
Linjuan Rita MenUniversity of Florida | UF · Public Relations
Linjuan Rita Men
Ph.D, APR
About
118
Publications
226,758
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Introduction
Rita Men, Ph.D., APR, is a Professor of Public Relations and Director of Internal Communication Research at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. Her research interests include internal communication, leadership communication, public engagement, measurement and evaluation, relationship/reputation management, entrepreneurial communications, and emerging technologies.
Additional affiliations
August 2017 - present
August 2015 - May 2017
August 2012 - May 2015
Education
August 2009 - May 2012
August 2007 - May 2009
September 2003 - June 2007
Publications
Publications (118)
This study examines how organizational leadership influences excellent internal communication by building the linkage between transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The results showed that transformational leadership positively influences the organization's symmetrical communication...
This study proposes and tests a conceptual model that not only measures public engagement with corporate pages on social networking sites, but also evaluates the influence of such engagement on important perceptual, relational, and behavioral outcomes. Study results provide empirical evidence of the positive effects of public engagement on perceive...
This study explores the internal communication role of chief executive officers (CEOs) by examining their communication channels, style, and quality, as well as their influence on employee–organization relational outcomes. Results showed that CEOs most frequently use email and face-to-face channels to communicate with employees. The social media pr...
This qualitative study examined relationship cultivation and public relations practices in start-up companies in Mainland China. Findings from 28 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs in China¹ suggest that employees and customers are the most important strategic publics for start-ups, followed by investors, the media, and the government. Symmetri...
This study explored how charismatic executive leadership communication during change influences employees’ attitudinal and behavioral reaction toward change. Specifically, it proposed and tested a conceptual model that links charismatic executive leadership communication during change, characterized by envisioning, energizing, and enabling behavior...
With more corporations incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) tools like social chatbots into their public communication practices, we explore optimal chatbot designs for organization-public relational outcomes. Our 2 × 2 × 2 factorial web experiment with eight custom-designed chatbots showed that communication strategies (verbal and non-verbal...
Drawing insights from leadership, public relations, and communication literature, this study aimed to advance the theorization of leadership communication in disruptive crisis times. Specifically, leadership communication attributes of transparency, authenticity, empathy, and optimism (TAEO) were connected to a central internal communication outcom...
With more corporations incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) tools like social chatbots into their public communication practices, we explore optimal chatbot designs for organization-public relational outcomes. Our 2 × 2 × 2 factorial web experiment with eight custom-designed chatbots showed that communication strategies (verbal and non-verbal...
Purpose
This study is designed to bridge a gap in the existing leadership communication literature by delving into lesser-explored facets of the field. It particularly concentrates on investigating how the verbal aggressiveness of supervisors influences various aspects of the workplace, including workplace emotional culture, the quality of employee...
The study aimed to establish linkages among laissez-faire leadership, perceived organizational justice, employee-organization relationships, and employees’ negative megaphoning behavior. Through an online survey of 397 employees working in large and medium corporations in the United States and the structural equation modeling analysis of the data,...
Organizational leaders are increasingly expected to be visible and communicative on social media with organizations' public. Drawing theory and literature from dialogic communication and leadership communication, this study analyzed and compared how corporate and nonprofit executive leaders capitalized on various dialogic principles and social pres...
This research presents a model connecting the perceived morality, authenticity, and timeliness (MAT) of CEO activism to consumer trust and supportive behaviors (e.g., consumer advocacy and intention to work) toward the CEO’s organization. The results show that perceived MAT of CEO activism are positively associated with Millennial and Gen-Z consume...
This study examined how the organizations’ use of mediated and interpersonal channels during change affects employees’ change-related outcomes. Specifically, the study proposed and tested a conceptual model that links organizations’ frequency of use of communication channels to perceived organizational communication transparency during change, empl...
This study presents one of the earliest empirical investigations on how to harness the power of chatbots for improving key public relations outcomes. Specifically, this study integrates the construct of social presence that has been widely studied in the computer-mediated communication literature with the concept of conversational human voice in pu...
The COVID-19 global pandemic drove many companies to reevaluate their approach to business and, as a result, some focused their efforts on leading with purpose. Purpose is an organization's fundamental goal that goes beyond profit maximization. It is an all-encompassing principle that guides everything the organization does and determines its strat...
Mobile-based social messengers are overtaking social networking sites as the new frontier for organizations to engage online stakeholders. This study provides one of the earliest empirical studies to understand how organizations should communicate with mobile publics to enhance public engagement and improve organization–public relationships. This s...
This study took a personification approach and examined how strategic communication influences the development of startup corporate character and associated outcomes in China. Specifically, it examined the relationships among startups’ symmetrical communication model, startup characters of agreeableness, enterprise, competence, and ruthlessness, cu...
This editorial introduces start-ups as critical drivers of growth in modern economies and gives an overview on existing research about young and innovative companies in the field of strategic communication. It also provides an overview of the articles published in this special issue.
This study examines whether and how internal communication at different levels (i.e., corporate symmetrical communication and supportive peer communication) interact to influence employee psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also reveals the mediating effects of employee organizational trust in this process, which helps...
This study examined whether and how listening in the internal communication context may influence the quality of employee-organization relationships. This study proposed employee psychological need satisfaction as the potential underlying mechanism that mediates the relationship between internal listening and employee relational outcomes. An online...
This study explored the relationship cultivation and social media strategies companies used to cultivate relationships with their publics in two culturally distinct markets of China and the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative content analysis of Weibo ( n = 756) and Twitter ( n = 645) posts from Fortune 500 companies in China ( n = 30...
This study examined how startup CEOs’ communication influences employees’ relational and behavioral outcomes. Specifically, it tested the influence of startup leaders’ communication responsiveness, assertiveness, and authenticity on employee-startup relationships and organizational citizenship behavior. Through an online survey of 744 startup emplo...
This study examines startups’ social media communication practice in China through the theoretical lens of dialogic communication. Drawing interdisciplinary insights from public relations and computer-mediated communication, this study explored conversational human voice and social presence as antecedents of startups’ dialogic communication with pu...
Internal communication, sometimes referred to as employee communication, internal relations, or internal public relations, has witnessed significant growth in the past decades as a discipline and profession. The introduction chapter revisits the definitions of internal communication, provides an overview of the recent developments in research and p...
This edited book delves into important current issues and trends in internal communication from a strategic communication perspective. It presents recent research findings, theories, best practices, and cases in internal communication on a global scale. The book discusses emerging and important long-standing issues in-depth, including topics such a...
Leadership is widely recognized as a key determinant in the functioning and well-being of individuals, groups, and organizations (Van Vugt et al., 2008; van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). Leadership cannot be separated from communication; research reveals organizational leaders spend 70%-80% of their time communicating (Wajcman & Rose, 2011). In this c...
This study explored how nonprofit executives in the U.S. engaged with online publics through various communication strategies. We investigated the extent to which nonprofit executives leveraged 1) digital dialogic principles, 2) social presence strategies, and 3) message tactics. In addition, this study attempted to explore how different communicat...
This study examines how supervisory leadership communication during the COVID-19 pandemic fostered employee trust through the lens of motivating language theory. Drawing insight from self-determination theory, this study also reveals the mediating effects of employees’ psychological need satisfaction for competence and relatedness in this process,...
This study explores how startup leadership communication influences employee outcomes. Specifically, drawing upon interdisciplinary insight from public relations, leadership, and managerial psychology, this study tests how startup CEO charismatic leadership communication, which is characterized by envisioning, energizing, and enabling behaviors hel...
This study examines how CEOs’ use of motivating language influences employee relationships within startup organizations. Informed by self-determination theory and social identity theory, the study proposes psychological need satisfaction and organizational identification as mechanisms accounting for the influence of startup leaders’ use of motivati...
This study explores the relationship cultivation strategies and disaster social media functions Chinese companies used to maintain relationships with their publics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Public engagement was assessed using a multi-dimensional construct consisting of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral measures. A quantitative content analy...
Employee advocacy has become a buzzword that has captured the interest of organizations. Despite the increased attention, employee advocacy is an understudied topic in the public relations literature. Hence, the purpose of this study was to fill a gap in public relations research on employee advocacy by examining internal communicators’ thoughts on...
This study examined how the 117 Twitter profiles maintained by U.S. headquartered agencies appearing in the 2017 Global Top 250 PR Agencies list from the Holmes Report are using this platform to communicate with their publics. Guided by the dialogic communication theory, a content analysis of 1,120 tweets (from the 112 agencies identified as having...
This study examined communication strategies used by organizations to encourage employee participation on internal social media and analyzed whether employees’ internal social media usage engenders increased transparency and relational outcomes from the employee perspective. Specifically, researchers proposed and tested a conceptual model that link...
As one of the first empirical attempts investigating the emerging role of positive emotional culture within organizations, the study examined how a symmetrical internal communication system and leaders’ use of motivating language contribute to fostering a positive emotional culture featured by joy, companionate love, pride, and gratitude. Furthermo...
This study explores whether and how internal social media influences employee engagement, a top priority for those working in public relations. Specifically, it proposes and tests a conceptual model that links employee use of internal social media, perceived organizational transparency, and organizational identification, to employee engagement. Thr...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine why and how an open and participative communication climate matters for employee organizational identification and their change-specific responses, specifically employees’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions.
Design/methodology/approach
To test the hypothesized model, the authors conducted an online...
An online survey of a national sample of employees of mid- to large-size organizations in the U.S. (N=549) was conducted to examine employees’ general acceptance of CEO ghost posting practices on social media and to test a conceptual model that links perceptions of CEO ghost posting and perceived CEO voice to perceptions of authentic CEO leadership...
This study examined how Chinese nonprofits practice stewardship and how stewardship principles influence nonprofit–donor relationships and donor retention. Fifteen qualitative in‐depth interviews were conducted with experienced fundraisers in China. Results showed that Kelly's stewardship principles were applicable in China; Chinese fundraisers pra...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare Fortune 200 and top startup chief executive officers’ (CEOs) communication strategies on Twitter and the effectiveness of these strategies in influencing public engagement. Specifically, guided by the dialogic communication theory and social presence theory, this study explored CEOs’ use of dialogic c...
This study was conducted to test the relationships between WeChat (a popular Chinese mobile SNS) and a number of variables including the structural features of users’ networks, the use of political information on WeChat, political discussions, and political attitudes. The results of this study showed that the use of political information by WeChat...
This study used a theoretical model from social psychological research on relationships, the investment model, to explain the engagement process. More specifically, the study examined how employee satisfaction with the relationship, quality of alternatives to the relationship (whether employees' most important needs can be met elsewhere), investmen...
Based on a random sample of employees (n = 439) in the United States, this study examined the effect of transformational leadership and transparent organizational communication on cultivating employee organizational trust during an organizational change event. We also investigated the interplay between transformational leadership, transparent commu...
This study examined whether and how the publics’ negative peer communication (NPC)about companies on social media could influence the quality of organization-public relationships (OPRs)through the theoretical lens of socialization and social learning theory. Through an online survey and a structural equation modeling analysis, results showed that N...
The study surveyed 506 employees in the United States to test the effect of internal communication (i.e., corporate-level symmetrical and leadership-level responsive communications) on fostering a positive emotional culture characterized by companionate love, joy, pride, and gratitude. In addition, we tested the interplay between corporate internal...
The growth of social media in organizations is reshaping internal communication strategy. This article explores the value of internal social media with a focus on employee engagement, which is defined as employees who are connected to the values and mission of the company, feel empowered, bring energy, passion, and discretionary effort to their job...
This study investigates how corporate character is shaped by organizational symmetrical communication and its effects on the quality of employee-organization relationships. Results of an online survey with 314 working adults in the United States showed that symmetrical internal communication plays an important role in defining the organization’s po...
This study examined how the Office of the President at the University of Florida has strategically utilized the social networking site of Facebook. Guided by the dialogic communication theory, a content analysis of the 146 posts published by the Office of the President and the 977 comments that these posts received between December 2014 and June 20...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of emotional culture on the quality of employee–organization relationships (EORs). To understand the nuances of the influence of positive and negative emotional cultures on employee relational outcomes, this study specifically examined four fundamental emotional cultures, namely, joy, love...
This entry provides a succinct literature review of authenticity in strategic communication. The theoretical conceptualization and definition of authenticity in the domains of public relations, leadership, branding, advertising, and political communication are provided. Measures, antecedents, and consequences of authenticity in strategic communicat...
This study expands the conceptual framework of dialogic communication on social media by incorporating a social dimension via social presence. Through a content analysis, we explored how dialogic internet principles and social presence strategies were implemented in top social CEOs’ Facebook posts to generate public engagement outcomes. Results sho...
This study explored the under-researched topic of leadership communication in the context of startup companies in China. Specifically, this study examined the role of executive leadership in shaping corporate culture and leadership communication purposes, strategies, and channels in startups. Findings were derived through 25 in-depth interviews wit...
Mobile-based social messengers have overtaken social networking sites as the new frontier for organizations to engage online stakeholders. This study provides one of the earliest empirical investigations on the antecedents and relational outcomes of pubic engagement with companies via WeChat—one of the world's most popular social messaging apps. Pu...
This study examined how public positive and negative social media (i.e., WeChat) discussion about President Xi Jinping in China, along with Xi’s leadership communication styles of assertiveness, responsiveness, and authenticity on social media influence publics’ evaluation of his leadership effectiveness, which in turn, influences public trust and...
This study examined the strategic use of social media for stakeholder engagement in startup companies in China. Guided by the theoretical framework of stakeholder engagement, in-depth interviews were conducted with 28 entrepreneurs in China, and a content analysis was performed with 419 corporate social media posts on Weibo and WeChat. Findings sug...
This study proposed and tested a social media peer communication model that links tie strength, social media dependency, and public–organization social media engagement to the peer communication process and organization–public relationship outcomes. Results of a cross-cultural survey of 328 American and 304 Chinese social media users showed that ti...
This study provides one of the earliest empirical analyses to explore how and why publics engage with corporate CEOs on social media and why such engagement matters. It tested a conceptual model linking CEO-public engagement to the interpersonal communicative variables of perceived authenticity and approachability as well as organization-public rel...
Based on a random sample of employees (n=391) working in various industrial sectors in the United States, we examined the respective linkages between employee–organization relationships (EORs) and authentic leadership, symmetrical internal communication, and organizational culture. Results indicated that authentic leadership, organizational culture...
As one of the first empirical analyses focusing on corporate executive officers’ (CEOs) communication style on social media and its impacts, the study aims to advance the theoretical understanding of CEO sociability and the mechanism underneath its effects on the broader public relations outcome of organization–public relationship and public advoca...
Based on consumer socialization theory, this study proposes and tests a conceptual model of social media shopping behavior, which links the antecedents of user motivations of engagement and peer communication about products to shopping behavior through social media. A cross-cultural survey was conducted with social media users in two culturally dis...
Scholars have increasingly recognized the importance of studying factors leading to employee engagement. However, few researchers have created and tested theoretical models that propose mechanisms linking employee engagement to social contextual variables. Based on a random sample of employees (n = 391) working across different industrial sectors i...
Purpose
– Academics and professionals across management and communication fields have increasingly recognized significant contributions of engaged employees to organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of communication channels, and communication attributes of transparency and authenticity on employee engagement in China...
This chapter presents an integrated framework of public-organization engagement on social media, which incorporates motivations of engagement, the antecedents, and the perceptual, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of engagement. It addresses several central issues of contemporary social media engagement research in public relations, including 1)...
The current study examines employee engagement as an outcome of internal public
relations. Specifically, it tests the how employee engagement is associated with
other outcome variables of employee–organization relationships and internal
reputation and how it is driven by organizational contextual factors of authentic
leadership and transparent comm...
This study examines the contribution of ethical leadership to internal communication
effectiveness by examining the influences of ethical leader behaviors, such as fair
treatment, role clarification, power sharing, people orientation, integrity, ethical guidance,
and concern for sustainability, on symmetrical internal communication, perceived leade...
This study links the factors central to social media communications, including perceived corporate character, parasocial interaction, and community identification, to public engagement and organization–public relationships. Based on American users’ engagement behaviors on corporate Facebook pages, the study underscores the effectiveness of a person...
To advance theoretical understanding of consumer engagement on social media, this cross-cultural study evaluates how culture influences consumers’ engagement levels and activities on brand pages of social network sites. It further evaluates the underlying motivations and engagement mechanisms in two culturally distinct countries, China and the USA....
The aim of the study is to illuminate the internal reputation management process by examining the impact of authentic leadership and transparent organizational communication on employee evaluation of the organization. Drawing upon extant literature of public relations, marketing, business and management on corporate reputation, the study suggests t...