Corporate Influencers as Communicators: Potential Challenges from an Organizational Perspective : A qualitative Study

Abstract: The communication environment in which organizations operate is changing, not least due to the increasing digitalization. With social media platforms growing importance in a professional context, employees can become potent communicators with strategic relevance for organizations. Communication through these Corporate Influencers poses several challenges to organizations, as the established approaches and methods of strategic communication, as discussed in literature, can only partially be applied for this new form of communicators. Due to the novelty of this field there is a significant gap in academic literature. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the challenges connected to the communication of Corporate Influencers from an organizational perspective, moreover, offering first insights into an emerging field in the discipline of strategic communication. To address the research gap, this study pursued an exploratory, hence qualitative approach. Nine semi-structured interviews with experts in the field from nine different companies were conducted and analyzed using the Gioia method. Through this method, the author was able to identify eleven major challenges on different hierarchical levels, arising for organizations in connection to the communication of Corporate Influencers. The analysis suggested a strong interrelation between the singular challenges, presented in form of a dynamic model. By contrasting these papers findings against preexisting literature from the field of strategic communication, and in particular employee advocacy, this thesis concludes that a holistic view is necessary from an organizational perspective. While an adequate corporate culture is the prerequisite for all further efforts, the challenges on a managerial level are of equal importance to those on the employee level, as well as to the challenges surfacing when moving towards the operationalization. While the challenges need to be addressed individually for a successful Corporate Influencer communication, they should at all times be regarded in an overall organizational context.