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1 – 10 of over 2000Sung‐Un Yang and James E. Grunig
The purpose of this study is to decompose common reputation measurement systems into behavioural organisation–public relationship outcomes, cognitive representations of an…
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to decompose common reputation measurement systems into behavioural organisation–public relationship outcomes, cognitive representations of an organisation in the minds of publics and evaluations of organisational performance. In the proposed model, propensity for active communication behaviour and familiarity are suggested as correlated precursors of organisation–public relationship outcomes (eg trust, satisfaction, commitment and control mutuality) and organisation–public relationship outcomes are hypothesised to have a direct effect on evaluations of organisational performance as well as an indirect effect via the mediation of cognitive representations of the organisation. The authors investigated different types of five Korean‐based organisations )two domestic corporations in different industries, a multinational corporation, a sports association and a non‐profit organisation) to validate the model across different types of organisations. The findings of this study suggest that relationship outcomes lead to favourable representations of an organisation and positive evaluations of performance of the organisation.
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Michel M Haigh and Shelley Wigley
– The purpose of this paper is to (n=472) examine how negative, user-generated content on Facebook impacts stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to (n=472) examine how negative, user-generated content on Facebook impacts stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization.
Design/methodology/approach
At Phase 1, stakeholders’ perceptions about the organization – public relationship, corporate social responsibility, attitude toward the organization, and reputation of the organization were assessed. A week later, at Phase 2, participants were exposed to negative Facebook comments. This study employed the theory of inoculation as a way to bolster stakeholders’ attitudes to protect against attitude shift following exposure to negative, user-generated comments.
Findings
Paired sample t-tests indicate stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization – public relationship and corporate social responsibility significantly decrease after stakeholders read negative, user-generated content. The pattern of means supports the idea inoculation can prevent against attitude shift.
Practical implications
Strategic communication professionals should be aware of the impact negative posts can have and develop a strategy to respond to negative comments on Facebook.
Originality/value
There is limited experimental research examining the impact of negative Facebook posts on stakeholders. It extends current literature and provides practitioners with some guidance on the impact of negative, user-generated content.
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The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about organization‐public relationships by establishing a theoretical category for understanding them and by contributing to a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about organization‐public relationships by establishing a theoretical category for understanding them and by contributing to a foundation of knowledge in that category. Relationship stresses are presented as the factors that constrain organization‐public relationships. This study identifies stresses on the relationship between a grassroots advocacy organization and its former members, as well as stresses between the organization and members who have decreased their participation in it.
Design/methodology/approach
In‐person interviews were conducted with 24 people, phone interviews were conducted with 44 people, and e‐mail interviews were conducted with 13 people. Interviewees included staff members, former volunteers, and volunteers who had decreased their participation in the organization.
Findings
Several relationship stresses were identified: the silver curtain, the emotion tax, relationship speeding, invisible isms, weak leadership, disagreement with decisions, the revolving door, overworking volunteers, underworking volunteers, age, and health.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes a new category for relationship management scholarship, which can be productive for theory building. It also illuminates Dozier and Lauzen's questioning about the unique conditions of social movement organizations.
Practical implications
Established cultivation strategies can actually aggravate publics when a relationship has significantly deteriorated and the root problem is not addressed.
Originality/value
Recognizing problems in the relationship between an advocacy organization and members results in a deep understanding of a unique context for public relations practice. In addition, this study illuminates a context for cultivation strategies by codifying a foundation of relationship stresses. Identifying stresses to relationships can help scholars and practitioners ascertain problems and treat those problems at the root level.
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The purpose of this paper is to outline concepts that explore and extend the significance of public relations as a relationship management discipline.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline concepts that explore and extend the significance of public relations as a relationship management discipline.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper postulates practice through which value is created to meet organisational objectives from the known or latent potential of tangible and intangible assets. In doing so, a definition and early research findings into the nature of relationships is put forwards and a definition of organisations as the nexus of relationships is proposed. The differentiation between organisational and interpersonal relationships is explored through a concept that organisations' tangible and intangible tokens are limited by a concept of materiality in a cultural setting.
Findings
The paper posits that material value is released through a process of relationship change and a public relations practice of relationship management is put forward as a management discipline that can create value when the process of relationship management acting on material tokens is deployed.
Originality/value
The paper explores how public relations is an agent for changing the value of organisations.
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Eyun‐Jung Ki and Linda Childers Hon
The purpose of this paper is to examine how organizations enact positivity, openness, access, sharing of tasks, and networking through their web sites. The paper also aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how organizations enact positivity, openness, access, sharing of tasks, and networking through their web sites. The paper also aims to investigate whether, different types of industries display different levels of relationship strategy.
Designs/methodology/approach
A content analysis of 286 web sites was conducted to determine how corporations use their site as a communication medium for building and nurturing relationships with publics. Company web sites were selected from the Fortune 500 list according to industry type. The sites were analyzed for the presence and quality of variables identified in the public relations literature as measures of relationship maintenance strategies.
Findings
The study's first research question addressed how the sampled organizations display use of relationship maintenance strategies through their web sites. The results revealed that openness was the strategy used most frequently. The quality of the openness dimension also was rated more highly than it was for any of the other strategies. The second research question explored whether industry type made a difference in organizations' use of the relationship maintenance strategies. A statistically significant difference among industry type was found for three of the strategies – positivity, openness, and access.
Originality/value
This study gives guidelines as to how companies can use their web sites more proactively to build and maintain relationships with their publics. The study also provides some insights into why some types of organizations might be more likely than others to use web sites for relationship maintenance. This study's primary contribution to public relations theory is its original focus on strategies for organization‐public relationship maintenance and this study also sought to identify and measure the quality of maintenance strategies.
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This study seeks to investigate strategies for building personal relationships with an organization's members, and to examine the outcomes of personal relationships in an advocacy…
Abstract
Purpose
This study seeks to investigate strategies for building personal relationships with an organization's members, and to examine the outcomes of personal relationships in an advocacy organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The case study includes interviews with 39 staff people at national, state, and affiliate levels of the organization; 58 members; and five former members, for a total of 102 participants. Document analysis and participant observation were supplemental methods.
Findings
The following strategies for cultivating personal relationships were identified: direct engagement, task sharing, constitutive rhetoric, peer linking, hat‐in‐your‐hand, investment in local relationships, and targeting of aware affiliates for diversity efforts. To contribute to the discussion about the value of personal relationships in organizations, the study also investigated the outcomes of personal relationships. The outcomes found in the study include affective commitment, political leverage, social capital, member recruitment, and member retention.
Research limitations/implications
Although many of the cultivation strategies and outcomes are likely to apply to various contexts, some of them may be specific to the context of an advocacy organization that has a grass‐roots culture and layers of leadership, such as local, state, and national offices.
Practical implications
Organizations can read the study to identify potential strategies they can use to cultivate strong personal relationships with their stakeholders.
Originality/value
The study produces new cultivation strategies and outcomes for personal relationships and engages in a critical discussion of the existing literature.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal public relations practices (e.g. internal communication and relationship management strategies) enhance employees’…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal public relations practices (e.g. internal communication and relationship management strategies) enhance employees’ organizational social capital in the Korean context by examining the mediation roles of employee-organization relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The researcher then recruited 23 field research assistants to collect data from 23 organizations in South Korea. For the purpose of this study, the researcher trained each of the research assistants, kept the confidentiality of each research participant, and used common methods of data collection. After this training process, the research assistants distributed an online link and encouraged employees in 23 organizations to participate in this survey. From these 23 organizations, 287 participants completed the survey. However, the authors had to delete 11 invalid responses. Consequently, the authors used a total of 276 responses to analyze the data.
Findings
The results of this study showed that two-way and symmetrical internal communication strategies were associated positively with employee-organization relationships and organizational social capital. Additionally, satisfaction and control mutuality had mediating effects on the relations between internal communication strategies and organizational social capital.
Originality/value
These results contribute to expanding the functions of internal public relations practices into organizational social capital.
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June Yung Kim, Jung Min Park and Jin Sook Im
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how current US senators utilize their Facebook pages to promote positive relationships with their public in terms of relationship…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how current US senators utilize their Facebook pages to promote positive relationships with their public in terms of relationship maintenance strategies: positivity, openness, access, assurance, sharing of tasks, and networking. Interactivity of their Facebook pages is also examined.
Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis was conducted for 89 Facebook pages of the US senators of the 112th Congress. Levels of six relationship maintenance strategies and interactivity of the Facebook pages were examined.
Findings
Among six relationship maintenance strategies, positivity and openness are the most frequently used strategies while access and assurance are the least observed. In total, 70 percent of the senators’ Facebook pages show a low level of interactivity.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to the samples of the current US senators.
Practical implications
This study provides a useful insight for political public relations practitioners that features associated with relationship management strategies can be employed to develop better social network sites for political actors, in order to build or enhance relationships with public.
Originality/value
Despite the importance of relationship management among political actors/organizations and public, and potential to establish relationships via social networking sites, only a few studies have tried to explore the relationship maintenance strategies on social network sites in the political arena.
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Richard D. Waters, Denise Sevick Bortree and Natalie T.J. Tindall
The purpose of this paper is to use relationship management theory to measure the impact of relationship cultivation on the employer-employee relationship. Specifically, the paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use relationship management theory to measure the impact of relationship cultivation on the employer-employee relationship. Specifically, the paper examines how well Kelly's (2001) conceptualization of stewardship can impact internal stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
Through intercept surveys of 421 adults, the paper used existing scales to measure dimensions of the employer-employee relationship and the participants’ perceptions of stewardship in the workplace.
Findings
This study found that the four dimensions of stewardship significantly impact feelings of trust, commitment, satisfaction, and balanced power between the employer and the employee. Additionally, increased use of stewardship resulted in increased involvement by employees.
Practical implications
The results of the paper offer several specific suggestions employers can do to communicate more effectively with their employees so that they are not only more informed but also feel more positively about the relationship they have with the employer.
Originality/value
Original stewardship scales were developed for the paper so that they can be tested in domains outside the nonprofit sector, where they have been routinely tested with donors and volunteers.
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Symmetric communication and relationship building are core principles of public relations, which have been highlighted for CSR communication. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
Symmetric communication and relationship building are core principles of public relations, which have been highlighted for CSR communication. The purpose of this paper is to develop three different communication strategies for CSR communication in Twitter, of which each contributes differently to the ideals of symmetric communication and relationship building. The framework is then applied to analyze how companies use the micro-blogging service Twitter for CSR communication.
Design/methodology/approach
Social network analysis is used to identify the 30 most central corporate accounts in a CSR Twitter network.
Findings
From the social network analysis 40,000 tweets are extracted and manually coded. Anova is applied to investigate differences in the weighting of CSR topics between the different strategies.
Originality/value
So far not much is known about how social media, such as Twitter, contribute to the core principles of public relations, if companies use social media to foster symmetric communication and relationship management, or which CSR topics they address.
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