Determinants of consistent,timely, and active responses in corporate crises

This paper investigates the individual and combined factors affecting the extent to which corporations respond to crisis events consistently, in a timely manner, and actively. The determinants examined include public relations autonomy, legal dominance, strategic orientation, and organizational factors. A survey was conducted of communications mangers, public affairs personnel, and public relations personnel, drawn from the top 500 companies operating in Taiwan. Results indicate that the relative effect of individual sources of influence on crisis response is greatest for situations in which public relations departments have the most autonomy, followed by those where crisis management is handled with a strategic orientation, those where the legal departments dominate, and those where organizational factors provide the main avenue of address. The results emphasize the intriguing role of public relations autonomy by demonstrating its significant impact on providing a consistent, timely, and active crisis response. The strategic orientation of situation analysis also predicts a consistent response, whereas legal dominance predicts strategic ambiguity or inconsistent communication.     

论信息与犯罪生成机制——以犯罪场为视角的分析

以犯罪场为视角,揭示了犯罪行为发生前的犯罪临界性因素激发犯罪的具体作用机制及其模式。并从信息的特性着手分析,探讨了潜在犯罪人在犯罪意图下,怎样通过信息与外在要素发生互动联系,怎样推动特定犯罪场实际生成具体的犯罪行为。指出信息对人们的决策及行为时刻产生着影响,信息无疑是犯罪各种临界性因素发生联系的纽带。     

《大众哲学》的理论贡献及社会影响简

作为马克思主义哲学通俗化、大众化的代表作,《大众哲学》不仅开辟了中国马克思主义哲学通俗化、大众化的先河,同时也对马克思主义哲学中国化进行了初步的探索,并且还在认识论等方面为毛泽东的《实践论》写作提供了经验借鉴。从一定意义上来讲,《大众哲学》是中国思想史上“新启蒙运动”的前驱,它的成功经验为当前在新历史的条件下推进马克思主义大众化提供了有益的范本和重要的经验参考。     

社会学视野中的教育及民族教育

社会学对于教育和民族教育问题的研究更为看重对教育得以运行的社会宏观背景的关注。从社会学的学科视野出发,作为培养人的一种社会活动和一种社会设置,教育无时无刻表征着社会生活的现实,所以,教育就应该凸显它本来就具有的社会底蕴;而社会学视野中的民族教育,自有其更为宽广的社会背景、更为深厚的学术支撑和更为丰富的学理内涵,本文就此展开了论述。     

Assessing the Playing Field: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Internet Sports Gambling Behavior

Internet gambling is growing rapidly, as is concern about its possible effect on the public’s health. This paper reports the results of the first prospective longitudinal study of actual Internet sports gambling behavior during eight study months. Data include recorded fixed-odds bets on the outcome of sporting contests and live-action bets on the outcome of events within contests for 40,499 Internet sports gambling service subscribers who enrolled during February 2005. We tracked the following primary gambling behaviors: daily totals of the number of bets made, money bet, and money won. We transformed these variables into measures of gambling involvement. We analyzed behavior for both fixed-odds and live-action bets. The median betting behavior of the 39,719 fixed-odds bettors was to place 2.5 bets of €4 (approximately $5.3 US) every fourth day during the median 4 months from first to last bet. This typical pattern incurred a loss of 29% of the amount wagered. The median betting behavior of the 24,794 live-action bettors was to place 2.8 wagers of €4 every fourth day during the median duration of 6 weeks at a loss of 18% of the amount wagered. We also examined the behavior of empirically determined groups of heavily involved bettors whose activity exceeded that of 99% of the sample.     

An evaluation of alternative fiscal adjustment plans: The case of Italy

What advice can be given to the policymaker to reduce the burden of public debt after a crisis? In this situation, the debt consolidation calls for fiscal surplus based on increases in taxes and/or reductions in public spending. This paper aims at answering to the above question. Specifically, it evaluates different policy options on the table using the estimated model of the Italian dynamic General Equilibrium Model (IGEM). Our main message is that plans aimed at reducing the public debt based on tax increases rather than expenditure reductions are more effective. Therefore, consolidation should be designed on the former.     

Developing a multi-level organization-public dialogic communication framework to assess social media-mediated disaster communication and engagement outcomes

Dialogic communication has long been viewed as vital for effective organization-public relations. Yet, it is under-theorized whether and how organizations’ disaster communication messages may embody dialogic communication principles, and how various dialogic features are associated with different public engagement outcomes on social media. Extending the Organization-Public Dialogic Communication (OPDC) framework to the context of social media-mediated disaster communication, we propose a multi-level framework to assess the dialogic capacity of Facebook messages sent by disaster management organizations during a natural disaster. Three levels of dialogic communication characteristics (i.e., message structure-level, topic-level, and linguistic level) are examined using content analysis and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Results identified media richness, correcting, and confirming topics as three consistent predictors of public engagement of all types. Meanwhile, there exhibit greater variations regarding how other topical features and linguistic characteristics are related to public’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement during a disaster.     

Revisiting the relationship between public relations and marketing: Encroachment and social media

Although public relations and marketing trade presses regularly discuss the conflict between the functions (e.g., Ecker, 2013; Havartin, 2013), academic researchers focused on the issue primarily in the 1980s and 1990s. The drop in public relations and marketing encroachment research does not parallel a drop in encroachment in practice, especially in light of today’s social media environment. In fact, historic tension between public relations and marketing intensified with the incorporation of social media into communication efforts. This paper updates the study of encroachment by reviewing the historical views of the topic, proposes ways that social media use has intensified issues related to role encroachment between public relations and marketing professionals, and outlines questions to guide future study of these topics.