Internal communication strategies for employee communicative actions: a qualitative analysis in American and Italian companies

Purpose – To understand if, and how, internal communication strategies can promote strategic employee communicative actions such as to disseminate positive information that enhances the company’s reputation. These communicative actions sustain the competitive advantage of a company. Approach – Interviews with: internal communication experts; internal communication managers in 10 American companies and 22 Italian companies. A focus group comprised of internal communication managers and experts. Findings –Employee communicative actions have been categorized into: exploration, interpretation, sharing and acting. Internal communication strategies enable employees to be effective communicators. Research implications – To investigate the link between employee communicative actions and internal communication and relationship quality by means of a survey among employees. Practical implications – Internal communication managers are expected first, to become enablers towards employees and line managers; and second, to facilitate sense-making processes and the quality relationship building. Key words – employee communicative actions, enablement, internal communication. Paper type – Research paper.