Digital Commons Network^™

The Issues Management Process In Nonprofit Organizations, Andrew B. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

Issues management concepts and processes have been traditionally studied within corporate contexts. Using the tools and best practices of the qualitative paradigm, this dissertation explores the extension of issues management into the nonprofit context through the multi-vocality of nonprofit executives, managers, and board members. The findings suggest that these nonprofit decision makers are employing an abbreviated issues-management process, that nonprofit executives are acting as issues gatekeepers, that nonprofit decision makers value issues management as a tool for integrated public relations and future crisis avoidance, and that nonprofit decision makers approach social issues divergently based on age and experience. The findings …

Fyre Festival: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly And Its Impact On Influencer Marketing, Loren Grace Gilbert, Courtney Childers, Brandon Boatwright

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Cultural Sensitivity: Importance, Competencies, And Public Relations Implications, Sarah A. Lutz

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

‘It’S Not Rocket Science’: Employees’ Lived Experiences And The Essence Of Employee Engagement, Laura Lou Lemon

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand how employees perceive and experience engagement and participate in its meaning-making process. While employee engagement has been primarily explored within the business, the human resources, and management disciplines, public relations research has only recently taken an interest in furthering its understanding.

Within these disciplines, the functional perspective has dominated employee engagement research, which has potentially limited theoretical developments. In response to the current literature being inundated with a rational, functional approach, the following dissertation attempts: (1) to examine employee engagement from an array of organizational voices using phenomenological methods; (2) to …

Local Government-Citizen Relationships: Using The Coorientation Approach To Analyze Relationship Effectivness, Melissa Wooten Graham

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the current debates in public relations scholarship surrounds how to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of public relations practitioners and programs and the value they add to an organization. Known as the ROI, or return on investment, in public relations, this concept is often hard to define. However, as management demands become stronger for more accountability from public relations departments, the need to effectively address this concern continues to grow. Previous research has shown that a strong indicator of the effectiveness of public relations is the relationship that exists between an organization and its publics.

This study details …

Understanding The Dimensions Of Trust In Public Relations And Their Measurements, Joosuk Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Trust judgment of an organization’s publics validates the existence of an organization as well as being one of the most powerful moderators of public relations effectiveness. The ideas of trust as one of the key dimensions to explain relational status between an organization and its key publics has been around more than a decade. Over the last two decades, the idea of trust in fact has been showing rising prominence across many diversified studies of relationship and relationship management. In relationship management, one of the important goals of public relations is to build mutually beneficial relationships among organizations and their …

Projecting A Preferred Identity: How Five Government Contractors Frame Their Corporate Brands Online, Nicole A. Merrifield

Masters Theses

This study expands framing research as a competitive intelligence tool for discerning the message strategies of a company’s competition. A content analysis of five Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ competitor websites was conducted to determine key subject areas and how each competitor positioned their business to a variety of publics. Using Entman (1991, 1993) and Hallahan’s (1999) framing research as the theoretical framework, the study reviews extant literature on corporate use of websites to frame reputations and cultivate relationships. Key findings reveal that ORAU’s competitors are more likely to promote new business, new hires/promotions, awards/honors, and project completions when issuing press …

Intention To Comply With Food Safety Messages In A Crisis As A Function Of Message Source And Message Reliability, Karen June Freberg

Doctoral Dissertations

A key role of public relations is to manage crises, unexpected yet unpredictable events that cause emotional and physical harm (Coombs, 2007). Among the challenges in handling a crisis effectively is dealing with the various media in which information is presented. Because the use of social media in a crisis is a relatively new phenomenon, further understanding of the challenges and opportunities of these media is warranted. Part of meeting this challenge requires precise modeling of consumer responses to safety messages. To remedy gaps in our understanding of social media and food safety crisis communications, consumer intent to comply with …