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Charitable organisations are principled actors providing essential community services. However, due to some highly publicised charity scandals in recent years, they are under increased scrutiny today. This study explores the impact of negative publicity (i.e. publicly reported scandals) about charitable organisations on the contributions of regular donors and analyses the moderating role of email marketing communications as a key factor in counteracting the impact of negative publicity on donations. The results of analysing a sample of regular donors during the period 2013–2020 reveal that negative publicity about charities reduces the amount donated, and that this effect is stronger on the contributions of more frequent donors, who are potentially more sensitive to this publicity. This impact is softened by email marketing communications. The implications for the field of marketing management in charities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subvertising is a communication phenomenon aimed at eliciting a response from citizens to advertising messages, and provides tools to fight back on a symbolic battleground. Within the current communication paradigm, subvertising stands as a form of empowerment for a better informed and more participatory active audience. Subvertising practices provide a communication response to a corporate discourse that is considered by many collectives to be manipulative and excessive in its omnipresence. Given that subvertising is such a practical phenomenon, it seems relevant to review what theoretical contributions have been made and determine the current state of research into the subject. This article presents a scoping review of publications on subvertising from 1980 through to March 2020, the main objective being to determine the intellectual output and evolution of existing research, with in-depth analysis of the texts and studies identified. The review process was carried out by searching 11 national and international databases, using 19 keywords selected in a preliminary narrative phase. The results show the evolution of existing literature by country of publication, language, document type, journal, authorship and document features. The conclusions reached indicate that the number of publications on the phenomenon of subvertising is on the rise, attracting interest from a wide range of disciplines, not solely those relating to communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the promotion effects of institutional investors' communication on corporate green innovation. We use content analysis to identify the efficiency of institutional investors' communication, and find that institutional investors' communication promotes corporate green innovation. The mechanism analysis indicates that institutional investors' communication improves managers' awareness of green transformation, promotes corporate green investment efficiency and mitigates the extent of greenwashing. The positive impacts of institutional investors' communication are more effective on corporate utility patents than on invention patents. Such green governance effects are more pronounced in non-state-owned firms, green investors and close-distance to the institutional investors. By introducing exogenous shocks of the New Environmental Protection Law and China's regional carbon emissions trading market pilots, we find that the impact of institutional investors' communication on green innovation is enhanced after the implementation of environmental policies. Overall, our research contributes to the existing literature on institutional investors' green activism and the factors of green innovation, and also enriches the cross-disciplinary research on environmental regulation affecting institutional investors' green governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication faces significant challenges due to an increasing polarization of public discourses. This polarization oversimplifies societal differences into "us versus them" dynamics, complicating consensus building and eroding trust in democratic processes. Traditionally, CSR communication research has focused on how organizations negotiate meanings between various stakeholders. However, the rise in polarization necessitates a broader research scope to understand its impact on CSR practices and organizational relationships. This Special Issue of Management Communication Quarterly explores these evolving challenges, analyzing how polarization reshapes CSR communication and outlining strategies for businesses to navigate this fragmented landscape. The issue also reflects on the broader role of corporations amidst tendencies of polarization and suggests directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends the existing research on C-suite communication and corporate communicators by adding the perspective of the supervisory board. Building on principal-agent theory and the public arena model the supervisory board chair's communicator role is conceptualized, and established and stakeholders are identified. Based on 28 qualitative expert interviews with supervisory board chairs, public relations, and investor relations managers from 10 DAX and MDAX companies, the study highlights the objectives for the chair's communication as well as responsibilities within the public relations and investor relations departments. The findings show that transparency and the establishment and maintenance of relationships are the main objectives of the chair's communication. Furthermore, the findings show that there is rarely a clear responsibility within the public relations or investor relations functions for the chair's communication. Closer cooperation leads to more professionalized chair communication – but not necessarily more active external communication. The article contributes to communication management and strategic communication research by highlighting the conceptual-theoretical challenge of the communication of the supervisory board because its actions set the framework for the corporate strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of rhetorical devices and how corporate leaders organise the texts and convey attitudes to stakeholders in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has become an important research area in recent years. A relatively neglected means of rhetorical expressions, however, is metadiscursive nouns. This study investigates the use of metadiscursive nouns in a 0.5-million-word self-built corpus of the US and Chinese CEO letters in CSR reports to reveal cross-cultural variations. The results show that the interactive metadiscursive nouns are twice as frequent in the US discourse as in the Chinese discourse, demonstrating greater efforts invested in cohesion by the US companies. This difference can be attributed to the writer-responsible rhetoric in the West and the reader-responsible conventions in China. The interactional metadiscursive nouns in the US discourse occur twice as frequently as in the Chinese counterpart, suggesting greater exertion of nominal stance by the US companies. This discrepancy mainly arises from the high- and low-context variations between the US and China. This study sheds new insights on metadiscursive nouns as rhetorical resources in cross-cultural CSR communication and provides implications for ESP practitioners to use them as a means of conceptualising writer–reader interaction in corporate communication. • The US texts use more interactive metadiscursive nouns than the Chinese texts. • The US texts use more interactional metadiscursive nouns than the Chinese texts. • The US discourse reflects writer-responsible rhetoric and low-context culture. • The Chinese discourse reveals reader-responsible rhetoric and high-context culture. • Metadiscursive nouns are key rhetorical resources in cross-cultural CSR discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this paper, which analyses the use of sports celebrities in advertising discourse, is to understand the strategic use to which brands put them in their commercial and corporate communication on Instagram. Design/methodology/approach: To this end, a content analysis was performed on the Instagram posts of the brands Santander, Movistar, Red Bull and Iberdrola during the period 2021-2022. Findings: The results indicate that, strategically speaking, these brands use the celebrity endorsement strategy to pursue emotional objectives and to adopt a position depending on the type of user. Likewise, these findings show that they single out uniqueness as the principal celebrity characteristic, while also mainly leveraging sports values, especially competence. These values represented by sports celebrities are markedly social in nature, which implies that they enjoy a degree of public recognition that is transferred to the brand to which they lend their image. Research limitations/implications: The conclusions connect celebrity endorsers with strategic branding issues and aspects of sports. Originality/value: An empirical approach is followed here to study the representation of sports celebrities in the advertising of well-known brands linked to the sports world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Destination image ranks top of the most prominently researched topics in tourism. Storytelling will probably follow soon but shares already today the same attention bias, particularly in the research community: Studies into the planning and managerial perspective of intended and projected destination images are as scarce as studies into the use, structure, and content of storytelling principles applied for heritage attractions and within destination planning and promotion. The current study reviews the literature on – particularly heritage – storytelling in tourism and its conceptual links to branding, persuasiveness, experiences, servicescapes, and co-creation. Narratology informs about the relevant criteria to be considered. A selection will be applied to analyse the content of the official promotional websites of selected state tourism organizations in Malaysia: Penang, Sarawak, and Terengganu. All three are marketing complex cultural and natural heritages. This text-based content analysis answers the underlying research question: To which extent and by which elements are the principles of storytelling applied via heritage assets of the destination? The outcome of the content analysis helps in three ways: (a) improving the storytelling management for a destination marketing organization, (b) directions of narratives and storytelling as a tool for enhancing DMOs' image, and (c) for heritage interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relational event models (REMs) are the primary choice for the analysis of relational-event network data. However, the standard REM assumes static parameters, which hinders the modeling of time-varying dynamics. This assumption might be too restrictive in real-life scenarios, making a model that allows for time-varying parameters more valuable. We introduce a state-space extension of the relational event model as a way to tackle this problem. The model has three main attributes. First, it provides a statistical framework of the temporal change of the parameters. Second, it enables the forecasting of future parameter values (which can be utilized to simulate new networks that can account for temporal dynamics in out-of-sample predictions). Third, it requires smaller data structures to be loaded into computer memory compared to the standard REM; this makes the model easily scalable to large networks. We conduct empirical analyses on bike-sharing data, corporate communications, and interactions among socio-political actors to illustrate model usage and applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the spillover effect of crises represents an emerging area of interest within crisis communication studies, the perspective of consumers on the risk of crisis spillover as a result of corporate misconduct by another company remains underexplored in emerging markets like China. This study aims to fill the void through assessing how the severity of a crisis and the strategic responses by companies influence consumer perceptions of spillover risks from corporate misconduct by another company. A pre‐test (N = 120) determined two corporate misconducts as characteristic for the automotive industry in China. These scenarios were utilized in an online experiment (N = 320) to examine the effects of two crisis response strategies (issuing a denial vs. giving no response) by a competitor automaker. The results reveal that when a corporate misconduct is perceived as more severe, the perceived crisis spillover risks to the industry is higher; this perceived risk mediates the impact of crisis severity on negative word‐of‐mouth. Issuing a denial is more effective than giving no response, and leads to more positive consumer outcomes. This research unravels the complex dynamics at play in shaping consumer attitudes towards companies indirectly impacted by a crisis through a spillover effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-risk organizations, such as chemical companies, are urged to engage in long-term, dialogic community relations with local residents. Community engagement can establish organizational legitimacy and help to address local concerns. However, stakeholders may be skeptical toward communication efforts made by high-risk organizations, especially during crisis situations. This qualitative study explores whether two Belgian communities are skeptical of the communication efforts made by chemical companies regarding pollution crises, what motives they attribute to the crisis communication, and which communication characteristics shape those attributions. In-depth interviews with 47 local community members reveal that the crisis communication efforts were considered self-serving and attributed to corporate concerns over (a) legitimacy, (b) financial consequences and (c) legal liability. Interviewees believed that these self-serving motives took precedence over public interests. This study also describes communication cues that triggered or strengthened suspicions. Practical recommendations are proposed for chemical companies to improve relationships with local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luxury fashion brands use Instagram as a channel to disseminate their corporate identities. They try to cover market niches that they did not previously reach due to their exclusive nature, by publishing content about their own events, such as catwalks. Fashion shows have become branding instruments. However, previous literature focuses on the collaborations of these brands with influencers, without giving the main role to the primary sender of the organizational discourse. What formats are used most? With what intention? How does the firm relate to the influencer in the corporate profile? What type of content generates the greatest impact on the audience? To answer these research questions, this work starts with the main objective of comparing how the most followed fashion luxury brands use Instagram to transmit their identities through the promotion of their fashion shows. A mixed, quantitative and qualitative content analysis is proposed of the 387 posts published by Dior, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton and Gucci between February 10 and March 7, 2023, when the weeks of the fashion from Paris, Milan, New York and London. The analysis reflects a non-proportional relationship between the frequency of publication, the interactions recorded and the percentage of engagement, the latter being higher when the format used is the image participated by an influencer. Likewise, the discursive intention is eminently commercial, with specific products taking center stage even when brand stories are shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of firm-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance characteristics on the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting of Pakistani listed enterprises. Design/methodology/approach: This study used content analysis of corporate annual reports and stand-alone CSR reports available on corporate websites in 2021 to identify CSR-related governance features and to calculate CSR reporting scores. Multivariate regression is used to test relationships. In addition, the analysis tested the moderating role of profitability in these relationships. Findings: Firm-level CSR governance characteristics contribute to the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting in a developing country. Further, results confirm that profitability moderates the relationship between CSR governance and the extent and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting. Research limitations/implications: This study employed cross-sectional data and focused on a single developing country. Future studies might include a cross-national sample and longitudinal data to demonstrate the broader relevance of these findings. The outcomes of this study are restricted to CSR disclosures based on CSR reports and annual reports. Future research may examine additional corporate communication channels, such as websites and social media platforms. Practical implications: This research validates the important role of CSR governance mechanisms as a driver of comprehensive CSR reporting. Business leaders and policymakers can facilitate improved corporate reporting by requiring companies to implement CSR-related governance mechanisms. Originality/value: This is the first study to test the influence of firm-level CSR governance mechanisms in promoting the quantity, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting in a developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital communication technologies, particularly social media, enable members of organizations at all levels and across all functions to communicate with external stakeholders. This has required organizations to rethink and restructure their strategic communication management, especially the orchestration of their communicative human resources. Using a qualitative case-study approach, this article examines how professional service organizations create and maintain their stakeholder relations in the contemporary media landscape through the orchestration of employee voice and enactment as organizational spokespersons. The findings show that organizations have created structural architectures that they use as a basis for strategic communication management. Based on these findings, the study introduces a novel concept of organizational voicing architecture, which refers to the conceptual structure and overall logical arrangement of organizational spokespersons who act as organizational representatives in the corporate communication system. Additionally, by integrating the findings related to the voicing architecture with existing knowledge about organizational listening, the study broadens understanding of the mechanism with which organizations strategically orchestrate their stakeholder relationships, and hence contributes to the strategic and corporate communication and public relations literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined companies' use of social media platforms for CSR communication during the pandemic lockdown. We examined 1768 companies' posts on Weibo and tested how the content and the features of the posts influenced retweets and likes. We used "fit" to describe a circumstance where an outside factor made a certain business more capable to alleviate the situation. We defined it as high in the perceived firm-situation fit. Results showed that for high-fit companies, the inclusion of pandemic content and CSR had a significant positive effect on retweets, while for low-fit companies, pandemic content hurt the number of retweets; the CSR factor did not influence retweets. The inclusion of CSR information had a significant positive effect on likes for both high-fit and low-fit companies. The results indicated that consumers have more moral expectations of high-fit companies to provide help during the pandemic lockdown. Moreover, increased interactivity has a significant positive effect on retweets and likes. Drawing from these results, practical suggestions on how to use social media platforms for future CSR communication to promote social good were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence and importance of humor in interpersonal communication, the disclosure literature is silent on the use of humor in the context of corporate communication. Using a sophisticated machine learning algorithm, we identify managers' successful uses of humor during public earnings conference calls. When managers use humor on an earnings call, stock market returns and analyst forecast revisions following the call are more positive, primarily because of a muted response to negative earnings news. Consistent with managers' successful use of humor being a favorable signal of future firm performance, we find no evidence of a return reversal over the subsequent quarter, and managers' use of humor predicts more favorable news at the subsequent quarter's earnings announcement. Our study provides new evidence on the use of humor in corporate disclosures, and our findings indicate that humor can meaningfully influence the market response to public earnings conference calls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of digital financial reporting on firm productivity. Information frictions represent a constraint that impedes efficient resource allocation and a major source of such frictions stems from the fact that firms' production functions (the conversion from inputs to outputs) are not observable to corporate outsiders. Digital communication of corporate financial data fundamentally changes how firm-specific information is disclosed, released, and disseminated by mitigating information asymmetry between corporate insiders and outsiders and facilitates the processing of such information. We use the staggered implementation of the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering and Analysis Retrieval (EDGAR) system to investigate the impact of digital financial reporting on firms' productivity. We show that the implementation of EDGAR results in an economically meaningful and statistically significant increase on firms' productivity, measured by total factor productivity (TFP). By focusing on the role of information dissemination in coordinating investments and production, our findings provide evidence on the real effects of "going digital" in corporate reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to analyze the supply and demand of marketing and communication consulting services and evaluate actual and perceived gaps. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses two different datasets to assess the gap. The supply database comes from desk research carried out in the province of Bergamo (n. 159 consulting agencies). The demand dates are the results of 100 structured interviews with local companies that requested marketing and communication consulting services both inside and outside the province. Findings: Findings show that there is no significant shortage in local service supply. Nonetheless, a limited gap exists between the provision of specific services and their overall quality. Conversely, the perceived gap is wider, leading to an impression of scarce availability – a notion disproven by the analysis of the actual supply. Practical implications: The study suggests that local agencies may overcome their "myopic" attitude and need to increase their visibility, competencies and expertise by investing in these areas and improving networking. Originality/value: There are no previous studies that compare the supply and demand for marketing and communication consulting services. The paper also provides insights into actual and perceived gaps in a hypercompetitive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]