Communicating with Stakeholders virtually

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How can companies stay in touch with their stakeholders virtually and build a trusting relationship in times of the Corona pandemic? A research team at the University of Leipzig led by Prof. Dr. Ansgar Zerfaß is currently investigating this question using the example of sustainability discourse. The goal is, to find out how companies can communicate successfully with their stakeholders virtually also in the future.

Stakeholder dialogues is also one the five key trends for 2021, identified by the Academic Society. Read more.

Goals

As a first step the research team will investigate how sustainability discourses can be successfully conducted virtually. The findings will be transferred to other subject areas, such as infrastructure and location issues, and will be brought together in the outlook.

The team is addressing the following questions:

1. What are the requirements for virtualizing stakeholder dialogues?
    
2. What processes and success factors are crucial for virtual communication with stakeholders?
    
3. Where do virtual stakeholder dialogues reach their limits?

Approach 

In order to answer the research questions, a multi-step procedure is used, which is divided into the following steps:

1. An interdisciplinary literature analysis is used to identify success factors for stakeholder dialogues and conditions for virtualizing dialog communication.
    
2. Responsible persons in corporate communications, CSR or public affairs departments as well as consultants and scientists will be asked in expert interviews about influencing factors and possibilities of stakeholder dialogues.
    
3. The research team will discuss with the interviewed experts which factors and conditions change as a result of virtualization.