Role of storytelling in communicating information within public-listed companies in Malaysia
The digitalisation and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have reshaped how we communicate in an organisation. Due to these, public relations encompasses the characteristics of advanced public relations in the 21st century and its growing strategic importance to businesses. The challenges faced by this...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/99602/1/NURAFIQ%20INANI%20BINTI%20MAN%20-%20IR.pdf |
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| Summary: | The digitalisation and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have reshaped how we
communicate in an organisation. Due to these, public relations encompasses
the characteristics of advanced public relations in the 21st century and its
growing strategic importance to businesses. The challenges faced by this
discipline include measuring the results of communication, the profession's
ethics, and the profession's globalisation. One of the public relations core
purposes is to inform employees of the company's strategy. Using storytelling to
communicate information, particularly a company's strategy and vision, can
significantly impact people in a meaningful or harmful way. The study's purpose
was to explore the role of storytelling in communicating information from the
perspective of public relations professionals, namely those who work for publicly
listed companies in Malaysia. This study's aim was achieved using a qualitative
phenomenological approach, where ten public relations professionals were
interviewed up to the data saturation point. Accordingly, an interview guide aided
in the interview procedure, which was captured using digital voice recorders. The
data were transcribed verbatim and organised into groups to generate codes,
categories, and themes. According to the study findings, public relations
professionals employed five unique definitions of an organisation's storytelling
when communicating information. Numerous variables, including the
characteristic of organisational storytelling, such as a narrative message, part of
a brand experience and culture, recounting corporate history, and touching
people's emotions, have affected the growth of storytelling in these modern
public relations. This study also found that public relations practitioners within
publicly listed companies in Malaysia used both official and unofficial stories
throughout the organisation based on their personal experience. Meanwhile, in
terms of communicating corporate goals, the elements of storytelling, such as
multiple channels, management values and culture, and techniques used to
create a good story, are used. Storytelling by public relations practitioners in
publicly listed companies showed the greatest support for communicating corporate strategy. This study showed a crucial contribution of public relations
practitioners as employees play a major role in the organisation’s collective
sensemaking process by narrating supportive or harmful stories. Theoretically,
based on the sensemaking theory, storytelling facilitates the transition to
informed decision-making within organisations by providing an integrative
conceptual framework and suggesting a better direction on how storytelling in
internal communication can support or undermine corporate strategy. This
study's implication will help and make it possible to negotiate an agreement to
increase storytelling's significance and strategies, allowing public relations
managers to determine which communication strategies work best for business
strategy and preparing the organisation for change. Practically, the conceptual
model could help organisations, especially Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs),
Government-Linked Corporations (GLCs), and other private and public sectors,
find, adapt, and create a guideline for designing and building comprehensive and
effective internal storytelling programmes for public relations and corporate
communication specialists. |
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