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When the concepts of organization-public relationships and organizational reputation are integrated in a model, the role of public relations in demonstrating its value can be captured more clearly than when there is a separate focus on each of the concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to integrate the concepts of relational outcomes and reputation in a single model. Survey research was used to collect data, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to empirically test the causal relations between variables of interest. In the causal model, relational outcomes are hypothesized to predict reputation, taking into account the exogenous influences of publics’ communication behaviors, personal experience, and familiarity with the organizations studied. The proposed structural equation model had tenable data-model fits across all organizations studied, supporting most of the hypotheses proposed in the study. More specifically, the research produced the following important results. First, this study found a significant, positive effect of relational outcomes on organizational reputation for all organizations studied. Second, the results of this study demonstrated the relevance of the proposed antecedents of relational outcomes and reputation. Third, the study found a stronger effect of communication behaviors on relational outcomes than the effect of familiarity. Limitations and suggestions for the future research were discussed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, John Bicket and Sanjit Biswas took a leave from their graduate research at MIT to start a networking company called Meraki, which eventually grew to a fast-growing, profitable company acquired by Cisco in 2012 for $1.2 billion. In this talk, Sanjit will recount the history of Meraki, from the Roofnet project at MIT CSAIL, to bootstrapping the business from the sales of their first product, to scaling up to over 500 employees. He will also share some of the lessons learned along the way, and will discuss some similarities between building computer systems as Ph.D. students and building a company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal experience is directly relevant to the development of recognition or attitudes. Unlike most previous studies that have treated people as identical objects, this study extends the current knowledge of the influence of personal experience on attitude formation by incorporating individual traits. Using a large-scale household survey dataset from China, this article empirically tests the hypothesized relationships among personal experience, individual traits and attitude formation, particularly examining the interaction effects between personal experience and individual traits. People with personal experience in healthcare services in the prior year report attitudes toward municipal healthcare sectors that differ significantly from the attitudes of people without such personal experience. Individuals with better health status tend to show more positive attitudes toward municipal service systems than individuals with poor health status. Personal experience moderates the relationship between self-reported health status and citizens' attitudes toward municipal governments. The influence of self-reported health status on citizen attitude is stronger for inexperienced individuals than for experienced individuals. In addition, this article also examines the contribution of satisfaction with healthcare service encounter to citizen attitudes toward municipal healthcare sector, which reaffirm that both personal experience of and satisfaction with public service greatly influences citizens' attitudes toward and trust in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]