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The purpose of this paper is to explore the power of leadership rhetoric with a theoretical foundation of signaling theory. Past research mostly focus on followers and not other stakeholders and the authors attempt to fill that research gap.

The research explored nearly 20 years and 51,500 pages of information from US presidents and explored the impact on stock market volatility using generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity.

The research findings suggest that leaders can/do have a powerful impact on stakeholders. In particular negative statements will cause the greatest reaction due to risk adverse stockholders, neutral rhetoric will calm the market and decrease volatility and positive rhetoric was not significant.

Past research suggests that a focus on the consequences of leadership rhetoric be explored and the research suggests that people do respond to powerful leaders, even if they are not followers. Also the authors filled a gap in regard to the impact of leader communication about economic and marketplace events.

Practitioners benefit from the research as they can focus upon the US presidents’ rhetoric and strategically apply the research as they can predict the movement of the stock market immediately thereafter.

Very little research has ever explored the impact of a leader’s rhetoric and the subsequent economic impact, and no one has explored in particular the president’s rhetorical impact (who is considered by many the top leader in the USA).

The purpose of this study is to examine how crowdfunding backer perceptions of market orientation and foreignness impact crowdfunding performance in emerging economies.

Using content analysis software, the authors analyzed 756 Kickstarter campaign narratives from the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa for the period between 2009 and 2019.

The authors’ results show that behavioral market orientation signals are positively related to amounts raised while decision criteria signals are negatively related. The authors also find that foreign entrepreneur status interacts with the two market orientations to impact funding amounts.

When creating crowdfunding campaigns in emerging economies, domestic entrepreneurs should use high levels of behavioral market orientation rhetoric but low levels of decision criteria rhetoric within their campaign narratives.

This study unpacks the components of market orientation and examines their positive and negative effects on crowdfunding success in the context of emerging economies.

This study examines the impact of gender on Facebook campaign strategies and the reception of these strategies during the 2018 Israeli municipal elections.

The authors analyzed all the messages posted on 48 politicians' official Facebook pages during the week leading up to the elections. They analyzed messages posted by 152 candidates running for the position of head of a municipality, 68 of whom were women (48 had an active Facebook account), examining the amount of engagement they had created. The authors also analyzed the candidates' use of rhetoric and use of negative campaigning and the engagement it created.

Analysis of the overall engagement of Facebook users in respect to men versus women politicians showed that men politicians' posts were significantly more engaging in terms of the number of likes and shares they generated, although the multilevel analysis found no significant differences between engagement in the posts of men and women politicians. The Aristotelian rhetoric analysis revealed no significant differences between women and men contenders; however, in line with the role incongruity theory, the engagement analysis found that male candidates' logic-based posts attracted significantly more shares. The negative campaigning analysis found that, contrary to the study’s hypothesis, female candidates posted twice as many messages, attacking their opponents as their men counterparts. However, in line with the hypothesis based on the role incongruity theory, these posts gained significantly less engagement than those of their men counterparts.

The study highlights that female candidates do not conform to their perceived gender role as soft, emotional, and gentle in their social media campaigning. However, in line with role incongruity theory, they were not rewarded for this “unwomanly” behavior because they gained significantly less engagement with their logic-based posts and their attacks against other candidates than their men counterparts. Despite the fact that prior studies have indicated the potential of social networks service (SNS) to empower women leaders, the findings of the study highlight the continued gender discrimination and the validity of role incongruity theory during social media campaigning, particularly at the municipal elections level.

Political parties and marketers have for centuries employed visuals as effective means of conveying their messages. Yet surprisingly, little has been written on the evident interplay between the visual rhetoric of political campaigns and destination image. Influenced by Foucault’s notion of subjectivity and drawing on critical discourse analysis, this chapter analyzes the visual rhetoric of the radical right-wing Swiss People’s Party campaign posters in order to explore the relationship between political rhetoric and destination image. It is concluded that while this image of Switzerland may be negatively influenced by the rhetoric of the party, the reflex of the state may inadvertently perpetuate cultural fundamentalism and exclusion.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often depicted as a major challenge to current business practices, and CSR managers have recently been indicated as prime examples of change agents. The purpose of this paper is to take an occupational perspective to consider these managers. It focuses in particular on their occupational rhetorics, which correspond to idealized images that CSR managers use to represent their work. These rhetorics are analyzed in order to shed light on CSR managers’ change potential in organizations.

The study, which benefits from collaboration with the Italian CSR Manager Network, draws on a multi-method research approach which included interviews, observations at public events and meetings, as well as focus groups with CSR managers.

Five broad rhetorical repertoires were identified: “the motor of change,” “the business-oriented,” “the fatalist,” “the idealist” and “the CSR bookkeeper” rhetorics. The primacy of the first two repertoires lead to the conclusion that CSR managers are more likely to foster continuity instead of change in current business practices.

The study is mainly based on interview data and could therefore be extended by ethnographic investigations of CSR managers’ work or by observations of CSR managers’ language use in their everyday work.

The study is part of a growing empirical literature that investigates the role of individual actors in developing and implementing CSR in organizations and, in particular, the role of CSR practitioners. It contributes to the development of the literature on CSR-driven change within business organizations.

This paper explores strategic change communication, framed by the idea that managers can be viewed as rhetoricians. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss senior managers' subjective experiences of rhetorical aspects of change management.

The paper draws on a case study from ABB Sweden (a power and automation technology company). In‐depth interviews with senior managers, with vast experience of change management, constitute the empirical source.

The most important finding is the managers' overall reluctance towards rhetoric. According to the managers in this study, a rhetorician is an over‐enthusiastic person who “waves his arms when speaking”. To master the art of rhetoric is not believed to be of particular importance when managing strategic change.

Senior managers' potentially negative attitude concerning rhetoric should be taken into account when researchers situate change management within a rhetorical frame.

Given the large interest in “efficient” communication, generally managers should be encouraged to overcome their reluctance towards rhetoric to improve their ability to “manage meaning” constructively.

This paper contributes to change management communication insofar as it gives voice to the individual manager. This voice indicates; in a time when rhetoric, storytelling, and charismatic leadership are making ground; that the understanding of rhetoric is much more limited than the general impression might suggest.

Recent research on word-of-mouth (WOM) has presented consistent evidence on the importance of secondary WOM (sWOM) on online user-generated content (UGC) and on diffusion of positive and negative commercial information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what motivates consumers to spread, via electronic WOM communication, negative information about commercial entities adversity using malicious verbal narratives. Based on concepts related to the joy of pain (schadenfreude) and gloating behavior the authors propose a set of hypotheses designed to test two key moderators (perceived deservingness and entity’s status) as well as the process of spiteful dissemination like content assimilation, dissemination time and duration.

The research consists on a series of four studies using different research methods (surveys and experiments) and a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Results show that actively communicating about others’ adversity (i.e. gloating behavior) provides an outlet to the passive observation of others’ adversity (i.e. schadenfreude feelings). Results indicate that schadenfreude and gloating are linked to the perceived deservingness of a commercial entity and entity status (the tall poppy syndrome). Results also show that malicious feelings and gloating behavior cause consumers to disseminate information more widely, more rapidly, for a longer period and frequently distort its content.

The findings contribute to literature on WOM by introducing an approach that highlights the potential negative effects of WOM on the dissemination of commercial information that might harm the relevant commercial entity’s reputation and goodwill.

This study illuminates the prevalence of negative rhetoric in WOM and supports the theory schadenfreude motives as a trigger for gloating behavior in the form of disseminating negative, malicious and intense WOM regarding commercial setbacks. This research is the first to examine and demonstrates that when it comes to WOM communication, schadenfreude feelings and gloating behavior might play a central role in the dissemination of negative information and the two constructs’ role in understanding infostorms, the sudden flow of large quantities of negative WOM using strong gleeful exultation. This study is the first to examine these phenomena in the business setting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of angry political rhetoric employed by George Wallace and Donald Trump. The authors start by discussing the civic thinking skills stressed within the C3 Framework, specifically the ability to analyze politicians’ arguments. Then, the focus shifts to look at angry political rhetoric within the US history. Next, the authors discuss the parallels of the angry political rhetoric employed by both Wallace and Trump. Finally, two activities are provided that enable students to grasp the convergences with the angry political rhetoric utilized by both Wallace and Trump.

In this paper, the authors explore angry rhetoric in American politics. The authors designed two classroom-ready activities by drawing on the best teaching practices advocated for in the C3 Framework. To elaborate, both activities allow students to research and analyze arguments made by George Wallace and Donald Trump. This enables students to engage in the four dimensions of the Inquiry Arc in the C3 Framework.

The authors provide two activities that can be utilized in the high school social studies classroom to enable students to dissect American politicians’ messages. These two activities can be adapted and utilized to enable students to examine a political candidate’s messages, especially those that draw on angry rhetoric. By completing the steps of these two activities, students are better prepared to be critical consumers of political media messages.

In this paper, the authors explore the role of angry political rhetoric in American politics. The authors examine the parallels of political style between George Wallace and Donald Trump. Two activities are provided to help students break down the angry political rhetoric employed by these two controversial figures.

Entrepreneurial firms such as professional service firms (PSFs) face constant challenges to acquire resources, one of the greatest of which is the challenge to win client engagements. Although rhetoric is at the center of the challenge to win client engagements, scholars have not identified what rhetorical strategies are the most persuasive to potential clients. By exploring one type of PSF, architecture firms, we argue that PSFs can compete for and legitimate themselves with clients by deploying institutional logics that provide symbolic frameworks and meaning. Since multiple institutional logics exist in society, a critical question for a PSF is which logic is most persuasive to clients. We analyze architecture firms’ written pitches to predict which rhetoric strategies win the valuable resource of a client engagement for a multiclient state project. Our results identify that rhetoric deploying a “profession” logic was most effective whereas a “business” logic was counter-productive in obtaining client engagements and securing resources for the firm.

Rhetorical works (schemes and tropes) can increase advertisement liking. Because liking impacts advertising effectiveness, this study aims to investigate if positive processing, brand awareness, and persuasion outcomes previously associated with rhetoric are spurious and chiefly attributable to liking.

An experiment (n=448) employed natural advertising exposure conditions and a 3 (headline: nonfigurative, scheme, trope)×2 (copy length: long, moderate)×2 (involvement: high, low) between‐subjects factorial design.

Absent of liking differences, schemes and tropes are robust motivators of available resources devoted to processing (elaboration and readership). Favourable arguments only influence brand awareness and persuasion if processed. Consumers negatively view longer copy. Nonfigurative headlines encourage insufficient processing as copy lengthens. Insufficient processing decreases brand awareness and persuasion. However, schemes and tropes overcome negative copy length effects on brand awareness and persuasion regardless of involvement.

Without the benefit of increased liking, schemes interfere with copy point and brand memory similar to other creative attention‐getters – humour and sex appeals. Instead, schemes focus consumers on advertising style. The results are based on consumer responses; thus, error may make differences harder to detect. Another limitation is the focus on a single low‐risk, informational product, i.e. pens. Future research should investigate effects of rhetorical works with high‐risk and transformative products.

Advertisers should use rhetorical works to motivate processing, especially with longer copy explaining advantages of new, technical, or complex products. Also, effective rhetorical works need not create positive affect.

Isolating advertising rhetoric effects from liking differences explains anomalies in the literature (e.g. scheme versus trope superiority).