Stories They Tell

Abstract

This study investigates the themes that drive persuasive recruiting appeals, or stories, designed to attract new, entrepreneurial workers in the direct selling industry. It offers a rhetorical perspective informed by fantasy theme analysis on the themes present in the recruiting content on the corporate Web sites of three direct selling companies (Mary Kay, Stella & Dot, and Scentsy). The analysis indicates that rhetorical agency is a core theme in the persuasive recruiting stories for these companies. Offering a means for business and technical communication scholars to explore agency or other persuasive story themes in context, this study addresses how a rhetorical perspective is useful to assess recruiting appeals in shifting, entrepreneurial work contexts.

Using Metadiscourse to Enhance Persuasiveness in Corporate Press Releases: A Corpus-Based Study

“…In addition, attitude markers for achieving pathos and engagement markers for achieving ethos were used frequently, while endophoric markers and evidentials were used infrequently. This study on metadiscourse use in the press release genre could further expand its scope of application and the rhetoric analysis of business communication (S. E. Martin & Rawlins, 2018).…”

Perpetuating Perceptions: Understanding the “Chaining” of a Common Training Narrative Beyond the Classroom

“…HRD focuses on the organizational concerns and discourse associated with macro- and micro-levels of organizational learning. As an extension of Horila (2021) and Martin and Rawlins’s (2018), this study used a symbolic convergence lens to analyze the discursive messaging of trainees and how that communication impacts employee perception of an organization. Narrative analysis was used to analyze the perceptions of employee training and how that training impacted how trainees feel about a host organization.…”

“…Negative fantasy chaining (or connection shared) impacted recruitment of young physicians to rural Minnesota (Barton & O’Leary, 1974), and positive chaining of the Mark Twain saga helpfully influenced the public relations of riverboat gambling (Duffy, 1997). Most recently, convergence theory was used to understand recruiting messages within the direct sales industry (Martin & Rawlins, 2018) and team decision making (Horila, 2021). Combining instructional communication theory and organizational communication theory (Kearney, 2008; LaBelle et al, 2015) could assist managers and trainers from a pragmatic view and expand communication scholarship in two ways.…”

“…There must be “a shared group consciousness within a rhetorical community” for a theme to chain or spread and a rhetorical vision to exist (p. 202), and negative chaining attacks the saga (“often-repeated telling of the achievement and events in the life of a community or organization,” p. 201). Martin and Rawlins (2018) concluded by suggesting the future research of messaging convergence in different organizations and areas other than direct sales. Therefore, the synthesis of instructional, organizational, and rhetorical theory gives agency to the trainer and trainees within the training classroom.…”

“…Employees with job satisfaction demonstrate organizational commitment, and trainee satisfaction reduces turnover. This study, then, explored the training experience using learning and symbolic convergence theoretical (SCT) framework examining the shared experience of educators, students, and employees—a choice in line with recent research (Gilmore & Kramer, 2019; Horila, 2021; Martin & Rawlins, 2018; Strawser & Sellnow, 2019). Though recent work has been conducted on understanding soft skills (Charoensap-Kelly et al, 2016) and instructional communication within the training classroom (Mathis, 2020; Faylor et al, 2008), the pandemic has placed a premium on comprehending work in new and innovative ways.…”