Vol 31, No 2 (2012)

Although the concept ‘organisation-stakeholder relationship (OSR)’ is not new and has been
researched extensively in the literature, few attempts have been made to critically analyse
existing viewpoints and propose a unified conceptual framework. The main research problem of
this paper is to address this lack of a commonly accepted conceptual framework for organisational
stakeholder relationships. This is done through a critical analysis of the different perspectives
and existing conceptual frameworks, using a qualitative method whereby strategic stakeholder
identification, OSR development, and OSR maintenance are integrated to propose a conceptual
framework, subsequently termed SISOSR, for building organisation-stakeholder partnerships
(OSPs) with strategic stakeholders. This article is structured as follows: Firstly, the key concepts
are defined; secondly, the building blocks of the framework are presented based on sound
theoretical constructs; and. thirdly, the SISOSR framework is graphically presented and discussed
to elaborate on the proposed process of OSR building, followed by concluding arguments.

The research objective for the study was to conceptualise strategic communication management
(SCM) in the context of governance. Based on the insights obtained through the conceptual
analysis, the core of corporate communication practice in the reflective paradigm is broadened
from social responsibility to societal responsibility. Corporate communication, in its strategic role
(SCM), therefore assists in solving or avoiding conflict between organisational behaviour and the
public perception of how societally responsible organisations should operate. Furthermore, theoretical and conceptual linkages that emerged through the conceptual analysis suggest that the three meta-theoretical approaches initially selected for the governance domain (the triple bottom line, stakeholder, and stakeholder inclusiveness approaches) should also be
added to the framework for SCM. It was also found that corporate communication (especially in its
strategic role, known as SCM) can be regarded as a stakeholder orientated/responsible approach.

Many studies have explored Network Direct Selling Organisations (NDSOs) because they create
many communicative contexts and demonstrate such a diverse range of communicative processes
that form and sustain this large industry. These organisations exist in more than 70 countries, and
have almost 88 million members who generate over US$132 billion annually (WFDSA, 2011).
This paper argues that although NDSOs can be differentiated from other types of organising, their
characteristics can be linked to some key premises in postmodern thinking about organising. It
utilises the schismatic metaphor identified by Morgan (1981) to generate further insights into the
study of individuals as composite unities of operationally closed self-creating systems that cocreate
organisations such as NDSOs. The schismatic metaphor is utilised to provide a powerful
framework for social analysis of organisations by identifying and discussing some theoretical links
between postmodernism, social autopoiesis, and second-order cybernetics.

This article presents an indicative sample from the results of an experiment that gathered
audience responses to television news that was coded as “war journalism” and “peace
journalism” respectively, in South Africa, during April 2012. From the peace journalism model,
evaluative criteria were derived under a set of five headings for content analysis of two television
news programmes and four newspapers. Distinctions under the headings were particularised
for individual stories by critical discourse analysis to disclose potential sources of influence
transmitted into audience frames. The test material was then coded to fall within the upper and
lower peace journalism quartiles of the ‘idiom and range’ of journalism, as currently practised,
demonstrated by the content analysis. Transcripts of discussions by focus groups who saw the
material, as well as written notes made whilst viewing by a larger sample of participants, were
themed according to Entman’s model of framing (1993), where causal interpretation is linked to
treatment recommendation. From these interim findings, peace journalism proved to be ideational
in the sense that peace journalism viewers were more likely to perceive structural and/or systemic
explanations for problems, and more likely to see opportunities for therapeutic and/or cooperative
remedies to be applied through exertions of political agency from different levels.