Do public relations professionals understand corporate governance issues well enough to advise companies on stakeholder relationship management?

The King Reports on Governance for South Africa are internationally respected for proposing integrated reporting in a triple bottom-line business context to improve corporate governance. The most recent report, King III, views stakeholder relationship management as a key tenet of corporate governance. This raises the question whether public relations professionals (PRPs) understand the principles of corporate governance well-enough to inform and guide organizations on the management of stakeholder relationships. The views of senior PRPs at selected top performing companies were elicited on their practice of stakeholder relationship management in line with corporate governance principles. It was found that their knowledge on corporate governance was limited, although they recognized its importance. They propose six role functions for managing stakeholder relationships on a strategic or managerial level; these role functions are aligned with the King III principles on stakeholder relationships. The following three were of particular importance: developing a corporate strategy, giving advice to senior management and managing crisis communication. Different terminologies were used to build relations with stakeholders and different approaches were used to profile stakeholders. It is recommended that organizations leverage their public relations functions on strategic and managerial levels in support of their corporate governance efforts. In turn, PRPs are encouraged to ensure a deep knowledge on corporate governance issues when counseling senior management on building stakeholder relationships.     

Governance and Enterprise Restructuring: The Case of Macedonia

This paper is a case study of the Republic of Macedonia (Southeast Europe), which focuses on examining governance and enterprise restructuring. Governance and enterprise restructuring is already defined indicator in EBRD’s studies and transition reports, measuring the effective corporate governance and corporate control exercised through domestic financial institutions and markets, fostering market-driven restructuring. As of the beginning of the transition process, governance and enterprise restructuring remains in the center, as essential pillar, that moves forward the society towards developed market economy. The data used in this article are analyzed with an econometric regression model, which as employed in this study examines the interrelationships between governance and enterprise restructuring and set of policies that influence the governance patterns.     

An analysis of corporate environmental responsibility on the global corporate Web sites and their dialogic principles

This study investigated how corporations use their Web sites as a way of helping to build corporate environmental responsibility. A content analysis of 2008 Fortune Global corporate Web sites compared environmental concerns and the use of dialogic principles across three regions (i.e., Asia, Europe, and North America). Results show that about 71% of Web sites have a stand-alone environmental menu as a central location for environmental information, and that Europe is the highest, followed by North America and Asia. The environmental concerns of ‘resources/waste management’ and ‘climate changes’ are more commonly highlighted than are ‘ecosystem’ and ‘environmental governance.’ Furthermore, most Web sites do not fully employ dialogic features, regardless of region.     

Corporate voice and ideology: An alternate approach to understanding public relations history

Scholars in the U.S. generally agree that the origins of corporate public relations correspond to the rise of the U.S. Industrial Revolution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This essay explores the under-theorized relationship between ideology and public relations by examining the role of the corporate voice in public relations history. Evidence suggests that public relations counsel, serving as the corporate voice, created messages that produced and reproduced certain ideological meanings about the corporation. These ideological meanings provided important guidance on how members of the public should think about, relate to, and experience the corporation as a necessary, natural and benevolent organization in society. By incorporating ideological theory as an analytical tool to study public relations history, this article explores an important, but not often studied aspect of public relations history – the development and use of the corporate voice as a site of ideological production.     

The new water cooler: Implications for practitioners concerning the NLRB's stance on social media and workers’ rights

This study examines the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) recent decision in Hispanics United (2012), which prohibits employers from firing employees for social media posts that contain work-related grievances. Given that social media has become a large part of corporate image on the Internet, this recent ruling has direct impact on corporate image, social media communication, and public relations. Implications for public relations practitioners and human resource management are discussed and standards for evaluating social media posts in light of this recent decision are provided.     

The Revitalization of a Popular Movement: Case Study Research from Sweden

This article tries to enhance knowledge about organizational characteristics and processes that are important for mitigating oligarchic tendencies in the governance of CSOs, and to discuss the factors that condition the operation of these characteristics and processes. Civil society is frequently seen as an important part of societal governance and discussed as the intermediary link between the individual and society. This connection is often made through the aggregate function of civil society organizations (CSOs). Currently there are discussions regarding the decline of traditional cross-class federative CSOs and the possible effect of this on democracy in society. This article presents a longitudinal case study of the governance within a large, membership-based federative CSO and illustrates the revitalization of a CSO and its mission through the influx of a new group of members from the surrounding environment. The author argues that this revitalization process was possible partly because the proposed changes were in keeping with the organization’s original ideological core and partly because of the organization’s open democratic governance system. This permeability is found at two levels: first, the borders are open for individuals to enter the organization as members, and second, the borders of the internal governance system are open for members to take part in the decision-making process. This enabled ideas to percolate up from the members through the democratic decision-making system to the top of the organization, and some ideas are translated into statutes and policies, which then trickle down to the members again through the executive structure. The conclusion is that a functioning democratic governance system, which is able to stay true to the organization’s ideological core at the same time as it is able to modify it in light of societal change, seems imperative for this kind of organization. By doing this, the organization is not just staying true to its original mission but also actively contributing to democracy in society by including new groups into the decision-making process.     

Factors shaping activists’ perceptions of corporate organizations: An empirical case from South Korea

The current study aims to explore the factors that shape activists’ perceptions of corporate organizations. This study administered the survey method to examine how activists perceive corporate operations and reputation in South Korea. The three factors that directed how the activist groups perceived the corporate sector are “corporate social responsibility,” “internal corporate culture,” “and “the extent of corporate openness.” Factor analysis showed that the activist groups used these criteria when they evaluate corporate reputation.     

Corporate actors in Western European television news

News about corporations can be understood as an interdependent relationship among the public relations function, organizational logic and the logic of the media. This research addresses the visibility and role of corporate actors in Western European public television news. A quantitative content analysis was conducted of a representative sample of six primetime news programs (N = 139) in 2006. The results show that corporate actors do not appear very often in the news, that they are part of a civil-economic coalition and join the public debate about issues. Promotion of products, brands and organizations is hardly visible.     

Reconsidering the corporate narrative in U.S. PR history: A critique of Alfred Chandler's influence on PR historiography

This study explores the influence and dominance of Alfred Chandler Jr.’s theory of corporate development within public relations [PR] history. Chandler's work on late 19th Century corporate development is influential in PR historiography. PR oftentimes places its genesis in the late 19th Century corporate sphere to distance itself from press agentry. Examining critiques of Chandler's work on corporate development, this study argues that rooting PR in a corporate context does not provide legitimacy to PR practice and skews PR history to favor a corporate narrative. Implications for both history and normative PR theory development are discussed.     

Beyond professional snail races: Contextualizing corporate communication in Indonesia

This study provides an overview of the current state of corporate communication in some of Indonesia’s largest companies. A cross-cultural survey of senior managers highlights the uniqueness of Indonesia by comparing practitioners’ perceptions with results from two Western countries, namely Austria and Australia. The results reveal the limitations of traditional professionalization theories; embedding corporate communication into the cultural and institutional context has proved to be more instructive. Practitioners in Indonesia employ a comparably critical distance to their own cultural environment. However, at the same time, they are highly adaptive when it comes to the stringently regulated and politicized institutional context of their work. From a normative perspective, we would instead support a self-understanding of professional communicators as societal change agents.     

Communicating corporate LGBTQ advocacy: A computational comparison of the global CSR discourse

Corporations are increasingly engaging with political and social issues through corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, in new areas such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) advocacy. Informed by institutional theory and stakeholder theory, this article systematically, comparatively, and computationally examines the intersection of LGBTQ advocacy and CSR communication. In particular, it contributes to the literature by (1) examining the global LGBTQ CSR discourse constructed by Fortune Global 500 companies (136,820 words) with semantic network analysis and structural topic modeling; (2) surveying non-profit organizations’ guidelines and comparing corporate values with them; and (3) exploring how stakeholder expectations and institutional factors influence CSR communication. Results indicate 6 corporate topics and 9 non-profit topics, which were explicated by referencing organizations’ original writing. It is further shown that stakeholder expectations and institutional factors not only affect whether or not corporations report LGBTQ efforts, but also affect what topics they highlight in CSR reports. Corporations in democratic countries with substantial stakeholder expectations emphasize areas that need high investment and exceed legal obligations.     

News and corporate reputation: Empirical findings from the Netherlands

This article examines the influence of business news on corporate reputation. A panel survey was used to measure the reputations of six companies and two professional sectors. Media coverage was analyzed by focusing on the tone of two different types of news. News about the successes of the companies – such as higher profits – improved their reputations. In addition, some companies’ reputation improved the more they were criticized by their competitors in the news. It is argued on basis of these empirical findings that the reputation of the party attacking a company in the news is crucial in determining its influence on the reputation of the besieged company.     

The role of private corporations in regional planning and development: Opportunities and challenges for the governance of housing and land use

There is a broad consensus that the corporate sector has an active role in facilitating community development through corporate-community investment. However, there remains uncertainty as to how much the sector should invest without taking on responsibilities and influencing decisions which are traditionally within the realm of the state. This paper explores the contemporary role of mining companies in regional governance through a case study of housing and residential land use planning and supply within the Bowen Basin coal mining and coal seam gas extraction region in Queensland, Australia. Mining companies were found to have a broad role in planning and development with far-reaching implications for land use and the wider regional community. These arrangements have emerged in response to corporate sensibilities, some recent policy requirements and most importantly, in pragmatic response to the institutional void apparent in many regional communities. In the absence of an effective regional framework with a clear and defined role for governments and corporations, powerful corporate interests risk effectively ‘capturing’ the regional development agenda within a framework that works on short-term paternalism rather than long-term regional partnerships. This also has implications for the efficiency of governance. Stronger institutional arrangements need to be developed to strengthen the capacity of the state to oversee these relationships. Regional governance and planning theory also needs to address this deficit.     

Assessing corporate planning of future sustainability initiatives in private healthcare organizations

PurposeThe research objective is to assess the corporate planning of future sustainability initiatives in private healthcare organizations.Design/methodology/approachPrivate hospital organizations have been selected using a judgmental sampling. A qualitative case study was followed in this research.FindingsThe findings shed light on corporate planning of future sustainability initiatives in private healthcare organizations.Research limitations/implicationsThe diversity of similarities and differences that has been uncovered between private healthcare organizations on corporate planning, reveals the complexity faced in trying to achieve sector-wide and or industry-wide uniformity of sustainability initiatives.Managerial implicationsThese findings offer opportunities to examine criteria to examine the corporate planning of future efforts and priorities in private healthcare sectors across countries and continents.Originality/valueThis paper distinguishes between corporate planning approaches in relation to the assessment criteria to examine future sustainability initiatives in private hospitals.     

Transforming Global Governance in the Post-2015 Era: Towards an Equitable and Sustainable World†

This article reports on a dialogic symposium that brought academics from a wide range of disciplines together with practitioners and activists. The purpose was to discuss key issues conditioning the possibility of establishing global governance mechanisms which could promote transition paths toward a more equitable and sustainable world. Following the structure of the symposium, the article is divided into four thematic sections. The first contextualizes the discussions by looking at the characteristics and challenges of global governance today. The second addresses power relations in global governance with a focus on the corporate and financial sectors. It discusses practices of multistakeholder governance and public–private partnerships, the unhealthy levels of corporate influence on the UN system, and the dominant discourse that naturalizes corporate power, ‘free’ trade, and corresponding definitions of ideas such as knowledge, efficiency, and development. The third section turns to sites and forms of countervailing power and practice with particular attention to transcalar approaches and social movement actors. It highlights the potential of multi-level, territorial approaches for breaking out of hierarchical and nation state-based frames and building alternative forms of democracy. It illustrates the relevance of bioregions and ecosystems as meaningful arenas for thinking about and organizing social and economic life and for managing common pool resources. It invokes the imperative of protecting the human rights framework from the multiple challenges it faces. Finally, it explores alternative ways of generating and sharing knowledge and of challenging narrowly defined ‘evidence-based’ policy by assembling legitimate, qualitative evidence rooted in lived realities. The concluding section raises the question of whether—and on what conditions—intergovernmental multilateralism can be seen as a locus for transformation, and suggests some avenues of future research.     

On large enterprises: new findings from a European comparison

The recent evolution of Italian capitalism shows the increasing relevance of large enterprises at three levels: the economic and institutional environment, the ownership structure, and the financing policy. A comparison of the financial structure of Italian large enterprises with those of other European countries (France, Germany, and Spain), using Bank for the Accounts of Companies Harmonised data, shows their financial fragility, where the prevalence of debt over equity justifies the still strong and close relationship between ownership control and management in their strategies and the prevalence of obsolete bank–firm relationships based on short-term external finance and multiple business lendings. These factors slow down firms’ expansion and consequently the need for companies to grow so as to face the new global market. Finance is confirmed as a determinant of growth both in size and in organisation. We conclude that a pivotal role for the growth of Italian firms lies in a “revised” relationship between size, governance, and the firms’ financial structure.     

Das deutsche System der Corporate Governance zwischen Persistenz und Konvergenz

We discuss the development of German corporate governance in light of the hostile takeover of Mannesmann by Vodafone. The paper criticizes the stability hypothesis of Thomas Heinze in KZFSS 4/2001 and demonstrates the deep changes within German corporate governance, which we describe as hybrid convergence. Given trade-offs between corporate growth and profitability, the preferences of German management have changed towards greater emphasis on shareholder returns. This change is evident in the implementation of new profitability targets, end of cross-subsidization and concentration on core competences. Through incremental changes throughout the 1990s, the importance of market mechanisms has increased and been internalized within corporations. German corporate governance is moving toward a U.S. market model through hybrid processes of institutional layering and conversion.     

Attenuating public skepticism: Effects of pre-crisis corporate engagement and post-crisis CSR initiatives on corporate evaluations

This study examined the effects of stated motives in post-crisis corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages, CSR-crisis issue congruence, and pre-crisis corporate engagement on public skepticism toward CSR and subsequent corporate evaluations. We conducted a 3 (motive of post-crisis CSR initiative: no statement vs. firm-serving vs. public-serving) x 2 (issue congruence: CSR initiative incongruent vs. congruent with crisis) x 2 (pre-crisis corporate engagement: absence vs. presence) between-subjects online experiment via Qualtrics panel (N = 378). The findings showed that stating a public-serving motive or launching a CSR initiative incongruent with a crisis heightened some aspects of CSR skepticism. We further found that pre-crisis corporate engagement interacted with stated motive and issue congruence to influence corporate evaluations. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.