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Social networks were created to connect with friends. Therefore, communication in social networks allows addressing individual contacts of each user and is often rather private by nature. Organizations can use this to communicate frequently and personally with their stakeholders. Therefore, this study investigates how organizations use personalization in their social media communication.

This study uses a quantitative content analysis of Facebook posts from ten large companies (N = 500). The posts were analyzed regarding the sub dimensions of personalization, individualization and privatization, as well as type of post, tonality, emotions, user reactions and topics.

Companies at least partially personalize their communication on Facebook. Overall, 28% of all posts were personalized. Personalized posts were almost always positive regarding tonality and mostly positive regarding emotions. While the personalized posts in this study have fewer user reactions than non-personalized posts, they still have a rather high absolute number of reactions. Regarding personal characteristics, results show that professional competence and appearance were mainly addressed. Concerning privatization, only very few posts showed an individual in a private setting.

The present work gives an overview of how personalized posts differ from non-personalized posts and looks at depicted individuals as well as the use of private elements. By applying the conceptualization of Van Aelst et al. (2012) and by looking at organizations’ use of personalization on the social media platform Facebook, it sheds light on an area that has not been the center of attention so far and helps to expand the current state of personalization research.

This study aims to analyze the structures, forms and functions of informal communication in telecommuting settings. Previous research on telecommuting has not considered the influence of telecommuting settings on informal communication, and research on informal communication has mainly focused on face-to-face communication while working in a physical office. This article aims to bring these two research strands together by analyzing the informal communication behavior of employees working from home.

The authors conducted qualitative interviews with 21 employees who were working from home. The participants were recruited using quota sampling and the data were analyzed following the procedure for examining qualitative data proposed by Mayring (2014).

The findings reveal similarities as well as differences between those working in an office and those working from home in terms of informal communication with co-workers: Informal communication fulfills similar functions in both cases, but remote work leads to less informal communication and hinders incidental exposure to other employees. Informal talks need to be planned in advance or strategically initiated. The authors identified five informal communication scenarios in telecommuting settings that partly, but not fully, overlap with scenarios in regular office settings.

The present study is one of the first to examine informal communication in telecommuting settings. Previous studies have either excluded the aspect of informal communication or the situation for employees working in telecommuting settings. The results provide new insights into informal communication behavior in remote work.

Editors of employee magazines may be torn between diverging expectations among their stakeholders. The management might be interested in strategically supportive communication, whereas employees might expect objective, independent, or critical coverage. Based on quantitative data, the paper aims to analyze how the editors perceive these expectations, how they see their professional role in this field of tension and how critically the magazines report.

The authors conducted a quantitative survey of 197 editors of employee magazines and a quantitative content analysis of 200 articles of employee magazines.

Editors perceive differences regarding the expectations of management and employees. These discrepancies, in turn, contribute to the experience of role conflicts. Our analysis reveals three types of editors: the voice of the management, the critical observer and the consensus-oriented mediator.

The study addresses the scarcely investigated area of conflict in which editors of employee magazines work. It is one of the first studies to analyze editors' perceived expectations of stakeholders, their professional self-perception and potential role conflicts with a quantitative survey. For the first time, quantitative methods are used to examine the causes of editors' role conflicts.

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.

Previous research assumes that informal communication may be highly relevant for organizations, but little is known about its actual relevance for employees or its functions and effects. The article aims to examine functions, types and effects of informal communication in organizations.

Research on internal communication usually focuses on formal strategic communication with or among employees. Informal communication between employees in organizations has received far less attention, although a great deal of communication in organizations is informal. Therefore, the present study analyses informal communication in organizations. The authors conducted a quantitative online survey of employees working for different organizations in Germany.

The authors show that five types of employee can be differentiated regarding their informal communication behavior: the chatterer, the focuser, the strategist, the small-talker and the networker. Moreover, the study demonstrates that informal communication significantly increases employees' perceptions of being informed, as well as their affective commitment, both of which increase job satisfaction. Finally, results show that informal communication does not decrease employees' productivity, but instead helps them to carry out their jobs more effectively.

Although previous studies indicate that a large part of the communication among employees within an organization is informal, research has rarely dealt with this phenomenon, instead focusing especially on formal communication. This is one of the first papers that focuses on informal communication among employees using quantitative survey data.

Personalised statements from CEOs can be used as a tool to protect reputation in corporate crises. However, it needs to be considered that CEOs have different personalities. The present chapter, therefore, examines the effects of social distance of a CEO in combination with crisis communication strategies in corporate crises. This is illustrated by means of an experimental study with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design (factor 1: close vs. far social distance of the CEO; factor 2: deny vs. rebuild crisis communication strategy). The results indicate that in preventable crises, a close social distance of the CEO is beneficial for the CEO’s image as well as the image of the organisation because it promotes empathy and motivated assessment. Empathy towards the CEO remains unaffected by the communication strategy. The effect of the social distance on the motivated assessment occurs, however, only with a deny strategy. If an apology is pronounced, there is no difference whether an approachable or a distant CEO is speaking. The study discussed in this chapter is among the first to take empathy and motivated reasoning into account when analysing the effects of privatisation on CEO image and organisational image.

This concluding chapter provides key takeaways from the insights and recommendations that emerged from the EUPRERA2022 volume with a focus on crises and issues. Reflections are made with an emphasis on the understanding of sticky crisis, the embodiment of challenging, complex and recurring critical risks that threaten organisational well-being and stakeholder safety across sectors and cultures. A call for more interdisciplinary and international collaborations between academia and industry is made. Future directions of crisis, risk and disaster communication research that matter to practice are discussed.