Explicating communicative organization-stakeholder relationships in the digital age: A systematic review and research agenda

Irina Lock

76 citations0/0 files storedPublic Relations Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Public Relations and Crisis Communication Digital Marketing and Social Media Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Abstract

The digital age is a game-changer for the communication between organizations and stakeholders. Relationships are pivotal to public relations. However, their conceptualizations, measures, and normative assumptions have neither been analyzed systematically and across disciplines, nor have they been studied in light of the changing digital communication landscape. This article re-examines the relationship paradigm in public relations and marketing in an online environment. By means of a systematic review, it seeks to explicate communicative relationships between organizations and their diverse stakeholders, to review how they are operationalized and measured, and to illuminate their normative evaluations. This conceptual specification is guided by systematic sampling and content analysis of all primary research on organization-stakeholder relationships in the broader social sciences. Results of a comprehensive analysis of 74 articles suggest that studies overemphasize the business contexts, follow an instrumental orientation based on transactions rather than communication, and lack analyses of digital data. To explicate a PR understanding of digital communicative organization-stakeholder relationships, a definition is provided and a research agenda is offered on theory, measures, and blind spots.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 76 citations exist upstream.

References

2009Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement 2009Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement 2009Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA Statement.2010Strategic management a stakeholder approach 1994The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing 2003Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing 2012CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA 1973Uses and Gratifications Research

Cited by

2022A decade of social media in public relations research: A systematic review of published articles in 2010–2020 2023A systematic review of digital internal communication 2023Consumer financial vulnerability: Review, synthesis, and future research agenda 2020Trust research in public relations: an assessment of its conceptual, theoretical and methodological foundations 2021Environmental sustainability disclosures in annual reports of mining companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX)

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.