Search results
1 – 7 of 7
Abstract
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to explore the decision‐making practices and processes related to gathering, selecting, and publishing of internal corporate news through intranets in large…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the decision‐making practices and processes related to gathering, selecting, and publishing of internal corporate news through intranets in large multinationals in Finland.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on eight semi‐structured interviews of intranet editors responsible for the corporate news on the intranet.
Findings
Intranet editors are the main corporate gatekeepers and agenda setters making news publication decisions; i.e. determining what is important and newsworthy. These editors make decisions independently rather than collectively, thus news gathering is greatly affected by the networking and organizational skills of the individual editors. Companies prefer neutral news. Honesty and openness are principles that justify also the publication of “bad news.”
Research limitations/implications
This study explored how intranet editors construct reality through shaping internal communication content. The study did not attempt to assess the effects or effectiveness of this communication. Similarly, although intranet's goals and purposes were assessed, the extent to which the intranet helps the company achieve its strategic goals was not analyzed in detail. Further, research is needed to explore these important issues.
Practical implications
This paper offers practical examples of how large multinationals convey internal news through intranets. It highlights aspects that may help companies improve intranet's strategic value by enhancing internal communication through the intranet.
Originality/value
This paper reveals the power of individual editors in constructing reality for the organization. It also offers practitioners, researchers, teachers, and students a rare view into the real‐life processes and practices related to communication via intranets that can rarely be accessed and evaluated by outsiders.
Details
Keywords
Benno Viererbl, Thomas Koch and Nora Denner
Editors of employee magazines may be torn between diverging expectations among their stakeholders. The management might be interested in strategically supportive communication…
Abstract
Purpose
Editors of employee magazines may be torn between diverging expectations among their stakeholders. The management might be interested in strategically supportive communication, whereas employees might expect objective, independent, or critical coverage. Based on quantitative data, the paper aims to analyze how the editors perceive these expectations, how they see their professional role in this field of tension and how critically the magazines report.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a quantitative survey of 197 editors of employee magazines and a quantitative content analysis of 200 articles of employee magazines.
Findings
Editors perceive differences regarding the expectations of management and employees. These discrepancies, in turn, contribute to the experience of role conflicts. Our analysis reveals three types of editors: the voice of the management, the critical observer and the consensus-oriented mediator.
Originality/value
The study addresses the scarcely investigated area of conflict in which editors of employee magazines work. It is one of the first studies to analyze editors' perceived expectations of stakeholders, their professional self-perception and potential role conflicts with a quantitative survey. For the first time, quantitative methods are used to examine the causes of editors' role conflicts.
Details
Keywords
Abigail Hackett, Steve Pool, Jennifer Rowsell and Barsin Aghajan
The purpose of this paper is to report on video making in two different contexts within the Community Arts Zone research project, an international research project concerned with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on video making in two different contexts within the Community Arts Zone research project, an international research project concerned with the connections between arts, literacy and the community.
Design/methodology/approach
At one project site, researchers and parents from the community filmed their children making dens with an artist. At another site, a professional film crew filmed young people engaged in arts practice in school settings.
Findings
In both cases, researchers, artists and community participants collaborated to do research and make video. This paper discusses the ways that this work was differently positioned at the two sites. These different positionings had implications for the meaning ascribed to video making from the point of view of the participants, researchers and artists involved.
Originality/value
By drawing on perspectives of researchers and artists, the paper explores implications for video making processes within ethnographic research. These include a need for awareness of the diversity and fragmentation of the fields of both visual research and visual arts practice. In addition, the relationship between research and the visual is unfolding in a context in which the digital is increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life. Therefore the authors argue for the need for researchers and artists to explore their epistemological assumptions with regards to video and film, and to consider the role of the digital in the lives of their participants. The coming together of these positions and experiences is what constructs the meaning of the digital and visual in the field.
Ben Marder, Avi Shankar, David Houghton and Adam Joinson
It is known that to encourage people to interact (e.g. sharing) with brands through social media, businesses create content in line with the expectations of their target audience…
Abstract
Purpose
It is known that to encourage people to interact (e.g. sharing) with brands through social media, businesses create content in line with the expectations of their target audience. On these sites, however, such interaction by consumers is visible, contributing to their self-presentation, which can be seen by their wider network; some of whom will find it appropriate, others may not. Currently, little is known about the effects of consumers’ own diverse set of audiences on behavioral intention toward brand interaction and emotional effect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey methodology (n=386) was adopted to examine intention to interact with real brand posts.
Findings
Results show that the brand interaction is associated with social anxiety when it is felt that visible evidence of such actions is discrepant from the audience expectations. This, then, constrains the behavioral intention to interact with brands online.
Practical implications
For businesses to maximize brand interactions and minimize social anxiety, they must be mindful of not just the expectations of their target but also consider their target’s own network. For site designers, this research urges for greater refining of privacy tools and suggests the addition of a “Secret Like” option.
Originality/value
Encouraging visible brand interaction through social media is paramount for businesses. Managers focus only on their target audience when designing content but neglect to consider the self-presentational implications of interacting with branded content to wider networks. This paper shows that this must be considered to increase success and maintain ethical practice. This is of value for multiple-stakeholders, managers, users, site designers and academics.
Details
Keywords
Sampsa Hyysalo and Mikael Johnson
“User” is the lingua franca term used across IT design, often critiqued for giving a reductionist portrayal of the human relationship with technologies. The purpose of this paper…
Abstract
Purpose
“User” is the lingua franca term used across IT design, often critiqued for giving a reductionist portrayal of the human relationship with technologies. The purpose of this paper is to argue that equating “user” with flesh and blood “people out there” is naïve. Not only that, it closes important options in conducting human-centered design.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conceptually elaborate a relational understanding of the user and integrate research findings on user representations found at the intersection of human-centered design and social studies of technology.
Findings
The user is best understood as a relational term that bridges between people out there and renditions of them relevant for design. A distinction between “user representations” and “engaged use” is a key distinction to clarify this further. Research to date demonstrates that R & D organizations have a wide range of user representations and positioning human-centered design to these would advance its likely yield.
Research limitations/implications
The strategic positioning of user studies and other human-centered design within R & D organizations is a growing research area that merits further research.
Practical implications
Descriptions of users would benefit from being more strategic in order to become viable amidst other design concerns. This can be aided by, for instance, visualizing the “users” that different fractions in the company rely on and compare these to the users indicated by human-centered design.
Originality/value
The paper makes an original reconceptualization of the user and integrates literature on user representations to open new options for conducting human-centered design.
Details