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Purpose This study aims to examine the effects of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal communication on employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior during a crisis situation, coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in particular. Integrating knowledge sharing research with internal crisis communication literature as well as self-determination theory, the mediating roles of employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction are also identified. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted with 490 full-time employees in the USA across industry sectors during the COVID-19 outbreak. Findings Results suggest that diversity-oriented leadership contributes to transparent internal communication during a crisis and increases employees’ satisfaction of autonomy, competence and relatedness needs. Transparent internal communication also increases employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction, which in turn fosters their job engagement and knowledge-sharing behavior during the crisis. Originality/value This study is one of the earliest studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal crisis communication in enhancing employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior, especially in the context of COVID-19.

Integrating social cognitive theory and public relations literature, this study examines the effectiveness of organizations' transparent communication in building public trust and encouraging health‐protection behaviours (i.e. social distancing) during a pandemic, that is, the COVID‐19 outbreak. Three aspects of transparent communication are investigated, namely information substantiality, accountability and participation. Results of an online survey of American citizens show that during the early stage of COVID‐19, information substantiality by state governments and health institutes (e.g., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) increases publics' trust, which positively influences their perceived risks, behavioural control and subjective norms. The participation of health institutes, rather than state governments, significantly increases public trust, whereas accountability has no effects. Individuals' perceptions and attitudes towards social distancing predict their social distancing behaviour during the outbreak. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of perceived authenticity of organizational behaviors and types of organization-employee relationship (i.e. communal and exchange relationship) on intangible assets of organizations generated by employees’ communicative behaviors (ECBs) (e.g. megaphoning, scouting). Design/methodology/approach A web-based survey was conducted with full-time 528 employees working in medium- and large-sized companies in the USA. Findings Results showed that an organization’s authentic behaviors are positively related with employees’ perceived communal relationships, but not with exchange relationships. However, both communal and exchange relationships turned out to increase ECBs: positive megaphoning, negative megaphoning, and scouting. The existence of both communal and exchange relationships was more significant than having only communal relationships in terms of encouraging employees’ active communicative actions. Research limitations/implications By building links between employees’ communicative actions and its antecedents, perceived authenticity, types of relationship; this study contributed to the body of knowledge on exchange and communal relationship in the context of employee communication and extended the understanding of motivations of ECBs. Practical implications The findings suggest that employees’ communicative actions are highly facilitated by organizations’ authentic behavioral efforts and perceived relationship. To encourage employees’ information seeking and sharing behaviors, for organizational effectiveness, organizations should behave in authentic ways – be trustful, transparent, and consistent – and build both communal and exchange relationship. Originality/value This study first attempted to demonstrate the impacts of both communal and exchange relationships for organizations empirically in internal communication and relationship building practices.

Social media have recently gained attention as a potential health campaign tool. This study examines this line of expectation concerning the role social media may play in health campaigns by testing an integrated health campaign model that combines insights from research on social media-specific perceptions and communicative behaviors in order to predict health behaviors. Specifically, this study aims to (a) develop a more holistic social media campaign model for predicting health behaviors in the social media context, (b) investigate how social media channel-related perceptions affect preventive health behaviors, and (c) investigate how communicative behaviors mediate perceptions and behavioral intention. The study conducted an online survey of 498 females who followed the Purple Ribbon Twitter campaign (@pprb), a cervical cancer prevention campaign. The results indicated that information acquisition mediated perceived risk's effect on intention. Information acquisition also mediated the relationships between intention and information selection and information transmission. On the other hand, social media-related perceptions indirectly impacted behavioral intention through communicative behaviors. The findings' theoretical and practical implications are discussed.