Employee communication: resources, behavior, enablement

Employee communication is generally defined as the communication flow between people operating within the boundaries of an organization and for this reason very often it is also referred to as internal communication. Behind this vision there is the idea of organizations as systems made by subsystems and linked to other systems situated in an external environment. This chapter argues for a new vision of employee communication, abandoning the system perspective (SP) and its focus on organizational boundaries. Matching management, public relations, and organizational communication literature, this chapter proposes an understand‐ ing of employee communication rooted in the resource perspective (RP) and focuses on the interactive processes generating knowledge and employee engagement and on the underpinned employee communication behavior (Mazzei, 2010) that cannot be prescribed but only sus‐ tained by means of enabling communication strategies. Furthermore, this chapter presents the Enabling Model of Employee Communication. It operationalizes the definition of employee communication based on the RP to offer a framework for employee communication management (Mazzei, 2014; Mazzei & Quaratino, 2020). Finally, it offers insights into theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research.