March 10 - Sala dei 146, IULM Open Space

9.00-10.30 (CET)

Internal communication, engagement, and the life satisfaction
Ana Tkalac Verčič

University of Zagreb, Croatia

Subjective well-being is an umbrella phrase which describes the way people evaluate their lives. Happiness and wellbeing are becoming increasingly important issues and are beginning to affect actions of governments, cities, and most of all – successful organizations. Despite research analysing the connection between life satisfaction and different work domains, there are no conclusive answers to the question of how work-domain contributes to life satisfaction. Strategic communications have an important role in safeguarding an encouraging and inspirational working environment. Internal communication has proven to be a predictor of employee job satisfaction, employee engagement, and both job and organisational performance. This lecture explores the relationship between internal communication satisfaction and life satisfaction, from both a theoretical and practical perspective, and through that the influence internal communication has on overall life satisfaction.


10.30-12.00 (CET)

Corporate Social Responsibility: communication strategies and challenges for organizations
Yijing Wang

Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands

In last decade, unprecedented corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts are devoted to a variety of social initiatives, ranging from environmental protection to community outreach. Companies committing to CSR engagement not only generate better support behaviours among stakeholders, but also build corporate reputation in the long run. However, critical issues related to CSR communication, such as stakeholders’ low awareness of and stakeholder scepticism toward companies’ CSR engagements, keep on eroding the benefits that a company can reap from its CSR engagement. This lecture invites the students to explore ongoing issues and new trends in CSR communication. Key topics include: How can companies communicate their CSR activities to different stakeholder groups effectively? What challenges do businesses face when engaging in CSR activities? What are the best practices of CSR communication? What role do social media play in CSR communication?


12.00-13.30 (CET)

Do you want to be more creative? How to use design and system thinking in strategic communication
Rudiger Theilmann

Leeds Beckett University, UK

Design thinking and systems thinking are known as approaches to solve problems and develop innovations. The lecture discusses the basic principles of those approaches and how design thinking and systems thinking can be used to develop creative and effective communication campaigns.


13.30-15.00 (CET)

Public Relations, art and literature for ideological messaging: The example of Nazim Hikmet
Meltem Çiçek

Maltepe University, Turkey

It is extremely important to look at Public Relations from an interdisciplinary approach. This lecture explores the link between public relations, art and literature. The use of art, literature and especially poetry in Public Relations is presented as facilitating communication and problem-solving processes, forming public opinion, contributing to 'consent engineering'. Ideological messages can be delivered effectively through poetry to produce consent in the target audience. Ideology is a matter of meaning and is transferred to poetry, especially by socialist poets. Ideology, according to Antonio Gramsci, is a reaction to reality. This idea is parallel to Nazım Hikmet's poetry. This lecture shows how interdisciplinary communication techniques can be used to influence public opinion and that poetry is a Public Relations tool. For this purpose, “Public Relations Duty of Forming Public Opinion”,” Poetry and Ideology in Public Relations” and “Production of Consent” will be explained with the example of Nazım Hikmet and with sample texts analysed from a Public Relations perspective.


15.00-16.30 (CET)

Consumer complaining on social media
Sabine Einwiller

University of Vienna, Austria

Consumers regularly experience corporate failures, which describe situations when a company’s performance falls below a person’s consumption expectations. The perception of such corporate failures or misconducts generally results in dissatisfaction and negative emotions, which can lead to complaining behaviour. The internet offers a plethora of possibilities for consumers and other stakeholders to express their opinions as online complaints. This carries the risk of harming the involved company by triggering dissatisfaction and negative emotions also in others who observe the online complaint, which can even lead to collective outrage and boycotting. The lecture discusses the concept of consumer complaining and presents findings from several empirical studies on how companies handle online complaints, how consumers respond to companies’ complaint handling and how the media reports on online firestorms.


16.30-18.00 (CET)

Communicating on social media: How to prevent legal problems
Vìctor Quintiere

Centro Universitário de Brasília-DF/UniCEUB, Brasil

Social media has brought a revolution to brands. Today consumers have a voice. They can speak out at any time about brands on social media and reach thousands of people. Thus, they need companies to adopt a more intuitive, transparent and interactive posture to build successful communication and marketing campaigns on social media. This lecture focuses on legal aspects of social media communication in different political and business contexts, taking the concrete example of the existing legislation in Brazil regarding 1) the press, 2) freedom of expression and 3) social media. Emphasis will also be given to how brands can protect themselves from possible legal problems or "cancellation".