Completed Research

Collaboration between Academia and Industry

 

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are key organizations to accelerate social, economic, and technological progress by generating both highly qualified human potential and knowledge relevant to society. The transfer of knowledge and technology has become increasingly crucial as a fundamental aspect of HEIs’ “third mission”. One way of transferring knowledge is by establishing collaborative relationships between HEIs and industry.

The research project “Collaboration between Academia and Industry” explored the cooperation between public universities, universities of applied sciences, and industry in Austria to gain insights into their strategies and approaches. It focused on the objectives, goals, areas, and forms of collaboration, the role of the major actors in orchestrating the collaboration, organizational structures, and the role of the government in support of the collaboration.

The project was funded in 2022 by the Higher Education Research and Applied Science (HERAS+) program through a postdoctoral scholarship to Dr. Arbresha Meha, Professor Associate at the University of Applied Sciences in Ferizaj, Kosovo.

Contact: Arbresha Meha, Sabine Einwiller

Email Arbresha: arbresha.meha@ushaf.net

Publications: 

 

Virtual Collaboration and Communication

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global crisis that is having a profound impact on almost all areas of society, the economy, and the way we live and work together. The pandemic boosted mobile working and changed work dynamics, which in turn generated new challenges for internal communication. While task- and work-related information services can be provided relatively quickly and easily with digital tools, broader employee communication is much more difficult in a highly virtual work context. In our research, we address the question of how employees, who do not work in the office every day, can be encouraged to work responsibly and with strong commitment to their organization. In particular, internal communication experts are challenged to develop new concepts when planning and implementing community and identity-building measures. Overall, it can be assumed that in virtual collaboration and communication environments, central goals of employee communication such as relationship building, identity formation and motivation require adapted and possibly novel strategies and practices.

The project on Employee Engagement in Times of Virtual Collaboration was funded by the Academic Society for Management & Communication in 2021.

Contact: Sabine Einwiller, Julia Stranzl, Ingrid Wahl, Christopher Ruppel

 

Publications:

  • Stranzl, J., Ruppel, C., & Einwiller, S. (2024). Staying emotionally connected while being physically apart – exploring what teleworkers need to stay committed and how internal communication can contribute. In Journal of Communication Management, 28(2), 272-293. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-02-2023-0023
  • Einwiller, S., Stranzl, J., & Wahl, I. (2022). Hybride Arbeitssettings. Die Rolle der Mitarbeiterkommunikation (Hybrid work arrangements. The role of employee communication). prmagazin, 52(8), E1-E6.
  • Einwiller, S. (2022). Emotionale Bindung durch Mitarbeiterkommunikation in Zeiten von Virtualisierung. PERSONALquarterly – Wissenschaftsjournal für die Personalpraxis, 03/2022, 24-27.
  • Stranzl, J., Wolfgruber, D., Einwiller, S., & Brockhaus, J. (2021). Keeping up the spirit. Internal communication in an increasingly virtual work environment. Communication Insights, Issue 13. Leipzig, Germany: Academic Society for Management & Communication.

 

Native Advertising 

Over the past decades, persuasive attempts through classical advertising that aim to obtrusively influence consumers to prefer, like and buy certain products or brands have lost effectiveness. This urges communicators to consider new ways of promoting their offerings by applying less obtrusive messages that add informational, entertainment or social value. Here, native advertising is often regarded as a promising new opportunity to inform consumers. Native advertising comes in a variety of forms and channels (e.g., Facebook posts, newspaper articles), however, at its heart it consists of promotional messages that are made to look like content which is published by a respected source (e.g., friends, journalists). This may lead to issues of transparency, as it becomes harder for consumers to distinguish commercial content from non-commercial content. We strive to better understand the role of this message format for media users by investigating their perceptions and reactions (e.g., reactance) to different forms of native advertising that are prominent in online news portals.

The project Native Advertising on Online Portals of Austrian News Media was funded by KommAustria - the Austrian Communications Authority from 2018-2020. It is also featured on the Societal Impact Platform of the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Contact: Christopher Ruppel

 

Publications:

  • Einwiller, S., & Ruppel, C. (2023). Die Wirkung von (in)transparentem Native Advertising auf die Vertrauenswürdigkeit des Mediums. In T. Koch, J. Beckert, B. Viererbl & N. Denner (Hrsg.), Grenzen, Entgrenzung und Grenzüberschreitungen der Public Relations und Organisationskommunikation (S. 23-53). Wiesbaden: Springer.
  • Stürmer, L., & Einwiller, S. (2023). Is this advertising or not, and do I care? Perceptions of and opinions regarding hybrid forms of content. Journal of Marketing Communications, 29(2), 161-178.
  • Einwiller, S., & Ruppel, C. (2021). Native advertising: News media's trust dilemma. 8th European Communication Conference (ECREA), September 6-9, Braga, Portugal (online).
  • Einwiller, S., & Ruppel, C. (2020). Native Advertising auf Onlineportalen österreichischer Medien: Vorkommen, Wahrnehmung und Wirkung. Kurzbericht, KommAustria.
  • Weitzl, W., Seiffert-Brockmann, J., & Einwiller, S. (2020). Investigating the effects of sponsorship and forewarning disclosures on recipients' reactance. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 45(3), 282-302. (open access)
  • Naderer, B., Seiffert-Brockmann, J., Matthes, J., & Einwiller, S. (2020). Editorial. Native and embedded advertising formats: Tensions between a lucrative marketing strategy and consumer fairness. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 45(3), 273-281.

 

Management of Communication Content and Messages

Due to the changing media landscape and the changes in stakeholders’ media use, corporate communications must meet stakeholders’ needs by operating quickly and in a coordinated manner, while simultaneously meeting the requirements for resource efficiency. This creates challenges but also opportunities that result from news ways of directly communicating with audiences via owned media, which force organizations to think and work like media producers. To do so effectively, many organizations have changed or are changing their internal structures and processes. This is accompanied by a transformation towards greater agility. Several organizations have also established newsrooms to organize and manage their communication of contents.

The project Content Management in Agile Organizations was funded in 2018/19 by the Academic Society for Management & Communication as part of a larger research project on Corporate Communications in Agile Organizations, a joint effort by researchers at the Universities of Leipzig, Münster and Vienna.

Contact: Sabine Einwiller, Jens Seiffert-Brockmann (former CCom member)

Publications:

  • Einwiller, S., Seiffert-Brockmann, J., & Ninova-Solovykh, N. (2022). Agile integrated communication – A content-based approach. In J. Falkheimer & M. Heide (Eds.), Research Handbook of Strategic Communication (pp. 400-415). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Seiffert-Brockmann, J., & Einwiller, S. (2022). Content-Strategien in der Unternehmenskommunikation: Themensetzung, Storytelling und Newsrooms. In A. Zerfaß, M. Piwinger, & U. Röttger (Hrsg.), Handbuch Unternehmenskommunikation. Strategie – Management – Wertschöpfung (3. Aufl., S. 541-556). Springer Gabler.
  • Seiffert-Brockmann, J., Einwiller, S. A., Ninova-Solovykh, N., & Wolfgruber, D. (2021). Agile content management: Strategic communication in corporate newsrooms. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 15(2), 126-143. (open access)
  • Einwiller, S., & Ninova-Solovykh, N. (2020). Strategisches Themenmanagement – Mit oder ohne Newsroom eine bedeutende Veränderung in der Unternehmenskommunikation. Kommunikationsmanager, 3-2020, 18-20.
  • Ninova-Solovykh, N., Seiffert-Brockmann, J., Einwiller, S., Wolfgruber, D., & Berger, K. (2019). It's all about content. Strategic Topic Management in agile organizations. Communication Insights, Issue 6. Leipzig, Germany: Academic Society for Management & Communication

 

Harmful Online Communication

In its early days, the internet was envisioned to serve as an electronic forum where a plurality of voices engage in rational argument. Yet, this vision is severely hampered by plenty of emotional and quite often aggressive, hateful and thereby harmful voices disseminated online. Such harmful online communication (HOC) - often debated as online "hate speech" - aims at harming the dignity or safety of the attacked target. Online platform providers, mainly private organizations, play a central role in confining HOC, because as the owner of the space they are the actors who have decisive power of intervention. This research focuses on the measures taken by various types of platform providers in six different national environments. In the first phase of the research, organizations' comments policies are content analyzed. In the second phase, interviews with representatives of the organizations are conducted to assess measures' effectiveness. The research generates in-depth insights into organizations' policies aiming to curb HOC, and unveils good practice examples while considering organization types and national embedding. Based on the findings, best practices and recommendations are derived that will help organizations and policy makers to tackle this issue and to foster the value of "online considerateness".

This project was funded by The Toyota Foundation in 2017/18.

Contact: Sabine Einwiller

Publications: