Public Relations Review最新文献

CEO activism is rising in popularity around the world due to growing social injustices, the inability of governments to address key concerns of their constituents (e.g., global warming, health, and safety), and abuses of power. Many people are simply fed up with the current state of affairs and want to see people in power held accountable. As a result, CEOs are taking public stances on timely issues. They are doing so not only because they want to win favor with their employees and customers but also because they feel an obligation—and pressure—to speak up and pursue greater good on behalf of others since they have platforms and visibility that are not shared by those whose lack similar status or vehicles to for their voices to be heard. This is a qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews with 24 CEO activists. Data analysis followed the hermeneutic phenomenological approach. The findings advance the CEO activism literature by focusing on the tactical repertoire of activist CEOs within the non-Western context of Ghana. Activist CEOs in Ghana use a broader portfolio of tactics than previously thought, offer a typology of CEO activism tactics, and help to internationalize CEO activism research. This study also expands upon nascent research streams such as responsible management, Africapitalism, Afrocentric philosophies of sustainability, and public relations for social responsibility.

Organizational crises have often been examined from the perspective of the crisis origin organization. Depending on the crisis type, other organizations might experience impacts because of the initial crisis. This emerging type of crisis—the crisis spillover—one that affects organizations along with the crisis origin organization, is under researched. The current research refines the “crisis spillover” concept and proposes a new perspective for this challenging crisis communication phenomenon by arguing in favor of a relationship between the crisis spillover and sticky crises, developing a conceptual framework, mapping out multi-layer characteristics of crisis spillover and delineating new directions for advancing research and practice for managing industry-wide complex crisis challenges. The framework, further refined based on feedback and evaluation from an expert panel composed of crisis communication executives, provides unique insights into the crisis spillover.

This article presents the findings of empirical research on the experiences of senior National Health Service communication practitioners in England during the Covid-19 pandemic, viewed through the prism of their emotional responses. Using narrative interviews with 15 senior communicators, the study discovered that contextual factors elicited the strongest emotional reactions, rather than dealing with the health crisis itself. Five common contextual factors were identified: ‘command and control’, working from home, social media, technology, and professional recognition. Linked to these factors were a range of emotions which can be clustered into eight main categories: stress and anxiety, guilt, frustration and anger, inadequacy, isolation, pride, excitement and a growing sense of confidence. The findings lead to a conclusion that internal contextual factors rather than the challenges posed by the progress of the disease itself determined the most significant elements of the experience of these practitioners. The study also identified the sources of personal support for communicators and their own recommendations for policy changes. The study concludes that health communicators were hindered by the environment in which they undertook their duties. Necessary policy changes will assist in ensuring this professional group can perform more optimally during major health crises in the future.

This study delves into the critical yet underexplored phenomenon of crisis spillover within the non-profit organization (NPO) sector. By investigating whether a crisis in one NPO affects others in both similar and differing sectors, this research sheds light on the far-reaching implications of negative expectancy violations in the wake of a crisis. Utilizing a single-factor (crisis type: no-crisis vs. low vs. high attribution of crisis responsibility) between-subject design experiment, the study unveils novel insights into how public trust and attitude are disrupted not just for the crisis-stricken NPO, but also for other NPOs across various sectors. The findings reveal a pervasive impact of a crisis, leading to diminished trust and unfavorable attitudes towards NPOs beyond the immediate crisis context. Interestingly, these spillover effects remain consistent regardless of the level of attributed responsibility for the crisis. This study not only highlights the interconnectedness and vulnerability of NPOs in crisis situations but also provides a crucial understanding of the broader sector-wide impacts, emphasizing the need for strategic crisis management across the NPO sector.

Public relations scholarship frequently studies relations between organizations and publics but rarely considers how the nature of organizations influences this interaction. In this essay, we review conceptions of the organization in several areas of public relations scholarship and find complexity that is unexplained by theory, causing a disconnect between public relations scholarship and practice. Using insights from stakeholder theory, essential contract theory, and intersectionality, we provide a new definition of the organization and 14 propositions about the nature of organizations. This definition is explained with a metaphor of an organization as a tent. The tent is composed of many stakeholders, each with multiple identities, utilizing contracts as poles to push and pull the organization in their preferred direction. An illustrative example is given of how this metaphor operates in a university. We call for a reorientation of public relations theory's relationships to organizations and suggest an important role for public relations and communication in constituting the nature of organizations and ensuring representativeness in decision-making.

In this paper, we present a digital tool named Diversity Perspectives in Social Media (DivPSM) which conducts automated content analysis of strategic diversity communication in organizational social media posts, using supervised machine-learning. DivPSM is trained to identify whether a post makes mention of diversity or a diversity-related issue, and to subsequently code for the presence of three diversity dimensions (cultural/ethnic/racial, gender, and LHGBTQ+ diversity) and three diversity perspectives (the moral, market, and innovation perspectives). In Study 1, we describe the training and validation of the instrument, and examine how it performs compared to human coders. Our findings confirm that DivPSM is sufficiently reliable for use in future research. In study 2, we illustrate the type of data that DivPSM generates, by analyzing the prevalence of strategic diversity communication in social media posts (n = 84,561) of large organizations in the Netherlands. Our results show that in this context gender diversity is most prevalent, followed by LHGBTQ+ and cultural/ethnic/racial diversity. Furthermore, gender diversity is often associated with the innovation perspective, whereas LHGBTQ+ diversity is more often associated with the moral perspective. Cultural/ethnic/racial diversity does not show strong associations with any of the perspectives. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed at the end of the paper.

Through one pilot test and two main studies using experimental design, this research examines publics’ responses to the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Results from Study 1 (N = 113) revealed that the application of AI in CSR practices generated greater word-of-mouth intention and purchase intention than that in CA practices, and perceived warmth of the company mediated this effect. Results from Study 2 (N = 122) replicated the results from Study 1, and further revealed the boundary conditions created by publics’ varying levels of uneasiness with robots. The more positive outcomes generated by the application of AI in CSR (vs. CA) practices were more pronounced among those with high levels of uneasiness with robots, but such an effect was not significant among those with low levels of uneasiness with robots. Findings were discussed based on interdisciplinary theoretical insights from the CA-CSR typology, HAII-TIME model, and Stereotype Content Model. Implications for public relations scholarship and practices were discussed.

This study explores an area that has not been widely researched in the Latin American and Caribbean region: the identification of a capability gap in relation to key strategic public relations and communication management issues and activities. To this end, this article presents findings and analysis from a survey conducted in 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2020. The existence of a capability gap in relation to key issues and activities in public relations and communication management is confirmed, which represents a challenge for the development of the public relations field as well as for higher education institutions across the region.

This study investigates how people participate in activism against Asian hate crimes (i.e., Asian Lives Matter (ALM)). In contrast to numerous studies that use Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS) to predict information behaviors, this study introduced and examined a streamlined model focused on predicting activism behaviors. Moreover, this study tests the Problem Chain Recognition (PCR) effect by exploring how situational motivation in problem solving related to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement affects individuals’ perceptions and communicative acquisition about the issue of anti-Asian hate crimes. Further, this study examines the differences among three American socialized racial groups in terms of problem recognition, constraint recognition, involvement recognition of activism against Asian hate crimes, and activism behaviors. The results of this study revealed that situational motivation in problem solving and referent criterion lead to activism against anti-Asian hate crime. In addition, this study found positive PCR effects between BLM and ALM. This represents a pioneering utilization of the PCR effect to the field of racial activism. Importantly, there were significant differences to perceive activism for anti-Asian hate crimes among three racial group (Blacks, Whites, and Asians). Therefore, the results of this study contribute to the theoretical building of STOPS and practical implications for understanding the complexity of the American socialized racial discourse and predicting racial activism in relation to BLM and ALM.

The Hispanic or Latina/o community is an important and growing part of the economy, culture, and politics of the United States. As such, public relations professionals need to be knowledgeable about and responsive to the needs of Hispanic or Latina/o publics. Despite a growing emphasis on diversity and inclusion in the field of public relations, research on Hispanic public relations (HPR) remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, the present study conducted a Delphi panel with 17 experts in HPR in the U.S. The panel used a multi-iteration and consensus-building approach to evaluate different aspects of HPR, including the state of the profession, the competencies required to practice HPR effectively, the value of incorporating HPR courses into academic curricula, and strategies for recruiting and retaining HPR students. The findings of this study provide valuable insights for public relations scholars, educators, and industry leaders. By examining the current state of HPR and identifying key issues and challenges, this study contributes to a better understanding of the profession and its potential for growth and development. By highlighting the importance of HPR education and training, this study also offers practical guidance for those interested in advancing the field of HPR.