The Importance of Source and Credibility Perception in Times of Crisis: Crisis Communication in a Socially Mediated Era

Social media are invaluable sources of information during organizational crises. Although recent research confirms this fundamental role in crisis communication, this article is aimed at deepening the understanding about the role of the source of information in this socially mediated era by comparing the organization and the employee as communicators. As social media lack traditional gatekeeping processes, dynamics of both source and content credibility are assessed. The findings, based on an experimental design, advocate that judgments of organizational reputation are not only dependent on the crisis-response strategy, but also depend on the source and perceptions of source and content credibility.     

Engaged at work? An employee engagement model in public relations

ABSTRACT

Engagement has emerged as an important concept in public relations scholarship. Yet a theoretically informed model with a clear and coherent explication of the construct is still lacking. By situating our study in the internal organizational context, we provided an updated conceptualization and operationalization of employee engagement, proposing a strategy-engagement-behavior three-step employee engagement model. Results from an employee survey (n = 568) supported our conceptual model, showing that organizational engagement strategies positively predicted employee engagement, which in turn accounted for employees’ positive and negative messaging behavior, as well as their contextual performance behavior. After controlling for significant demographic variables such as gender, age, organizational size, number of subordinates, and level of management position, we identified a complete mediation effect of employee engagement in our two-step structural equation modeling analysis.     

Bridging transformational leadership,transparent communication,and employee openness to change: The mediating role of trust

Based on a random sample of employees (n = 439) in the United States, this study examined the effect of transformational leadership and transparent organizational communication on cultivating employee organizational trust during an organizational change event. We also investigated the interplay between transformational leadership, transparent communication, and organizational trust, and their impact on employee openness to change. The findings suggested that transformational leadership and transparent communication were positively associated with employee organizational trust, which in turn, positively influenced employee openness to change. Theoretical and managerial contributions of the study were discussed.     

Human resource management,employee engagement,and nonprofit hospital performance

Human resource management (HRM) has been shown to impact organizational performance, but more research is needed on particular human resource (HR) practices in nonprofits and their effect on performance. In this article, we explore one HRM practice argued to influence performance, employee engagement in decision‐making, examining whether involving staff at different levels of a nonprofit affects nonprofit organizational performance. Drawing on data from a 2011 study of nonprofit hospitals, we find employee engagement has a positive influence on managerial and stakeholder perceptions of organizational performance. Employee engagement in decision‐making is also related to objective nonprofit performance measures, although the effects are less consistent. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for nonprofit research and practice.     

Examining the effects of internal social media usage on employee engagement

This study explores whether and how internal social media influences employee engagement, a top priority for those working in public relations. Specifically, it proposes and tests a conceptual model that links employee use of internal social media, perceived organizational transparency, and organizational identification, to employee engagement. Through an online survey of 1150 employees from various organizations in the United States that had adopted internal social media, results show that employees’ use of internal social media contributes to an enhanced level of perceived transparency of the organization and organizational identification, which in turn, leads to employee engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

“Vision,passion, and care:” The impact of charismatic executive leadership communication on employee trust and support for organizational change

This study explored how charismatic executive leadership communication during change influences employees’ attitudinal and behavioral reaction toward change. Specifically, it proposed and tested a conceptual model that links charismatic executive leadership communication during change, characterized by envisioning, energizing, and enabling behaviors, employee organizational trust during change, and employees’ openness to change and behavioral support for change (i.e., cooperation and championing). Through an online survey of 439 employees who had experienced a company-wide organizational change in the past two years in the United States, results showed that charismatic executive leadership communication during change positively influenced employee organizational trust, openness to change, and behavioral support for change. Employee trust toward the organization during change positively influenced employee openness to change, which in turn, contributed to employee behavioral support for change. Employee trust was revealed as a partial mediator for the positive impact of charismatic executive leadership communication during change on employee openness to change and behavioral support for change. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Employee communication,job engagement,and organizational commitment: A study of members of the Millennial Generation

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between job engagement and two key components of employee-organization relationships (EOR). Findings from a survey of members of the Millennial Generation (N = 539) in the United States indicate that job engagement mediates the relationship between employee communication and organizational commitment. It is concluded that when employees are engaged in their work, their commitment to the organization is strengthened and the likelihood of them leaving the organization decreases. Furthermore, an argument is made in light of the study’s findings that engagement and commitment work in concert to strengthen EORs overall. To foster engagement, organizations should remove obstacles to internal information flow and provide ongoing feedback to employees about individual and organizational issues.     

When transparent leadership communication motivates employee advocacy: Testing the mediator roles of employee attributions in CEO activism

This study examined employees’ self-serving and genuine attributions of CEO activism as mediators, focusing on how they explain the process through which CEO’s transparent leadership communication impacts employees’ company advocacy and issue advocacy behaviors. With a survey of U.S. full-time employees, results showed that genuine attribution mediated the influence of transparent leadership communication on both advocacy variables. However, self-serving attribution was not identified as a significant mediator. Furthermore, though transparent leadership communication was not significantly associated with self-serving attribution, the latter was positively related to both issue advocacy intention and company advocacy intention. Highlighting the mediating roles of employee attributions, the findings of this study provide an advanced understanding of employee advocacy behaviors as impacted by transparent leadership communication in CEO activism.     

Organizational Change-Too Much,Too Soon?

ABSTRACT

Recent changes in government policies and practices, especially managed care, have led many nonprofit organizations to embrace collaboration as a competitive strategy. This article presents a case study of a large human service agency that has adopted a management service organization (MSO) model, a type of collaboration particularly suited to handling third-party contracts, at the urging of the founding CEO. A new governance model was also adopted. Using chronology as an analytical approach, the case examines key decisions made by professional and lay leaders during four distinct stages of organizational development. The actions taken by the board of directors to restore financial stability and protect the organization's reputation after learning from the CEO of the existence of a significant deficit demonstrate the need for strategic planning and better communication among all relevant parties involved in a collaboration.     

An Integrated Model for Organization—Public Relational Outcomes,Organizational Reputation,and Their Antecedents

This study is to test a theoretical model regarding the effect of organization—public relationships on organizational reputation. Grounded in multidisciplinary literature, this study proposed that organization—public relational outcomes are hypothesized to influence organizational reputation, considering the exogenous influences of communication behaviors, experience, and familiarity that the research participants hold of the organizations studied. The proposed model illustrated tenable data-model fits, and most of the hypotheses were statistically supported. The key finding of the research includes that, across all organizations studied, organization—public relational outcomes were associated positively with favorable reputation of the organizations studied. Limitations and suggestions for the future research were discussed.     

Enhancing Employee Engagement via Leaders’ Motivational Language in times of crisis: Perspectives from the COVID-19 outbreak

By bridging theoretical perspectives from diverse disciplines including public relations, organizational communication, psychology, and management, this study advances a sequential mediation process model that links leaders’ motivational communication—specifically, direction-giving, empathetic, and meaning-making language—to employees’ organizational engagement during times of crisis. The model incorporates employees’ psychological needs satisfaction and their subsequent crisis coping strategies so as to explain the process that underlies the effects of leader communication on employee engagement. We tested the model in a unique yet underexplored crisis context: organizational crises triggered by the global pandemic of COVID-19. The results of an online survey of 490 full-time U.S. employees provide strong support to the model’s predictions. Our research extends internal crisis communication scholarship in public relations by addressing what types of leader communication strategies as well as how these strategies contribute to employee engagement in a holistic fashion. It also advances theoretical development of the motivational language theory, self-determination theory, transactional model of stress and coping, and organizational engagement—the four theoretical bases of our study—in the context of organizational crises. Lastly, the study results provide timely practical insights on effective internal crisis communication.     

Why Leadership Matters to Internal Communication: Linking Transformational Leadership,Symmetrical Communication,and Employee Outcomes

This study examines how organizational leadership influences excellent internal communication by building the linkage between transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The results showed that transformational leadership positively influences the organization's symmetrical communication system and employee–organization relationships. The effects of transformational leadership on employee relational outcomes are partially mediated by symmetrical internal communication. Symmetrical communication demonstrates large positive effect on the quality of employee–organization relationships, which in turn leads to employee advocacy. Effects of symmetrical internal communication on employee advocacy are fully mediated by employee–organization relationships. Significant theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

A personal-communicative evaluation approach to CEO advocacy & employee relations

Acknowledging the importance of CEO advocacy in employee relations, this study proposed a personal-communicative evaluation model of CEO advocacy, which postulates that CEO advocacy creates (intended and unintended) organizational changes. Taking both employees’ personal domain (i.e., value congruence, legitimacy of leadership representation, and personal issue involvement) and communication domain (i.e., salience) considered, this study examined how both domains influence employees’ meaning reconstruction process, which drives employees’ sense of belonging. Conducting an online survey with 429 employees in the U.S., the study found that employee-CEO value congruence had a positive effect on employees’ sense of belonging, but violations of employees’ expectations of a CEO’s role in representing the entire company on the issue (either over-representing or under-representing) offset the positive effects of value fit on employees’ sense of belonging. Both theoretical and practical implications for effective CEO advocacy are discussed.     

Discourse of renewal: Developing multiple-item measurement and analyzing effects on relationships

Emphasis on protecting an organization’s image and reputation has dominated crisis communication research. A crisis is assumed to only bring negative impacts because it tarnishes an organization’s reputation. Priority is placed upon whether an organization can come up with response strategies that mitigate this harm, rather than on rebuilding relationships. Challenging these untested assumptions, discourse of renewal is complementary to the image- and reputation-centered perspectives and theorizes crises as opportunities to reflect, grow, and therefore renew to a better state. To further discourse of renewal, the current study first establishes a valid and reliable measure of discourse of renewal, and investigates how discourse of renewal influences publics’ relationship with an organization. Results of the study indicate that engagement, prospective foci, communication efficiency, and emphasis on organizational culture and core values are four dimensions of discourse of renewal, and that discourse of renewal positively influences publics’ relationship with an organization.     

Bonuses and investment in intangibles

Traditional analyses of bonuses have focused on performance measures such as output or profit as the sole determinant of bonus pay plans. However, com-panies now use bonuses for a variety of purposes, including employee recruit-ment and retention and to obtain better outcomes in quality and customer service. These trends suggest that a host of strategic considerations influence company decisions about bonus payouts, ranging from traditional concerns such as employee performance to the company’s reputation among prospective employ-ees and customers, stakeholder influence, and support for technological and organizational change as part of company plans to develop intangible assets. Using data from 2000 ELCS (European Labor Cost Survey), I investigate the determinants of bonus payouts, in particular how a company’s concerns about intangible assets affect its bonus outlays. Consistent with a growing body of evidence, both individual and workplace effects are important in explaining the variation in the incidence of bonus payments. Specifically, the findings suggest that human capital investments are positively related to bonus payments.     

Examining the interplay of an organization's prior reputation,CEO's visibility,and immediate response to a crisis

In one of only a few crisis communication research studies taking a relational approach, examining the effects of a company's prior reputation in publics’ responses to a given crisis situation, Lyons and Cameron (2004) found that both reputation and response profoundly affected publics’ attitude and behavioral intentions toward an organization involved in a crisis situation, using hypothetical, fictitious organizations and crises. Using actual organizations and crises, our research team designed a 2 (reputation: good vs. bad) × 2 (crisis response: apologetic vs. defensive) × 2 (CEO visibility in immediate crisis response: visible vs. invisible) within-subjects experiment (N = 102) to examine the variances in stakeholders’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward a company after being exposed to online video that delivered a corporate crisis response. Findings were counter-intuitive: a defensive response to a crisis is as acceptable to crisis stakeholders as an apologetic response if the CEO is visible (or audible) in the response and if the pre-crisis company-stakeholder reputation is positive. Good reputation, defensive crisis response and CEO visibility in immediate response to a crisis resulted in the best stakeholder attitudes and purchase intentions.     

Ethical leadership,intrapreneurship, service innovation performance and work engagement in chambers of commerce and industry

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this study which examines how it can be more effective in terms of organizational and managerial aspects with chambers of commerce and industry affiliated to The Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey is to analyze the relationships between ethical leadership, work engagement, intrapreneurship, and service innovation behavior. In addition, it is to determine the role of mediation of work engagement effecting on intrapreneurship and service innovation behavior. For this purpose, quantitative analysis methods have been adopted. The data collected from 568 employees who were employed in chambers of commerce and industry operating in Turkey were analyzed. For the validity and reliability of the measurement tools, confirmatory factor analysis, the model’s good fit values and the AMOS Structural Equation Model were used. It was found that ethical leadership had statistically significant effect on employee engagement, intrapreneurship and the subscales of service innovation behavior (employee service innovation behavior and new service development). The results showed that work engagement partially mediated with ethical leadership effecting on intrapreneurship, ethical leadership effecting on the subscales of service innovation behavior. It is thought that the study is important in terms of providing empirical contributions to the ethical leadership, service innovation, intrapreneurship and work engagement literature. Finally, there are some limitations of the study and some suggestions are offered for future studies.     

Enhancing Volunteer Engagement to Achieve Desirable Outcomes: What Can Non-profit Employers Do?

Engagement is a positive psychological state that is linked with a range of beneficial individual and organizational outcomes. However, the factors associated with volunteer engagement have rarely been examined. Data from 1064 volunteers of a wildlife charity in the United Kingdom revealed that both task- and emotion-oriented organizational support were positively related to volunteer engagement, and volunteer engagement was positively related to volunteer happiness and perceived social worth and negatively related to intent to leave the voluntary organization. Consistent with theory, engagement acted as a mediator between these factors. The implications for future research and the relevance of the findings for voluntary organizations are discussed.     

The Effects of Corrective Communication and Employee Backup on the Effectiveness of Fighting Crisis Misinformation

Crisis misinformation, including false information about a crisis or a crisis-stricken organization, has become a fundamental threat to organizational wellbeing. Effective crisis response geared toward fighting crisis misinformation demands a more systematic approach to corrective communication. Grounded in misinformation debunking theory, this study aims to advance misinformation research in public relations and organizational crisis communication. An online experiment using a U.S. adult sample (N = 817) was conducted to examine the effects of corrective communication strategy (simple rebuttal vs. factual elaboration) and employee backup (present vs. absent) on perceived message quality, organizational reputation, and perceived crisis responsibility. Results show: 1) the use of factual elaboration and the presence of employee backup were direct contributors to crisis response effectiveness; and 2) perceived message quality mediates the effect of corrective communication. This study provides insights into advancing crisis communication theory and offers evidence-based recommendations for practitioners to combat crisis misinformation more effectively.     

Membership Matters: Why Members Engage with Professional Associations

Professional associations face the challenge of member engagement. This study examined the effects of members’ need fulfillment and perceived organizational support on their attitude toward the professional association and engagement with the association with a survey of 13,229 members from 18 associations. More specifically, this analysis focused on members’ perceptions of need fulfillment and organizational support as motivations of member engagement. Our results suggested that member perception of need fulfillment and organizational support positively influenced their attitude toward their association, which was positively related to their engagement with the association in volunteering and donating funds. In addition, members’ perceived support from the association was found to motivate their engagement with the association. Moreover, we identified gaps in members’ volunteering behavior between junior and senior members: career status significantly moderated the relationship between attitude toward and volunteering for the association, with junior members showing a stronger effect. The theoretical and practical implications of this study were discussed.