Values advocacy: Enhancing organizational images, deflecting public criticism, and grounding future arguments

Bostdorff, Denise M.; Vibbert, Steven L.

doi:10.1016/0363-8111(94)90055-8

Cited by 91 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…These plans use messages and symbols to communicate values (Rokeach, 1968;Miller and Lellis, 2016) since the aim of strategic communication is to create a favorable reputation for stakeholders or to motivate change beneficial to the industry (Cornelissen and Cornelissen, 2017). These actions are often employed in persuasive campaigns for public relations and advertising (Bostdorff and Vibbert, 1994). For example, strategic communication is reflected in climate change mobilization through agenda-building, framing, and social marketing (Cox, 2010).…”

Section: Background Energy Democracy As a Communication Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Case Study of Electric Utility Companies’ Use of Energy Democracy in Strategic Communication

McKasy

Yeo

2018

Front. Commun.

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A substantial increase in distributed renewable energy resources is changing the face of the energy environment, leading to strategic communication efforts by key stakeholders. The energy democracy movement supports this transformation from fossil fuels to distributed renewable energy and aims for equitable involvement of publics in energy decision making. These tenets challenge utility company earnings as they are directly related to energy sales and infrastructure returns on investment. Proposals by electric utility companies to restructure net-metering policies as a solution to financial issues have been criticized as prohibitive to the success of renewable energy advancement. To address these disagreements, the Edison Electric Institute and a communication firm, Maslansky & Partners, created The Future of Energy: A Working Communication Guide for Discussion. This handbook provides utility companies with strategic communication guidelines to portray themselves as supportive of renewables within a dynamic energy industry. We posit that aspects of the energy democracy movement have been employed by electric utility companies, as shown through the use of the handbook, as a strategy for communicating with customers in discussions around net metering. We examine two case studies in states with recent controversial net-metering policy changes by analyzing utility company websites and press releases for the use of the communication handbook terminology. We found that, in both cases, the suggested language was used to position their companies as pro-renewable energy and their utility-scale projects as more equitable for their customers. In addition, we found differences between each company's use of key terms from the handbook. We posit that this is due to the temporal context of each net-metering debate at the time of the handbook release. Conclusions and future directions for research in the growing area of energy democracy are discussed.Keywords: electricity, energy, energy democracy, net metering, strategic communication A dramatic increase in solar power adoption has occurred in the last decade, in part because of the growing consumer interest in green energy, coupled with significant decreases in associated costs (Weiner, 2015;Muro and Saha, 2016). The unprecedented speed at which distributed resources are changing energy systems underscores the challenge and importance of understanding the roles of humans in this transition. This evolution is especially apparent in democratic societies in which participatory communication is integral to resolving environmental issues (Stephens et al., 2015). Energy democracy is a movement that aims to involve publics in energy decision making with emphasis on the transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy and distributed systems (Fairchild, 2017). This aligns with a broader effort in environmental communication to address human-caused threats to ecological systems and the failure of social institutions to confront these threats (Cox, 2007). Some propose that scholars...

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Section: Background Energy Democracy As a Communication Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Case Study of Electric Utility Companies’ Use of Energy Democracy in Strategic Communication

McKasy

Yeo

2018

Front. Commun.

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“…Communication is an enactment of an organization ' s personae, as innovator, responsible fi scal agent, good corporate citizen, etc and corporate communication, in our opinion, works best when it employs information in the service of persuasion (cf. Bostdorff and Vibbert, 1994 ).…”

Section: Implications and Questions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leveraging Organizational Innovation for Strategic Reputation Management

Courtright

Smudde

2009

Corp Reputation Rev

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“…Therefore I would like to add the matter of values advocacy to this thread. Values advocacy has been discussed for example by Bostdorff & Vibbert (1994) who describe it as an appeal to shared cultural values.…”

Section: Genre Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Shell presents itself as a positive, active, dynamic company with a strong social agenda which extends beyond the needs of their own employees to embrace communities everywhere (Keyishian 1996). The impressive list of achievements suggests to the recipient that he too could and should be a conscientious citizen of the world (Bostdorff & Vibbert 1994) and the contact information provides him with the opportunity to contribute and become part of Shell's achievements, in other words, to become part of the inclusive "we" of Shell and feel good about himself.…”

Section: Profits or Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From the introduction to the report and the first examples, it could be assumed that all the advertisements in this series would be characterized by direct forms of recipient address, but Shell use these advertisements as a forum for presenting their socio-political stance and is an example of values advocacy (Bostdorff & Vibbert 1994, Keyishian 1996, Livesey 2001, Coupland & Brown 2004, Cook 2008) and the role of the addressee is to listen and learn. Active participation on the part of the addressee is limited to an opportunity to respond to the invitation to contact Shell that is extended at the bottom of the right-hand page.…”

Section: Profits or Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Good Guys : A Cultural Semiotic Study of the Print Advertising of the Oil Industry (1900-2000)

Vang¹

2014

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Values advocacy: Enhancing organizational images, deflecting public criticism, and grounding future arguments

Cited by 91 publications

References 6 publications

A Comparative Case Study of Electric Utility Companies’ Use of Energy Democracy in Strategic Communication

A Comparative Case Study of Electric Utility Companies’ Use of Energy Democracy in Strategic Communication

Leveraging Organizational Innovation for Strategic Reputation Management

Good Guys : A Cultural Semiotic Study of the Print Advertising of the Oil Industry (1900-2000)

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