Revisiting strategic communication's past to understand the present: Examining the direction and nature of communication on Fortune 500 and Philanthropy 400 web sites

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the communication styles on the web sites of a random sample of the top American corporations and non‐profit organizations. By revisiting the traditional approach to understanding strategic communication, the four models of public relations provide insights into the direction and nature of organizational communication.Design/methodology/approach – A random sample of Fortune 500 (n=180) and Philanthropy 400 (n=170) was conducted. Although public relations research has never measured internet communication using the four models, the researchers created original scales to measure their web performance.Findings – The research reveals that both corporations and non‐profits have strong preferences for using one‐way communication on their web sites. However, both groups moderately incorporated two‐way communication practices as corporations were more likely to use two‐way research practices and non‐profits were more likely to engage in conversations online.Origin...

[1]  Sumit K. Lodhia.  Corporate Perceptions of Web Based Environmental Communication: An Exploratory Study into Companies in the Australian Minerals Industry , 2006 .

[2]  A. Friedman,et al.  Developing Stakeholder Theory , 2002 .

[3]  Samsup Jo,et al.  The Effect of Web Characteristics on Relationship Building , 2003 .

[4]  J. Grunig,et al.  Managing public relations , 1984 .

[5]  Hong-Hee Lee,et al.  Corporate blogging strategies of the Fortune 500 companies , 2006 .

[6]  Jane Webster,et al.  Enhancing the Design of Web Navigation Systems: The Influence of User Disorientation on Engagement and Performance , 2006, MIS Q..

[7]  Mihaela Vorvoreanu.  Website Experience Analysis: A New Research Protocol for Studying Relationship Building on Corporate Websites , 2008 .

[8]  Eyun-Jung Ki,et al.  Relationship maintenance strategies on Fortune 500 company web sites , 2006 .

[9]  James L. Garnett,et al.  Strategic change in organizational communication: emerging trends for wealth formation in the new millennium , 2000 .

[10]  R. Feinberg,et al.  E‐CRM Web service attributes as determinants of customer satisfaction with retail Web sites , 2002 .

[11]  L. Lewis,et al.  When the "stakes" are communicative: The lamb's and the lion's share during nonprofit planned change , 2003 .

[12]  Michael L. Kent,et al.  Building Dialogic Relationships through the World Wide Web. , 1998 .

[13]  Melissa M. Smith.  Nonprofit Religious Organization Web Sites: Underutilized Avenue of Communicating with Group Members , 2007 .

[14]  Peter Naudé,et al.  How is information technology affecting business relationships? Results from a UK survey , 2003 .

[15]  J. Jonker,et al.  Stakeholder Excellence? Framing the evolution and complexity of a stakeholder perspective of the firm , 2002 .

[16]  Diana Ingenhoff,et al.  Web Sites as a Dialogic Tool for Charitable Fundraising NPOs: A Comparative Study , 2010 .

[17]  Glenn Ellison,et al.  Lessons About Markets from the Internet , 2005 .

[18]  Oliver Quiring,et al.  What Interactivity Means to the User Essential Insights into and a Scale for Perceived Interactivity , 2008, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[19]  Anne Gregory,et al.  Applying communication theories to the Internet , 2001 .

[20]  Candace White,et al.  The World Wide Web as a public relations medium: the use of research, planning, and evaluation in web site development , 1999 .

[21]  C. Ogan,et al.  The Internet as Mass Medium , 1996, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[22]  Stuart L. Esrock,et al.  Organization of corporate web pages: Publics and functions , 2000 .

[23]  A. Fiore,et al.  For fun and profit: Hedonic value from image interactivity and responses toward an online store , 2005 .

[24]  A. Meijer.  Understanding modern transparency , 2009 .

[25]  S. Sandhu.  Strategic Communication: An Institutional Perspective , 2009 .

[26]  William J. White,et al.  The relationship between Web site design and organizational responsiveness to stakeholders , 2003 .

[27]  Bruce K. Berger,et al.  Public relation(ship)s or private controls? Practitioner perspectives on the uses and benefits of new technologies , 2003 .

[28]  L. Pitt,et al.  Stakeholder Strength: PR Survival Strategies in the Internet Age , 2005 .

[29]  Sora Kim,et al.  What they can do versus how much they care Assessing corporate communication strategies on Fortune 500 web sites , 2010 .

[30]  Greg Leichty,et al.  Corporate World Wide Web Pages: Serving the News Media and Other Publics , 1999 .

[31]  Yuping Liu,et al.  Developing a scale to measure the interactivity of websites , 2003, Journal of Advertising Research.

[32]  Seok Kang,et al.  Nonprofit organizations’ use of the World Wide Web: are they sufficiently fulfilling organizational goals? , 2004 .

[33]  Annelie M.E. Naudé,et al.  The use of the internet by ten South African non-governmental organizations—a public relations perspective , 2004 .

[34]  Kirthi Kalyanam,et al.  Principles of Internet Marketing , 1999 .

[35]  Antonino Vaccaro,et al.  Corporate dynamic transparency: the new ICT-driven ethics? , 2009, Ethics and Information Technology.

[36]  Chun-ju Flora Hung.  Exploring Types of Organization–Public Relationships and Their Implications for Relationship Management in Public Relations , 2005 .

[37]  Lola Butcher,et al.  Nonprofit Organizations Outpace Businesses in Use of Social Media , 2009 .

[38]  Kaye D. Sweetser,et al.  PR practitioners’ use of social media tools and communication technology , 2008 .

[39]  R. Lefebvre,et al.  The New Technology: The Consumer as Participant Rather than Target Audience , 2007 .

[40]  Elsayed Bekhit,et al.  Online Public Relations in the Arab Governmental Websites , 2009 .

[41]  Louisa Ha,et al.  Interactivity reexamined: A baseline analysis of early business web sites , 1998 .

[42]  S. O'Donohoe,et al.  Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies , 2008 .

[43]  T. Melewar,et al.  The Internet revolution: some global marketing implications , 2003 .

[44]  Qing Hu,et al.  The evolution of corporate web presence: A longitudinal study of large American companies , 2006, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[45]  R. Lefebvre.  The Change We Need: New Ways of Thinking about Social Issues , 2009 .

[46]  J. Phelps,et al.  Online privacy and security practices of the 100 largest US nonprofit organizations , 2009 .

[47]  Robert L. Heath,et al.  Strategic Issues Management: Organizations and Public Policy , 2009 .

[48]  Yungwook Kim,et al.  Craft and Professional Models of Public Relations and Their Relation to Job Satisfaction Among Korean Public Relations Practitioners , 1998 .

[49]  Catherine Gowthorpe.  Asymmetrical dialogue? Corporate financial reporting via the Internet , 2004 .

[50]  John A. Ledingham,et al.  Relationship management in public relations: dimensions of an organization-public relationship , 1998 .

[51]  Y. Huang.  Is Symmetrical Communication Ethical and Effective? , 2004 .

[52]  M. Morsing,et al.  Corporate Social Responsibility Communication: Stakeholder Information, Response and Involvement Strategies , 2006 .

[53]  Priscilla Murphy.  The Limits of Symmetry: A Game Theory Approach to Symmetric and Asymmetric Public Relations , 1991 .

[54]  Jaemin Jung,et al.  A cross‐cultural study of the world wide web and public relations , 2005 .

[55]  Sejung Marina Choi,et al.  Building customer relationships in an electronic age: The role of interactivity of E-commerce Web sites , 2008 .

[56]  S. Hansen.  The global diffusion of relationship marketing , 2008 .

[57]  Candace White,et al.  Public relations practitioners’ perception of the world wide web as a communications tool , 2000 .

[58]  Paul Capriotti,et al.  Communicating corporate responsibility through corporate web sites in Spain , 2007 .

[59]  Stuart L. Esrock,et al.  Social responsibility and corporate web pages: Self-presentation or agenda-setting? , 1998 .

[60]  M. Will,et al.  Corporate communication in the new media environment: A survey of 150 corporate communication web sites , 2000 .

[61]  C. Marsh,et al.  Public Relations Ethics: Contrasting Models from the Rhetorics of Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates , 2001 .

[62]  Richard D. Waters,et al.  Examining how advocacy groups build relationships on the Internet , 2009 .

[63]  Kimberly A. Neuendorf,et al.  The Content Analysis Guidebook , 2001 .

[64]  R. Biloslavo,et al.  Web sites as tools of communication of a “green” company , 2009 .