived.

The paper explores the case of Ferrari, which started a reorganization process in which the main actors were employees and strategic communication represented the crucial component.

This paper focuses on one single organization. Additional research is needed to generalize the effectiveness of the proposed strategic communication model.

The paper shows that the four strategic communication components (i.e. aligning, energizing, visioning, and constituting), if applied in an integrated manner, can give insightful stimulus for the management of important change programs.

The paper contributes to the change management literature by linking strategic communication, continuous improvement and entrepreneurial theory.

The purpose of this paper is to address corporte social responsibility (CSR) as a form of corporate self‐storying that highlights isomorphic processes influencing legitimacy as a key organisational concern.

Having constructed a theoretical framework incorporating CSR and corporate identity literature, the paper draws on a discourse perspective to analyse the legitimation strategies applied by a single organisation storying its CSR involvement. The strategies are subsequently addressed in relation to isomorphic discourses of legitimacy.

The analysis supports the view that corporate self‐storying of CSR balances between the needs for differentiation and conformity. Organisations thus navigate between the value associated with compliance with societal norms and expectations and the value of promoting organisational uniqueness.

Institutional processes result in isomorphic organisational practices also in relation to legitimacy reflected in the storying of CSR involvement. However, this study implies that isomorphism also offers organisations opportunities to stand out.

The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it articulates a framework for addressing CSR communication as a form of corporate self‐storying that is embedded in a differentiation/conformity paradox. Second, it explores how an organisation's extended responsibility – i.e. responsibility for supplier practices – is storied in a way that suggests that addressing legitimacy is a question of navigating the paradox.

Reputation is conceptualised as the believed effects that any social agent (ranging from a person to a company to a country) can have. Food reputation is beliefs about the effects of food on its consumers. On the basis of a multidimensional construct for food reputation derived from qualitative and correlational studies, this paper aims to test four hypotheses about food reputation dimensions' effects on consumers' food choices.

A multi‐attribute, multi‐step choice experiment was carried out using a “phased narrowing” procedure. The procedure is based on eight product choices, using four reputation dimensions as manipulated attributes (duration, identity‐territoriality, social and environmental responsibility, psycho‐physiological well‐being); this is replicated on one drink and one food product.

A pilot study (n=50) checked the manipulation of the four reputation dimensions. ANOVA (n=118) showed the impact of the manipulated reputation features in the food choice process, especially in the final decision‐making phase.

The results confirm that food reputation features impact consumer choice, detailing the relative importance of different reputation features according to choice phase, product category, and individual characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication among the top 300 companies in Switzerland and to investigate how favorable the cultural context is for this kind of communication.

The investigation of the top 300 companies in Switzerland was conducted using a written survey that built on previous studies.

CSR communication in Switzerland appears to be well developed, but still has broad margins for development. Examples are provided on how to improve CSR communication. Such improvements should be relatively easy to implement since Switzerland, it is argued, appears to be open to CSR communication.

The investigation considered only the communication objectives toward a limited range of stakeholders, such as clients, shareholders, and employees. The survey was conducted among the top 300 companies in Switzerland; these companies are not necessarily representative of the whole Swiss business community.

The paper describes the elements that should be considered in order to develop an effective CSR communication. These elements are synergies between issues, objectives, and channels; criteria for a credible social report; the exploitation of the potentialities of CSR advertising and the web; and the understanding of the national context where the organization is operating.

This paper focuses on CSR communication, an area that has received limited attention in CSR research. Organizations may find interesting hints on how to develop effective CSR communication.

When corporations adopt a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program and use and name it in their external communications, their members should act in line with CSR. The purpose of this paper is to present an experiment in which the consistent or inconsistent behavior of a CEO was studied.

In this experiment the authors offered materials about an organization that has an extensive program on sustainability. In the consistent condition the authors presented a CEO who traded in his sports car for a hybrid car (which actually happened), whereas in the inconsistent condition the authors presented material in which the CEO kept his sports car.

The hypotheses were not supported. Inconsistent behavior did not lead to a significantly different attitude towards the company or lower purchase intentions.

The sample consisted of students who were maybe not familiar with the particular company, the CEO of the company and/or with the sustainability programs of the company. The materials developed in the experiment might be too weak.

Although the expected results were not found, the authors certainly think that consistent behavior of the CEO and other organizational members might decrease skeptical responses of stakeholders when they are confronted with CSR communication.