Helle Kryger Aggerholm

Conceptualising employer branding in sustainable organisations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualise employer branding in sustainable organizations at the intersection of branding, strategic human resource management (HRM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR).Design/methodology/approach – Based on an outline of current conceptualisations of employer branding, the paper discusses the strategic potentials of merging corporate branding processes, strategic HRM and CSR into a theoretical framework for reconceptualising employer branding as co‐created processes and sustainable employer‐employee relationships.Findings – When organizations adapt strategies for sustainable development (including CSR), it affects how to approach stakeholder relations and organizational processes, including the employee‐employer relationship and employer branding processes. However, current employer branding conceptualisations do not comply with such changed corporate conditions. The suggested framework reconceptualises employer branding as an integrated part of a CSR ...

The Role of Recontextualization in the Multivocal, Ambiguous Process of Strategizing

This paper shows how ambiguity arises across multiple strategizing activities through the presence of multiple strategic actors within and across different strategizing phases. During the authoring phase, the intentionality of the different management actor voices becomes detached from the meaning expressed in the strategy text, resulting in a decontextualized, monovocal strategy paper. In the translation phase, the study shows how the text still possesses an inherent multivocality making it impossible to talk about strategy text as an atemporal, neutral object. In the phase of interpreting the strategy, three main rhetorical positions are identified among the employees:acceptance, ambiguity and rejection, representing the multivocal interpretations of the employees interviewed. The study contributes to the ongoing discussion about the challenges and potentials of the multivocal, multicontextual nature of strategizing in organizations.

A practice perspective on strategic communication: The discursive legitimization of managerial decisions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to link the authentic, communicative activities, e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutionalized practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. change management decisions and communication strategy (Steyn, 2003). Thus, the concern is with the relationship between institutionalized strategic management and the real-life strategic communication processes, thus advancing the understanding of the role of texts and discourses in the actual practice of strategic communication in an organizational context of strategic change processes. Design/methodology/approach – The data are based on a large corpus of video-taped management meetings and organization-wide meetings in a large Danish public, knowledge-based organization. The method applied for studying the management discourse is a conversation-analytical approach (Sacks et al., 1974; Sidnell, 2010). This method has been chosen as it enables the authors to focus on micro-aspects of o...

Management conversations in Danish companies

Purpose – Good stakeholder relations are crucial for the corporate image and reputation of modern organisations. One important management tool for use in successfully establishing good stakeholder relations involves management conversations. Until now these conversations have not been investigated extensively either in general or specifically within the field of corporate communication. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this developing field of research by presenting the results of a study of management conversations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper investigates the ways in which various management conversations are used strategically in companies to benefit relations with stakeholders and the image or reputation of the company concerned. The conversations studied are recruitment conversations, job appraisal interviews, round‐table sickness leave conversations and dismissal conversations.Findings – The paper shows that the companies involved are aware that such conversations should be u...

Legitimation as a Particular Mode of Strategic Communication in the Public Sector

ABSTRACT Within the theoretical frameworks of strategic communication and legitimation and through the use of a case study analysis, this article investigates the creation of managerial legitimation towards internal stakeholders in text and talk as a particular mode of strategic communication in a public sector organization. Following a theoretical discussion of the interconnectedness of strategic communication and managerial legitimation, we present a case study analysis of management talk at three interrelated management meetings dealing with the implementation of New Public Management-based (NPM) reforms in a public sector organization. The context of NPM in the case study is particularly relevant for our investigation, because it sets the stage for the creation of legitimation by the public sector managers. Our analysis finds that these public sector managers use the integration of ‘voices’ (voices of authorization, rationalization and moral evaluation) of different actors (e.g., the Ministry, the organizational members, competitors, and partners) as a means of establishing legitimation. Specifically, this research shows how the integration of these (strong or weaker) ‘voices’ in management talk happens at a microlevel and is used as a particular mode of strategic communication.

Communicating Organizational Change Reactions: Downsizing Survivors’ Discursive Constructions of Flexible Identities

The aim of this article is to study employees’ discursive construction of disparate survivor responses. The analysis reveals how employees position themselves simultaneously within different types of categories by use of discursive actions. Drawing on various discourses, the actors reject having one solid core of identity and instead signal the existence of various flexible identities. The article contributes to a greater understanding of the importance of discourse within organizational change. An increased managerial sensitivity toward employee discourse may help to understand why employees obstruct organizational changes and subsequently make it easier to preempt and handle such reactions.

The Role of Organization-wide Meetings in the Communicative Practice of Strategy: The Creation of Organizational Unity and Commitment, or Tension and Paradoxes?

The overall purpose of this article is to raise our understanding of strategic communication defined as communication of strategic goals (Hallahan et al., 2007). Applying a discourse analytical approach, we empirically investigated how employees interpret and relate to management information concerning strategic goals. Inspired by Lewis (2000), the empirical analysis focuses on the disparate discursive positions expressed in interviews with employees. In particular, the article discusses organization-wide meetings as a potential forum for disseminating the goals of an enterprise, fostering a mutual understanding of the external, strategic context, and generating commitment to these strategic goals. The interview findings reveal how the asymmetric type of organizational communication that is characteristic for such meetings seems to generate more tension than unity within the organization due to decontextualized or deficient communication of multiple strategic goals and change initiatives, inconsistencies between the speakers, and heterogeneity among the receiving employees with their misaligned interests and intra-institutional incompatibilities.

Social Media Recruitment 3.0: Toward a new paradigm of strategic recruitment communication

Purpose Drawing on a unique case of a Web 3.0 recruitment campaign, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on a reflexive dialogical research approach, which means that it is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand an empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic communication. Findings The study points toward a fundamental new approach to recruitment communication. The application of a Web 3.0 strategy entails what we term an open source recruitment strategy and a redirection of employee focus from work life to private life. These insights point toward ontologically challenging the basic assumptions of employees, work life and the employing organization. Research limitations/implications The paper presents a single-case study, which prepares the ground for larger, longitudinal studies. Such studies may apply a more long-term focus on the implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and how they may be integrated into – or how they challenge – overall corporate communication strategies. Practical implications A turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Furthermore, the authors argue that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market. Originality/value This study indicates how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used in and fundamentally alter recruitment communication, and hence offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do.

„Getting Social with Recruitment“: eine Fallstudie einer Rekrutierungskampagne in sozialen Medien im Web 3.0

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit sozialen Technologien und digitalen Medien in der Rekrutierungskommunikation. Soziale Technologien und digitale Medien sollen zur Wertschopfung in Organisationen beitragen, indem sie es Unternehmen ermoglichen, Dialoge mit Stakeholdern zu initiieren, partizipatorische Prozesse zu fordern und demokratische Ideale zu verwirklichen (Hanna et al. 2011; Kent 2013; Macnamara 2012). Solche Werte sind jedoch nicht per se in sozialen Medien eingebettet. Fuchs et al. (2010) behandeln soziale Medien aus soziologischer Perspektive und schlagen drei unterschiedliche Ansatze der Sozialitat von sozialen Medien vor: eine strukturbasierte Sichtweise von Sozialitat (Web 1.0), eine aktionsbasierte Sichtweise von Sozialitat (Web 2.0) und letztlich eine kooperationsbasierte Sichtweise von Sozialitat (Web 3.0). Sie begrunden diese Sichtweisen damit, dass die mit sozialen Medien verbundenen Werte nicht automatisch der blosen Prasenz in den sozialen Medien folgen, sondern davon abhangig sind, wie man an soziale Medien herangeht und wie Masnahmen in sozialen Medien konkret ausgefuhrt werden. Basierend auf Fuchs et al. (2010) ist der Zweck dieses Beitrags zu untersuchen, wie soziale Medien und damit das Konzept von Sozialitat in Rekrutierungskampagnen strategisch genutzt werden und wie eine Rekrutierungskampagne in sozialen Medien im Web 3.0 die strategische und praktische Kommunikation beeinflusst. Der Beitrag prasentiert eine explorative Studie einer einzigartigen Rekrutierungskampagne in sozialen Medien. Anhand der Analyse dieser Kampagne im Vergleich zu anderen Kampagnen in sozialen Medien untersuchen und diskutieren wir den strategischen Wert und die Herausforderungen, die eine volle Anwendung von sozialen Mediatechnologien im Web 3.0 mit sich bringt. Mit dieser vollen Anwendung geht die Praktizierung von kooperationsbasierter Rekrutierungsstrategie durch die Vermengung von Botschaften einher, die unter passionierten Online-Usern auserhalb eines traditionellen Anstellungskontextes zirkulieren. Abschliesend erortern wir die managementbezogenen Implikationen einer solchen Strategie. Der Beitrag erschliest neue Erkenntnisse uber die Rekrutierungskommunikation und uber soziale Medien und gibt fur Forschung und Praxis zukunftige Orientierungen.