Conference Agenda

Purpose: This paper explores how communication managers can leverage digital technologies to incorporate communication insights into corporate decision-making processes, and thereby help to adjust strategies in a complex environment.

Design/methodology/approach: An interdisciplinary analysis of literature from the disciplines of business administration, consulting research, business informatics, and communication science was used to develop a conceptual framework outlining the use of business intelligence (BI) in communication management. Subsequently, the framework was validated in a qualitative interview study with experts from the field.

Findings: To utilize information from external and internal sources for internal consulting, communicators need to process data, translate them into relevant information for decision-making, and make them accessible to relevant members of the organization. The framework shows how this can be achieved through a BI process that covers all phases as well as the necessary technologies and applications, from cleansing and merging the data to accessing the aggregated information. This enables communication professionals to act as internal consultants and ensures that corporate decisions can consider communication-related opportunities, risks, and similar insights.

Originality: This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by systematically introducing BI to corporate communications and communication management. It adds to current debates on CommTech, on internal consulting as a valuable role for communication professionals, and on corporate listening as the inbound dimension of corporate communications.

Purpose –The digitalization of greater society has permeated organizations, where managers are reassessing how internal communication is practiced and defined, particularly in the context of public relations and strategic communication. These changes were already underway before the COVID-19 pandemic, which strongly highlighted the importance of effective internal communication. Now, more than ever, digital transformation is profoundly affecting internal communication, yet there are substantial gaps in our understanding of the current situation. This study aims to identify and provide an overview of the research in the area.

Design/methodology/approach – The present paper systematically reviewed 78 research studies published in 53 journals between 1990 and November 2022 in order to identify theoretical and methodological trends in digital internal communication research and to examine key conceptualizations, measures, and analytical approaches.

Findings – The findings reveal the evolution of research on digital internal communication and highlight geographical, theoretical, and methodological gaps that should be addressed in future work.

Originality – This study offers a critical evaluation of existing research on digital internal communication.

Strategic and communication management’s struggles to demonstrate how its practice enhances corporate performance. There remains a scarcity of evidence pertaining to the role and contribution of communication management in corporate operations and processes, such as innovation. This is largely due to the paucity of data and evidence. On the other hand, communication department contribution remains ambiguous, as noted by Zerfass and Volk (2018, p.398), due to the infrequent examination of communication departments as a unit of analysis.

This paper is a work-in-progress that aims to fill a gap in the literature. On the one hand, it presents a brief literature review on corporate social innovation (CSI) and strategic communication, highlighting the novelty of the CSI topic and the need to explore the communication contribution. The paper contributes to current scholarship efforts to further explore communication and practitioners’ role in organizational process: it proposes a conceptual and analytical framework aimed to conduct empirical research by identifying its key elements. Further avenues for research are highlighted in the discussion section.

Purpose: Especially in times of turbulence and uncertainty, employees need to be supported to act and make decisions in the best possible way. Internal communication is an important means of demonstrating responsibility for employees and supporting their empowerment. Empowerment itself is linked to important internal communication goals, such as motivation or engagement. However, research on employee empowerment in internal communication research has been limited, and there is a gap in how empowerment can be influenced by internal communication. This paper explores how empowerment can be measured in a survey and influenced by internal communication.

Design/methodology: The paper presents the results of a representative online survey conducted in the summer of 2022 among non-executive employees in German private and public corporations with at least 50 employees (n = 606).

Findings: Our results show that the quality and quantity of both executive and peer-to-peer communication have an impact on empowerment and its subdimensions. For example, the quality of peer-to-peer communication positively influences feelings of integration and overall empowerment, while the quality of executive communication has a strong positive effect on not only the above-mentioned dimensions, but also on the feeling of influence. In our study, we also develop an empowerment scale that can be used for future internal communication research.

Originality: The paper strengthens our thus far limited understanding of the impact of internal communication on employee empowerment, focusing on the domains of executive and peer-to-peer communication, and offers implications for the theoretical and empirical analysis and practice of internal communication.