Editorial 29.6: Gender equality, workplace culture and engaging with publics

Abstract

In editorial 27.4 (Topi� c, 2022), I wrote about the increase in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) -known as diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) in the US -scholarship in the Corporate Communications: An International Journal (CCIJ). Equally, in editorial 29.2 on diversity and innovation, I have argued that CCIJ continues to publish EDI/DEI works and that "CCIJ is emerging as a journal that increasingly publishes equality scholarship in corporate communication, contributing towards knowledge creation in this field as well as widening participation and bringing inclusivity to scholarship by opening doors to equality scholars in corporate communication" (Topi� c, 2024a, p. 118). This issue also continues in that manner, and we present several articles that tackle gender equality in public relations and corporate communications, as well as papers that tackle workplace culture and leadership. In terms of workplace culture and leadership, CCIJ publishes an increased number of these papers, thus also emerging as a venue for this work. However, whilst we regularly publish gender equality papers and present a popular venue for that work, this issue goes further and innovates research in this area by studying unconventional issues such as spillover effects of gendered communication and the impact of gender stereotypes on publics' crisis response. What is more, we focus further on studying publics and their levels and modes of engagement with organisations and how publics respond to organisational messages.In this issue, Michal Chmiel writes about the societal impact of brand public relations (BPR) on gender equality. Using an experimental method and a sample from three countries (N 5 378), the author examined the mechanism of the societal impact of BPR. The effects of spillover of evaluations between two sub-brands of a house-of-brands company, caused by positive publicity about communication co-created by Public Relations (PR), were analysed. The findings supported the existence of a positive spillover of evaluations. The author demonstrates that consumers of a female brand (Dove) changed their views about a typical woman in society by learning about how a related male brand (Lynx/Axe) communicated, and establishing these communication behaviours was enabled by using PR and the publics concept, not psychological theory, to explore behaviour, with which the author contributes to public relations theory and methodology. The author also shows how organisations can positively influence publics when they engage in responsible communication grounded in gender equality. Sining Kong, Michelle Marie Maresh-Fuehrer and Shane Gleason write about the impact of gender stereotypes on publics' crisis response. The authors used two industries as case studies (automotive vs daycare) and two spokespersons (male and female), as well as two crisis response appeals (emotional and rational), to examine the effect of gender stereotypes in crisis communication. The findings have shown that "either matching spokesperson sex with sex di...