Managing the communicative organization : a qualitative analysis of knowledge-intensive companies

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Managing the communicative organization : a qualitative analysis of knowledgeintensive companies © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited Accepted version (Final draft) Pekkala, Kaisa Pekkala, K. (2020). Managing the communicative organization : a qualitative analysis of knowledge-intensive companies. Corporate Communications, 25(3), 551-571. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij-02-2020-0040 2020 This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Managing the communicative organization : a qualitative analysis of knowledgeintensive companies © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited Accepted version (Final draft) Pekkala, Kaisa Pekkala, K. (2020). Managing the communicative organization : a qualitative analysis of knowledge-intensive companies. Corporate Communications, 25(3), 551-571. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij-02-2020-0040 2020 MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 1 Managing the Communicative Organization: A Qualitative Analysis of Knowledgeintensive Companies The increase in employees’ communicative role in organizations has been acknowledged in the literature in recent years (Andersson, 2019; Heide and Simonsson, 2011; Kim and Rhee, 2011; Madsen and Verhoeven, 2019; Mazzei, 2010; Pekkala and Luoma-aho, 2017; van Zoonen et al., 2018). The emergence of digital media, particularly social media, has enabled employees to communicate across organizational boundaries about their work, profession and organization (Men, 2014). Employees’ communication behavior (ECB) in digital media has been linked to organizational reputation (Kim and Rhee, 2011; Helm, 2011), the promotion of corporate products and services (Dreher, 2014), social selling (Warren, 2016), employer branding (Mangold and Miles, 2007), organizational resilience (Vos, 2017), strategizing (Whittington et al., 2011) and the generation of new knowledge (Mazzei, 2014). Yet despite the increased interest in ECB, its antecedents and contributions to organizational performance, there is very little understanding with respect to the ways in which companies manage employees’ workrelated communication in social media. However, there has been a long-standing consensus among management scholars, particularly in the area of behavioral management, that employees’ performance in the organizational context is very much dependent on conditions created by managerial work, which either increases or decreases employees’ motivation (e.g. Herzberg, 1966 and McGregor, 1960). The integration of behavioral management theories and communication management literature has been lacking due to the prevailing paradigmatic thinking in which corporate communication and its management has been the exclusive task of the members of the MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 2 dominant coalition, meaning organizational leaders and communication practitioners (Grunig, 1992). A recent literature review by Zerfass and Volk (2018) revealed that previous communication management research has paid comparatively little attention to the communication function as a unit of analysis. “Instead, a greater focus has been laid on the professional roles of communication practitioners and their individual strategic contribution to the corporation” (Zerfass and Volk, 2018, p. 399). As a consequence, many key patterns in communication management systems and structures remain unexplored (Moss et al., 2017). Additionally, the extant literature on communication management, particularly in the area of corporate communication and strategic communication, has largely been built on an approach in which organizations are univocal and consistency is the key guiding principle of communication management to external publics (Christensen and Cornelissen, 2011), while employees’ communicative role has been relevant mainly in the internal organizational context. This paradigm is changing, however, as employees are increasingly taking on the role of active communicators (Agresta and Bonin, 2011; Huang et al., 2013; Madsen and Verhoeven, 2019). One of the novel avenues that builds on the assumption that organizations are increasingly multivocal is the research area of the “communicative organization,” which perceives each employee as a potential communicator in today’s mediatized and polyphonic environment (Kuhn, 2008; Schoeneborn, 2011). The present study builds on this limited knowledge about the management of employees’ work-related communication and argues that by integrating behavioral management as a subarea of the communication management discussion, we are able to theorize communication management in an era where organizations operate through multiple voices of employees as active communicators. The term management is broadly defined here as including leadership (Mintzberg, 2009) and is understood as the process of working with and through individuals, groups and other resources (such as technology) to accomplish MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 3 organizational goals. Ultimately, management is perceived here as enacting authority to create conditions for individual behavior in an organizational context and hence, it is seen as a design function (Kuhn, 2008). Communication management is an integral part of any organization, as organizations can only achieve their goals and objectives through the coordinated efforts of their members (Adler, 1999). The objective of this paper is to explore how employees’ work-related communication is managed in knowledge-intensive organizations and the paper is organized as follows: First, the literature related to communication management and ECB is reviewed and key theoretical approaches and concepts are introduced. Second, in the empirical part of the paper, the methods and the sample used in the exploratory study are described, before presenting and discussing the findings. Literature review The literature review addresses the core constructs of the study, including ECB, the multivocal organizational communication system (MOCS) and management of the communicative organization (MCO). Following the “communicative organization” approach (Kuhn, 2008; Schoeneborn, 2011), the paper focuses on finding answers to how organizations through their communication management create organizational conditions that enable and motivate employees to communicate professionally in social media. To this end, the paper draws on corporate communication, public relations, organizational communication and the management literature. Before providing a more detailed review of the management literature, the paper focuses on the literature related to ECB in organizations and the communication context since organizational behavior is always situational in nature (Meyer et al., 2010). MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 4 Employees’ communication behavior (ECB) The emergence of post-bureaucratic and knowledge-intensive organizations (Alvesson, 2004) and the increased use of social media among employees has shifted communication power (Men, 2014) and the responsibility (Andersson, 2019; Gulbrandsen and Just, 2016) for corporate communication outcomes to individual employees communicating on behalf of their employers. This has recently prompted scholars to study ECB, including individual and organizational antecedents that enable positive communication behavior [e.g. selfenhancement (Lee, 2020); the employee–organization relationship (Kang and Sung, 2017); symmetrical internal communication (Men, 2014)]; the key processes in ECB (e.g. megaphoning and scouting, Kim and Rhee, 2011); the consequences of social media use in organizational contexts and identifying important organizational (e.g. reputation, Helm, 2011; Dreher, 2014) and individual outcomes (e.g. job performance, Cao et al., 2016). Kim and Rhee (2011) conceptualized ECB into two categories, which they termed megaphoning and scouting. They defined megaphoning as “employees’ positive or negative external communication behaviors about their organization” (p. 246) and scouting as “employees’ voluntary communication efforts to bring relevant information to the organization” (p. 247). Positive megaphoning has also been conceptualized as employee advocacy (Men, 2014) and defined as “the voluntary promotion or defense of a company, its products or brands by an employee externally” (Men, 2014, p. 262). An employee advocate may have a variety of ways to communicate on behalf of their employers. Vos (2017), for example, stated that individuals can contribute to their organizations in social media by drawing attention to a topic, influencing the direction of the debate, showing accountability to maintain legitimacy or gain acceptance, educating publics and engaging social media users to provide input and participate in joint problem-solving (Vos, 2017, pp. 18–19). Through these activities, employees enact important communicative roles through which they embody, MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 5 promote and defend their organizations, scout for information and insights about the operating environment and build and maintain relationships with stakeholders (Madsen and Verhoeven, 2019). The Multivocal Organizational Communication System (MOCS) The emergence of employees’ work-related communication through the use of digital media with an increasing number of organizational communicators is changing organizational power structures (Riemer et al., 2015). Communication in the organizational context is argued to be changing from being exclusively univocal in nature toward being multivocal (Huang et al., 2013). As employees from different parts of the organization are increasingly communicating both inside and outside organizational boundaries, and hence the source of the voice is no longer centrally located and legitimized by the management or communications function, it is increasingly stemming from individual employees’ communication with stakeholders across those boundaries (Agresta and Bonin, 2011; Huang et al., 2013). Huang et al. (2015) defined univocality as an institutional, formal, centralized and mostly top-down mode of communication, while, conversely, multivocality refers to a more usercentric, distributed, informal and inherently participative mode of communication that creates polyphony. In this paper, the term univocal corporate communication is used to describe communication from a single source, initiated by the organization’s central communications team or leadership, which has traditionally been seen as formal corporate communication. Huang et al. (2015) defined the content of univocal communication as organization-published content (OPC), referring to content generated by small teams “under the guidance of senior management” (p. 51). A multivocal mode of communication is, instead, based on user-generated content (UGC) and refers to organization members using MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 6 their personal voice and character and engaging in dialog with stakeholders internally or externally on topics that relate to the organization’s brand, products and organizational culture, which has traditionally been seen as informal corporate communication. Multivocal communication is thus based on UGC (Huang et al., 2015), namely, content “created outside of professional routines and practices” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). This paper provides the more specific definition of employee-generated content, which refers to content generated by employees concerning their work, career, profession or employer. Recent research suggests that in digital media environments organizational reputation becomes coproduced, requiring organizations “to embrace the same creative style of expression favored by their audiences” (Etter et al., 2019, p. 47) as “social media users are a multitude of actors, whose motivations, sources of information and constraints are comparatively more diverse” (ibid., p. 34). Moreover, Christensen and Cornelissen (2011, p. 395) suggested that corporate communication is no longer an exclusively managerial project but the “ideal that is shared and kept alive by many different actors inside and outside the organization.” This mode of communication, where many different actors communicate on behalf of the organization simultaneously, is termed as the MOCS in this paper, consisting of both organizationand employee-generated contents. Management of the Communicative Organization (MCO) Despite the increased importance of employees’ communicative role and its potentially strong effects on an organization’s reputation (Miles and Mangold, 2014; Helm, 2011; Mazzei, 2014), surprisingly little research has addressed the management practice of ECB in social media. A vast majority of the existing literature and research focus on social media policies as instruments for management (Banghart et al., 2018; O’Connor et al., 2016; Parker et al., 2019) and very few empirical studies (e.g. Felix et al., 2017 and Walden, 2018) have MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 7 taken a broader “social media governance” approach to manage employees’ communication (e.g. Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012). However, this type of framework views individual employees and their identities quite narrowly – as members of an organization – either creating or diminishing organizational value, protecting or hurting the organization (Stohl et al., 2017) and does not take into account that employees’ advocacy behavior is voluntary in nature and requires organizational identification and job satisfaction (Van Dick et al., 2008) and thus, a positive employee–organization relationship (Kang and Sung, 2017). The governance model describes management practices conducted in many of today’s organizations but does not reveal why some organizations are more successful than others. Overall, the communication management literature has drawn for the most part on two management literature streams: strategic management and the excellence approach. According to both of these theoretical frameworks, employees have been seen as important assets for organizations but their motivation has not been the locus of the literature among these frameworks. Grunig’s (1992) excellence theory of public relations, inspired by the excellence management approach originated by Peters and Waterman (1982), “specifies how public relations makes organizations more effective” (Grunig, 1992, p. 27). The aim of the excellence approach is to strive for improvement and toward best practices. In addition to the excellence approach, in recent years, corporate communication and public relations have been increasingly practiced and theorized within the framework of strategic management (Macnamara and Zerfass, 2012). Strategic management is defined by Greene et al. (1985) as “a continuous process of thinking through the current mission of the organisation, thinking through the current environmental conditions, and then combining these elements by setting forth a guide for tomorrow’s decisions and results” (p. 536). Strategic management has resulted in dividing management activities between strategic and operational management (Zerfass and Volk, 2018). A recent attempt to create a strategic MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 14 Conversely, when the culture and norms enhanced control, the focus was on guiding and creating mechanisms to control employees’ work-related communication. In these types of organizations, the management emphasizes consistency. As another communication professional put it: “I would say that these recent tech developments and all the tools we have in use allow almost anyone to do whatever they want. And it actually looks fine. The only problem is if the colors, graphics or tone of voice are not according to the guidelines. The way in which we want to be seen and perceived. Then it’s a problem.” (Interviewee 15) Moreover, the strategic orientation toward communication differed between companies. In some companies, communication was seen as a strategic goal in itself, while in one organization it was seen as a tool for achieving results in other areas and in another it was not on the priority list at all when considering areas of development in that specific organization. Organizations also differed in how they had structured their communication and related roles and responsibilities. In some organizations, the communication responsibility was distributed among all members of the organization and seen as a part of employees’ work role. In other organizations, the ownership of corporate communication resided in the communications department, which considered itself as ultimately responsible for driving the communication activities and the employees’ role was considered to be more instrumental. Moreover, leadership commitment and support varied across different organizations. The influence of organizational leaders on the communication culture and its development work was highlighted by all interviewees but the actual supporting activities differed between the organizations. As one interviewee stated: “If employees themselves had initiated this internally, it would have met with resistance from the top management and communications department. But the top management were so committed to supporting this. This is not to say that commitment alone MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 15 would make the change happen, but it is almost a prerequisite for doing this successfully.” (Interview 4) Finally, the novelty of the phenomenon also affected the level of maturity in managing employee communication in social media. In some organizations the strategic decision to engage all employees in organizational communication had already been made several years prior, while in others the work had just started. Hence, the organizational competence in functioning as a multivocal system differed. Additionally, in some organizations, the development work had been systematic and in others more ad hoc. So the level of experience and intensity of the development work differed between organizations. Different managerial approaches With regard to the organizational differentiating factors mentioned above, three patterns of managerial processes were identified, which were named “individual-,” “corporateand “business-oriented approaches.” The data structure of these three different managerial approaches is presented in Figure 2. Figure 2. The data structure of three different managerial approaches First-order concepts Second-order themes Aggregate dimensions • Trusting and respecting professionalism of individual employees • Viewing individual differences as a richness Guiding beliefs among communication leadership Individual-oriented • Aiming for efficiency and quality in communication • Focus on consistency of communication • Communication team having ownership of organizational communication Corporate-oriented • Viewing organizational communication as a part of business and everyone’s work Business-oriented • Willingness to make expertise visible • Willingness to attract new talent • Willingness to acquire new knowledge Individual-oriented MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 16 Individual-oriented approach This approach relied on the individuality and self-responsibility of employees and the managerial focus was on enabling individual employees to empower and educate themselves. In organizations applying this type of management approach, the hierarchical structure was fairly flat and employees trusted each other’s abilities to conduct the work-related tasks. The drivers for engaging employees to communicate about their work and act as organizational advocates were the willingness to be perceived as an insightful organization and to make their employees’ expertise visible. Such companies were eager to acquire the best talent from the job market, to which end employees’ work-related communication was considered important in attracting new talent to join the company. For existing employees, • Willingness to improve organizational visibility and discoverability • Willingness to enhance employer brand • Being aware that communication department resources are insufficient to operate in contemporary media landscape • Being worried that other organizations are more advanced • Being worried about employees harming the reputation Drivers for development of employees’ communication Corporate-oriented • Willingness to create new business • Strategic decision to be on the cutting edge in organizational communication • Understanding that many voices have a greater effect than one single voice Business-oriented • Increasing awareness • Creating community • Communicating expectations • Allocating time • Providing tools and content • Training • Coaching and supporting • Providing feedback and rewarding Employees’ communication management processes Individual-oriented Corporate-oriented Business-oriented • Dependence on active and skillful individuals Perceived challenges in managing employees’ work-related communication Individual-oriented • Difficult to engage individuals Corporate-oriented • Requires plenty of work and time to make this approach function well Business-oriented MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 17 social media also offered a place to gain new knowledge and to stay up-to-date on industry news and events. Communication management was focused on enhancing individual employees, both in terms of their expertise and their personality. All communication about the organization was based on promoting individual employees and their expertise, with corporate webpages featuring employees prominently. “Our Internet pages are structured in such a way that every piece of content our employees create is linked to the individual who produced it, and this is the way we aim to generate traffic between different platforms and tools.” (Interviewee 2) According to the interviewees, employees had a great deal of autonomy regarding how they performed their work. There was strong resistance toward manuals and guidelines so the management approach respected the organizational culture in this matter, and instead of creating policies and procedures, the emphasis was on inspiring and encouraging employees and enhancing the uniqueness of the organization and each individual’s important role in it. This was summed up as follows: “We have strong resistance to all manuals. We communicate a lot about our communication objectives and we always explain what we are doing in our department in our communications and on our marketing sites. And we try to inspire people by showing our passion and by communicating our achievements and results.” (Interviewee 2) Overall, such organizations valued their employees as important assets. They were also highly dependent on their experts and if an active and insightful communicator left the organization, it was difficult to find a replacement. The management approach was also affected by certain constraints because the culture and norms dominated behaviors. Hence, it took time and effort and required patience and persistence from the communication professionals to achieve the intended results. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 18 Corporate-oriented approach In the corporate-oriented management approach, the communications department played a central role in driving organizational communication initiatives and processes. Many of the management processes were applied in a paternalistic manner. However, the managerial work differed between companies depending on the extent to which organizational leaders were committed to supporting employees as active communicators and signaled the importance of this through their own communication and example. Companies where leaders were more committed showed higher levels of trust toward employees’ ability to communicate at work. When employees were seen as trusted advocates, they were trained, supported and guided to communicate actively. On the other hand, when leaders were less committed, the focus of managerial work was on preparing for risks and creating guidelines for employees to follow and systematic processes that would encourage employees to communicate about their work did not exist. As one interviewee from a company where leaders were highly committed to employee communication stated: “We (the communications department) help our people to write those blogs, we create templates and background materials for them. We help in editing and fine-tuning their content so we kind of support them in content production. When the content is ready, we advise them on how to send it out with ready-made post alternatives so it is easy for them to share content. We also use a tool called Smarp, which allows people to see what is going on and to share content easily in their social media networks. For both social media and Smarp, we have regular training sessions in which everyone can participate, and then we are available afterwards so whenever anyone needs support we help with writing, and guide them on how to produce different types of content such as blogs. We offer consultation ourselves, MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 19 or then we offer support by providing external writers who create the content on their behalf. So we really offer whatever they want in terms of support, and we never abandon them.” (Interviewee 8) The communications department had a central role in providing support, as well as in driving the communication initiatives and making sure that things happened. All work-related content such as blog posts and articles were published through the employee advocacy platform by members of the communications department. This allowed the communications professionals to check and verify that the content was in accordance with the required guidelines. On the other hand, the communications department was able to support employees in their communications efforts by providing draft content and posts that employees could then modify and share among their networks. When the leadership commitment was low, there was an apparent lack of trust among organizational leaders toward employees’ ability to communicate on behalf of their organizations and the focus of the managerial work was on content. Employees were asked to follow detailed guidelines and policies, as one interviewee stated: “We have so many existing policies that staff may not always be familiar with all of them. Employees are required to undergo code of conduct training every year, part of which is a reminder about the basic policy concerning how you talk about your company and that you need to be objective when doing so. And that when acting as a representative of your company, you should not put your own views forward. And that those things should always be kept in mind and separate from each other.” (Interviewee 15) Overall, in these types of companies, the working culture was hectic and customer work and other areas of organizational development were often prioritized above communication among the leadership and employees in general. The interviewees argued that they felt that communication was often regarded as an add-on to employees’ daily work. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 20 They reported that it was difficult to engage employees in communicating actively, although they were supported and guided. One of the explanations for this inactivity could be that the employees perceived work-related communication as an extra duty. The managerial strategy and practices supported the view that the ultimate responsibility for and ownership of the communication was still in the hands of the communication professionals. Business-oriented approach Within organizations that adopted a business-oriented management approach, social media communication was perceived as an integral part of doing business. Such organizations had a strong vision for the future as far as organizational communication was concerned and employees were perceived as integrated assets in making this vision a reality. The communication management was therefore based on future insight, an understanding of technological affordances, being connected to employees’ daily work and the organizational culture. This means that communication leads were well aware of recent developments and opportunities in the communication environment, as one interviewee stated: “I think that our Head of Communications at that time identified some silent signals about where the world is going. Actually not only about where the world is going, but in which direction we should develop it.” (Interviewee 4) The driver for the systematic development of employees’ work-related communication and supportive management practices was the objective to become a thought leader and, ultimately, to gain new business through being perceived as a premier partner in the respective industry. These expectations were communicated internally to all employees. As one member of staff put it: “I would say that we are now in a very desirable situation. We have been working hard during the past two and a half years to change our culture in such a way that communication MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 21 is everyone’s responsibility and belongs to everyone. We used to have a strong mindset about communication being handled exclusively in the communications department, but now we are shifting toward the mindset that communication is everyone’s responsibility.” (Interviewee 16) One of the early decisions made by the communication management was the decision to communicate about shared responsibility and the discussion was always linked to business objectives. Although everyone was perceived as a communicator, individuals were encouraged to find their own style, channels and interest areas and to be their authentic selves. One interviewee expressed it this way: “From the very beginning, we launched the idea that communication is on everyone’s desk and part of that was the so-called distributed content management model, which means that the communications department does not update all channels and webpages exclusively. . . We saw that employees had the knowledge and that they are on top of that substance and should take more responsibility for sharing it. For example, if product managers are responsible for making sure that their product is competitive, we think that part of that responsibility involves communicating about that product and its benefits. That created some resistance in the beginning and it has been a rocky road to becoming what we are today.” (Interviewee 3) The business-oriented management approach emphasized the systematic training and coaching of employees. The training sessions were often organized by the communications department and there was a dedicated person or team to coach employees. Interviewees also stated that more experienced peers were encouraged to act as mentors for less experienced employees. So the ownership of the development work was also shared between employees and the communications department. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 22 In addition to training and coaching, employees were supported in the event of problematic situations, for example. The change whereby employees became organizational advocates posed new risks and challenges, which required the communication management to create new supporting practices. For example, an employee’s personal messages in social media could be construed as representing the organizational view, even though that was not the intention. In some cases, social media users could tag official company accounts and company leadership and try to cast employees in a negative light. These kinds of situations could be very stressful for employees and organizational support might duly be needed. As one interviewee explained: “These situations are very challenging from the staff’s point of view if, for example, someone has a different opinion than our employee and then our employee’s tweet is retweeted, and there are comments to the effect that people should look at what the employee is doing by himself. It is quite a difficult situation for that employee, as he might be thinking that he has messed up and feel scared that will he lose his job and there will be consequences. I have always tried to call the employee in these circumstances and say that you have not done anything wrong, and that you should not be worried about that.” (Interviewee 4) If mistakes were made, they were seen as opportunities for improvement, and informing employees about their mistakes was handled with sensitivity to ensure that they would not feel apprehensive about communicating in the future. As one interviewee pointed out: “I always aim for caution because if the situation is handled in the wrong way, and the emphasis is on the mistake and what the employee has done wrong, they might become paralyzed and unwilling to communicate anymore. What we absolutely do not want is for anyone to become afraid of communicating.” (Interviewee 4) MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 23 Overall, the business-oriented approach of managing employee communication called for a visionary mindset and plenty of work by the communications department to get started. According to the interviewees, the hard work paid off when employees bought into the idea and started to see communication as a part of their work, which in turn motivated other employees and changed the organizational culture and norms in the long-term. Management processes in different managerial approaches The data showed that communication management processes, including increasing awareness and creating a common understanding, creating community, communicating expectations, allocating time for communication, providing tools and content, training, coaching and supporting, providing feedback and rewarding were used differently depending on the managerial approach adopted in each organization. The different processes and their application (derived from open coding) are presented in Figure 3. The processes are divided into two categories: enablers (processes that enable employees’ intended communication behavior) and motivators (processes that can increase employees’ motivation to communicate) as they affect behavior in different ways, following Herzberg’s (1966) dualfactor theory. According to this theory, the maintenance factors as such – called enablers in this model – do not increase performance but, if absent, can decrease employee output. On the other hand, motivators can have a positive effect on behavior and serve to motivate employees to enhance their performance. Figure 3. The different management processes and their application MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 30 Figure 5. The different management frameworks, paradigms and their locus Discipline Communication management framework Applied management paradigms Locus of management Definitions Public Relations Public Relations Excellence approach Relationships between organization and its publics “Public relations is a mechanism by which organizations and publics interact in a pluralistic system to manage their interdependence and conflict” (Grunig, 1992, p. 9) Strategic management Organizational decisions and communication programs “It is important to view public relations as a strategic management function rather than as a purely interpretative function by explaining its role in strategic management and organizational governance.” (Kim, Hung-Baesecke, Yang, Grunig, 2013, p. 202) Behavioral management Publics “To understand the formation and evolution of reputation, it is necessary to understand the causes, processes, and consequences of communicative behaviors of active publics or highly involved behavioral relationship holders.” (Kim, Hung-Baesecke, Yang, Grunig, 2013, p. 207) Communicative Organization Behavioral management Communicators (Individual members of organizations) Management framework to design organizational conditions that enable and motivate organizational members to communicate about their work, profession and organization. Corporate Communication Corporate Communication Strategic management Corporate communication (communication and symbols) Corporate communication being an instrument of management by means of which all consciously used forms of internal and external communication are “harmonized” as effectively and efficiently as possible, so as to create a favourable basis for relationships with groups upon which the company is dependent (van Riel, 1995, p. 26). The vision of contemporary corporate communication, in other words, is to manage all communications under one banner (Christensen and Cornelissen 2011, p. 386). MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 31 Limitations and future research directions As with every research project, this study has its limitations. First, the study was conducted among knowledge-intensive companies that are dependent on their employees’ expertise. The decision to focus on such companies can be justified by arguing that as prior research focusing on managing employee communication is rare, the most informative sample could be obtained by selecting a field in which employees’ expertise and corresponding communication would be a critical success factor and in which informants would be expected to have experience in managing employees’ communication. Luckily this was the case, and the managerial approaches uncovered were even more varied than expected. Second, the study was conducted in Finland only and all of the interviewees were responsible for national communication programs, although some of the organizations were part of international companies. It would therefore be interesting to know how the proposed framework could be applied to other cultural contexts. Practical implications and conclusions This study provides insights into communication management and employees’ work-related communication in knowledge-intensive companies. First of all, the article identifies the organizational differentiating factors that affect the way management is conducted in each organization. To this end, the article pinpoints three different management approaches, namely, individual-oriented approach, which is used in organizations with flat hierarchies, autonomy and shared leadership; corporate-oriented approach, which is used in organizations that have a hierarchical structure and which are willing to exert some level of control over employees’ communication and business-oriented approach, which is used in companies that have made a strategic decision to engage employees in using social media at work to realize MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 32 the full potential of the digital communication technologies available. In addition, the article describes management processes designed to enable and motivate employees’ work-related communication and thus provides a good starting point for companies willing to develop their managerial work in this area. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 33 References Adler, S. (1999), “Building better bureaucracies”, The Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 36-49. Agresta, S. and Bonin, B.B. (2011), Perspectives on Social Media Marketing, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA. Alvesson, M. (2004), Knowledge Work and Knowledge-Intensive Firms, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Andersson, R. (2019), “Employee communication responsibility: its antecedents and implications for strategic communication management”, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 60-75. Banghart, S., Etter, M. and Stohl, C. (2018), “Organizational boundary regulation through social media policies”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 337373. Bryman, A. (2016), Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford. Cao, X., Guo, X., Vogel, D. and Zhang, X. (2016), “Exploring the influence of social media on employee work performance”, Internet Research, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 529-545. Christensen, L.T. and Cornelissen, J. (2011), “Bridging corporate and organizational communication: review, development and a look to the future”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 383-414. Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985), Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York. Dreher, S. (2014), “Social media and the world of work: a strategic approach to employees’ participation in social media”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 344-356. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 34 Eisenberg, E. (1984), “Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 51, pp. 227-242. Etter, M., Ravasi, D. and Colleoni, E. (2019), “Social media and the formation of organizational reputation”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 28-52. Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P.A. and Hinsch, C. (2017), “Elements of strategic social media marketing: a holistic framework”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 70, pp. 118-126. Flick, U. (2007), Managing Quality in Qualitative Research, Sage, London. Gagne, M. and Deci, E.L. (2005), “Self-determination theory and work motivation”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 26, pp. 331-362. Gioia, D.A., Corley, K.G. and Hamilton, A.L. (2013), “Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: notes on the Gioia methodology”, Organizational Research Methods, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 15-31. Greene, C.N., Adam, E.A. Jr and Ebert, R.J. (1985), Management for Effective Performance, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Grunig, J.E. (Ed.) (1992), Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. Gulbrandsen, I.T. and Just, S.N. (2016), “In the wake of new media: connecting the who with the how of strategizing communication”, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 1-15. Heide, M. and Simonsson, C. (2011), “Putting coworkers in the limelight: new challenges for communication professionals”, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 201-220. Helm, S. (2011), “Employees’ awareness of their impact on corporate reputation”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 64 No. 7, pp. 657-663. Herzberg, F. (1966), Work and the Nature of Man, World Publishing, Cleveland. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 35 Huang, J. Baptista, J. and Galliers, R. (2013), “Reconceptualizing rhetorical practices in organizations: the impact of social media on internal communications”, Information and Management, Vol. 50, pp. 112-124. Huang, J., Baptista, J. and Newell, S. (2015), “Communicational ambidexterity as a new capability to manage social media communication within organizations”, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 49-64. Kang, M. and Sung, M. (2017), “How symmetrical employee communication leads to employee engagement and positive employee communication behaviors: the mediation of employeeorganization relationships”, Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 82-102. Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M. (2010), “Users of the world, unite! the challenges and opportunities of social media”, Business Horizons, Vol. 53, pp. 59-68. Kim, J.-N. and Rhee, Y. (2011), “Strategic thinking about employee communication behavior (ECB) in public relations: testing the models of megaphoning and scouting effects in Korea”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 243-268. Kim, J.-N., Hung-Baesecke, F., Yang, S.-U. and Grunig, J.E. (2013), “A strategic management approach to reputation, relationships, and publics: the research heritage of the excellence theory”, in Carroll, C.E. (Ed.), The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation, WileyBlackwell, Chichester. Kuhn, T. (2008), “A communicative theory of the firm: developing an alternative perspective on intraorganizational power and stakeholder relationships”, Organization Studies, Vol. 29 Nos 8-9, pp. 1227-1254. Lee, Y. (2020), “Motivations of employees’ communicative behaviors on social media: individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors”, Internet Research, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 971-994. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 36 Lee, Y., Lee, J. and Hwang, Y. (2015), “Relating motivation to information and communication technology acceptance: Self-determination theory perspective”, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 51, pp. 18-428. Leonardi, P.M. and Vaast, E. (2017), “Social media and their affordances for organizing: a review and agenda for research”, The Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 150-188. Macnamara, J. and Zerfass, A. (2012), “Social media communication in organizations: the challenges of balancing openness, strategy, and management”, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 287-308. Madsen, V.T. and Verhoeven, J.W.M. (2019), “Big ideas in public relations research and practice”, in Frandsen, F., Johansen, W., Trench, R. and Romenti, S. (Eds), Advances in Public Relations and Communication Management, Emerald Group Publishing, available at: https://books.emeraldinsight. com/page/detail/Big-Ideas-in-PublicRelations-Research-and-Practice/?k=9781838675080. Mangold, W.G. and Miles, S.J. (2007), “The employee brand: Is yours an all-star?”, Business Horizons, Vol. 50 No. 5, pp. 423-433. McGregor, D. (1960), The Human Side of Enterprise, Mcgraw-Hill, New York. Meyer, R.D., Dalal, R.S. and Hermida, R. (2010), “A review and synthesis of situational strength in the organizational sciences”, Journal of Management, Vol. 36, pp. 121-140. Mazzei, A. (2010), “Promoting active communication behaviours through internal communication”, Corporate Communications, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 221-234. Mazzei, A. (2014), “Internal communication for employee enablement: strategies in American and Italian companies”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 82-95. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 37 Men, L.R. (2014), “Why leadership matters to internal communication: linking transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee outcomes”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 26, pp. 256-279. Miles, S.J. and Mangold, W.G. (2014), “Employee voice: untapped resource or social media time bomb?”, Business Horizons, Vol. 57, pp. 401-411. Mintzberg, H. (2009), Managing, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco. Mitchell, T. (1982), “Motivation: new directions for theory, research, and practice”, Academy of Management. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 8088. Moss, D., Likely, F., Sriramesh, K. and Ferrari, M.A. (2017), “Structure of the public relations/ communication department: key findings from a global study”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 43 No. 1, pp. 80-90. O’Connor, K.W., Schmidt, G.B. and Drouin, M. (2016), “Helping workers understand and follow social media policies”, Business Horizons, Vol. 59 No. 2, pp. 205-211. Parker, J.M., Marasi, S., James, K.W. and Wall, A. (2019), “Should employees be “dooced” for a social media post? The role of social media marketing governance”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 103, pp. 1-9. Pekkala, K. and Luoma-aho, V. (2017), “Looking back, looking forward: From spokespersons to employee advocates”, Paper Presented at 20th International Public Relations Research Conference. Conference Proceedings, pp. 268-279. Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H., Jr. (1982), In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, Harper & Row, New York. Riemer, K., Stieglitz, S. and Meske, C. (2015), “From top to bottom”, Business and Information Systems Engineering, Vol. 57 No. 3, pp. 197-212. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 38 Schaarschmidt, M., Walsh, G. and Ivens, S. (2015), “Perceived external reputation as a driver of organizational citizenship behavior: replication and extension”, Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 314-336. Schoeneborn, D. (2011), “Organization as communication: a Luhmannian perspective”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 663-689. Stohl, C., Etter, M., Banghart, S. and Dajung, W. (2017), “Social media policies: implications for contemporary notions of corporate social responsibility”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 142 No. 3, pp. 413-436. Treem, J.W. (2016), “How organizations communicate expertise without experts: practices and performances of knowledge-intensive firms”, Management Communication Quarterly: International Journal, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 503-531. Van Dick, R., van Knippenberg, D., Kerschreiter, R., Hertel, G. and Wieseke, J. (2008), “Interactive effects of work group and organizational identification on job satisfaction and extra-role behavior”, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 72 No. 3, pp. 388-399. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2007. 11.009. van Riel, C.B.M. (1995), Principles of Corporate Communication, Prentice-Hall, Hemel Hempstead. van Zoonen, W., Bartels, J., van Prooijen, A.-M. and Schouten, A. (2018), “Explaining online ambassadorship behaviors on Facebook and LinkedIn”, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 87, pp. 354-362. Vos, M. (2017), “Communication in turbulent times: exploring issue arenas and crisis communication to enhance organisational resilience”, University of Jyväskylä. Walden, J. (2018), “Guiding the conversation: a study of PR practitioner expectations for nonnominated employees’ social media use”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 423-437. MANAGING THE COMMUNICATIVE ORGANIZATION 39 Warren, C. (2016), “Social media and outbound ticket sales: examining social media strategies among top-performing salespeople”, Journal of Applied Sport Management, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 46-62. Whittington, R., Cailluet, L. and Yakis-Douglas, B. (2011), “Opening strategy: evolution of a precarious profession”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 531-544. Zerfass, A. and Volk, S.C. (2018), “How communication departments contribute to corporate success: the communications contributions framework”, Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 397-415.