Communication and Culture

Abstract

Purpose: Although qualitative methods have now gained a stronger foothold in International Business (IB) research, they remain under-researched, especially regarding how researchers can overcome obstacles created when interviewers exhibit ‘multiculturality’ during international field research projects. This paper analyses how researchers’ multicultural backgrounds create challenges and opportunities in data collection during in-depth interviewing, and how such backgrounds further impact on the power imbalance between researchers and interviewees.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The two multicultural co-authors of this paper draw upon their 141 in-depth interview experiences with expatriates and local staff across five separate field research projects in Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea, Finland, and the US. Field research experiences are analysed through a Bourdieusian inspired ‘epistemic reflexive’ self-interrogation process between the two co-authors.
Findings: This paper suggests five strategies to cope with the power imbalance between the researcher and the respondent in terms of social categorisation and language: activating the ‘favoured’ ethnicity, putting the ‘desired’ passport forward, constantly reassuring of belonging to the ‘right’ social category, bonding in the interviewee’s mother tongue and adopting a multilingual approach characterised by frequent code-switching.
Originality/value: This paper emphasises the relevance of exploratory, self-reflexive analysis, and uncovers how social categorisation and language influence the interviewer-interviewee power imbalance. Distinct methodological contributions are proposed accordingly for IB literature: placing ‘multiculturality’ as an important concept at the forefront of qualitative IB research; and identifying ethnicity and accent as key factors in terms of securing and conducting interviews.
Keywords: Multiculturality; International Business research; in-depth interview; expatriate; language; social categorisation; field research.
Paper type: Research paper

The book chapter discusses the findings of a quantitative investigation into the work roles of European communication professionals. In particular, our research investigates whether the manager-technician typology, developed in previous role research, still captures the reality of modern communication work, and whether there are any differences in the European context compared to the United States, where most research on practitioner roles has been done to date. Based on structural equation modeling, we show that several assumptions from this stream of research do not hold up to the scrutiny of modern statistical methods. Instead, we propose a more modest interpretation, first of which roles modern communication practitioners actually enact, and second how these roles relate to job satisfaction, managerial input and gender differences in the field.

Purpose
Recent years have seen resurgent interest in professionalism in public relations, with several initiatives to enquire about the state of the communication profession and its part in organizational strategy. This article discusses the findings of a quantitative investigation into the work roles of European communication professionals. In particular, our research investigates different professional roles, as developed in previous roles research, while taking a particular look at managerial role enactment.

Design/methodology/approach
We report the findings of an explorative study among 551 European communication professionals. The measures are used in this study are closely aligned with previous roles research, but modernized. We analyzed the data with factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Findings
We unfold four distinct contemporary managerial tasks ("diagnosis", "coaching", "liaison" and "execution"), extending previous research rooted in distinguishing these managerial tasks from more technical ones. As a result we show that (1) managerial role enactment is predominately determined by education and work experience, with a diminishing gender gap when it comes to performing managerial tasks alone, and (2) that these roles just partly relate to salary but highly relate to job satisfaction, particularly when it comes to taking part in management decision making (tasks that require responsibility, accountability, job diversity and also an analytical, strategic mindset).

Originality/value
The results of our study point to the further transformation of the PR Roles' concept, turning a more execution oriented job profile into a more managerial and strategically oriented profession.

Die intensive und zielgerichtete Kommunikation mit den Kapitalmärkten ist für Unternehmen heute unverzichtbar, beeinflusst sie doch neben dem Aktienkurs und damit dem Wert auch die strategischen Handlungsoptionen eines Unternehmens. Häufig wird dabei jedoch ...

Kurzfassung The advent of social media has changed the information environment drastically over the past 10 years. The new Internet is characterized by the vital participation of its users and comprises a variety of tools and sites for shared information creation and ...

ABSTRACT The article discusses the findings of a quantitative investigation into the work roles of European communication professionals. In particular, our research investigates whether the manager-technician typology, developed in previous role research, still captures the reality of modern communication work, and whether there are any differences in the European context compared to the United States, where most research on practitioner roles has been done to date. Based on structural equation modeling, we show that several assumptions from this stream of research do not hold up to the scrutiny of modern statistical methods. Instead, we propose a more modest interpretation, first of which roles modern communication practitioners actually enact, and second how these roles relate to job satisfaction, managerial input and gender differences in the field.

Purpose Recent years have seen resurgent interest in professionalism in public relations, with several initiatives to enquire about the state of the communication profession and its part in organizational strategy. This article discusses the findings of a quantitative investigation into the work roles of European communication professionals. In particular, our research investigates different professional roles, as developed in previous roles research, while taking a particular look at managerial role enactment. Design/methodology/approach We report the findings of an explorative study among 551 European communication professionals. The measures are used in this study are closely aligned with previous roles research, but modernized. We analyzed the data with factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings We unfold four distinct contemporary managerial tasks (“diagnosis”, “coaching”, “liaison” and “execution”), extending previous research rooted in distinguishing these man...

Kurzfassung The advent of social media has changed the information environment drastically over the past 10 years. The new Internet is characterized by the vital participation of its users and comprises a variety of tools and sites for shared information creation and ...

Social media have enriched the communication profession with new and immediate ways of stakeholder interaction. Along with new possibilities also come challenges – as professionals are engaging in real-time conversations with their audiences on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the like, they have to learn to mentally cope with an oversupply of possibly relevant information, with an invasion of work matters

ABSTRACT Many people who are unemployed tend to experience forms of psychological and social losses, including a weakened time structure, diminished social contacts, an absence of collective purpose, falling status, and inactivity. This article focuses on the experience of diminished social contacts and addresses whether social media help the unemployed maintain their relationships. Based on qualitative interviews with unemployed individuals, the article identifies various types of social support networks and their impact on individual experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Although the unemployed use social media to cultivate their social support networks, the opportunity to establish new contacts, both private and professional, is underutilized. Thus, social network differentiation between the unemployed and employed persists online in social media.

ABSTRACT This article reports the results of a stratified sample survey of 2414 unemployed individuals in Germany regarding Internet usage, accompanied by a small sample of qualitative interviews and time-use diaries. The Internet serves as a structuring device for individuals during unemployment and helps such individuals maintain social contacts; it fills time with activities for the unemployed that are meaningful from a normative perspective and are perceived subjectively as a good use of time. The Internet enables degrees of interaction that would otherwise not be possible because of financial difficulties. The research suggests that expanded interaction on the Internet for the unemployed would likely be beneficial.