Conference Agenda

Effective internal communication (IC) increases employees productivity, organisations that pay attention to IC achieve better results, team members are more loyal and more involved in the organization's activities (Thompson, 2002; Madlock, 2008; Lee, 2022). Hybrid work, when employees can work from home or from office’ workplace or can change these forms of work during the week, is growing in popularity. This new work forms have been boosted by the global COVID-19 pandemic (Ceurstemont, 2021; Eliyahu, 2022) and require changing IC processes. Although there are studies analysing IC success factors in private sector during the new hybrid work era (Bansal, King, 2022; Wang et al, 2021), there is only a few analysis on IC challenges and possible solutions in the public sector (Jacobsen, Salomonsen, 2021; Leijerholt, 2022). Surveys of employees in the ministries before and during the pandemic revealed that there is a low job satisfaction in public sector (Ministry of Internal Affairs of Lithuania, 2021) and one of the reasons is a lack of effective IC. The conducted study is one of the first qualitative case studies of its kind, analyzing the challenges arising during the hybrid work era in public sector organization - the ministry, and revealing how these challenges are being solved at state-owned organisation with the strict rules, bureaucratic procedures; which IC channels work. The study fill the gap of public sector’s IC research in the new reality as well as suggest effective ways of communication for other public sector organisations.

Public sector holds great responsibility to create public policies and services that create value for all citizens. In ‘wellbeing public policy, the aim is to create policies and services that improves citizens wellbeing. To do this effectively, understanding what citizens values is essential. However, bringing citizens’ subjective wellbeing into the equation has been noted as a major challenge in the process. To solve this, strategic organizational listening holds a great potential in discerning this another side of a coin. The results of the single case study demonstrates how public organizations can use organizational listening as a tool to create better wellbeing services and public policies and also to become more citizen-centric. By doing so, this paper demonstrates the importance of strategic communication in organizations. Furthermore, the paper also illustrates how citizens wellbeing and public wellbeing policy creation can be approached by understanding of what constitutes good everyday life from citizen perspective. Thus, this paper provides example of how organizational listening can be approached and conducted effectively within this context. This research is under process and main data will be collected during the April 2023.

Purpose: This study aims to understand which argumentation strategies different organisations use in lobbying, and how they might be predictable. It analyses the communicative-strategic influence game of lobbying in a case study from the UK where Big Tech companies are lobbying against proposed regulations to prevent online harms.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative content analysis of N = 79 submissions in response to the UK Online Safety Bill from an array of public interest, identity, or business groups including Big Tech was conducted. It captured both in- and deductively the argumentation strategies put forward in response to the regulatory proposal.

Findings: Early findings suggest Big Tech use argumentation strategies that emphasise negative social-economic impacts of proposed regulations. The strategic construction of these arguments appears to appeal to policymakers’ conceptions of the public interest.

Contribution/originality: The study contributes to advancing the argumentation perspective on strategic communication, situating lobbying within public relations, and developing a lobbying argumentation playbook eventually applicable beyond the studied context. For practice, it aids less resourceful lobbying organisations to better prepare their own argumentation in the face of more powerful opponents.