Relationship Management with Managers of Countrywide Offices of SEESA: A Case Study

Employees are a crucial stakeholder group for organisations since they determine the degree to which they achieve their goals. It is therefore necessary to build strong relationships with the workforce to encourage employee engagement, which implies that employees’ individual goals are aligned to those of the organisation. To build strong relationships, internal communication should be managed strategically. However, when an organisation has offices around the country, internal relationship management can be impeded, which adversely affects the entity attaining its goals. In this qualitative study, the case of SEESA, a national labour law organisation specialising in providing legal services to employers, was investigated to determine the way in which it manages relationships with its nationwide managers. A mixed-method approach was followed, using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to gather data. The findings indicated that, despite studies elsewhere indicating a communication and relationship building strategy as a prerequisite for building strong organisation-employee relationships, the outcomes of such relationships can be present without a formal internal communication strategy. This can occur provided the organisation is inclined towards a symmetrical world view, has an open culture and encourages two-way communication with top management. Suggestions for managing relationships with employees in nationwide offices are made.     

Non-verbal and paralinguistic political communication in sport: an analysis of images of Springbok rugby

Non-verbal communication as a subfield of communication sciences has received increased attention in scholarly publications over the past few decades. Various scholars in the field, such as Real (1975), Ekman (1993), Lunenburg (2010), Garber (2011) and Krauss, Chen and Chawla (2015), emphasise the importance of non-verbal communication in generating, processing and channelling information. Not only facial expressions but also gestures and body language are deemed important. Studies by Real (1975) found that sport plays a crucial role in identity formation and the transmission of meaning and values. In South African sport, rugby-football in particular was used to reflect Afrikaner political prowess and masculinity, and the Afrikaner’s growing influence and dominance. As Salah, Sebe and Gevers (2012) indicate, non-verbal communication should be studied within the context that frames such communication; therefore, their multi-modal approach, used in conjunction with non-verbal communication, is vital for this discussion. In this article, the broader, more inclusive contextual approaches of Salah, Sebe and Gevers (2012) and Lunenburg (2010) are employed to analyse seven iconic photographic images which are steeped in the political dynamics of the period. After focusing on the theoretical aspects of non-verbal communication underpinning the study, the photographs are analysed as examples of impactful non-verbal communication.     

An Integrated Model for Communicating Within and About Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have two main objectives, namely, contributing to sustainable development; and adding strategic value for organisations. These objectives imply that organisations should communicate about CSR initiatives with stakeholders to add strategic value, whilst also communicating within CSR with the beneficiaries of these initiatives to contribute to sustainable development. In the field of CSR communication, however, the majority of the literature focuses on communication about CSR, while communication with the beneficiaries within CSR is often overlooked. This article presents an integrated model for communication both within and about CSR initiatives. The constructs of such integrated communication are analysed in order to identify similarities and point out differences. The ultimate aim is to present a holistic model for CSR communication that covers the content, nature and aims of such communication. The model is based on a literature study involving the two-way symmetrical approach, the reflective paradigm, strategic communication management and the participatory approach to communication for social change. Integrating communication within and about CSR in a single model is a complex undertaking, which entails incorporating constructs of communication from diverse theoretical fields flowing from different meta-theoretical assumptions. To date, this model is the first attempt to integrate communication within and about CSR on a theoretical level.     

Organizations,Credibility, and the Psychology of Collective Action

Political organizations frequently attempt to recruit sympathetic citizens to support their causes. Doing so requires communicating credibility—that is, persuading potential new supporters that they can actually achieve the goals they set out to achieve. In this article we investigate two of the predominant kinds of information that organizations might use to establish credibility: retrospective information (about past successes) and prospective information (about future plans). Using one field experiment and one survey experiment, we find that retrospective information fails to increase people’s willingness to spend scarce resources supporting political organizations. We find that this occurs because information about past successes suggests that the organization can succeed without any additional help. In contrast, we find that prospective information motivates new participants to become active.     

Introduction: Social Media,Political Marketing and the 2016 U.S. Election

This essay introduces the contributions of the volume “Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 U. S. Election.” Using a variety of methodological approaches, the authors investigate the communication strategies of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president together with the responses of their audience. Collectively, this research offers insights into how new communication technologies are changing both political marketing and the ways candidates and voters interact.     

Participatory Communication,Theatre and Peace: Performance as a Tool for Change at the End of Conflict

This article presents insights on a participatory theatre initiative implemented in Kenya, with the aim of understanding the changes that were initiated towards the re-establishment of peace between communities. The project was carried out in the aftermath of the post-election violence that took place in the country between 2007 and 2008. Amani People’s Theatre organised a number of theatre-based activities adopting a participatory approach, which ensured the involvement of community members from different tribes. Participants used the plays to re-enact the events, experienced during the conflict and the issues that still affected their communities as a result of those events, and worked together on finding solutions. The article begins with a literature review on Theatre for Development and its progress towards a more participatory approach. This is followed by an introduction of the project and the context in which it took place. The study design and Theory of Change developed for the analysis are then presented, opening the path to a discussion of the findings generated through that framework. Lastly, final reflections bring to light a number of issues that must be considered when working with participatory theatre in peace interventions.     

Post-Feminist Spectatorship and the Girl Effect: “Go ahead,really imagine her”

Women and girls are currently positioned as highly visible subjects of global governance and development, from the agendas of the United Nations and the World Bank to the corporate social responsibility campaigns of Nike, Goldman Sachs and Coca Cola. This paper examines the representations of empowerment in visual (image and video) material from the Nike Foundation’s ‘Girl Effect’ campaign. Drawing on the works of Angela McRobbie and Lilie Chouliaraki, I suggest that this campaign is reflective of a mode of ‘post-feminist spectatorship’ that is now common to corporatised development discourses; it is manifested both in terms of the conservative mode of neoliberal empowerment proposed for distant others and the mode of ironic spectatorship imagined for the viewer. I conclude that the relations constructed in the ‘Girl Effect’ campaign between the (empowered) Western spectator and the (yet-to-be-empowered) Third World Girl work to erode bonds of solidarity and entrench structural inequalities by positioning economically empowered girls as the key to global poverty eradication.     

Public relations for public affairs

The term ‘public affairs’ has now become a much‐discussed topic in continental Europe's political and economic circles, including Germany and Austria. The problem is that few people really understand just what the term means. Many people have the impression that ‘public affairs’ is another way of describing lobbying. Others perceive it as classic public relations. In Europe many decision makers of the business world lack the specific knowledge of policy making; however, until now just a few such executives have taken advantage of the real opportunities opened up by using the services of professional public affairs consulting. Communications companies in Europe are now offering public affairs consulting as part of their services, with increasing success. The first task to make public affairs better known in Europe therefore must be public relations for public affairs. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Educational figures as models for empathetic communication at school： An exploratory examination of an integrative assessment model

This paper presents an exploratory examination of a methodology deliberated to quantify empathetic modeling in Israeli schools. Approximately half a dozen disciples and 3-5 teachers in each of 102 elementary and high-schools from various regions of Israel, affiliated with different educational sectors, participated in the study, which was conducted by 40 well trained interviewers. Using sophisticated algorithms, integrative scores were extracted in order to represent each school＇s pupils-teachers fit in viewing the empathetic approach by the school＇s leading educational figures. The results are conceived as indicative of the viability of the to-be-evaluated assessment method and the construct of school-empathy. Applied implications are suggested and continued research deliberated to test the hypothesis of an inverse causal connection between school-empathy, and school-violence is proposed.     

Social media and political communication in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament

Social media play an increasingly important part in the communication strategies of political campaigns by reflecting information about the policy preferences and opinions of political actors and their public followers. In addition, the content of the messages provides rich information about the political issues and the framing of those issues during elections, such as whether contested issues concern Europe or rather extend pre-existing national debates. In this study, we survey the European landscape of social media using tweets originating from and referring to political actors during the 2014 European Parliament election campaign. We describe the language and national distribution of the messages, the relative volume of different types of communications, and the factors that determine the adoption and use of social media by the candidates. We also analyze the dynamics of the volume and content of the communications over the duration of the campaign with reference to both the EU integration dimension of the debate and the prominence of the most visible list-leading candidates. Our findings indicate that the lead candidates and their televised debate had a prominent influence on the volume and content of communications, and that the content and emotional tone of communications more reflects preferences along the EU dimension of political contestation rather than classic national issues relating to left-right differences.