The Use of Humor in Employee-to-Employee Workplace Communication: A Systematic Review With Thematic Synthesis

The aim of this systematic review was to develop a thematic synthesis of existing qualitative studies to explore the use of humor in employee-to-employee workplace communication and provide a greater understanding of this area of research through the experiences of employees. A number of databases were searched using key terms and papers were selected using pre-specified criteria. The thematic synthesis approach of Thomas and Harden was used to review the final 23 papers. The findings from the thematic synthesis resulted in four temporal themes that described how humor was utilized during an employee’s organizational transition: (1) initiation into organizational humor, (2) joining a “tribe”—in-groups and out-groups, (3) exerting influence—humor as power, and (4) using the safety valve—humor to relieve tension. The temporal themes described in this study crossed organizational and cultural divides, where humor formed an essential part of work-based dialog.

Relationship Cultivation via Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From China and the U.S

This study explored the relationship cultivation and social media strategies companies used to cultivate relationships with their publics in two culturally distinct markets of China and the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative content analysis of Weibo ( n = 756) and Twitter ( n = 645) posts from Fortune 500 companies in China ( n = 30) and the U.S. ( n = 30) respectively was conducted to examine the effects of their relational efforts on public engagement. Results showed that certain relationship cultivation strategies and use of social media functions effectively increased public engagement in both China and the U.S., although on different levels. Both Chinese and U.S. companies most frequently adopted the strategy of openness. While the openness strategy was most effective at raising engagement levels in the U.S., publics of Chinese companies became more engaged when companies used the access strategy. Also, publics of Chinese companies showed higher levels of engagement and more positive emotions toward companies’ social media messages than their U.S. counterparts. The findings advance our understanding of organization-public relationships in a worldwide disaster setting, with insights informing the global public relations theory and practices.

Pronouns, Positioning, and Persuasion in Top Nonprofits’ Donor Appeals

Despite increased giving in 2019, competition for donations among nonprofits remains high, especially when a charitable organization’s niche overlaps with that of others’. Consequently, nonprofit charitable organizations must tell stories that persuade donors to support their mission and contribute. This study uses positioning theory to examine how websites of the charitable organizations that appeared in Forbes Magazine’s 2019 top 100 charities use storytelling to facilitate their ethos such that they gain support and thus increase their donor base. The results revealed that nonprofits use positioning to establish two types of partnerships: invited and assumed. Furthermore, the coding revealed three primary types of positioning within these partnerships: savior-follower, business partners, and teacher-student. These positions organize and set the parameters for each organization’s story and will not only influence and potentially dictate the speech acts that follow, but also the responsibilities and rights of all those involved.

Human-Centered Leadership Development: A Communication-Based Approach for Promoting Authentic and Transformational Leadership

Leadership development (LD) has been shown to deliver significant value in both professional and academic settings. However, scholars of leadership communication and LD have argued for a need to recognize LD as a highly social, co-creative, and communicative process in which followership and larger organizational and social contexts play a significant role. Recent research has also argued for self-directed and experiential learning approaches to promote learning mindsets and psychological resources for long-term growth. The present study addresses these challenges by developing a holistic theoretical model and an applied design for LD comprised of evidence-based communication interventions that address intrapersonal, interpersonal, and strategic communication contexts in order to promote both authentic leadership and transformational leadership capacities. The model employs human-centered design methods to complement established experiential learning models and facilitate co-creative engagement with situated organizational challenges.

Product Placement Bibliometric Study: Generic Journals Versus Specific-Communication Journals

Media fragmentation represents new challenges for product placement strategies to become an increasingly effective way to reach consumers and non-users. In this frame, this paper has been developed with three main objectives: (i) to carry on a performance analysis to measure the visibility/impact of the scientific product in product placement (most cited authors, journals, and themes), (ii) to visually present the scientific structure by topics of research in product placement as well as its evolution to identify future research lines, and (iii) to compare both objectives in generic journals and specific communication ones. To this end, the resources in the Web of Science Citation Index were used. Scimat software was applied on a sample of 694 indexed papers from 1992 to 2021 containing “product placement” with 8,521 global citations (176 of the papers were indexed in communication journals with 3,190 citations). Our results show that MEMORY is a key motor theme—the future of research tends to new themes in the communication field (i.e., ATTITUDES/BEHAVIORS or VIRTUAL). Three industries have been key: alcohol, tobacco, and food. This research adds value to previous analysis as long as we have included: (i) a multidisciplinary approach; (ii) an unfolded analysis focusing strictly on communication journals; and (iii) a longitudinal analysis to compare different periods showing dynamic scientific maps.

Hierarchical and Role-Based Differences in the Perception of Organizational Listening Effectiveness

A growing body of research underscores the importance of how effectively (or poorly) organizations listen and respond to key external publics and stakeholders. This paper describes research focusing on how organizational hierarchy and member roles impact perceptions of organizational listening effectiveness, specifically the process of capturing, analyzing, disseminating, and utilizing the “Voice of the Consumer” (VoC). After reviewing literature in three relevant areas of research, the paper describes a study in which senior executives’ perceptions of the effectiveness of consumer listening efforts in their respective organizations are compared with those of lower-level consumer intelligence providers and users. Results indicate that senior executives assess VoC program effectiveness in their organizations more favorably than consumer intelligence providers/users with respect to 10 key aspects of organizational listening. Implications for theory-building and knowledge development, along with implications for practitioners and directions for future research, are discussed.

The Role of Symmetrical Internal Communication in Improving Employee Experiences and Organizational Identification During COVID-19 Pandemic-Induced Organizational Change

Integrating strategic internal communication research with organizational change literature and organizational support theory, this study proposes a theoretical model to understand the influence of symmetrical internal communication on employees’ cognitive and affective experiences and organizational identification in a COVID-19 pandemic-induced change situation. A quantitative online survey was conducted with 490 full-time employees in the United States in mid-April 2020. Results indicate that symmetrical internal communication during organizational change contributes to employees’ perceptions of change communication quality. In addition, symmetrical internal communication, along with perceived quality of change communication, enhances employees’ perceptions of organizational support and positive emotions during organizational change, which in turn leads to stronger organizational identification. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Organizational Information and Communication Technologies and Their Influence on Communication Visibility and Perceived Proximity

This study investigates the relationships between the use of various organizational ICTs, communication visibility, and perceived proximity to distant colleagues. In addition, this study examines the interplay between visibility and proximity, to determine whether visibility improves proximity, or vice versa. These relationships are tested in a global company using two waves of panel survey data. ESM use increases communication visibility and perceived proximity, while controlling for prior levels of visibility, proximity, and the use of other organizational ICTs. The influence of ESM on network translucence and perceived proximity is generally stronger than the impact of other technologies on these outcomes. These results highlight the importance of considering various aspects of the technological landscape conjointly, as well as distinguishing the two dimensions of communication visibility. Finally, the results indicate that perceived proximity has causal priority over communication visibility, indicating that communication visibility exists partly as an attribution of perceived proximity to distant colleagues, and is not solely inferred from the use of organizational ICTs.

Confronting Idea Stealers in the Workplace: The Unfortunate Moral Credentialing Granted to Power-Holders

How and when do employees confront one another for stealing their ideas? Business communication literature on confronting unethical behavior is synthesized with moral licensing theory to better understand responses to unethical actors about unjustified credit taking in the workplace. In this message production experiment, working adults ( N = 344) were randomly assigned to respond to a supervisor, peer coworker, or subordinate who stole or ignored the participant’s intellectual contributions. Content and statistical analyses revealed subordinates were comparatively less direct when confronting bosses, suggesting third-party moral licensing and moral credentialing were measurable in communication patterns. Importantly, this dynamic was not attributable to perceptions of task interdependence. Instead, subordinates perceived the stealing or ignoring of their ideas to be less unethical than did bosses. Additionally, individuals whose ideas have been stolen in the workplace were less confrontational compared to those who have not. Thus, data suggest incremental acquiescence to this form of workplace wrongdoing, particularly when the transgressor holds high hierarchical status. Taken together, these data may explain how recognition for ideas tends to spread vertically to bosses (labeled here, vertical credit creep), which may function to reinforce established power arrangements and to perpetuate unjustified credit taking in the workplace.

Breaking the Sound of Silence: Explication in the Use of Strategic Silence in Crisis Communication

Crises present organizations with the “rhetorical exigency” to enact control. Silence is not an option. This study, as the first empirical examination of Le et al’s (2019) seminal study on silence in crisis communication, examines, first, if silence can be strategically used as a bona fide strategy; second, under what circumstances should silence be broken; and third, when silence is broken, how it affects (a) organizational reputation, (b) societal risk perception, and (c) the publics’ crisis information sharing intention. An online experiment was conducted using a nationally representative sample in the United States. Participants were recruited in 2019 via a Qualtrics panel. The stimuli used in this study consisted of two components: (1) an explanation about a fictitious company; and (2) two types of silence breaking (forced vs. planned) embedded in each stimulus accordingly after the same crisis incident. Four hypothesis were conceptualized. They were all supported. Collectively, they showed that the effect of silence-breaking type on crisis information sharing intention was mediated by societal risk perception, which is conditioned by participants’ level of perceived organizational reputation. Silence, or failure to fill the information vacuum, has not been an option to consider thus far as it suggests the organization is “not in control.” However, this study suggests the types of silence organizations can adopt and the modes the organizational silence can be broken. It provides a new lens for organizations to engage in business communication.