Web power: a survey of practitioners’ World Wide Web use and their perceptions of its effects on their decision-making power

A national e-mail survey investigated how 432 public relations practitioners perceive their World Wide Web use impacts their decision-making power in their organizations. Practitioners’ web use appears to be positively related to three of Finkelstein's [Finkelstein, S. (1992). Power in top management teams: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Academy of Management Journal, 35(3), 505–538] conceptualizations of power derived from “upper echelons” theory from the strategic management literature—structural, expert and prestige power. “Super users” who use the web more frequently for productivity and efficiency, for research and evaluation, and for issues communication are most likely to perceive the web empowered them to be promoted (structural power). Practitioners who use the web more frequently for productivity and efficiency as well as for issues communication are more likely to perceive the web empowers them as experts in their organizations (expert power) and enhances how others see them (prestige power). Practitioner-owners perceive that greater web use leads to greater expert power than did non-owners.     

Crisis communications preparedness among U.S. organizations: Activities and assessments by public relations practitioners

A survey of U.S. public relations practitioners (n = 126) found that three-quarters of their employer organizations had a written crisis communications plan and that organizations, as a whole, were reasonably prepared to engage in crisis communications. Preparedness was measured based on the presence of a crisis plan as well as indices related to tactics, training, the maintenance of contact lists, and media monitoring. Preparedness was found to be positively correlated to organization size, the level of autonomy, and delegation of authority within the organization, and the process orientation of the organization, but not organization type nor involvement in international versus domestic-only operations. Practitioners from organizations with plans had lower assessments of their relationships with publics, but greater confidence in their ability to respond.     

Long over short term

Abstract

Managers and organizations are learning that dealing with ecological issues seriously is part of their responsibility. In this article, the inherent rationality of an ecologically oriented approach to management is highlighted. For this purpose, a conceptual framework for a comprehensive fitness of organizations is presented. Based on this framework and on case studies in small businesses a simulation model has been developed. The structure of this model is outlined. Then, on the basis of simulation experiments, several aspects of ecological management are discussed. The focus is on the role of pre-control, which substantiates the primacy of the long-term perspective. In this context, the trade-offs between short- and longer-term decisions, as well as the vulnerability of one-sided strategies are discussed.     

Called to order: A board president in trouble

This is a fictionalized case based on real events. It is intended as a teaching tool to stimulate discussion about procedural issues in nonprofit governance; board roles and responsibilities; communications; and relationships between boards, chairs, and executives, particularly in the context of smaller organizations. It is meant to support sessions on nonprofit boards and governance in introductory courses on nonprofit management or for use in workshops with new or less experienced executives and board members. Set in an organization engaged in cultural exchange, the case can be used in introductions to nonprofit management, arts administration, or international nongovernmental management.     

From an “outside group” to a catalyst for corporate change: Examining activists’ legitimation strategies

Activist organizations use issues management when pressuring corporations to alter practices and policies that these groups find problematic. Throughout this process, activists must establish legitimacy for their issue concerns, organizations, and proposed solutions to gain public support for their activities. This study qualitatively analyzes the communication practices of 21 activist organizations to understand the strategies that these unique groups harness as they seek to build legitimacy as part of the issues management process. The findings contribute to a growing body of public relations research on activist communication by introducing a new legitimation strategy that underscores the importance of ongoing issues monitoring for activists and illustrates how activist organizations can co-opt extant narratives to build legitimacy for their existing issue arguments.     

Casa de Esperanza [Part B]

When nonprofit organizations make significant changes in mission, there are many issues of organizational structure and culture that must be re‐examined and re‐aligned. As the second segment in the case of Casa de Esperanza illustrates, there are many human issues that must be navigated by leaders making such changes. Case B illustrates the challenges that must be confronted as leaders embrace the agency's identity as a community‐based Latina organization, rather than a government‐funded domestic violence organization. The case describes the management planning and implementation processes, including changes in leadership, programming, and operations. Staff responses to these changes are also stressed, revealing the very human elements of organizational change. © 2004 Jodi Sandfort     

The Organizational Demography of Japanese Environmentalism*

Although a macro‐organizational perspective has become increasingly commonplace in social movement analyses, few studies examine the full spectrum of organizations in any single social movement industry (SMI). Utilizing a unique source of data on Japanese environmental movement organizations, we compare characteristics of groups focused primarily on environmental issues with those for whom environmental issues are part of a larger multi‐issue focus. We then profile across distinct, and theoretically important, organizational domains to assess how local, prefectural and national groups compare on a variety of organizational attributes, including: size, membership type, tactics and activities, and issues. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding both Japanese environmentalism and the structure of SMIs generally.     

Gender,Occupation, and Promotion to Management in the Nonprofit Sector

Although one can assume the work values within nonprofit organizations promote gender equality in promotion decisions, there is preliminary evidence that in the nonprofit sector women are underrepresented in higher management positions. Whereas the mechanisms resulting in underrepresentation of women in management have been studied extensively in for‐profit organizations, little is known about these mechanisms in nonprofit organizations. Is gender in nonprofit organizations—even given the underlying values of these organizations—an impediment to attaining a management position? This article presents a case study of employment patterns within the Dutch section of the humanitarian INGO Médecins Sans Frontières and focuses particularly on the effects of gender and occupation on transitions to management. The case study organization represents a “critical case” because the nature of this organization's work environment can be expected to result in a relatively high percentage of women in management. Employee records (N = 2,247) were analyzed using event history models. We found that women made the transition to management less rapidly than men, even when controlling for factors like age, previous work experience, and nationality. However, gender differences were completely explained by occupation. Those employees in female‐dominated occupations (in this case, medical personnel such as nurses) had a lower promotion‐to‐management rate than those in male‐dominated occupations (in this case, nonmedical personnel such as financial officers), irrespective of their gender. This case study highlights the importance to nonprofit management research of studying the effects of occupational sex segregation on promotion.     

Radical activist tactics: Overturning public relations conceptualizations

Public relations scholars often misinterpret the rationale for radical activist tactics and overlook their advantages. Radical tactics can help activist organizations redefine and embolden members’ identities, give members a sense of meaning, discourage opponents’ supporters, provoke overreactions that generate support, create momentum for moderate activist organizations to ameliorate problems, and redefine the political spectrum so moderate activist organizations’ requests appear more reasonable by comparison. This paper argues that an improved understanding of radical activist organizations’ goals, tactics, and priorities should change the way public relations scholars theorize and evaluate them.     

How organizational characteristics affect the adaptive tactics used by human service nonprofit managers confronting financial uncertainty

The way that nonprofits respond to funding uncertainty is crucial to their ability to meet goals and position themselves for future success. This article investigates how structural, managerial, and financial characteristics affect the adaptive tactics used by human service nonprofits during times of financial stress. These tactics include adding new programs, reducing programs or staff, expanding or starting joint programs, pursuing earned income, and expanding advocacy involvement. Using longitudinal data on human service nonprofits collected on either side of the 2002–2003 economic downtown, we find that larger size provides organizations with a unique ability to choose among different adaptive tactics, as larger size was significantly predictive of adding new programs, reducing programs, expanding advocacy, and pursuing earned income. Strategic planning was positively associated with innovative tactics such as starting joint programs or pursuing earned income. Financial stress or declines in an organization's major funding source led to cutbacks, as expected, but managers who foresaw these challenges were able to respond proactively by adding programs or starting joint programs. However, managers with more training did not respond much differently than did other managers, and organizational age and use of performance management tools had no effect in guiding organizational responses to financial uncertainty.     

Organization and Management in the Third Sector: Toward a Cross‐Cultural Research Agenda

Third sector organizations in the industrialized and the developing world—and particularly the subset of third sector organizations known as development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—are becoming more culturally diverse in internal staff composition, management styles, and working environments. Although cultural issues have been largely absent from the nonprofit and the NGO research literatures, the organizational implications of societal culture and organizational culture are widely debated within other research fields. This article proposes a closer engagement between third sector management research and the wider study of cross‐cultural organizational issues within anthropology, development studies, and management theory. It argues that such an exchange is necessary if third sector organizational research agendas are to include changing organizational landscapes effectively, and the article concludes with some ideas for future research.     

The Business Case of Gender Equality in Swedish Forestry and Mining ‐ Restricting or Enabling Organizational Change

Forestry and mining constitutes an important part of Swedish basic industry. These industries are heavily male‐dominated and are expressing an ambition to become more gender equal and less gender‐segregated, arguing that this could strengthen their competitiveness in a number of areas. In this article we explore how company representatives construct gender equality as a business case and discuss how these constructions restrict and/or enable gender equality in these organizations. Departing from a social constructivist understanding of how language (re)produces gendered power relations in the workplace, the empirical basis of this paper consists of eight interviews with respondents who possess special insights into, and being of strategic importance to, gender equality issues in forestry and mining companies. In our analysis we found three dominant dimensions of the business case of gender equality Marketing (as) gender equality, Uncovering the male norm and Gender equality as a depoliticized value. We conclude that the business case framing facilitates for the companies to engage in issues of gender equality. However, issues concerning conflicting interests and power relations seem to be difficult to address within the business case discourse. This we argue affects and shapes the terms for gender equality in these organizations.     

Public relations and strategic issues management challenges in Venezuela: A discourse analysis of Crystallex International Corporation in Las Cristinas

This investigation, using critical discourse analysis (CDA), seeks to develop an understanding of strategic issues management through Crystallex International Corporation’s discursive construction and management of legitimacy in the Las Cristinas mine in Venezuela. This analysis of the Las Cristinas case unearths elements that could provide useful insights about the Latin American environment in general and public relations efforts in that region specifically. Additionally, this analysis contributes to ongoing efforts of finding the most effective public relations practices for this particular part of the world, as well as help to highlight what constitutes a “fully functioning society” [Heath, R. (2006). A rhetorical theory approach to issues management. In C. Botan & V. Hazelton (Eds.), Public relations theory II (pp. 63–99). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ] in developing countries.     

Advocacy Tactics and Policy Outcomes of Sex Offender Rights Organizations

Social movement organizations for sex offender rights work to reduce harm to registrants and their family members by influencing sex offender registration and community notification policies. This study draws on two theories of social movement organizations—organizational emergence and political opportunities—to investigate the capacity (i.e., structure, resources, knowledge and skills) of these organizations to bring about policy changes. Data were gathered using in-depth, telephone interviews with 19 leaders of state-level advocacy organizations in the United States. Two types of strategies emerged, distinguishing organizations as proactive or reactive in their approach to policy change. Proactive organizations contribute to policy amendment, development or adoption, whereas reactive organizations focus on blocking policy. These two types of organizations have similar tactical repertoires; however, more proactive organizations report the use of networking and coalition building and media stories, and more reactive organizations report the use of legislative testimony and research and policy analysis tactics. This study informs social work policy and practice by highlighting effective and ineffective tactics used by highly stigmatized advocacy organizations.     

Conflict Versus Consensus Strategic Orientations Among Environmental NGOs: An Empirical Evaluation

Israeli environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) are assessed in light of Resource Mobilization Theory, introducing a new method for dividing ENGOs according to strategic orientation. Based on a national survey, 85 groups are categorized as consensus ENGOs that seek understanding aim at finding common grounds, or as conflict ENGOs working “outside the system.” Results show that conflict ENGOs are more grassroots in orientation and consensus ENGOs are more professionalized. Conflict ENGOs operate primarily in local arenas. Consensus ENGOs appear more stable, with larger annual budgets and paid staff, but with fewer registered members. Consensus ENGOs enjoy a wider variety of income sources; receive more funding from government, foreign, and private donations; and have a broader range of self-generated income sources. Conflict ENGOs depend more on membership fees. Both groups are highly dependent on foundation grants. In general, greater resources are associated with consensus activity than among organizations utilizing conflict tactics.     

Developmental Dynamics in Nonprofit-Sector Federations

This article explores developmental processes in community-based issue domains and the effects of such processes on the federated referent organizations (FROs) that emerge to address problematic issues. Such organizations mobilize resources and serve as focal points for collective strategies. FROs encounter developmental tensions as they oscillate between adaptation to their environments and construction of new contexts. The way these tensions are resolved suggests three possible response scenarios: reorientation, replacement, or demise. Likely conditions for each scenario are explored. A case study of a federation of over 200 nonprofit organizations in a metropolitan region in the United States is used to illustrate the argument, and implications for similar types of organizations are indicated.     

Book reviews

The US campaign for ‘pure food’ from the 1880s through 1906 featured a diverse coalition of groups with quite different ways of defining the problem, identifying the relevant actors, and balancing political and consumerist tactics. This paper examines how these differences in framing, rather than undermining cooperation or impeding success, helped to broaden the coalition for pure food and to win passage of the 1906 Food and Drug Act. It pays particular attention to the ways in which women's groups acted as frame brokers, translating pure food issues into a maternalist language and, in so doing, contributing both new support and new tactics to the campaign. The case study is used to address more general issues in the relationship between framing and (1) coalition-building and (2) tactical repertoires.     

Tracking ‘the transnational’: studying transnational organizations and managements,and the management of cohesion

This article argues for greater clarity in researching transnational organizations and management, and the need for gendered multi‐level theory and gendered multi‐actor analysis. It examines different understandings and conceptualizations of ‘the transnational’ in studying transnational organizations and management, and their implications for understanding and conceptualizing the ‘management of cohesion’. In so doing, three conceptual and theoretical questions are considered: what are the major meanings of ‘the transnational’ in studying transnational organizations and management? What are the major different disciplinary frameworks in studying transnational organizations and management? What are the major epistemological debates in studying transnational organizations and management? Particular emphasis is placed on: the field of studies on transnational organizations and management; transnational research projects on transnational organizations and management; and the lives of transnational researchers. Two ongoing research projects – on gender relations in transnational organizations and managements, and men's changing organizational practices in Europe – are focused on to illustrate these issues. The theme of gender critique is developed throughout.     

How flat organizations filter: organizational gatekeeping in a networked environment

The development of affordable Internet-based tools and platforms has led to major transformations in organizational dynamics. One key change is the shift of agency from center to ends and the consequent emergence of decentralized (networked) organizations. Focusing on the realm of collective action, we suggest that organizational configurations constructed around participants with greater agency induce organizations to promote new filtering tactics to sort out members who are valuable to the group. Drawing on Signaling Theory, we analyze the filtering behavior that organizations develop in their attempt to cope effectively with a type of tension characteristic of the digital era: The impetus to uphold egalitarian ideals on the one hand and the need to sort out desired participants on the other. Previous studies have explained how boundary work actually works in bureaucratic settings with fairly clear boundaries. This study focused instead on how new patterns of collective participation emerge, and how novel practices related to filtering are distributed in decentralized organizations. The study makes two points with theoretical implications. First, it explains an organization's decision to conduct filtering measures – a decision that on the face of it is counterintuitive since organizations operating in a digital environment can tolerate the enclosure of ‘free riders’. The second point relates to filtering practices. It shows that the emergence of new forms of participation, practices and norm, due to the development of networked media, encourages creativity in the development of specific filtering tactics, with activists considering new tactics for achieving their goals.     

A Practical Model for Ethical Decision Making in Issues Management and Public Relations

The deontological philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) provides a powerful framework for the analysis of ethical dilemmas. Kant's philosophy is discussed and applied to what this research poses as the "practical model for ethical decision making" (see Figure 1). This Kantian model establishes an ethical consideration triangle and incorporates symmetrical communication. The issues management of 2 global organizations was used as an empirical test of the model and to refine it for practical implementation. I argue that rigorous analysis of ethical decisions and symmetrical communication result in ethical issues management.