Search results

This study examined donor development processes in a faithbased, 501(c)(3) publicly-supported, tax-exempt organizational setting. The conceptual framework is relationship marketing theory as informed from a systems theory alignment perspective. Organization-public relationship (OPR) dynamically predicts donor willingness to contribute unrestricted funds. It is proffered that the discrepancy variable, “values-fit incongruence,” significantly affects this dynamic. This contention is explored by asking the following two questions: (a) does donor-organization values-fit incongruence significantly negatively predict donor willingness to contribute unrestricted funds, and b) is the OPR construct strengthened with the patent inclusion of values-fit incongruence as an interactive moderator variable. Results suggest values-fit incongruence significantly negatively predicts donor willingness to contribute unrestricted funds. The results also suggest the OPR model is not strengthened by patently including the values-fit incongruence variable, as it may already be latently accounted for.

This study examines the stakeholder’s experiences of two key groups: donors and donor-volunteers. The goals of this study are to (1) determine how donor experience affects organization–public relationships (OPRs) and its antecedents for these two groups and (2) extend the OPR model by considering new potential supportive behavioral intentions arising from OPR outcomes.

Using data from a survey of self-identified donors and donor-volunteers, multiple regressions were performed to establish the possible effects of experience and advocacy on OPRs.

Findings of this study support the idea that donation experience can be considered a potential antecedent for the OPR. The findings also support the idea that advocacy can be a valuable behavioral outcome resulting from OPR.

Nonprofits are ever seeking to better connect with their donor and volunteer supporters. This study helps to show the value of donation experience and the importance of cultivating advocacy behaviors among these supporters.

The study seeks to merge extant theory in communications and public policy to better understand the OPR model. Specifically, connecting OPR to the antecedent of donor experience and behavioral intentions like advocacy will help paint a stronger picture of donor–volunteer relationships with nonprofits.

The paper aims to test Benoit's five image restoration strategies to examine how each strategy impacts perceptions of the organization‐public relationship (OPR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It also examines how the strategy used impacts the credibility of the source cited in the crisis response message.

An experiment measures stakeholders' reactions to the different crisis messages and the messages' impact on perceptions of the OPR, CSR, and source credibility measures.

Results indicate the reducing the offensiveness strategy led to higher perceptions of the OPR and CSR. The image restoration strategy employed does impact stakeholders' perceptions of the credibility of the source.

The paper indicates organizations should try to bolster, minimize, transcend, and differentiate when preparing crisis messages during a product recall crisis. These types of messages protect the OPR and perceptions of CSR.

It adds to the experimental literature (whereas previous research uses cases studies). It expands Dardis and Haigh by examining the impact image restoration strategies have on OPR and CSR. It also extends current literature by examining the source of the message and how the image restoration strategy employed impacts the credibility of the source.

This study examines how congruent moral conviction between an individual and a company impacts organization-public relationships (OPR). Using arguments from the Attribution Theory, this study also examines how individuals' perceptions of company motives impact the quality of the OPR. This study offers new understanding of what drives individuals' supporting behaviors regarding a company's advocacy efforts and how individual and company ethics contribute to OPR.

This study conducts an online survey (N = 267) to examine the role of moral conviction as a predictor of OPR in the context of corporate social advocacy (CSA). Four types of attributions are examined as a mediating variable.

Results indicate that moral congruency between an individual and an organization directly leads to stronger trust and power balance and that moral conviction positively predicts all four OPR dimensions through values-driven attributions.

This study is novel in its inclusion of the moral conviction variable examined in a CSA context, as the role of ethics, or ethical applications, has not been widely examined in this body of literature.

A monopolistic relationship between utilities and their customers creates a unique relational context in which the basic assumption of one's ability to terminate a relationship with an unsatisfactory relationship partner is violated. The purpose of this paper is to examine how attitudinal and behavioral outcomes are influenced by relational gap as the discrepancy between the expected relationships under deregulation and the experienced public relationships under monopolistic completion.

With this purpose, an online survey was conducted with customers of a monopolistic utility provider; a sample of 1,145 adults living in the region was provided from an academic online panel database project for research participants, yielding a response rate of 32 percent.

The key findings are that, among the four relational outcomes, control mutuality and satisfaction showed the biggest and significant shift to higher levels of performance expectations under competition than under a monopoly. Further, a shift in control mutuality and satisfaction led to more negative attitudes toward the company and a stronger intention to switch.

This study can contribute to the practice and study of communication management by suggesting a sound empirical framework in managing public relationships.

Enthusiasm for hosting mega sport events has been dampened mainly due to the opposition of local communities. Although the use of public relations that aims for two-way communication to build mutual understanding and the long-term relationship could be an effective tool in diminishing the opposition, little research exists that interprets the social concern with public relations theoretical lens. In this light, the primary purpose of the present study was to conceptualise government-public relationships in the context of mega sport events and to develop a valid and psychometrically sound scale to measure the relationship quality between two entities.

An initial pool of 23 potential government-public relationship items was drawn through item generation processes, including research synthesis and content validity. Then, this study collected 254 respondents via online surveys and split the total sample into two sets for exploratory factor analysis and (n = 127) and confirmatory factor analysis (n = 127).

As a result, the scale of the government-public relationships consists of 17 items representing three dimensions: control mutuality, trust and satisfaction.

The developed government-public relationship scale furnishes event marketers and researchers with a solid framework and a measurement tool for empirical examinations. The current research reveals that the dimensionality, reliability and validity of the three latent government-public relationships dimensions are satisfactory while failing to meet the general consensus that commitment is an important dimension of the existing organisation-public relationships scale.

This paper aims to analyze the opinions of newsletter editors in the Sierra Club in an effort to understand the roles an editor and newsletter content play in building relationships in an activist setting. There are two goals: to examine editorial decision making in an activist organization; and to examine the role of interpersonal interaction as part of an organizational‐public relationship (OPR).

In‐depth interviews with 14 Sierra Club newsletter editors examined issues related to newsletter content choice, issue frames, sources, and mission.

The findings illustrate normative practices for grassroots gatekeepers. Editors saw their role as facilitating relationship building and activism among members. This has theoretical implications for OPR theory by suggesting a new facilitative relationship type.

As all qualitative research, the findings of this study are not generalizable. This study is further limited because it focuses on a single organization and one communication channel.

Most editors suggested that content selection was based on the expertise of the editor or an editorial or executive board. This provides strategic communication opportunities for both the national and the grassroots organization, if the editorial decision making model is identified by strategists.

Mid‐level gatekeepers, such as newsletter editors, are an important public to study because of their potential impact on key publics. This paper provides both practical and theoretical implications. Practical implications include insights into how some activist gatekeepers make decisions and into information salience.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the relationships non‐profit organisations develop with their annual giving and major gift donors and to compare the differences between the giving levels.

A web‐based survey of individual donors (n=120) to a non‐profit healthcare organisation evaluated their relationships with the organisation using Hon and Grunig's four dimensions of organisation‐public relationships.

To explore the dynamics of the fundraising process, donors were categorised into two different schema. First, donors were classified as either major gift donors or annual giving donors. With this classification, major gift donors were more likely to have stronger feelings of trust, satisfaction, commitment, and control mutuality with the organisation than annual gift donors did. The second classification divided the donors who have made multiple contributions to the organisation and those who had only made one donation at the time of the study. This study found that donors who gave multiple times to an organisation evaluated the relationship stronger than one‐time donors. Finally, these dimensions were also able to predict past giving behaviour 91 per cent of the time for the participants in this study.

The findings strengthen the bridge between public relations and fundraising. Additionally, they further validate the organisation‐public relationship measures created by Hon and Grunig, and they demonstrate the indices' ability to predict behaviour.

The findings stress the importance of donor cultivation within the non‐profit organisation‐donor relationship particularly since the number of non‐profit organisations is rapidly growing and competing for donations. Additionally, the results demonstrate the growing importance of demonstrating financial and social accountability.

The study extends the growing organisation‐public relationship paradigm into a specialisation of public relations that is rarely studied from a social scientific perspective. This study strengthens the reliability and validity of Hon and Grunig's variables as well as strengthening the connection between public relations and fundraising.

This chapter adds to emerging research exploring the construct of joy by drawing attention to the value of more loving stakeholder relationships. Relationship management research has focussed attention on the antecedents, outcomes and quality of an organization's relationships with various publics and stakeholders and has examined strategies that can nurture these relationships. However, not much of this research has addressed intimacy and passion in these relationships.

Accordingly, this chapter draws on the theory of brand love developed in relationship marketing research and the theory of love from psychological research to build a theoretical framework of organization–stakeholder love (OSL) that can be applied to organizational relationships with publics and stakeholders. An OSL framework switches emphasis from how organizations can attract stakeholder affection (e.g., love) towards organizations to how organizations can and should love their stakeholders. The proposition put forward in this chapter is that OSL can and should become a driving force behind organizations' interactions with stakeholders, thus contributing to ethical public relations practices.

OSL is important because it has the potential to contribute to addressing public relations' image problems (e.g., relating to terms such as spin and corporate greenwashing); it offers a new love orientation that guides organizations towards a focus on the primacy of stakeholder needs and values, which in turn may shape the way organizations initiate and manage relationships with stakeholders. This chapter concludes with practical ways to implement OSL and a research agenda suggesting ways OSL may open up new research opportunities in public relations.

The purpose of this paper is to describe three foundational concepts that contribute to conceptual heritage of the field of public relations (publics, organizations and relationships). Conceptual heritage is positioned as a type of shared public memory, a dominant narrative, that encourages adherence to the past whilst recognizing that counter-narratives can pose useful alternatives to foundational concepts.

The approach is a selective literature review that describes three dominant concept categories and presents more recently developed alternative concepts and approaches to illustrate how public memory is subjective and evolving.

The concepts of publics, organizations and relationships have grounded the dominant narrative and development of the field of public relations. Though these concepts continue to be influential as researchers rely upon and expand upon their legacies, counter-narratives can spur the innovation of ideas, measurement and practice.

The paper focuses on only three major foundational concepts selected by the authors. The importance of these concepts as well as additional examples of the field’s conceptual heritage and evolution could be identified by different authors.

The analysis demonstrates how the public memory contributes to the development and evolution of the field of public relations. Counter-narratives can offer appealing, subjectively constructed challenges to dominant narratives.

This paper describes and critiques public relations’ conceptual heritage and argues that conceptually and methodologically-based counter-narratives have contributed to its evolution.