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In recent years, issues like untrusted or questionable sources of information are indisputably rampant in the digital era. The quality of information is now found to be challenging with its kind of issues, crisis and also clarity in which it requires to have a strategic scenario and practice to enhance quality assurance in order to creating safe cyber-spaces. The initiative to organise information at the organisational stage has widely emerged on the cyberspace. This paper aims to examine the insights of the element of trust in quality communication and information management to drive key performance indicator to support organisational sustainability. This approach is likely to play a significant role in enhancing critical inquiry in to issue of trust in information to ensure untainted integrity and quality assurance of the source of the information.

The preparation of this paper used a systematic literature review according to four phases, namely, identification, assessment or examination, extraction and interpretation. This approach was selected to advance critical inquiry into the most current topic on the trust for quality of information as way of strategic communication management to achieve safe cyber-organisational sustainability. The process was made through the various sources of peer-reviewed articles including journals, book chapters, books and conference proceedings. The literature review was carried out through the search for keywords such as trust in information, strategic communication and safe cyber-organisational sustainability.

The results revealed that the trust in quality of information with its wide range of initiatives could be enhanced as an initial attempt to embrace comprehensive approach in establishing strategic communication to ensure organisational sustainability and quality assurance of safe cyber space. The result further indicated three points, which follows development of virtual interaction with information management for safe cyberspace, enhancing continued predictability assessment in digital information process and practice and developing trust in information and quality of communication for organisational sustainability.

This paper is expected to give an insightful value in contributing to quality measurement of the strategic communication to promote trust in quality of information. Hence, the design to expand strategic management to support digital social connections in the cyber space. As a result, the profound contribution would also lead to enhancement of organisational sustainability in the digital era, amid technological trends.

The need to develop an approach to strengthen the trust in information in the digital cyberspace should focus on providing insights into the quality of information, authenticity and integrity to develop quality assurance for social connection. The awareness raising process in consolidating the trust in information has to start with exploring early social interaction in the digital age. This approach provides quality assurance to linking digital connection to develop trust in the quality of information. This would enable feedback to ensure accessibility and accuracy of quality of information dealing with critical elements relating to organisational sustainability.

The entire awareness in expanding the trust as information quality indicator has to be started with exploring the early social interaction in the digital age, to achieve quality basis on linking the digital connection as an attempt to build the information quality. This would give a feedback in ensuring the accessibility and accuracy of information quality together with dealing with an ultimate element to lead to the organisational longevity.

The term strategic communication has become firmly established in recent years. The emergence of the term was associated with the hope of finding a more fitting description for overlapping communication processes, since existing approaches can hardly fulfill these expectations. To date, the research has been dominated by communication-focused and, in particular, organization-focused approaches that show little interest in the alternative perspective. An integrating perspective can overcome the wall that exists between the communication level and the organizational level.

The integrating communication and organizational theory framework is developed on the basis of Niklas Luhmann’s “Theory of Social Systems” (TSS), which can be attributed to the “Communication Constitutes Organization” (CCO) perspective. This perspective seems appropriate because its communication theory integrates the sender and addressee perspectives, and its extended organization theory can be used to describe in detail the organizational structures of strategic communication.

The communication theoretical framework states that one of the functions of strategic communication is to reduce complexity to a single follow-up option. From the sender’s perspective, strategic communication can be defined as an attempt to encourage acceptance of a follow-up option proposed out of self-interest. The organizational theory framework that both builds on this and is linked to it first shows the diversity of strategic organizational communications before explaining their formal and informal structures.

This paper is the first to offer a comprehensive framework that integrates concrete strategic communication activities as well as the (in)formal organizational structures that lead to their emergence. On the one hand, this enables a more differentiated description of all relevant aspects of communication theory (e.g. tonality, clarity vs. ambiguity and technical dissemination medium). On the other, the organizational theoretical framework offers a systematization that can be used to describe various formal and informal structures comparatively. Above all, this kind of inclusive, integrating framework is the prerequisite for research that relates the diverse concrete strategic communication activities to an organization’s formal and informal rules and thus understands them as (primarily) the result of organizational decisions.

In this study, we applied the strategy-as-practice (SAP) framework to analyse strategic communication practices. SAP implies approaching strategy as something that organisational members do and is useful for understanding the tensions between emergence and formalisation and between planning and improvisation that characterise the everyday communication work of communication practitioners.

The paper is based on an ethnographic study of a record company and on qualitative interviews with various actors from the music industry.

Tensions exist between the emergence of inputs from active consumers that require flexibility and attempts to strategically formalise and continuously adapt plans and encourage consumers to act in anticipated ways. The findings revealed five strategic communication practices—meetings, working in the office, gathering and analysing consumer engagement and related data, collaboration and storytelling—that practitioners used to conduct strategic communication and navigate the tensions.

The study contributes to understanding the role of strategic communication practices in contemporary organisations and how practitioners manage the tensions within them. The study shows that an SAP approach can account for improvisation and emergence, as well as planning and formalisation. It also shows how SAP resonates with emergent and agile strategic communication frameworks.

In today's risk society, foundations are essential for sustaining democracies. However, the proof of a value-creating function of foundations is rarely assessed. Therefore, this study uses sensemaking theory and the communication value framework to explore to what extent a foundation achieved its overall mission in tackling societal challenges as opportunities.

This study employs a case study approach of a Swiss foundation. Through 20 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, insights about the value-creating function of the foundation were gained, showing how strategic communication activities contributed to the foundation's overall mission in various spheres of action.

The stakeholders overall identified a value-creating function of the foundation. The feedback obtained from the interviews could be structured along the lines of the communication value framework, with minor adjustments, showing that the foundation brought about value through its strategic communication regarding tangible assets (e.g. publicity), intangible assets (e.g. unique reputation), room for maneuver (e.g. renowned network) and opportunities for development (e.g. new formats). However, on each level, value-limiting factors have also been identified (e.g. limited publicity).

This study is the first to employ sensemaking theory to assess a foundation's value-creating function in achieving its overall mission by interviewing direct stakeholders. It is also one of the few studies in the field that analyzes strategic communication of foundations. Thus, this study adds methodological, theoretical and practical knowledge to foundation communication, value-creation and strategic communication management.

The purpose of this paper is to provide rich, qualitative insights around internal communication in strategic communication agencies, addressing the evolutions in expectations and best practices for agency leadership through COVID-19.

Qualitative interview study with 18 US-based leaders of public relations and advertising agencies to examine their experiences of leading and managing strategic communication teams during COVID-19.

Synthesized findings around changes in leadership values and important facets of ongoing internal crisis communication led to the development of the following five categories—Improvisation and Flexibility, Transparency and Trust, Ownership and Embodiment, Care and Empathy, Relationships and Resilience.

Using a high-value sample, the study is the first (to the best of the authors' knowledge) to focus on the crucial context of agencies and internal communication around COVID-19; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and other pandemic-era challenges. It provides theoretical implications around ongoing, internal crisis communication and practical implications for agency leaders in crisis.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the challenges of health emergency communication as presented in the COVID-19-related research articles in the fields of organisational communication, strategic communication and public relations published between 2020 and mid-2022. A qualitative literature review consisting of two rounds of data selection and ATLAS.ti-assisted content analysis was conducted. The data include 67 articles published in quality journals of communication studies, with a focus on the abstract, results and discussion sections. The findings emphasise the need for emotional support, empathy and both vertical and horizontal informal communication in uncertainty reduction during a major health emergency. The limitations of the study include that the data are limited to the first published journal articles concerning the consequences of COVID-19 and that it comprises publications in communication studies but not related fields, such as health, psychology or management. However, it provides an overview of the research findings and offers guidelines for managers and communication professionals for the development of communication practices under the threat of a major health crisis. Moreover, it proves the importance of healthy and trustful workplace relationships as a prerequisite for coping with uncertainty. All in all, the study provides a good basis for further studies of organisational communication and health emergencies.

Mergers are an increasingly popular method to grow a business despite the fact that many fail to meet their pre-deal expectations. This paper outlines the benefits, and argues in favor, of managerial commitment to a well-defined, strategic communications plan from inception through completion of an organizational merger. The authors propose training leaders in areas such as cultural communication, crisis communication, and shared governance prior to developing an M&A-specific communication plan.

This article is primarily an integrative theoretical piece, drawing on prior literature and secondary research sources while also integrating the authors’ academic and industry experience to offer best-practices for enhancing organizational communication efforts pre- and during mergers and acquisitions.

There are many financial and structural issues that can result in a failed merger. However, even when a deal makes sense financially M&A’s still have a relatively low success rate. These failures are often people related. Two significant issues are presented; culture conflicts related to communication, and uncertainty of a changing environment. Communication is the key to a successful M&A. If effective communication is deployed pre-M&A and during integration, it can greatly reduce the chance of failure.

This report offers a novel approach to decreasing the likelihood of M&A failure, focusing specifically on people-specific causes of hindrance. It outlines two of the significant human-related issues; culture conflicts and uncertainty reduction, both as related to organizational communication.

This paper refines the Digital Media–Arena (DMA) framework to address the diversity of stakeholders contributing to the production, (re)appropriation and (re)distribution of organisational messages in digital environments. It also presents a case analysis for the purpose of demonstrating the applicability of the revised conceptual framework to a critical situation.

Grounded in key public relations, corporate communication and strategic communication research, this study first extends the DMA framework by introducing six new forms of media-arenas. Next, the study takes a public sector perspective to analyse the revised framework against a critical situation involving the Finnish prime minister in summer 2022.

The application of the revised DMA framework to analyse the critical situation shows the importance of mapping and understanding diverse discourses across multi-arenas and their communication role in a rapidly unfolding scandal surrounding the prime minister of Finland. Findings also reveal the diversity of stakeholder voices forming their own versions of organisational messages and sometimes converging organisational messages within and across DMAs.

The DMA framework can offer practical suggestions to guide communicators to make strategic choices in what, where, how and with whom they can communicate.

The revised DMA framework contributes expanding the field's knowledge of the strategic communicative use of the digital environment in typically highly volatile and multi-vocal situations by offering instrumental understanding of the conflicting challenge between subjugating and liberating organisational messages across the digital spectrum.

The purpose of the study is to examine the relevance and application of green communication in management of the risks associated with moral outrage inducing crises. The study aims to identify how green communication mitigates both crisis risks and moral outrage. Additionally, the research discusses ethical and unethical green communication practices in the context of their impact on relationships between organizations and stakeholders during the crisis.

The study is designed as exploratory research. Available English-language journal articles and conference proceedings have been examined to investigate the role of green communications in crisis response contexts. The application of the search criteria and initial filtering yielded a total of 139 publications for further analysis. Following a detailed review and subsequent filtering, the final sample of 66 unique cases has been selected and analyzed in the context of Situational Crisis Communication Theory.

The systematic review and document analysis indicated multitude of significances of green communications in the context of the updated Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Moreover, a novel phenomenon has been identified: greenbleaching is exaggerated or fabricated usage of green communication to mitigate risks in the organizational crises caused by ESG-unrelated factors or events.

This study offers greenbleaching as a novel concept. Moreover, this is the first research that examines unethical green communication in the context of moral outrage inducing crises. Insights for researchers and practitioners regarding sustainability communication, green communication, and crisis communication ethics are also incorporated.

The question of whether and how communication departments contribute to organizational value creation has rarely been addressed in research. Such evidence is crucial, however, as communications compete internally with other functions (e.g. marketing and human resources (HR)) for budgets and staff. This article fills the gap by applying the business model concept, an established approach from management theory and practice, to communication units.

Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, the authors propose the Communication Business Model (CBM) as a new management approach for communications. To this end, pertinent definitions, frameworks and typologies of business models are analyzed and combined with insights from corporate communications literature.

The CBM outlines the generic architecture of business models for communication departments. Such models describe the basic principles of how such a unit operates, what services and products it provides, how it creates value for an organization and what revenues and resources are allocated.

The approach stimulates the debate on communication units as objects of observation when researching communication management practices. Further research with appropriate empirical methods is needed to identify and study different types of business models for communications.

The CBM can be used as a management tool to analyze, explain and innovate communication management in organizations. It is a fertile approach for communication practitioners to make the work of their department visible and to position themselves internally and externally.

Transferring a well-known concept from general management to communication management enriches the value creation debate in theory and practice. It allows communication leaders to align their work with organizational goals and make it accessible to top management and other decision-makers in the organization. It also opens up new avenues for research and education.