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This chapter examines the specific role of strategic communication as a facilitator for business internationalization. It provides a new and comprehensive rationale for explaining the contribution of strategic communication to the global success of companies and shows communication leaders how they could demonstrate the value of communication for internationalization.

The chapter identifies an important contribution of strategic communication in today’s globalized world, which demands further attention in academia and in practice by addressing three research questions: (1) How can strategic communication be conceptualized as part of the internationalization of firms? (2) Which specific objectives, responsibilities and practices can be assigned to strategic communication within the process of internationalization? (3) Does the theoretical framework capture the significant components of strategic communication within internationalization, appropriately from the point of view of senior experts in the field?

The chosen approach is conceptual and empirical. A cross-disciplinary literature analysis has been performed to construct a framework that links possible forms and manifestations of strategic communication to different situations of international business development. Qualitative interviews with senior communication executives were conducted to verify the plausibility of the theoretical framework from a professional point of view. The study identifies four core fields of strategic communication within the internationalization processes: initiation, transformation, expansion and integration. Communication should be implemented differently within the typical periods of internationalization, and communication management should focus on different aspects during these processes. Empirical findings indicate that the core fields depicted in the framework are either already applied in practice or perceived as plausible and doable.

From a theoretical standpoint, this study emphasizes the value of a cross-disciplinary perspective on corporate communications, which helps to bridge gaps between management research and communication studies. The study expands the body of knowledge in strategic communication by integrating new objectives and activities.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which social media competence (SMC) determines exporting companies’ actual adoption of social media applications, which eventually might impact these firms’ performance. Quantitative study where data were collected through a web-based survey addressed to Spanish exporters. SEM is employed for testing the hypotheses. SMC has an influence on the firm’s actual use of these social media applications, which in turn has an impact on the firm’s performance. However, the intention to use social media applications mediates the relationship between the firm’s SMC and its social media usage.

Family business firms (FBFs) constantly struggle with the challenge of successfully reaching and surviving beyond the third generation. Narrative or storytelling is frequently used in business to transmit knowledge, achieve goals, create and maintain a connection with stakeholders, and achieve sustained growth. Most FBFs consciously or unconsciously use narrative and possess their own discourse, which is unique to every family and family business and which may aid FBFs in achieving continuity. FBFs must have an adequate atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation so that group members can transform acquired tacit knowledge through storytelling into explicit action. FBFs should be prepared to help collaborators and other stakeholders build competencies since tacit knowledge transfer, through narrative, can aid in the solving of problems, enhance innovativeness, and improve strategic decision-making. Therefore, narrative may well aid FBFs in fulfilling their ultimate goal of continuity. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the potential influence of narrative on FBFs’ continuity and prevention of their precipitous expiration. This chapter contributes to previous literature that sheds light on the narrative implications of FBFs, and depicts FBFs’ narratives and the dynamics of their business objectives, as well as touches on the heterogeneous nature of each family business’ storyline. There are various advantages to FBFs’ storytelling; perhaps the most noteworthy is the achievement of sustained business growth and continuity.

This study considers an under-explored pathway of immigrant business expansion beyond contemporary models of ethnic entrepreneurship.

We push against dominant theories of immigrant adaptation and small business, such as assimilation theory, to explain a rise of franchised small businesses among Indian Americans. We combine two cases on Indian American small business ownership, based on years of qualitative fieldwork each.

Indian Americans have forged a new path of immigrant business growth beyond either enclave or middleman minority businesses. The growth of franchised stores by immigrants remains underexplored in the immigration and work literature. Their growth in the industry signals a type of mobility, by moving more into corporate models of business ownership and performance. Yet, their success has depended on many of the same mechanisms that define lower end, informal ethnic businesses, such as a reliance on ethnic social capital for information and financing, strategies to avoid racism, co-ethnic labor, and the like.

Like any qualitative study, it is limited by its lack of breadth. But, given that it combines two cases, it compensates for this challenge more than otherwise.

This chapter furthers the argument that immigrant mobility does not necessarily mean assimilation and in fact can represent a collective response against assimilationist tendencies. This continued collective strategy to mobility is all the more necessary in the face of neoliberal economic models that place greater burdens on individuals.

Purpose – This chapter briefly outlines the history of childbirth in the United States and describes the influence of the natural birth movement and consumer demand in shaping the contemporary advertising of mainstream maternity services.

Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative content analysis of 59 hospital websites was undertaken in order to understand how hospitals depict childbirth in their online advertising.

Findings – Our findings illustrate how contemporary medical institutions idealize childbirth through their depictions of its physical and social dimensions. Although hospital advertising has adopted some of the rhetoric of the natural birth movement in describing the social and symbolic dimensions of the childbirth experience, this rhetoric is shown to stand in tension to the highly rationalized and bureaucratic institutional nature of hospitals. These tensions are most apparent in advertised descriptions of the physical environment of maternity centers and in the attempt to depict hospitalized birth as an opportunity for the individual empowerment of women.

Research limitations/implications – This research is limited to an analysis of how providers advertise their services and does not provide data on whether practices actually reflect the rhetoric of the ideal birth. Future research should consider the fit between rhetoric and reality in hospital maternity practices in order to better understand the social structural constraints of delivering these services in a hospital maternity center.

Originality/value – This chapter highlights the importance of consumer demand for how maternity services are portrayed and identifies key tensions between an idealized image of birth and the rational, bureaucratic demands of modern medical institutions.

Reciprocal partnerships between institutions of higher education (IHEs) and communities provide opportunities for IHEs to fulfill their core mission while at the same time benefiting communities. One model of institutional accountability for this type of partnership is the Elective Carnegie Community Engagement (CE) Classification. As a process is underway to internationalize the US-based classification, this chapter engages with a central guiding question: How can we best adapt the CE classification’s institutionalizing framework for CE – designed in the context of the United States – in a way that upholds the integrity of engagement practices, adheres to effective strategies for organizational change, and is sensitive to national, cultural, economic, political, social, and historical contexts? In addressing this question, the internationalization strategy is focused on careful adaptation of the application framework so that it can be applied in specific national higher education contexts. The adaptation seeks to incorporate nationally and culturally relevant CE approaches that are reflected in organizational strategies at the institutional level, consistent with the internal logic of the CE classification: valuing expertise of others, working against colonial knowledge regimes, and mindfully building toward increased epistemic justice. This strategy can be a model for internationalization of other processes for IHEs.

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.