Active employee communication roles in the future: Voluntary or part of the job?

Vibeke Thøis Madsen, Joost W.M. Verhoeven

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    Abstract

    Social media has made employees more visible both inside and outside the organization, and employees are increasingly perceived as key communicators in corporate communication (Heide and Simonsson, 2011; Snyder and Honig, 2016; Pekkala and Luoma-aho, 2017). Employees are asked to share knowledge and develop new ideas on internal social media (Vuori and Okkonen, 2012) and to act as brand ambassadors on external social media, since they can promote the brand in a trustworthy and reliable way (Snyder and Honig, 2016; Pekkala and Luoma-aho, 2017). The enactment of active communication roles springs out of organizational identification and organizational citizen behavior (Morrison, 1994). However, as the importance of employees as communicators increases, organizations encourage employees to enact these active communication roles. In this respect, employees are not only required to perform their job in a satisfactory manner, they also have to play a number of communication roles. These elevated role expectations complicate organizational communication for employees. They can experience stress since they have to act out so many different roles or they can experience role conflict or ambiguity. No comprehensive framework has so far defined or described the many communication roles employees are expected to play. An extensive literature review was conducted to identify and understand the many employee communication role in organizational, strategic and corporate communication. Based on the review a typology of eight employee communication roles was developed to clarify the roles and discuss the consequences for employees and organizational communication.
    Translated title of the contributionFremtidens aktive medarbejderkommunikationsroller: Frivillige eller en del af jobbet?
    Original languageEnglish
    Publication date14 Aug 2019
    Number of pages1
    Publication statusPublished - 14 Aug 2019
    EventThe dark side of communication: 2ND INTERNATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON DISCOURSE AND COMMUNICATION IN PROFESSIONAL CONTEXTS - AAU, AAlborg, Denmark
    Duration: 14 Aug 201916 Aug 2019
    https://www.en.cgs.aau.dk/research/conferences/discourse-communication-2019/

    Conference

    ConferenceThe dark side of communication
    LocationAAU
    Country/TerritoryDenmark
    CityAAlborg
    Period14/08/201916/08/2019
    Internet address

    Keywords

    • employee communication roles
    • active communication roles
    • employee advocacy
    • ambassador
    • orgnizational citizen behavior

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