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This chapter aims to understand the communication practices of CSR in technological environments, specifically corporate websites. It is important to know what are the dimensions of CSR most valued in online communication, what content is more widespread, and if there is dialogic communication between organizations and different stakeholders. It was used a quantitative method of analysis, using the expanded web content analysis. It was based on the study results of the 1,000 largest Portuguese companies published by the Economic Journal in 2014. The chapter includes the analysis of the best companies from 24 sectors of activity of Portugal. Portuguese organizations use their websites to communicate about CSR practices. A large majority of companies dedicate to these subjects a higher number of pages. The findings indicate that the issues disseminated are various, but the predominance content is related to environmental dimension. Results suggest a low level of dialogic dimension adoption. It is proposed a theoretical framework of online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions: the technical dimension, the informational dimension and dialogical dimension, considering the different kind of publics and the different practice areas inherent to CSR. This framework is a contribution to the deepening of knowledge and understanding of online communication of CSR practices, on the perspective of public relations theory. It has practical implications to communication, because it proposes guidelines that should be considered in an effective online communication of CSR in organizations of various sectors of activity in Portugal. It is proposed a theoretical framework of an effective online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions that are part of the dialogical capacity of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse interfaces between scholarly and science communication practices by using the production of open letters on climate change as a point of departure. Furthermore, the paper highlights an understudied form of science communication – open letters.

The material consists of nine open letters on climate change, written and signed by academics and published in 2018–2019, as well as 13 semi-structured interviews with the initiators and co-authors of the letters. The interviews were analysed by qualitative thematic analysis and grouped into thematic clusters.

The study finds that three practices used in scholarly communication – more specifically: peer review, professional community building and, to a certain extent, communication as “merit-making” – are central in the making of the open letters, illustrating an integration of scholarly communication practices in academic science communication activities.

The study suggests that the conflation of communication practices needs to be seen in relation to larger structural changes in the academic working environment, as well as in relation to the specific environment in which communication about climate change occurs.

This study contends that the proposed conflation between scholarly and science communication concerns not only texts and genres but also practices integral to contemporary science, thereby conflating the forms of communication at a practical level.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between routine communication practices and corporate entrepreneurship (CE). Drawing upon CE theory and neo-bureaucratic theory, the paper provides insight into all the directions of routine corporate communication and their potential influence on CE.

The paper reviews past and current literature from which hypothesis are developed. Applying the competing values framework and data from 64 Polish manufacturing firms, we used multiple power regression to test the hypothesized relationships.

The study provides evidence for a positive relationship between routine communication practices and CE. The analysis reveals different levels of influence of various communication aspects on CE.

Many organizations’ common objective of their redesign efforts is to get rid of the bureaucratic features of the organization. This study suggests that the challenge is to reconfigure certain routine processes and formal requirements within the organization to better suit CE purposes. The paper specifies which routine communication practices can significantly impact CE.

Very few prior voices articulate the need of routine practices study in CE research. This paper extends CE theory by providing a new perspective on CE factors and opening new avenues for further research.

Existing research on how professionals manage after-hours connectivity to work has been dominated by studies on the strategies/practices individuals develop. In these studies, mobile technology is perceived as a tool or an enabler that supports otherwise human-centric connectivity decisions. This view sees technology as separate or external to the organisation, missing out on its nuanced role in shaping connectivity decisions. Our study aims to bring technology back into the sociomaterially imbricated context of connectivity and to unpack its parameters.

Drawing on data collected from documents and semi-structured interviews, we adopt the framework of “sociomaterial imbrications” (Leonardi, 2011) to understand the social and material parameters that influence connectivity management practices at two different academic institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The study identifies a set of social and material parameters (organisational, individual, technological and situational) that imbricate to shape, collectively and not individually, professionals’ connectivity management practices. Connectivity decisions to change practice (such as decisions of where, when or why to connect) or technology (how to connect) are not as distinct as they appear but originate from, and are founded on, imbricated sociomaterial parameters. Our study further suggests that connectivity decisions are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of sociomaterial imbrications, but decisions are not solely idiosyncratic. The context within which connectivity decisions are taken influences the type of decisions made.

Connectivity management emerged from sociomaterial imbrications within a context constitutive of four interacting parameters: organisational, technological, situational and individual. Decisions around the “how” and the “what” of connectivity – i.e. the practice of connectivity and its underpinning technology – originate from how people perceive sociomaterial imbrications as enabling or constraining within a context. Individual perceptions account for changes in practice and in technology, but the context they find themselves in is also important. For instance, we show that professionals may perceive a certain technology as affording, but eventually they may use another technology for communications due to social norms.

The purpose of this paper is to provide further insight into the relationship between internal communication practices, communication satisfaction, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. It is centered in the emergency services sector in general, and on land ambulance services in particular. The focus organization is a large urban land ambulance service with an operating budget of approximately $50 million and 468 employees.

Only paramedics were eligible to participate in the study. In total, 91 (32.5 per cent) of the organization's 280 paramedics participated. Data were collected using a questionnaire comprising pre‐existing work‐related psychometric measures. The measures included the Communication Audit Survey, the Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire, the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and the Affective Organizational Commitment Scale. Only quantitative data were collected.

The data showed that internal communication practices explained 49.8 per cent of the variation in communication satisfaction, 23.4 per cent of the variation in job satisfaction, and 17.5 per cent of the variation in affective organizational commitment. However, these effects were fully mediated by communication satisfaction when job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment were regressed against both internal communication practices and communication satisfaction.

These findings have important practical and theoretical implications. Managers will not be able to foster job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment through internal communication practices unless they recognize and appreciate what information is valued by employees. Second, managers must have a clear understanding of both the quantity and quality of information desired by employees if they are to design internal communication systems that meet the information needs of employees. Finally, one must consider the possibility that, for employees, communication satisfaction represents a fundamental yardstick against which all of the organization's activities and change initiatives are measured. This possibility is supported by research from the domain of change management.

Given the present shortage of skilled and able emergency personnel, it is in the best interest of organizations to enhance job satisfaction and commitment of such critical employees.

The paper explores processes associated with the adoption of corporate sustainability communication in a B2B context. It employs a combined action research and sensemaking approach to document moments that precede the initiation of external sustainability communication.

The paper is the outcome of an action research project, where we examine the case of one industrial company that was silent on its multiple sustainability-related practices, but recently decided to become more transparent to the outside world. A processual approach to sensemaking is adopted to show how organisational and non-organisational members actively participated in meaning co-construction.

Corporate silence can be disrupted by triggering events that cause moments of sudden realisation for organisational members, eventually leading to the initiation of sensemaking processes inside the organisation. Once this occurs, the possibility of externally communicating sustainability appears a feasible and strategic approach to pursue. We document how different actors are involved in meaning co-construction and how the entire process of sensemaking unfolds.

A sensemaking approach sheds light on the complexity of sustainability communication, where multiple actors are involved. This is a useful approach to consider in order to couple sustainability with other organisational practices. Moreover, sensemaking opens a window of opportunity for various societal actors' interventions to shape the role and content of sustainability communication.

The paper offers an original, theoretically informed methodological contribution to the literature on sustainability communication by coupling a sensemaking approach with action research. The approach is employed to examine the role of internal organisational actors in sustainability reporting processes, an area that has received scant attention.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aptness of “information literacy”, conceptualized as a socially contextualized phenomenon, for analyses of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

The paper presents a conceptual analysis. Two influential representatives of the social turn in the information literacy literature are taken as starting points: Annemaree Lloyd’s conceptualization of “information literacy practice”, and Jack Andersen’s conceptualization of information literacy as “genre knowledge”. Their positioning of information literacy as a socially contextualized phenomenon – by use of practice theories and rhetorical genre theory, respectively, – is analysed against an illustrative example of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

Conceptualizations by Lloyd and Andersen explain information literacy as socially contextualized in terms of stable norms and understandings shared in social communities. Their concepts have the potential of explaining changes and innovations in social practices including scholarly communication. If we combine genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts – and accentuate the open-endedness of social practices and of genres – we can enhance the understanding of information literacy in settings of interdisciplinary scholarly communication where the actors involved lack shared conventions and assumptions.

The paper suggests that the fluid features of social contexts should be accounted for in the information literacy literature. By combining genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts in a novel way it offers such an account. It provides a useful framework for understanding the phenomenon of information literacy in interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

The purpose of this paper is to link the authentic, communicative activities, e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutionalized practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. change management decisions and communication strategy (Steyn, 2003). Thus, the concern is with the relationship between institutionalized strategic management and the real-life strategic communication processes, thus advancing the understanding of the role of texts and discourses in the actual practice of strategic communication in an organizational context of strategic change processes.

The data are based on a large corpus of video-taped management meetings and organization-wide meetings in a large Danish public, knowledge-based organization. The method applied for studying the management discourse is a conversation-analytical approach (Sacks et al., 1974; Sidnell, 2010). This method has been chosen as it enables the authors to focus on micro-aspects of organizational practices (Nicolini, 2013) by investigating the interactional patterns that serve as resources for doing legitimation as an institutionalized practice.

The common denominator for the entire analysis is legitimation accomplished through the discursive use of distanciation and the analysis identifies three different discursive elements or micro-level strategies directly related to the concrete doing of strategic communication. First, legitimation is created by reference to the socio-economic context of the organization. Second, legitimation is generated by means of pointing to the abnormality of the strategic situation. And third legitimation is fostered by the use of idiomatic expressions. These different ways of accomplishing legitimacy are in a strategy-as-practice perspective related to the specific, in-situ communicative praxis and accomplished by the concrete actions of the strategic communicators, and thus the authors can position the instances of strategic communication at the organizational micro-level.

This paper studies at a micro-level how strategic actors use various discursive resources to legitimize strategic decisions and how these resources constitute the discursive basis of strategic communication as a managerial practice. The authors focus on the role of discourse in the legitimization processes of strategic managerial decisions analyzing micro-level instances of organizational communication. The paper thereby links the actor process activities (Langley, 2007), e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutional field practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. strategy and planning (Johnson et al., 2007).

This paper aims to discuss the role of communication in relieving tensions that can arise from organizational practices enacted during structural change. Practices, according to Whittington (2006, p. 619), constitute shared routines of behaviour, including traditions, norms and procedures for thinking and acting.

Employees’ reflections regarding what, how and why certain circumstances occurred during the structural reform of an Estonian State Institution with approximately 300 employees, comprised the study data. Reflections were collected during 27 interviews conducted after recent change to the structure of this organization. After aggregating different actions, associations and emotions into practices, these practices were assigned to elements offered by Schatzki (2005), and tensions between the elements sought and analysed.

Analysis of the three practices extracted as forming part of the structural reform – management decision-making, recruitment and physical relocation – showed that in organizational settings, the constitutional role of communication within practices needs conscious attention at different levels of the practice. Tensions that arose between practice elements, e.g. rules or reasons for doing something not complying with ways of doing it, revealed the need for metacommunication regarding those elements.

Communication during organizational changes needs to be more than crafted messages via well-organized channels from the communications department; it needs to penetrate to all different levels before, during and after a change. All that to create as many opportunities for employees at all levels to collectively make sense of what is happening and for the management to make necessary changes based on that. It should be created consciously by for example inviting employees together in discussion circles during the planning phase of the change and outlining the key processes of the change in question with them involved.

The value of this study is in investigating what goes on in an organization by distancing oneself from the immediate behaviour of an individual to focus on patterns of action, which gives another understanding as to why even when people wish for the best, things often still do not turn out as hoped. This approach refers to the theory that there are tensions or mistakes coded into practices, thus allowing one to look at inter-personal communication as part of other actions, not as a separate line of actions.