Yolandi Botha PhD

The Australian Romance Readers Association (ARRA), a special interest group that publicises the romance form and provides opportunities for readers to network and discuss the genre, has run a dedicated annual survey since 2009. The survey results between 2009 and 2023 illustrate the changing reading practices of respondents, especially in terms of modes of reading, preferred subgenres of romance, purchasing habits, information sources about new romances, and book formats. This article describes key survey results in terms of the changing characteristics and practices of the respondents. Key findings include that respondents generally read quickly, they read a lot, tend to always carry a romance novel, increasingly embrace eBook use, undertake most reading at home, and increasingly try a broad range of romance subgenres. The surveys provide insights into the importance of social media marketing and recommendations for readers to learn about new books. The ARRA survey data between 2009 and 2023 provides insights for writers who wish to strategically market their texts while showing some of the changing practices and trends of respondents. Overall, this paper emphasises that the romance reading respondents are highly committed, engaged and discerning in their decision-making and reading practices.

This article addresses the gap in crisis response literature by exploring rebranding as crisis response from a stakeholder relationship management perspective, drawing from the collaborative pillars of co-creation, social capital, sense-making, and sense-giving. The rebranding of Facebook to Meta is explored as a pragmatic scancis (a crisis that transfigures into a scandal) to understand its rebranding strategy as a crisis response. Through the thematic analysis of 50 online articles published between September 2021 and November 2021, a strong emphasis was placed on the crisis Facebook/Meta was facing, leading to the rebrand. Using the theoretical lens of primary and secondary crisis response strategies, it was found that Facebook/Meta used a defensive approach to divert the attention of stakeholders with the brand, while limited evidence was found that Facebook/Meta prioritized their stakeholders in their secondary crisis response. The process of influencing the sense-making and meaning construction of stakeholders by Meta was considered negatively and thus not aligned with the concept of sense-making, resulting in its inability to co-create a rebranded company that garnered the support of its stakeholders. This article moves beyond existing studies that focus on the building blocks of stakeholder relations in crisis response contexts through an exploration of four collaborative pillars of social capital, co-creation sense-making, and sense-giving. The article uniquely extends rebranding to crisis response literature by proposing a rebranding co-creation framework that provides much-needed guidelines to organizations facing a morally induced crisis.

Organizational credibility is an important component of organizational survival. The need to build and maintain organizational credibility in the social media context is specifically significant, largely due to the popularity of the medium in the current interactive communication environment. Social media, however, create a challenging environment for accurate information consumption, because it excludes the journalistic gatekeeper, are subject to misinformation and allow for information proliferation by both official and nonofficial users. For organizations to enhance their credibility in the social media context, it is important, firstly, to determine what constitutes social organization credibility. To establish an enhanced understanding of social organizational credibility and to build towards a formal conceptualization, this article quantitatively explored the preliminary identified determinants of social organizational credibility among active social media users. An exploratory factor analysis indicated that social organizational credibility consists of the determinants of trustworthiness, qualified resonance, homophily, personable interaction, informed conversation, and apt social word-of-mouth. Furthermore, the results also highlighted that an organization's connections (including social media influencers and experts) are also a key determinant of social organizational credibility. This research provides guidance as to how social media users assess an organization's credibility in the social media context, which could help alleviate the misinformation stigma that is associated with social media as an interactive communication platform. The identified determinants and the conceptualization of social organizational credibility extend existing organizational credibility literature and provide organizations with much needed guidelines to enhance their credibility in the social media context.

This article proposes a new concept, co-change-orientated communication (co-COC), whichencapsulates the daily social and communication processes of organisational members inmaking sense of change from a critical strategic communication perspective. Guided by anevolutionary approach to concept development, this article aims to quantitatively measure thepragmatic relevance of identified attributes and antecedents of co-COC to the development ofa fully-fledged concept at six high-change South African organisations. An exploratory factoranalysis confirmed that co-COC is attributed by meaningful dialogue, employee engagement,collaboration and co-creation, and the encouragement of dissent. It is bottom-up in nature andenabled by the antecedents of organisational agility, leadership agility, a change-able cultureand stakeholder engagement. Co-COC further extends theoretical development on the need forchange in approaches to communication that support ongoing organisational change and hasvepotential to assist communication professionals to recognise the need and pragmatic relevance ofcontemporary developments in strategic communication. The various antecedents and attributesof co-COC could also provide organisations with guidance on the implementation of changeorientatedcommunication approaches in support of ongoing organisational change.

The importance of stakeholder engagement for organisational survival is widely recognised and supported. The interactive, polyphonic organisational context has placed added emphasis on stakeholder engagement. Strategic communication professionals are increasingly becoming responsible for creating connection among diverse voices which necessitates their involvement in the stakeholder engagement process. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of the strategic communication professional in the stakeholder engagement process in contemporary, polyphonic (multivoiced) strategic communication. This was done by determining the pragmatic relevance of two approaches to stakeholder engagement, namely deliberate-emergent and radical-emergent. A quantitative research design was employed using a web-based survey, which was distributed to communication professionals in academia and practice. An exploratory factor analysis highlighted two approaches to stakeholder engagement that recognises the importance of stakeholder conversations and inputs, while honouring conventional planning as a key activity for successful stakeholder engagement. The results of this study provide guidance to organisational management on engaging stakeholders in line with the current polyphonic organisational context. The study also affirms the indispensable role of the communication professional in the stakeholder engagement process, either to provide stakeholder guidance or to contribute to stakeholder enablement and empowerment.

This article presents a new concept, "co-Change-orientated Communication" (co-COC), to address the need for theoretical developments beyond mainstream assumptions by drawing from contemporary, critical developments in strategic communication. A two-phased, qualitative methodological strategy was employed. Firstly, a thematic analysis of a sample of literature according to specific parameters and contextual bases was conducted. Secondly, to identify an exemplar for co-COC, a document analysis was done of selected 2016 Fortune "Change-the-World" organisations' annual and sustainability reports. In congruence with the themes of the literature, the document analysis revealed that co-COC is a bottom-up concept and elicits the attributes of meaningful dialogue, employee engagement, collaboration and co-creation, and encourages dissent. To realise the implementation of co-COC, the document analysis indicated the antecedents of stakeholder engagement, organisational agility, leadership agility and a change-able culture. co-COC contributes to the body of knowledge on strategic and change communication and serves as a heuristic for future research. Furthermore, co-COC provides theoretical development beyond the conventional, which not only affirms the critical role of change communication in the successful management of change, but could also assist communication professionals to realise the need for the inclusion of contemporary developments in strategic communication.

The accelerated capacity of the media can be to the advantage or disadvantage of individuals. From an organisational communication perspective, it is argued that shared knowledge through inline communication media could contribute towards sustainable strategic stakeholder relationships. To achieve this, this article is addressed from the Communicate Constitution of Organisations (CCO) school of thought as foundation with a specific focus on the knowledge management perspective as multidisciplinary approach to create shared knowledge and meaning. From a knowledge management perspective, it is argued that inline communication media could be used as change agent to create this meaning and awareness. For the purpose of this article, inline communication media refers to the integration of online and offline interactive communication between the organisation and stakeholders and the move towards shared meaning through cross-mediality for sustainable stakeholder relationship building. According to Larghi, Lemus, Moguillansky and Welschinger (2015:22) the integration of actions and behaviour are valuable to understand strategic stakeholders and it could be used as a manner to systematically change how they add meaning to reality. This underlines the need for an approach to combine online and offline interactive media to strengthen strategic stakeholder relationships. In line with the CCO school of thought, it is argued that connectivity, which creates perceptions over time, space and relationships, allows individuals to move from the digital to the physical envrionment and back (Larghi et al. 2015:28). Inline communication media therefore creates various cross-channel touch points to strengthen communication to apply relationship management with strategic stakeholders to the advantage of the organisation. An important aspect is the movement towards shared knowledge which,, from an organisational communication perspective, differ from the mere transfer of information through the media to make provision for the continuous change in the new and social media context. This article addresses this gap to move from information transfer through the media towards shared information where inline communication media is used as change agent to create shared knowledge, meaning, innovative collaboration and problem-solving to contribute towards sustainable relationship building with strategic stakeholders. This article provides a two-fold contribution: Firstly, from an organisational communication viewpoint, this article proposes a new perspective where inline communication media could be used as change agent for the transfer of shared meaning; and secondly, that this shared meaning, made possible through knowledge management, could contribute towards strengthening the organisation's relationships with strategic stakeholders.

The potential influence that internal stakeholders' image of the organisation could have on external stakeholders' image of the organisation, is strongly supported in the literature. This research project attempted to address the need for an approach that facilitates employee engagement, coupled with a leadership approach that allows collaboration, inclusion and cooperation within the organisation, to strengthen internal corporate image. This article reports on the results of the second phase of this research project, where a proposed stakeholder-inclusive conceptual framework for strengthening the internal corporate image, built from a stakeholder-inclusive perspective as depicted in the King III report on corporate governance, was explored in practice. A quantitative, self-administered web-based survey was conducted with the 2014 winners of the Deloitte Best Company to Work For (BCTWF) survey. The results not only indicated that these organisations' practices resonate with the proposed stakeholder-inclusive framework, but also that the principles of the framework, namely stakeholder theory; integrated internal communication; peace arena; stakeholder engagement by means of the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard (AA1000SES) and responsible leadership and stewardship correlate with one another. The stakeholder-inclusive conceptual framework expands on the body of knowledge on corporate image and provides corporate communication professionals with a guide for strengthening their organisation's internal corporate image, which could serve as starting point for strengthening the external corporate image and eventual corporate reputation.

It is widely reported in the literature that employees’ image of the organisation has a direct influenceon external stakeholders’ image of the organisation. This research attempted to address theneed for an approach that facilitates employee engagement coupled with a leadership approachthat allows collaboration, inclusion and co-operation within the organisation, to strengthenthe internal corporate image. A synthesis of the literature from a unique stakeholder-inclusiveperspective, depicted in the King III Report on corporate governance, was conducted to identifythe theoretical principles for a preliminary conceptual framework explored through a case studyapproach. Parsec Technologies Pty Ltd was purposively selected as case study, because it wasthe 2012 and 2013 winner in the manufacturing sector of the Deloitte Best Company to Work For(BCTWF) survey, and served as a best practice organisation in the context of this research. Datatriangulation by means of one-on-one interviews, focus groups and an open-ended survey wasconducted with employees to determine the pragmatic relevance of the proposed framework. Thefindings culminated in a new generic stakeholder-inclusive conceptual framework to strengthenthe internal corporate image by means of the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standardelements and responsible leadership. Although a single case study is limited, this frameworkcontributed to the body of knowledge on corporate image to provide organisations with guidelinesfor strengthening their internal corporate image.

To fill the gap in existing literature to build organisation-stakeholder relationships (OSRs) and to expand the body of knowledge on the process of OSR-building, Slabbert (2012) developed a model that provided a partnership approach to describe the process of OSR-building with strategic stakeholders. This model was tested among in-house corporate communication professionals at JSE -listed organisations. The main aim of this article is to describe a follow-up study that further explored how the principles of this model resonate with the process of OSR-building in practice, specifically in selected South African public relations (PR) and communication agencies. By further exploring the principles of the Sequential, Integrated, Sustainable Organisation-Stakeholder Relationship model (SISOSR), this study explored whether OSR-building from a modernistic perspective is still relevant in practice or whether it resembles a postmodernistic move evident in recent academic literature. Although the findings indicate that the OSR-building process presented by Slabbert’s 2012 model is more conducive to in-house corporate communication professionals’ practices, it does tend to resonate with OSR-building in practice which could be evident of communication professionals’ slow uptake of postmodernistic approaches. The research findings were used to provide guidelines for possible amendments of the SISOSR model to align it with OSR-building in practice. This could be used as a starting point for future studies in addressing the process of stakeholder relationship building from a postmodern perspective.