Tendencias de investigación sobre comunicación interna en revistas internacionales: 2015-2021

Academia and organizations tend to agree on the importance they give to internal communication as a discipline of knowledge and as a strategic issue in organizational management. However, many organizations omit the systematic application of this type of communication and the academy has not produced, to date, a systematic body of knowledge. In order for these situations to be recognized and worked on, research work is necessary to build an integrating theoretical body. What this work proposes is to review the publications on internal communication (IC) to inquire about the recent advance in this knowledge and its applications. To accomplish this, four of the most important academic journals on communication in organizations were reviewed according to the SCImago Journal & Country Rank. They are: Public Relations Review, Management Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Strategic Communication and Journal of Communication Management. The period of analysis was carried out between 2015 and 2021. Bibliometric indicators used were: the number of articles on internal communication published, broken down by journal, year and number, most used words and phrases. The authors were also studied by analyzing the number of signatures per article, who published more on internal communication, as well as the most cited experts. The results in the 125 issues reveal a discreet presence of IC since of 1278 articles published, 126 dealt with the subject, which represented 9.87% of the total. The journal that published the most on IC was Public Relations Review with 38 articles, followed by Management Communication Quarterly with 35. Journal of Communication Management edited 32 articles, leaving International Journal of Strategic Communication as the journal that dealt with the subject the least with 21. All journals made special editions on various topics, but the Journal of Communication Management was the only one that made an extraordinary edition dedicated to IC under the title Internal Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic published in volume 25, number 3, July 2021. The most productive year for IC was 2021 with 32 articles. Throughout the period, 55 issues were published without articles on IC, 36 with one, 20 with two, nine with three, four with four articles and only one issue with seven, the special edition. Among the most used words are employee (s), social, strategic, engagement, media and crisis. And the most used phrase after “internal communication” is “social media”. The most cited author was also the most productive in the period studied: Lijuan Rita Men. Other authors who published multiple times included Cen April Yue, Ana Tkalac Verčič, Jeong Nam Kim, and Vibeke Thøis Madsen. James Grunig, Ansgar Zerfass, François Cooren, Linda L. Putnam, Mary Welch, and W. Timothy Coombs were also frequently cited. In conclusion, and despite the increased interest caused by the pandemic, internal communication is not a priority issue in the reviewed journals. A greater emphasis on normative and instrumental aspects was also detected, with a clear orientation towards the solution of specific organizational problems, that is, a functionalist perspective, centered on management. This article seeks to support both scholars and professionals of internal communication, leaving within their reach, in addition to this review, the challenge of increasing research to generate knowledge in internal organizational communication.