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This study aims to examine the effects of internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the two types of communicative behaviors of employees, namely, scouting and advocative behaviors. Guided by social exchange theory, the study also explored the mediating role of social exchange relationships between an organization and its employees and employee engagement.

An online survey was conducted with 405 full-time employees in the USA across industry sectors.

Results show the following: internal CSR practices, including employment stability, working environment, skill development, workforce diversity and work–life balance, improve social exchange relationships and employee engagement; social exchange relationship mediates the positive association between internal CSR and engagement and advocative behavior; and employee engagement also mediates the association between internal CSR and the scouting and advocative behaviors of employees.

This study is among the first attempts to explore the effectiveness of organizations’ internal corporate social responsibility practices on employees’ informal communicative behaviors, information seeking and transmitting within and outside of their organization.

This study aimed to examine how senior leadership influences corporate communication and employees' attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Using two-way symmetrical communication model in public relations and leadership theory, it investigated the effects of CEOs' task- and relationship-oriented leadership on symmetrical internal communication, employees' organizational commitment and communicative behaviors.

An online survey was conducted with 417 full-time employees working in various industries in the United States.

The results showed that CEOs' relationship-oriented leadership significantly influenced symmetrical internal communication, which, in turn, increased affective commitment and employees' scouting behavior. CEOs' task-oriented communication had no significant effect on symmetrical communication.

This study advances theoretical understanding of two-way symmetrical communication in relation to senior leadership and provides practical insights for corporate leaders and public relations practitioners regarding how to improve employee outcomes through CEOs' strategic leadership and internal communication practices.

This study seeks to address the question on the role of information-seeking behavior in dealing with uncertainty on workplace health disclosure from the perspectives of internal communication.

An online survey was conducted with 409 full-time employees in large-sized companies in the United States.

The results showed that employees engage in proactive and passive information-seeking strategies when they are uncertain about their supervisors' reactions toward their health problems. Positive EOR and organizational climate would increase their intention to adopt inquiry strategy, whereas negative EOR and the climate would increase their intention to adopt monitoring strategy. Employees who adopt inquiry strategy tend to perceive the benefits of health disclosure, whereas those who adopt monitoring strategy tend to perceive the risks of health disclosure. If employees perceived increased benefits in terms of health disclosure, then they tend to disclose their health problems to their supervisors, and vice versa.

This study is among first to investigate workplace health disclosure decision-making from the perspectives of internal communication. These findings highlight the importance of excellent internal communications in employees' health disclosure decision-making process and support the proposition that proactive information-seeking is a strategy that contributes to uncertainty management in the workplace. This study also provides significant practical guidelines for corporate communication practitioners and leaders by establishing a safe and friendly environment where employees feel comfortable to disclose their health problems to supervisors.

This study explores the link between internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) and employee advocacy intention in the anonymous online environment, viewing the positive behavior of employees in anonymous social media as discretionary and altruistic efforts for their organization. Guided by social exchange theory (SET) and relationship management theory, the role of a communal relationship and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is likewise explored.

An online survey was conducted with 405 full-time employees in the US.

Results showed that internal CSR positively influences the organization–employee communal relationship as well as OCB. Results further show that the employee-oriented communal relationship plays an important role in increasing OCB, which in turn enhances employee advocacy intention in anonymous social media.

This study is one of the first attempts to conceptualize employees' advocative behaviors in anonymous websites (e.g. Glassdoor) and to explore the antecedents of advocative behaviors, drawing insights from human resources management and internal relations.

This study aims to examine the effects of transformational leadership on employees' internal (i.e. voice) and external (i.e. megaphoning) communication behaviors and to explore the mediating role of employees' communal and exchange relationship norms with their organization.

An online survey was conducted with full-time employees working in various industry sectors in the USA.

Transformational leadership significantly increased employees' voice behaviors and their positive and negative megaphoning behaviors. Communal relationship norms exerted a significant mediation effect on employees' communicative behaviors and exchange relationship norms had positive impacts on employees' megaphoning behaviors.

This study is among the first attempts to test the effect of transformational leadership style on employees' communicative actions within and outside of a company and the mediating role of exchange-communal relationship norms.

This study aims to examine the effects of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal communication on employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior during a crisis situation, coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in particular. Integrating knowledge sharing research with internal crisis communication literature as well as self-determination theory, the mediating roles of employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction are also identified.

An online survey was conducted with 490 full-time employees in the USA across industry sectors during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Results suggest that diversity-oriented leadership contributes to transparent internal communication during a crisis and increases employees’ satisfaction of autonomy, competence and relatedness needs. Transparent internal communication also increases employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction, which in turn fosters their job engagement and knowledge-sharing behavior during the crisis.

This study is one of the earliest studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal crisis communication in enhancing employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior, especially in the context of COVID-19.

With the growing concern for environmental and sustainability issues, especially in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, organizations feel compelled to pursue green sustainability in their operations. In this regard, the active involvement of employees in pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is crucial for achieving organizational environmental sustainability goals (Saeed et al., 2019). To shed light on this important issue, this study aims to investigate the impact of interacting/engaging environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategy on employees' PEBs through the mediating effects of communal relationship and employee empowerment.

A total of 443 full-time USA employees working across various industries participated in an online survey.

The interacting/engaging environmental CSR communication strategy fosters employees' perceived communal relationship with their organizations and empowers them to support their organization's environmental initiatives, which, in turn, positively influences employees' PEBs at work.

This study advances CSR and internal communication literature through the lens of relationship management and self-determination theories. The findings theoretically suggest the effectiveness of the interacting/engaging environmental CSR communication strategy in nurturing favorable employee–organization relationships (EORs), employee empowerment and PEBs at work. The practical implications of CSR communication are also elaborated.

This study aims to examine the relationship between leaders' personality traits and their internal communication practices from the leaders' and the followers' perspectives. The effectiveness of leader communication on the followers' perceived relational quality with their organization is also tested.

Two survey studies in the United States were conducted focusing on leaders' and followers' perspectives on communication practices, respectively.

Results of Study 1 showed that leaders' self-reported extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability and openness to experience are all significantly and positively associated with their symmetrical and transparent communication practices. From the followers' perspective (Study 2), extraversion and agreeableness positively influenced symmetrical leader communication, while agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively related to transparent leader communication. Both symmetrical and transparent leader communication enhanced the followers' perceived relationship quality with their organization.

The current study is among the first attempts to incorporate the trait theory of leadership in understanding organizational leaders' effective and ethical communication practices with their followers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of different types of corporate issues and employee–organization relationships (EORs) on employees’ perceptions of the issues and on their communicative actions. Specifically, this study investigates how employees who have experienced an internal or an external issue within their organizations differently perceive the organizational issue and engage in positive and/or negative communicative behaviors.

An online survey was conducted with 363 full-time employees in large-sized companies in the USA who have experienced any internal or external issues within the past six months.

Employees are more cognitively aware of and feel more involved and less constrained in solving an internal company issue than an external one. Experiencing internal issues has led employees to share negative information about their organization externally. The quality of EORs pre-issue significantly increases employees’ involvement and positive communication behavior and decreases constraint levels and negative communication behaviors regarding an issue.

Corporate communication and public relations practitioners should incorporate strategic internal communication strategies to preemptively manage internal issues and to avoid them from evolving into internal crises.

This study is among the first to distinguish internal and external issues perceived by internal stakeholders and to examine their impacts on employees’ issue-specific perceptions and communicative behaviors. This study also provides significant practical guidelines for corporate communication practitioners and leaders by explicating the strategic role of issue type and employee behaviors in issue management.

This study examines the effects of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online engagement and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions about a company. Specifically, it investigates how employee post characteristics including valence and content and employer reputation jointly influence publics' online and offline behaviors.

A 2 (post valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (post content: organization-related vs. job-related) × 2 (employer reputation: good vs. bad) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to view a stimulus social media post created by a fictitious company employee, reflecting one of the eight experimental conditions on a random basis. After viewing, they were requested to report their online engagement intentions (i.e., “like,” “share” and “comment”) with the post and offline WOM intentions about the company.

The experimental results showed that participants expressed more “like” intentions when they viewed a positive post than a negative post. Further, they were more likely to “comment” on a job-related post as opposed to an organization-related post. In addition, a significant interaction effect between post valence and employer reputation on publics' online engagement was found, which in turn influenced their offline WOM intentions about the company.

This study is among the first empirical attempts to examine the effectiveness of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online and offline behaviors. The experimental findings highlight the importance of managing employee relations from a corporate reputation perspective.