Search results

Editors of employee magazines work in a grey area between public relations and journalism. On the one hand, they need to accommodate the company management’s interest in a positive presentation; on the other, they must meet the employees’ need for objective and independent information. Although employee magazines reach millions of recipients every day, its editors have rarely been the focus of academic work. The purpose of this paper is to change this and scrutinise the way the editors view their professional role and the role conflicts to which they are subjected.

We conduct 15 qualitative semi-structured interviews with editors of employee magazines to analyse their professional role and possible conflicts in their work.

The editors’ self-concept varies significantly along two dimensions, which the authors use as the basis for distinguishing four types: the management ambassador, the employee representative, the mediator and the service provider.

The study sheds light on employee magazines, a medium between public relations and journalism that has not been analysed before. It helps to specify the role of these magazines and its editors’ between the expectations of the management and the employees.

Describes some of the policies that helped UK environmental consultancy ADAS to win best‐to‐work‐for prize in the Edie Awards for Environmental Excellence.

Concentrates on the company's approach to training and development, employee consultation and internal communications.

Details in particular the ADAS induction process, which helps new employees to feel a part of the organization and is seen as a key aspect of promoting employee retention.

Highlights the importance of good working relationships, rather than remuneration packages or frequent HR “initiatives”, in helping to create a good working environment.

Emphasizes the importance not only of consulting employees, but of acting on the feedback received.

Details a number of policies that other firms with a geographically dispersed workforce may find helpful in cementing a sense of “belonging” to a single organization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate executives of companies are using blogging as a new communications channel.

The paper presents an overview of the blogging phenomenon, placing it in context of the larger growth of Web 2.0 and user‐generated content. The paper provides the reader with a primer on blogs and how they can be used effectively by executives, as well as looking at the importance of monitoring the blogosphere for what is being said by and about a company.

Over 50 corporate CEOs were found who are presently engaged in blogging. The research also identifies companies where employees have been fired for blogging and presents best practices in blogging and blog policies.

The principal limitation of the research is that as blogging is a rapidly growing and evolving area, the present results on executive blogging are accurate only for the moment. The implications of this research are that it provides the foundation for surveying not only the status of blogging by managers but also an agenda for blogging research, which might examine blogging behaviours, develop blog metrics and look toward the return on investment of blogging.

The paper reveals the benefits of managerial blogging for both the company and the individual. It also examines issues concerned with human resources, financial disclosure and policy development that have arisen because of the rise of blogging within companies.

The paper represents a timely review of a rapidly evolving social network and its associated communications technology, providing both management practitioners and academicians with insights into managing in a new age.

How do we understand political polarization around the issue of climate change in the United States? Using a mixed-methods approach, this paper unpacks the components of the debate over climate science and policy between 2015 and 2017 to understand the sources of divisiveness that have come to characterize climate politics in the United States. Data in our analysis include the content of Congressional hearings and open-ended, semi-structured interviews with the most influential climate policy actors at the federal level. We find high levels of polarization around two specific components of this debate: the type of policy instrument and the role of the federal government in regulating carbon dioxide emissions. This paper concludes by exploring how patterns of polarization preceding the 2016 election help us to understand the expected political debate over federal climate policy in the years to come.

BY THE TIME this is in the hands of readers most of them have ceased to record their daily doings in any detail in the new diary; it will now be used merely as an engagement book, although some men and women seem to be able to do even without that limited reminder of their appointments. Nevertheless we wish our readers at this late hour a good librarianship year with increasing progress in the arts of the book and of communication, and their distribution. If the men who do things were only as ready and able to find time to write of them for the benefit of their fellows, how lively our professional journals, including ourselves of course, would be. That is something we would stress. It has been well said, indeed is widely recognized, that every man and woman owes a debt to the profession of his or her choice. They pay it by doing the business of their library day well, by their efforts, successful or otherwise to improve their service; it is only after those efforts, we agree, that their duty to their co‐workers may emerge. No one writer or librarian can be familiar today with everything that is happening in libraries; the profession is so much larger than any one of us, and infinitely larger than those we serve imagine it to be. Nor can any library journal, with the resources now available, give the merest chronique of the variations that abound in practice. Something towards such omniscience may be reached if we all have a regard for the whole profession.

The aim of this paper is to provide a multifaceted exploration of the motives and success factors of a magazine web site.

The paper presents an explorative single case study of a Finnish magazine web site. The analysis is based on triangulated data (semi‐structured interviews, observation, statistics, and documents provided by the magazine publisher).

The case illustrates that a magazine web site supports all the three functions (editorial, circulation, and advertising) that are vital to a magazine's success. Moreover, virtual community activities seem to have enhanced customer loyalty and added a more lifelike dimension to the magazine concept.

Media managers should look at internet presence from a more multifaceted perspective rather than merely focus on the revenue streams. Operating online services should be valued and exploited alongside the development of the print product.

The value of this research lies in the notion that the web site may complement rather than replace the print magazine.

Using an econometric approach, this study aims to examine Mid-Atlantic USA wine consumers’ willingness to participate in winery or vineyard tours based on their wine knowledge, wine drinking occasions, demographical factors, past experience with wine tourism and wine purchasing behaviors.

An internet-based consumer survey (N = 977) conducted 22-24 October 2014 was used to collect data. The screening criteria for the survey participants were: 1) being a resident of the Mid-Atlantic region (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, USA), 2) at least 21 years old, 3) not an industry member, and 4) having purchased and consumed wine within the past year. In addition to descriptive statistics, a logistic regression was used to estimate consumers’ willingness to participate in winery or vineyard tours. Independent variables were categorized into five groups: sources of wine knowledge, wine drinking occasions, demographical factors, past experience and wine purchasing behaviors.

With 736 valid observations, the logistic regression shows that males are more likely to be interested in winery or vineyard tours, while young adults (<25 years old) are less likely. Learning about wines from winery tasting room staff members, from wine magazines or from local and regional magazines are the top three positive influencers on interest in these activities. Past wine tourism experience in the Mid-Atlantic region, drinking wine as an everyday beverage and giving wines as gifts also show a positive relationship with likelihood of participating in these activities.

Study results can help the Mid-Atlantic wine industry understand wine tourists’ behaviors and preferences. Advertising in wine magazines and local and regional magazines can be used to target wine consumers interested in winery or vineyard tours. Attributes (i.e. past experience with wine tourism and gaining knowledge from winery tasting room staff) that are related to the quality of wine tourism experience were identified. Participants were also interested in purchasing wine from the winery during or after participating in wine tourism activities; therefore, wineries should focus on guest interactions to encourage such purchases.

This survey collected data from both consumers who had or who lacked wine tourism experience, which allowed us to gather input from wine drinkers who had not necessarily visited tasting rooms. This survey instrument can be used to collect data from wine consumers residing in regions where the presence of wineries and wine tourism is low, which can provide insight that otherwise might be influenced by currently offered wine tourism activities. This paper uses an econometric approach to understand consumer interests in wine tourism in the Mid-Atlantic region and provides a comprehensive, clear and informative profile of likely wine tourism participants who reside in a region that has not been studied comprehensively.

The authors examine and compare accounting associations' identities in distinct segments of the accounting profession surrounding the 2014 merger of three Canadian accounting associations.

The authors conceive of accounting associations' magazine front covers as a setting for “identity performance” (i.e. a scenery through which identity dimensions are intentionally communicated to target audiences). The authors examine pre-merger and post-merger associations' identity performances that took place between January 2011 and December 2020 and identify 21 broad themes that the authors interpret in terms of identity logics (i.e. professionalism/commercialism) and audience focus (society/association members), underscoring (dis)similarities in identity performances pre- and post-merger.

The authors' analysis reveals distinct identity performances for the different segments of the pre-merger accounting profession and for the post-merger unified accounting association. Identity logics manifest differently: a commercial logic dominated for two of the associations and a professional logic dominated for the third. Identity fluidity was evident in the merged association's shift from commercial toward professional logic when the association ceased publishing one magazine and introduced a new one. Society rather than associations' members dominated as a target audience for all associations, but this focus manifested differently. Post-merger, identity performances continued to focus on society as the audience.

The authors highlight the Goffmanian identity performances (Goffman, 1959) taking place via accounting associations' magazines. The authors adopt a segment perspective (Bucher and Strauss, 1961) that demonstrates that commercialism does not trump professionalism in all segments of the profession. For the first time, the authors juxtapose identity logics (professionalism/commercialism) and targeted audiences to better understand how these facets of accountants' identities compare between segments.

This paper aims to explore how home economists, employed by the Good Housekeeping Institute, may have influenced the use of principles from the home economics movement in advertising appeals for electric appliances.

A content analysis of more than 400 print advertisements from Good Housekeeping magazine, from 1916 to 1929, was conducted to determine whether manufacturers used appeals derived from the home economics movement in their advertising. Then, the Good Housekeeping Institute’s history is explored to suggest how its relationship with manufacturers may have resulted in the use of the home economics movement’s principles in advertising appeals for electric appliances.

The content analysis shows that principles of the home economics movement appeared in advertising appeals for electric appliances in advertisements placed in Good Housekeeping magazine during the period studied. Through its unique relationships with electric appliance manufacturers, the Good Housekeeping Institute seems to have taught manufacturers how to position electric appliances by incorporating the principles of the home economics movement in their advertising appeals.

This research demonstrates how a commercial organization successfully navigated its relationships with manufacturers and consumers for mutual benefit.

This work is the first to link the Good Housekeeping Institute’s work with manufacturers to its influence on advertising appeals. This work also expands understanding of the influence of women on marketing practice. Existing literature on women’s publications is also broadened by analyzing Good Housekeeping, rather than the more frequently studied Ladies’ Home Journal.

Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually constituted performance of the material and social. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The aim of the research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, the authors adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK Government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is the use of data released under a Freedom of Information request.

The authors present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. The authors draw on the literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. The authors also invoke the notion of “extended chains of intra-action” to theorize changes in the wider organization.

Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.