Anja Špoljarić

Purpose: This review article offers an insight into employer brand and its importance for organizations, as well as an overview of international employer brand based on research on this topic available to date.Design/methodology/approach: An examination and critical evaluation of 37 research articles, two scientific monographs and a chapter was conducted. The selection of articles was based on conducted content analysis.Findings: Having an employer brand has become of utmost importance for many organizations since it was first described in academic literature in mid-1990s. Despite its key role in organizational success, there is a certain lack of recognition of employer brand in academic literature. While employer brand research is somewhat scarce, international employer brand research is almost non-existent. Organizations that operate on different international markets often recruit their employees internationally as well. However, employer brand developed and managed locally differs from the one developed and managed globally.Research limitations/implications: This review is based on a small number of articles available in the databases. Additionally, only the research papers written in English were included in the review.Originality/value: This review paper offers a much-needed overview of literature on employer branding within international context. International employer brands and international employer branding have so far been neglected within employer branding literature, despite the obvious need for differentiation. Therefore, this article seeks to provide a systematic overview and identify relevant characteristics of the international employer brand.

Internal communication has developed from an integral component of general management into a separate function that is consciously and purposefully managed to produce desired outcomes for organizations, organizational members, and society as a whole. Internal communication can improve organizational outcomes, but also increase quality of life. Looking forward, it is possible to see how work in the most developed organizations is becoming more reliant on trust and less on control, more on internalized values and less on external coercion. It is, therefore, paramount to study the phenomenon of internal communication as a management function and locate its study among academic disciplines studying organizations, management, and communication.

Internal communication is often equated with internal communication satisfaction (ICS), even though the second is the consequence of the first. In other words, it is a relationship between the antecedents (communication practices) and the consequences (communication satisfaction). ICS can be defined as a socioemotional result of communication interaction or as employees' satisfaction with various aspects of communication within the organization. In defining the model described in this book, one of the key variables that was explored was ICS. The model describes how it relates to workplace attitudes and through that – what it affects and what it is affected by. The sixth chapter defines communication satisfaction as a consequence of communication practices. It also puts the communication satisfaction in the context of communication within organizations and explains what ICS is exactly, what it consists of and how to measure it. Additionally, and most importantly, this chapter describes outcomes of higher ICS, explaining why organizations should strive to ensure ICS among their employees.

Internal communication is a great contributor to employee-organization relationships. These relationships describe how employees perceive the organization they work for. To illustrate these relationships, researchers often turn to concepts such as organizational support and psychological agreement, which are indicators of social exchange within the organization and its quality. In this chapter, social exchange theory and employee-organization relationships are explained, in order to explain the origins of organizational support and psychological agreements. This chapter also defines these two concepts and describes the connection they have to internal communication and employer brands.

A brand is a symbol that sums up all associations made to a name. While branding is well-developed in marketing, branding among employees as a concept is still evolving. It has become a subject of interest in academic research, as well as among many practitioners. This is no surprise, since an employer brand can bring a crucial advantage to an organization, which makes it relevant to both academics and practitioners, especially in the fields of marketing and human resources management (HRM). Essentially, an employer brand is what differentiates an organization as an employer from others. Generally, branding requires communication, both internal and external. The same goes for employer branding, it needs to be communicated to both internal and external publics. How internal communication contributes to employer branding is explored within this chapter. This chapter explains what the process of branding entails, describes two parts of employer brands – internal and external, and explains what it means to be an employer of choice and how to become one. It also describes how employer brands are communicated.

This chapter of the book discusses the evolving roles and functions of internal communication and presents an overview of new research and practice in internal communication in the past decade. This chapter also discusses the changing economic, political, social, cultural, media, and technological environments for organizations and their implications for internal communication. The recent pandemic is one of such changes that has amplified the importance of internal communication. In addition, fast digitalization, which is one of the defining characteristics of the 21st century, has also had a massive effect on communication within organizations. Therefore, this chapter of the book offers an explanation of the increasingly important role of internal communication for organizations.

During the last few years, the environment of internal communication has significantly changed, mostly under the influence of technology and media. This includes the way people communicate with each other and is most noticeable in the changes and advances that happened to channels of communication. These changes are also noticeable in the way communication is conducted within organizations. Modern organizations use a whole range of channels to reach their internal audiences – from traditional, face-to-face communication to printed publications, electronic media, and social networks. However, these different channels introduced a new problem area for organizations – choosing the right set of communication channels for different segments of internal publics. When choosing communication channels, organizations should consider the needs and preferences, resources, speed of data transfer, sender goals, and characteristics of both the receiver and the message itself. In order to understand how this is done, the fourth chapter examines different channels organizations use and the ways they use them. The chapter demonstrates importance of choosing the right internal communication channel mix and gives an overview of possible channels.

The concept of engagement is studied in different academic fields such as sociology, political science, psychology, and organizational behavior and has lately become a popular paradigm in public relations research. The development of relationship management has led to using engagement as the new paradigm within which organizations are trying to integrate, interact, and collaborate with their stakeholders. This chapter explores employee engagement and its connection to internal communication. It explains what engagement is and how it is studied. It also describes the importance of engagement and what internal communication does for it, i.e., how internal communication contributes to employee engagement.

This book proposes a model of internal communication based on empirical research to demonstrate how contemporary organizations strategize, organize, perform, and measure it. Internal communication is the management of communication between an organization and its members to inform, motivate, engage, and cocreate meanings to make organizations more effective. The book presents key concepts defining the successful implementation and execution of internal communication: internal communication satisfaction, employee engagement, employer branding, organizational support, and psychological contract fulfillment. Including an extensive literature review and informed by in-depth interviews conducted with corporate communication directors and human resource management directors in 25 Croatian organizations, the book uses original research to give practical guidance on internal communication best practices. The book is an ideal resource for researchers and advanced students of public relations and corporate communication broadly and internal and employee communication specifically.

In the modern organization profitability and future success depend on its readiness to put employees first and recognize them as the most important resource of organizational success. The relationship between concepts included in this book (internal communication satisfaction, employee engagement, psychological contract, employer brand, perceived organizational success and reputation) is significant for better communication management within the organization. Even though defining the relationship between those variables has been a topic in academic research, there are no significant studies that analyze those variables within the same context and explore their mutual relationships. The number of studies which are focused on the relationship between these concepts and their effect on organizational reputation is too small and there is a need for widening the theoretical and empirical scope to better understand all of the mentioned concepts and their relationships. The goal of this chapter is, therefore, to further explore the potential connections between internal communication satisfaction, employee engagement, employer brands, psychological contracts, and perceived organizational support. This chapter describes relationships between all the concepts explained in previous chapters.