Mediating Role of Public Engagement,1

Mediating Role of Public Engagement,1

Running head: MEDIATING ROLE OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

Toward a Model of Engaged Publics: Trust, Satisfaction, and the Mediating Role of Public Engagement for Supportive Behaviors

(Abridged Version of Doctoral Dissertation)

Minjeong Kang, Ph. D.

Syracuse University

March 1, 2012

Abstract

The quality of relationships between an organization and its public is a good indicator of the public’s general attitude toward the organization. However, gaps exist between organization-public relationship quality and public’s actual supportive behaviors. To fill a critical missing link between organization-public relationships and publics’ supportive behaviors, this study investigates if public engagement, defined as a motivated affective state of individual members of publics that drives their voluntary extra-role behaviors, connects evaluation of organization-public relationships to actual supportive behavioral outcomes. By focusing on the concept of engagement, the purpose of the current study is to empirically test a theoretical model of public engagement with two key antecedents, (i.e., relational trust and satisfaction) and its mediating role between such antecedents and positive behavioral outcomes.

Toward a Model of Engaged Publics: Trust, Satisfaction, and the Mediating Role of Public Engagement for Supportive Behavioral Outcomes

For nearly three decades of public relations scholarship, key goals of communication management have been the strategic management of quality relationships between an organization and its key publics (e.g., L. Grunig, J. Grunig, & Dozier, 2002; LedinghamBruning, 2000). Since Ferguson (1984, August) called for research on organization-public relationships (hereafter called OPR) in 1984, Ki and Shin (2006) noted in their systematic review of past public relations research that the concept and theories of OPR have dominated public relations research. More specifically, relationships between an organization and its publics have been examined in terms of four key relational outcomes of trust, satisfaction, commitment, and control mutuality and their subsequent effects (e.g., Hon & J. Grunig, 1999; Kang & Yang, 2010; Ki & Shin, 2006; Yang & J. Grunig, 2005; Yang, 2007).Previous research examined key outcomes of OPR in relation to (a) favorable corporate/organizational reputation (e.g., Yang, 2007; Yang & J. Grunig, 2005); and (b) publics’ attitudes toward organizations and behavioral supports (e.g., Bruning, 2000; Hong & Yang, 2009; Ki & Hon, 2007a; Kang & Yang, 2010).

As many corporate communication campaigns focus on achieving desirable effects on publics such as increased awareness, knowledge, positive opinions, attitudes, and behaviors (Dozier & Ehling, 1992), scholars (e.g., Hong & Yang, 2009) have argued that in order for such communication campaigns to bring out intended effects, factors that provoke publics to engage in communication with organizations need to be considered. In such an effort, Hong and Yang (2009) examined the effects of satisfaction and reputation on organizational stakeholders’ communication behaviors and found the mediating role of company-customer identification on the word-of-mouth intentions.

Filling this gap between conceptual relationship assessments and tangible behavioral indicators of public support, the concept of public engagement has emerged in the contemporary public relations practices (e.g., Breakenridge, 2008; Solis, 2010). With the emergence of social media, publics have increasingly utilized this new form of active communication as a critical tool of public engagement with organizations (e.g., Breakenridge, 2008; Scott, 2007; Weil, 2006). Individual stakeholders are increasingly demanding to be active partners in many corporate activities such as corporate social responsibility campaigns, because they are willing to “contribute to society’s sustainability and well-being in partnership with business, government and non-governmental organizations” (Edelman, 2009, March 5, par. 1). As organizations begin to acknowledge the value of empowered individuals, who are willing to collaborate with organizations as a critical partner for mutual success, the needs to engage publics as the integral part of organizational operations and success have exponentially increased. Hence, the success of organizations in this new public and media environment can be largely dependent on organizations’ abilities to find ways to effectively and positively engage their stakeholders for meaningful partnerships.

The concept of engagement is nothing new. In business and organizational context, engagement has become a popular concept to develop efficient organizational communications for employee motivation and leadership development. Also, in marketing communication, customer engagement has been explored for product development and consumer relationships. As the relationship perspective has become a dominating paradigm in marketing research, concepts such as customer satisfaction, customer-brand commitment, identification, and customer/brand engagement have become popular concepts in exploring the value of customer-brand relationships and the subsequent effects of nurtured relationships with customers on supportive intentions or behaviors. Moving away from linear persuasion model of marketing communication (Plummer, 2008), marketers and communication professionals alike have put forth much effort to understand the changing world of customers and their expectations by shifting the marketing emphasis to the “co-creation” of customer/public experiences (e.g., Rowley, Kupiec-Teahan, & Leeming, 2007). Common to these various understandings of engagement is that engagement is a desirable condition that brings positive organizational or marketing outcomes such as increased employee voluntary behaviors, consumer advocacy, and customer loyalty.

Although public engagement has emerged as an important concept in contemporary corporate and strategic communication context, the concept of engagement has suffered from the lack of a clear theoretical definition. Without proper definition of the concept, professionals and scholars alike have been jumping on the bandwagon to find ways to connect engagement with more tangible customer outcomes such as return-on-investment (ROI), word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior, purchase, or loyalty without much success. Our understanding of engagement so far lacks serious theoretical deliberations as well as empirical support.

With the emergence of new tools such as web analytics that enable for marketers to monitor and measure people’s activities online, engagement has emerged as a term that describes the level and degree of activity people have with a brand or company. Common approaches social media consultants or marketers suggest are equating engagement with the number of clicks, mentions in the media, “linking, bookmarking, blogging, referring, clicking, friending, connecting, subscribing, submitting inquiry forms and buying are all engagement measures at various points in the customer relationship” (Odden, L. cited in Falls, J. “What is Engagement and How do We Measure it? ” January 4, 2010).Despite the usefulness of such information to some marketers, what these numbers represent are behaviors that are fragments of behavioral outcomes of engagement but not engagement itself. Some PR professionals (e.g., KD Paine) have proposed different levels of engagement measures to differentiate relationship-based engagement from matrix-based engagement (“Measuring Engagement is Just Another Term for Measuring Relationships,” January 4, 2010). The best way for the concept of engagement to have conceptual and behavioral utility is to be conceptualized in a model that embraces both the psychological and the behavioral components it implies (Macey& Schneider, 2008).

The current study reviews existing organizational and marketing literature on engagement and adopts pertinent views into public relations research context by theoretically defining the concept of public engagement; devising a methodologically sound measure for engagement; and empirically examining the relationships between public engagement and other important concepts in public relations research.

Literature Review

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online (2012), the intransitive verb “to engage” means to pledge oneself; to begin and carry on an activity; to participate or to induce to participate; or to give attention to something. As such, it carries meanings of both cognitive and behavioral dimensions such as getting involved or participating in activities such as conversation, discussion, or making a pledge to do some action. The concept of engagement has been studied in various contexts such as organizational psychology, education, and consumer psychology. Macey and Schneider(2008) defined engagement as having three components: trait engagement, state engagement, and behavioral engagement. In their conceptual model of engagement, Macey and Schneider suggested that trait engagement, a personality disposition of individuals (i.e., positive outlooks of life and work in general), provides a perspective for understanding the world. And, this trait engagement gets to be reflected in psychological state engagement, and finally this psychological state engagement leads to behavioral engagement. Similarly, Kahn (1990) also noted that personal engagement refers to “harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performance” (p. 694).

On the basis of Macey and Schneider’s (2008) and Kahn’s (1990) frameworks of engagement, the current study discusses the concept of engagement in cognitive, affective, and behavioral frameworks in relations with key antecedents and outcomes. More specifically, this study proposes that public engagement is discriminant from OPR, which has been primarily viewed as a cognitive concept (J. Grunig & Hung, 2002; Kang & Yang, 2010), and is predominantly an affective concept. More importantly, focusing on trust and satisfaction as key antecedents of engagement, the concept of public engagement is proposed as a crucial mediator connecting key relational outcomes—trust and satisfaction– with a public’s supportive and loyal behaviors.

Definitional and Measurement Issues

Althoughthe concept of engagement has become a popular term both in practice and the academic world, there are various conceptual and methodological concerns that hinder further development of theories and practices on engagement.For instance, in March 2006, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) defined customer/brand engagement as “turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context” (Plummer, 2008, p. 15). Similarly, Brian Haven (Forrester, Marketing’s New Key Metric: Engagement, 2007 August 8) has defined engagement as “the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence an individual has with a brand over time (p. 5) ” from “a person’s participation with a brand, regardless of channel, where they call the shots” (p. 5). As such, the working definitions of engagement widely adopted by professionals lack conceptual clarity and utility at best.

Confusion also exists in academic literature. For instance, problems in the discussion of engagement are often associated with vague definitions as discussed in Robinson and Perryman, and Hayday (2004). Colbert and colleagues (2004) defined engagement in terms of heightened motivational states of employees (Colbert, Mount, Harter, Witt, & Barrick, 2004, p. 603). Similarly, Wellins and Conselman (2005) also defined engagement as an “illusive force that motivates employees to higher levels of performance” (p. 1).

Closely connected to the definitional problems, there also exist issues with the measures of engagement (Robinson et al., 2004). Contemporary measures of employee engagement are often similar to already existing concepts such as commitment (e.g., Baumruk, 2004; Richman, 2006), satisfaction (e.g., Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002), organizational citizenship behaviors (Robinson et al., 2004), or a compilation of four different categories: satisfaction, commitment, psychological empowerment, and task involvement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). However, scholars have pointed out such measures as problematic in that factors such as satisfaction, work involvement, or commitment tap not a whole, but only some aspects of engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). For instance, noting earlier works by Mathieu and Zajac (1990), Brown (1996) concluded that task involvement is more like an antecedent of commitment rather than a characteristic or consequence of organizational commitment.

Such definitional ambiguities of engagement and the operational overlaps with similar concepts are especially problematic in their exclusion of engagement as a state that connotes passion, commitment, or involvement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). Macey and Schneider argued that a more precise definition of engagement should include absorption, passion, and affect but not satisfaction, job involvement, and commitment as its central characteristics (p. 7). This contention is echoed in Erickson’s (2005) view of engagement. Erickson (2005) noted engagement is more than simple satisfaction or basic loyalty and argued that it is “about passion and commitment-the willingness to invest oneself and expend one’s discretionary effort (p. 14)” beyond what is required. Engagement isrelatively persistent or stable (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002; Macey & Schneider, 2008) with elevated emotional tone of the state (Schaufeli et al., 2002) that involves two critical factors: attention (i.e., “how much effort and time are spent”) and absorption (i.e., “how intense is the focus”) (Rothbard, 2001).

The current study adopts this prominent view of engagement with the affective aspects at the core of its definition and suggests (a) positive affectivity, (b) affective commitment and (c) empowerment as three key dimensions of public engagement. Therefore, public engagement in this study refers to a psychologically motivated affectivestate of individual members of publics that drives their voluntary extra-role behaviors. Public Engagement is characterized by affective commitment, positive affectivity and empowerment that individual public experiences in interactions with an organization over time that result in supportive behavioral outcomes.

Defining Engagement

Engagement as affective commitment.Affective commitment “reflects an emotional attachment to, identification with and involvement in an organization” (Meyer & Smith, 2000, p. 320). Having received substantive attention in organizational research, affective commitment has been identified as one of the important determinants of employee dedication and loyalty (Rhoades, Eisenberger, & Armeli, 2001). Unlike continuance and normative commitment that connote some degree of reluctance to commitment based on calculation and circumstantial conditions, affective commitment implies voluntary desires to commit (Bansal, Irving, & Taylor, 2004) and has been closely linked to the concept of engagement (e.g., Meyer & Allen, 1991; Allen & Meyer, 1996).

Some scholars and practitioners have defined engagement in terms of organizational commitment (e.g., WellinsConselman, 2005) as “to be engaged is to be actively committed, as to a cause (p. 1).” And, affectively committed individuals tend to possess a sense of “belonging and identification that increases their involvement in the organization’s activities, their willingness to pursue the organization’s goals, and their desire to remain with the organization” (Rhoades, Eisenberger, & Armeli, 2001, p. 825). This emotional and affective connection may result from “a psychological link” (Allen & Meyer, 1996, p. 252) or “a psychological bond” (Gruen, Summers, & Acito, 2000, p. 320) between relationship partners, which makes voluntary defection or disconnection less likely (Gilliland & Bello, 2002; Meyer & Allen, 1997). The current study postulates affective commitment is a facet of engagement characterized by emotional bonding and pride that brings additional efforts to sustain that relationship.

Engagement as positive affectivity.Positive affectivity is largely considered as having temperamental characteristics that are conducive to feeling joy, excitement, and other positive feelings (Costa & McCrae, 1980) with links to outcome measures such as job satisfaction (e.g., Staw, Bell & Clausen, 1986; Staw & Ross, 1985). Characterized by “activated pleasant affect” (Larsen & Diener, 1992, p. 31), positive affectivity and its definition are consistent with how Schaufeli, Bakker, Hoogduin, Schaap, Kladler (2001) defined engagement in terms of positive affective-motivational state of fulfillment that is typically noted by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Similarly, Macey and Schneider (2008) suggested that positive affectivity connoting “feelings of persistence, vigor, energy, dedication, absorption, enthusiasm, alertness, and pride” (p. 12) is a central facet in the conceptualization and operationalization of engagement.

Similar understanding of positive affectivity to the concept of engagement can be found in how some scholars refer to positive affectivity as passion, excitement, (WellinsConcelman, 2005) or emotional engagement (Fleming, Coffman, & Harter, 2005). Shirom’s (2007) notion of vigor is also similarly positioned to engagement as a persistent positive-affective state with the feeling of cognitive liveliness as well as enhanced physical and emotional energy. As central as it is to the understanding of engagement, definitions and measures of engagement without tapping into the affective energetic state are not properly understanding and measuring the concept of engagement in whole (Macey & Schneider, 2008). The current study postulates positive affectivity is a facet of engagement that is characterized by six positive markers (PANAS) (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988).

Engagement as empowerment.Closely linked with the concept of power, empowerment has been largely considered equal to delegation or decentralization of decision-making power (Burke, 1986; Kanter, 1983). Consequently, empowerment has been used interchangeably with employee or public participation. Based on the theory of intrinsic task motivation, Thomas and Velthouse (1990) argued that to empower is equal to “give power to” (p. 667) and suggested that empowerment entails a sense of authorization, capacity, and energy, concluding that empowering as “to energize” (p. 667) best captures the term as defined as motivational state.

Viewing empowerment as a motivational concept, Conger and Kanungo, (1988) proposed enabling (empowering) individuals through enhancing self-efficacy. Bandura (1982) argued that the self-perceptions of efficacy are central to human agency, impacting actions, cognitive patterns, and emotional arousal. In other words, individual’s perception of self-efficacy or efficacy judgment will affect how much effort and persistence is necessary for one to exert in a given task and environment.

Empowerment is associated with many positive outcomes. For example, empowered individuals tend to display high efficiency in their achievements, high level of energy and effort in learning (Bandura, 1977); initiative and innovative behaviors (Block, 1987; Sprietzer, 1995); and managerial effectiveness (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990; Sprietzer, 1995). Rothbard’s (2001) view of engagement as psychological presence reflects close relations between efficacy and engagement. This study adopts the view of empowerment as a motivational state that is internal to individuals (Conger & Kanungo, 1988) and proposes empowerment represents a motivated facet of engagement, both conceptually and operationally.

Antecedents of Public Engagement

Since the emergence of organization-public relationships (OPR) as the dominant paradigm of public relations research, Hon and J. Grunig’s(1999) measures of OPR have been adopted as the most prominent tool of measuringrelationship quality between organizations and publics, as Ki and Shin (2006) noted from past OPR research. Conceptualized as the outcomes of a relationship formed between an organization and its publics (J. Grunig & Huang, 2000), Huang (1997) initially defined OPR as in terms of four key outcomes: trust, satisfaction, commitment, and control mutuality. Later, Hon and J. Grunig (1999) developed the widely used measurement index of OPR with four relationship indicators and two relational types (i.e., communal and exchange relationships).