International Journal of Business Communication

This study examined links between employee interaction with their organization’s official Facebook page, social capital, and employee identification with the organization. Results indicate employee interaction with their company’s Facebook page was positively related to organizational identification and bridging and bonding social capital. Moreover, the relationship between interaction with the company Facebook page and identification was partially mediated by bridging social capital outcomes. Overall, results suggest the company Facebook page is an important communicative bridge between the employee and the larger organization, enhancing the employee-organization relationship. Results contribute to our understanding of social media and organizational identification, as well as our understanding of social capital associated with social media use in organizational settings.

Based on a study of leader communication effectiveness conducted in a large human resource outsourcing firm, this article reports how virtual team members’ perceptions of their leaders’ effective use of communication tools and techniques affect team performance outcomes. The study also investigates the role that trust plays in moderating the relationship between virtual team members’ perceptions of their leaders’ effective use of communication and team performance. Analysis of 458 responses from 68 teams found a positive relationship between virtual team members’ perceptions of leaders’ effective use of communications and team members’ perception of their team’s performance. The study also found that trust strengthens the relationship between perceived leader communication effectiveness and team performance results. Last, the study also revealed serious organizational alignment issues between what team members perceived to be effective leader communication, their perception of team performance outcomes, and the organizations performance measured by a balanced scorecard.

This study investigates two potentially complementary reporting scenarios in annual reports: reactive impression management and retrospective sense-making. It examines stock market performance graphs in European listed banks’ annual reports before and during the global financial crisis. Our results indicate that banks reacted to the global financial crisis by omitting stock market performance graphs from the annual report and from its most prominent sections. On the other hand, banks reduced favorable distortions and favorable performance comparisons. No significant evidence of retrospective sense-making is found. Overall, the findings are consistent with impression management incorporating human cognitive biases, with companies preferring misrepresentation by omission over misrepresentation by commission. Under high public scrutiny, banks appear to seek to provide a more favorable view by concealing negative information rather than by favorable distortions or comparisons. The study contributes to the development of impression management theories. It uses a psychological interpretation that incorporates human cognitive biases, rather than adopting a purely economically based perspective.

This study examines the impact of perceived foreign language proficiency on hybrid culture building in multicultural teams. Hybrid culture includes a mutually shared set of norms, communication patterns, problem-solving approaches, and synergistic task coordination that result from the diverse cultural backgrounds of the team members. Language is the main vehicle for communication and plays a major role in social interaction and therefore hybrid culture building. We argue that the level of perceived language proficiency of multicultural team members influences hybrid culture building; consequently, adequate language skills lead not only to an efficient task solution but are also an important factor in creating interpersonal relationships and building a shared culture. Our empirical analysis supports the positive influence of language proficiency in hybrid teams; however, foreign language proficiency is more influential on cognitively oriented areas of multicultural teamwork than on affective ones.

This article demonstrates the complex nature of the relationship between linguistic competence and the level of disempowerment that individuals perceive in global business contexts where English is increasingly used as a lingua franca. Most of the existing literature assumes that lower linguistic competence causes disempowerment, and that this relationship is largely static for individuals. This study, in contrast, finds that the sense of disempowerment caused by linguistic competence is negotiable as power dynamics between individuals can also be influenced by other relationships that act as potential sources of power. As a result, even for those with lower linguistic proficiency, perceived disempowerment can be reduced if other power-yielding factors compensate. An analysis of the narratives of 34 Japanese businesses demonstrates that such factors include value-of-information, goal sharing, and economic relationships. This article concludes by presenting a theoretical contribution to the conceptualization of the power of linguistic competence and the implications for educators.

This study investigates the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on protecting and restoring company reputation in crisis situations. The results suggest the ability of proactive CSR to counter potential damage to corporate reputation caused by a crisis but not to serve as a remedy after a crisis. The findings further indicate a significant interaction effect between crisis type and the fit of reactive CSR for a company without proactive CSR. For a preventable crisis, a company is better off choosing low-fit reactive CSR than not engaging in reactive CSR at all. In a victim crisis, low-fit reactive CSR is more effective in improving company reputation than high-fit reactive CSR. When a company has been previously engaged in proactive CSR, the impact of fit across crisis types disappears. The mediating role of perceived altruism suggests the importance of sincerity in CSR.