Timeliness,responsiveness and the human voice: The effects of dialogic strategies and the mediating role of perceived communication ethicality on social media relationship building

This study investigates how social media can be better managed to cultivate positive organization-public relationships. It advances an expanded and integrated conceptual model to test how the communication features of corporate pages on social networking sites may influence publics’ perception of the organization’s communication ethicality, which further predicts organization-public relationships as a compound index of trust, commitment, and satisfaction. The results, based on structural equation modeling, showed that three important communication strategies are success factors that could shape perceptions of communication ethicality: timeliness, responsiveness, and the use of human voice in a dialogic framework. In particular, publics’ perception of the organization’s communication ethicality emerged as a key mediator driving communication effects to foster positive relationships with stakeholders in an online environment.     

Bankruptcy reform and congressional action: The role of organized interests in shaping policy

This paper tests the degree to which PAC contributions can influence voting outcomes on legislation that disproportionately influences the poor. Using passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 in the House of Representatives, the results show an association between PAC campaign contributions from the financial industry and support for final passage of bankruptcy reform. The findings suggest that one source of underrepresentation of the poor may be donations made by interest groups during campaigns.     

How responsiveness works in mainland China: Effects on institutional trust and political participation

This study investigated whether and how institutional responsiveness, a constitutive element of dialogic communication, influences institutional trust and political participation among members of the public in mainland China. A total of 4068 respondents from mainland China completed questionnaires. Results demonstrated that institutional responsiveness indirectly reduced publics’ destructive non-institutional political participation by building institutional trust. Extending the public relations literature on dialogue, we found that this indirect relationship is conditional on online political information seeking rather than online political expression among members of the public. For people who frequently use the Internet to seek political information, institutional responsiveness is more likely to boost institutional trust, which decreases the likelihood of participation in offline political activities.     

Carers of People with Mental Illness from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities

Australia is a multicultural country and it is common for families from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities to care for their relatives with mental illness. However, there are limited Australian studies examining the experiences of informal carers of people with mental illness from CALD communities. A scoping review was conducted to search for peer-reviewed articles reporting the perception of carers regarding their caregiving experiences, wellbeing, and needs. Using cultural responsiveness as a conceptual framework, this study analysed the findings of the identified studies to generate themes. Findings show that carers experience severe caregiving challenges and face considerably poor culturally oriented services in mental health. Social work implications concerning the need to provide culturally responsive practice in mental health services are discussed.     

Making democracy matter: Responsibility and effective environmental governance in regional Australia

This paper will critically examine the changing social relations of responsibility associated with Australia's current regional ‘experiment’ in environmental governance. This experiment centrally involves the transfer of responsibility for natural resource management (NRM) from Federal and State governments to community-based regional bodies. Although governments are promoting democratic NRM planning at the regional level as a more effective means of addressing Australia's environmental problems, we argue that a tension is emerging in association with the simultaneous pursuit of these goals: ‘effectiveness’ has been defined in terms of the accountability of regional communities to central governments for the achievement of short-term results, an approach which is undermining the democratic promise that regional bodies would be responsive to wider community concerns. The notion of ‘responsibility’ provides a means of investigating this tension, as accountability and responsiveness are both elements of the overarching concept of responsibility. The examination of NRM institutions through this theoretical lens indicates that the shared substantive interests required to motivate a sense of shared responsibility amongst regional actors have been sidelined by the procedural demands of accountability. We argue that, if NRM planning is to be genuinely accountable and responsive to substantive public ends, the properly social and dialogical nature of responsibility relationships must be recovered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the social and political relations of responsibility that appear to provide the best opportunities for effective environmental governance, and thus for the achievement of more sustainable NRM outcomes, at the regional level.     

The responsiveness pyramid: Embedding responsiveness and interactivity into public relations theory

Responsiveness and interactivity are two terms that play an important part in any communicative process. Nevertheless, both academic studies and daily conversations tend to merge or transfer their meanings. Drawing on Rafaeli's interactivity model (Rafaeli, 1988) the purpose of this paper is to clarify the complex relationship between responsiveness and interactivity and to present the responsiveness pyramid, a model that suggests a clearer theoretical distinction between these concepts. In addition, responsiveness and interactivity are presented as relational maintenance strategies that may contribute to organization–public relationship building. This study is based on a field experiment and a content analysis of 799 organizational responses of Israeli businesses and nonprofit associations. The study reveals that organizational representatives, from both businesses and nonprofit associations, do not utilize the interactive and dialogic potential of their online responses in order to promote organization–public relationship building.     

The Purchaser/Provider Split in Social Care: Is It Working?

This paper reviews the ideas of public choice theory that provided the rationale for introducing the purchaser/provider split and suggests that the notion of provider self-interest is as undifferentiated a concept as its rival: public ethos or duty. Using data from eighteen months' observation and interviewing in five local authorities, it then goes on to address the huge amount of work involved in separating purchasing from providing. We trace the changing understanding of the purpose of the split, problems of defining who is a purchaser and who a providers, problems of working the new relationship between purchasers and providers, and difficulties in developing the purchasing function.
We then seek to examine what are believed to be the main benefits of the purchaser/provider split, asking whether there is evidence that purchasers are doing a better job of identifying needs than providers, and whether there is evidence of competition involving multiple providers and multiple suppliers. Finally, we investigate whether there has been an increase in responsiveness, taking home care as an example. The paper concludes that while increased competition among suppliers has been one important factor in two authorities in securing a more responsive service, the evidence is equivocal as to whether the purchaser/provider split has been the key to securing competition.     

组织顾客创新、供应商反应性与项目绩效的关系研究:基于组织服务市场的实证分析

随着用户创新研究与实践的日益增加,组织市场(B2B)上有关组织顾客创新的理论研究与实践活动也受到了前所未有的关注。本文对组织服务市场上有关组织顾客创新及其对项目创新绩效与项目运营绩效的影响进行了研究,剖析了供应商认知反应性和情感反应性在上述影响中可能扮演的调节作用。同时,本文还以中国电信工程服务业为实证研究背景,分别从组织顾客与供应商两个不同的视角收集数据,验证了组织顾客创新对项目创新绩效和项目运营绩效所产生的差异性影响,检验了供应商反应性所扮演的调节作用,并对顾客样本和供应商样本的分析结果进行了简单的比较。     

论责任政府的回应性

回应性是责任政府的一项重要属性。责任政府作为一种理想的政府模式,表现为对公民与社会的需求能迅速且有效地回应,具有良好的公共需求导向的公共服务能力。政府的责任性、回应性与服务性是密切联系的,回应性是政府责任的传导机制,政府通过有效的回应,履行责任,实现公共服务的终极目标。政府如果没有有效的回应性与敏捷的回应机制,政府的责任性无法真正转化为有效的公共服务,也就无法真正实现责任政府的服务性。我国政府回应性的缺失是普遍存在的,这不仅与我国政治民主化程度不高有关,也与政府管理不善有着密切的关系。随着民众权利意识、监督意识、民主参与意识的不断增强,我国民众对民主的发展要求越来越迫切,要求政治参与和提高政府回应的呼声不断高涨,因而逐步转变传统的政府行政管理模式,建立长期有效的政府回应机制,进而不断提升政府回应性成为当前政府改革的一项重要内容。     

Parental style,parental practices,and socialization outcomes: An investigation of their linkages in the consumer socialization context

This study aims to generate insights into the mechanisms through which parental style influences adolescent consumer socialization. Toward this end, it examines two alternative conceptual frameworks: (1) The mediation model which posits two key dimensions of parental style (responsiveness and demandingness) as antecedent variables affecting adolescent consumer socialization directly and indirectly through parental socialization practices and (2) the moderation model which posits each parental style dimension as a moderator of the link between parental socialization practices and adolescent socialization outcomes. The influences of maternal and paternal parental styles on adolescent socialization outcomes are investigated separately and compared. Results provide stronger support for the mediation model. They also show that mothers’ parental style and practices are more influential than fathers’ in shaping adolescents’ consumer socialization outcomes.