Conference Agenda

Purpose of research: Particularly in the last few years employees suffer a lot so that organizations are looking for suitable forms of appreciation for their continued engagement. This study aims to clarify the role of internal communication in fostering an appreciative work environment by asking what employees expect in terms of appreciation and what are authentic forms to meet their expectations.

Theoretical approach and background: Based on social exchange assumptions and resource theory, this study strengthens the findings of appreciation as a prototypical socioemotional resource.

Research questions: (1) What do employees expect to be appreciated for? (2) How should employee appreciation look like so that employees feel that the effort is authentic? (3) What role does internal communication seize in promoting an appreciative work environment?

Method: Three focus groups with employees without management responsibility working in large Austrian organizations were conducted in January 2023.

Initial findings: The screening of the transcripts shows different reasons for which employees expect appreciation. Organizations have different ways of valuing employees - internal communication has an enabling function, is a strategic actor in this sense and should have a role model function.

Purpose

The present paper aims to test an integrative model of employee activism including several situational and cross-situational promoting factors. The study draws upon individuals’ perceptions and communicative responses regarding a problematic situation in their company, using the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS), and further incorporates the concepts of negative affect, organizational commitment, and symmetrical internal communication.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey among full- and part-time employees (N=500) from large-sized corporations in the U.S. was launched in mid-March via Qualtrics and is still ongoing. A hypothetical scenario related to sexual harassment at respondents’ workplaces was specially designed for the study and is used as a trigger. Data will be analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings

As the data collection is not yet completed, no results are available at the time of the submission.

Originality

This study explicitly differentiates between internally and externally directed employee activism and will, thus, enhance knowledge about what drives these specific types of activism and which measures companies can take to reduce possible risks. Results will advance activism research in public relations and extend the utility of the STOPS in an organizational context.

Purpose – This paper explores communicative coworkership on internal social media (ISM) in a Danish hospital with the aim of showing how coworkership may contribute to creating responsible communication in a period of crisis.

Design/methodology/approach – The study conducts a qualitative netnographic analysis of 142 posts and 534 comments shared by employees on the hospital’s ISM. Furthermore, a discourse analytical approach has been applied to reveal how communicative coworkership is enacted.

Findings – The study demonstrates how employees enact communicative coworkership on a micro-level on ISM, and how this enactment plays an important role in creating responsible communication.

Practical implications – Creating responsible communication could be a matter of providing an ISM communication arena where employees enact communicative coworkership and share thoughts, frustrations and knowledge with each other during a crisis, and where management listens and responds to the concerns of the employees.

Originality – This study adds to the emerging research on communicative coworkership by showing, how it is unfolded on a micro level on ISM between employees who find themselves in the middle of a crisis.

Keywords - Communicative coworkership, internal listening, employee voice, internal social media, internal crisis communication, responsible communication

Paper type Case study