Sophie Esmann Andersen

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 ...

Cause-related marketing 2.0: Connection, collaboration and commitment

The article aims to explore and revise cause-related marketing (CRM) in light of an emerging concept of the market and the roles assigned to companies and consumers in marketing communication processes. Based on a dialogical reflexive approach to case studies, we take our point of departure in theoretically identifying key CRM constituents and their interrelations, and we show how current theories within CRM build upon axioms of a traditional firm-centric view on value creation and fail to meet the challenges of new market structures and relations. This tension of axioms provides a point of direction for introducing the Pepsi Refresh Project as a case illustration of an alternative CRM practice that redefines CRM from company-driven to community-driven – and points towards relocating CRM from an overt to a covert brand and marketing communication strategy. CRM becomes a joint value- and identity-constructing practice transforming consumer criticism into brand involvement and community commitment. By reflexively merging theoretical and case insights, the contribution of the article lies in the revisiting of existing CRM theories in the context of connected, critical and empowered consumers and the subsequent outlining of what we suggest to be CRM 2.0.

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.

Communicative Dilemmas of CSR: Towards an Integrative Framework of CSR Communication

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is said to be resting on a fundamental dilemma: a dilemma between ethical obligations towards society versus economic duties of maximising profits. In other words: A clash occurs between business and morality. In this chapter, we explore how this fundamental dilemma is replicated in CSR communication contexts. The purpose is to conceptually explore CSR dilemmas in communication contexts in order to develop an integrative framework for understanding the complexity of and communicative dilemmas embedded in CSR. Framed by three communication disciplines (integrated marketing communication, organisational communication and corporate communication), we outline how CSR is applied, and how it changes and redefines key concepts within each discipline. CSR generates new stakeholder demands and social expectations towards the organisation; the question is how the organisation manages and communicates this new role of responsibility. On that basis, we discuss how the CSR dilemma manifests as three communicative dilemmas: A self-promotion dilemma related to challenges of promoting CSR without simultaneously demonstrating its organisational anchoring; an identification dilemma related to the challenges of creating CSR value for employee identification without becoming a normative tool of employee identity control; and a relation dilemma, which is concerned with the challenges related to stakeholder engagement and the balancing of how to integrate the multivocality of different, opposing stakeholders without compromising the ideal of representing one unified corporate entity. The insights of the chapter contribute to the literature on CSR and CSR communication by providing a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and complexity of CSR communication, manifested as communicative dilemmas.

Sustainability in Business Communication: An Overview

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the field of sustainability in business communication by looking at it from five very different angles, which nevertheless form a comprehensive view of the field. The first part investigates how the use of lexical items which express the sustainability idea have developed in business communication. The second part looks at the development of sustainability communication within employer branding. Part three focuses on current trends of sustainability in marketing and advertising and finds that sustainability is not quite as frequently used here as it is in reporting, employer branding or investor relations communication. In the fourth part, sustainability communication is scrutinized as reflections of the development within investor relations communication. Those historic developments show a very clear increase in the use and the significance of sustainability in business communication. Part five then adds a cultural and a political dimension to sustainability communication and thus broadens the perspective. By investigating those different angles of sustainability in business communication by empirical analyses, exploratory studies, literature reviews and discussions, the article aims at drawing a picture of sustainability in business communication that captures discursive manifestations of sustainability, historic developments and current trends, sustainability communications towards internal and external audiences, and intercultural and political implications.

Nachhaltigkeit in der Wirtschaftskommunikation: eine Einführung

Nachhaltigkeit ist in aller Munde. Das Prinzip ist dabei denkbar einfach – und auch denkbar einleuchtend: Der Verbrauch von Ressourcen darf niemals den Bestand an Ressourcen dermasen gefahrden, dass eine Nutzung der Ressourcen nicht mehr moglich ist.