May 10, 2022

By Derek Moscato, Western Washington University

The recent occurrence of Earth Day has once again fostered important national discussion about the energy economy and its implications for climate change and our ecological future. But even as media discourses focus on the fertile ground of shifting public opinion, environmental organizations must also remain focused on issues of stakeholder recruitment, retention, and engagement. Figuring out how to break through the clutter of political rhetoric, promotional culture, and civic disinterest makes… More

May 2, 2022

By Katie R. Place, Page Center senior research fellow

In the wake of COVID-19, organizations have scrambled to listen to marginalized publics. Many have endured significantly higher job loss rates and a greater bearing of the burden of the crisis, due to longstanding racism, income inequality, and reduced economic mobility.

Complicating this, organizations have historically engaged in an 80:20 ratio of speaking versus listening, where listening is selectively done to promote marketing needs, provide competitive data, or… More

April 25, 2022 • Jonathan McVerry

There are more than 600 organizations in the United States centered on coaching women to run and win political campaigns. Some topics – speechwriting and fundraising – are to be expected. But in one training program, two Page Center scholars found that the concept of authenticity repeatedly surfaced as a key element.

Despite a surge in interest over the past six years, women candidates face the same obstacles to public office that have been hindering them for decades.

April 15, 2022

By Lisa Tam, Queensland University of Technology; Soojin Kim, University of Technology Sydney; and Helen Hutchings, Phillips Group

Macnamara wrote: “organizational listening is easier said than done because of the challenges of scale and diversity of views among stakeholders and publics." It is ideal to capture as many perspectives as possible from diverse groups of stakeholders and publics. But in reality, there are enabling and constraining factors that affect perceptions and practices of organizational listening. To examine these… More

March 7, 2022

By Minjeong Kang and Bitt Moon (doctoral candidate), The Media School, Indiana University

In our Page Center-funded project, we aimed to explore how organizational listening competency reduces employee silence in the workplace. The pervasive culture of employee silence is detrimental to fostering an open and safe work environment for organizational learning and innovation.

For this project, we explored factors that interfere with employee voice. Our goal was to propose an organizational listening competency (OLC) measure. To do… More

March 3, 2022 • Jonathan McVerry

Page Center advisory board member Charlene Wheeless has been a trail-blazing force in public relations for decades. But when she returned to the c-suite in 2019 after a long bout with cancer, she didn’t know if she could continue blazing trails.

After stepping down as Bechtel Corporation’s principal vice president of corporate affairs, she found a way to restore the spirit that guided her to becoming a Black female executive in an industry of mostly white male leaders.… More