Lars Pynt Andersen is associate professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Copenhagen. His PhD dissertation studied the rhetorical strategies and genres of television advertising. He has published papers on the uses of irony and personification metaphor in advertising, on the rhetorical complexity in crisis communication, but also in the field of consumer culture, such as the “tween” consumer and the vicarious consumption of mothers. He is currently researching the construction of the “Nordic” and “Nordic values” as a global marketing strategy of Nordic culture, cuisine, fashion, and design.

James S. Baumlin is Distinguished Professor of English at Missouri State University, where he teaches the history of rhetoric, critical theories, and Renaissance literature. His publications include two monographs, a dozen co‐edited collections, and over one hundred articles, book chapters, notes, and reviews.

Josh Boyd PhD Indiana University, is Associate Professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. His research on organizational rhetoric, with an emphasis on legitimacy, has appeared in Journal of Applied Communication Research, Communication Theory, Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Public Relations Research, and The Wall Street Journal. He also teaches and studies communication pedagogy, and he has won Purdue’s top undergraduate teaching award.

Larry D. Browning PhD Ohio State 1973, is Professor of Organizational Communication and the William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of in Communication in the Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas at Austin, and adjunct professor at Nord University, Business School, Bodø, Norway. His research includes the role of lists and stories in organizations, information communication technology and narratives, cooperation and competition in organizations, and grounded theory as a research strategy.

Christy M. Buchanan PhD University of Michigan, 1988, is a Professor of Psychology and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Advising at Wake Forest University. Her research and teaching addresses adolescent and young adult development, especially the impact of beliefs and expectations about adolescence, family, and culture. Her administrative responsibilities include the orientation of new students and academic support for undergraduates.

George Cheney PhD Purdue University, 1985, is Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and an adjunct professor at the University of Utah and the University of Waikato, New Zealand. His research, teaching and service interests include organizational identity, workplace participation, professional ethics, globalization, human rights, sustainability, and peace. He has authored or co‐authored ten books and over 100 articles and chapters. Currently, he working on a series of studies and commentaries on cooperatives and other alternative organizations, focusing on innovations in democratic participation and the full embrace of principles of sustainability.

W. Timothy Coombs PhD, is Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University and an honorary professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is a past recipient of the Jackson, Jackson, and Wagner Behavioral Research prize from the Public Relations Society of America, the 2013 Pathfinder Award from the Institute of Public Relations, and the Business Impact Award from the Association for Business Communication. He is a member of the Arthur W. Page Society. His co‐authored crisis research has won multiple PRIDE awards from the Public Relations Division of the National Communication Association for books and articles.

Charles Conrad PhD University of Kansas, 1980, is a Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University. He teaches courses in organizational communication, organizational rhetoric, and communication, powerr and politics. His research currently focuses on the symbolic processes through which organizations influence popular attitudes and public policies. His most recent book is Organizational Rhetoric: Resistance and Domination and is writing a “close comparison” of organizational rhetoric and healthcare policymaking in the United States and Canada.

Jeffrey L. Courtright PhD Purdue University, is Associate Professor of Communication at Illinois State University. With more than 25 years in public relations education and research, he investigates the relationship between corporate reputation and message design across a variety of contexts, from environmental communication to community relations to international public relations. Dr. Courtright has studied both multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations and published multiple research articles, of which several are with Dr. Peter Smudde. With Smudde, he also has published the books Inspiring Cooperation and Celebrating Organizations (2012) and Power and Public Relations (2007).

Scott Davidson currently lectures in the School of Media, Communication, and Sociology at the University of Leicester. Before becoming an academic he worked as a lobbyist and voluntary sector campaigns manager. His PhD dissertation explored the mediation of population aging and older voters and he has published articles on the segmentation of audiences by age. More recently his research has focused on critically theorizing how public relations and lobbying practice should serve democratic societies.

Heidi Hatfield Edwards PhD, is a Professor of the School of Arts and Communication at Florida Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on communication and social issues, with emphasis in social responsibility, and the cultural and societal implications of communication regarding social issues. She is especially interested in how audiences use mediated messages, interpreting those messages and engaging with message creators, opinion leaders, and other audience members.

Denise P. Ferguson PhD, is Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Research at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California. Her research has been published in Public Relations Review, Public Relations Journal, Sociological Quarterly, Quarterly Review of Business Disciplines, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, Business Review Yearbook, and The Sage Handbook of Public Relations, and has been presented at International Communication Association, BledCom, International Public Relations Research, National Communication Association, and Public Relations Society of America annual conferences.

Benjamin D. Golant PhD Royal Holloway, University of London, is a research fellow at University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the use of language in organizing, in particular the role of rhetoric and narrative. He has published in Organization Studies, Human Relations, and Organization. Current empirical work focuses on rhetorics of identity and organizational change, and on the role of narrative for the constitution of knowledge communities.

Stephanie Gusler is a doctoral student in the University of Kansas’s Clinical Child Psychology Program. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Radford University, then obtained her MA in Psychology at Wake Forest University in 2015. While at Wake Forest she worked as a graduate research assistant on the Democracy Fellows longitudinal study.

Peter M. Hamilton is an Associate Professor at Durham University Business School. He previously worked at Imperial College, London and the University of Central Lancashire. His main research interests are in the areas of organizational rhetoric, rhetorical agency, dirty work, and interactive service work. He has published in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Resource Management and Organization.

Katy J. Harriger PhD University of Connecticut, is Professor and Chair in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. Her research and teaching interests focus on civic engagement of young people, American politics, and constitutional law.

E. Johanna Hartelius is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research areas cover the rhetoric of expertise, digital culture, immigration, and public memory. Within and across these areas, she examines how people construct privileged knowledge and experience to wield political power in public discourse. She is the author of The Rhetoric of Expertise (2011) and the editor of The Rhetorics of US Immigration (2015). She is the recipient of the 2013 Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award, and her scholarship has appeared in Argumentation and Advocacy, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Culture, Theory, and Critique, Management Communication Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Review of Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Southern Communication Journal.

Robert L. Heath PhD University of Illinois, is Professor Emeritus at the School of Communication University of Houston and Academic Consultant in the College of Commerce, Faculty of Management and Marketing at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Heath is one of the academic pioneers in examining the history and theoretical foundations of strategic issues management as well as analyzing public relations from a rhetorical perspective. He is author or editor of 20 books and 250 articles and book chapters in major journals and leading edited volumes. In addition to strategic issues management, he has written on rhetorical theory, social movements, communication theory, public relations, organizational communication, crisis communication, risk communication, terrorism, and reputation management. He edited the Encyclopedia of Public Relations and The Sage Handbook of Public Relations. He has lectured in many countries, to business and non‐profit groups, and for various professional organizations. In May 2007, the Issue Management Council honored him for his leadership over three decades to fostering mutual interests between the corporation and all stakeholders and stakeseekers.

Keith M. Hearit PhD Purdue University, and a 2013 American Council on Education Fellow, is an Assistant to the Provost and a Professor in the School of Communication at Western Michigan University. A leading expert in the field of crisis management, he specializes in how individuals and institutions respond communicatively to atypical situations, particularly those of their own creation. In addition to authoring Crisis management by apology: Corporate response to allegations of wrongdoing (2006), Hearit is also the author of over twenty journal articles and book chapters. His work has been referenced in the New York Times, USA Today, and National Public Radio, along with other regional and national publications.

Elisabeth‐Hoff‐Clausen is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication, Section of Rhetoric, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has published essays on rhetorical theory and criticism, digital rhetoric, and organizational rhetoric in journals such as Rhetoric Society Quarterly and Rhetorica Scandinavica, as well as in many edited volumes such as Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age (2015) and Kommunikationsteori (2016). She is the author of three books, all on rhetoric and digital media, including Online Ethos (2008). Her research interests center on issues of trust, agency, and rhetorical discourse in new media settings.

Bruce A. Huhmann PhD, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University. Previously, he was Wells Fargo Professor of Marketing and Director of the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at New Mexico State University and F. Ross Johnson Fellow in Marketing at the University of Manitoba. His research appears in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, and numerous other journals, books, and conference proceedings.

Øyvind Ihlen Dr.art. University of Oslo, 2004, is Professor at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo. Ihlen has edited, written, and cowritten ten books, among them Public Relations and Social Theory (2009) and Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility (2011). His award‐winning research has appeared in numerous anthologies and in journals such as Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Affairs, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Journal of Communication Management, Corporate Communications, Management Communication Quarterly, Environmental Communication, Sustainable Development, and Business Strategy and the Environment. He is regional editor for Public Relations Inquiry and Rhetorica Scandinavica.

Michael L. Kent PhD, Purdue University 1997, Fulbright Scholar 2006, Riga Latvia. Kent is a Professor of Media, in Public Relations and Advertising, School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Arts and Social Sciences, Sydney Australia. Kent conducts research on dialogue, engagement, international and intercultural communication, mediated communication, metaphor, new technology, theory, and web communication. Kent has published in national and internal communication and public relations journals including Communication Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communications, Journal of Public Relations Research, Gazette, International Journal of Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, Public Relations Quarterly, Public Relations Review, and others.

Jens E. Kjeldsen is Professor of Rhetoric and Visual Communication at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has written extensively about rhetoric, visual communication and argumentation, speechmaking, speechwriting, and digital presentations. He is the founder and immediate past President of the Rhetoric Society of Europe, and cofounder and long‐time chief editor of the research journal Rhetorica Scandinavia. Among his publications are Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of Rhetoric (Ed,., 2017) and “Symbolic condensation and thick representation in visual and multimodal communication” (2016).

Laura L. Lemon PhD University of Tennessee, is an Assistant Professor of Public Relations at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include public relations, employee engagement, internal communication and social media. She completed her MA in Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Prior to pursuing her doctorate in Communication, Lemon spent over seven years assisting nonprofit organizations in Colorado with public relations initiatives.

Greg Leichty is a Professor of Communication at the University of Louisville. His areas of research include argumentation, public relations theory, and the rhetoric of social movements. He currently is working on several projects that examine how social movement organizations define themselves in their public communications, particularly how the communicated identity of social movement organizations change when they become more politically partisan. He teaches courses in Argumentation, Conflict Management, and Qualitative Research Methods, and Case Studies in Communication. His service work includes an evaluation consultancy for Louisville's Coalition for the Homeless.

Charles Marsh is the Oscar Stauffer Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. He is author of Classical Rhetoric and Modern Public Relations: An Isocratean Model (2013) and Public Relations, Cooperation, and Justice: From Evolutionary Biology to Ethics (2017). His research has appeared in Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Inquiry, Journal of Media Ethics, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and other academic journals. He is co‐author of the textbooks Public Relations: A Values‐Driven Approach (2017) and Strategic Writing: Multimedia Writing for Public Relations, Advertising and More (2018). Before joining academia, he was senior editor of internal publications for the J. C. Penney Co. and was editor of American Way, the inflight magazine of American Airlines.

Jill J. McMillan PhD University of Texas at Austin 1982, is Professor Emerita of Communication and Research Professor at Wake Forest University. Her work has focused on communication and rhetoric in organizations and institutions: corporate identity; the strategies and impact of an organization’s public messages; communicative dysfunction in organizations; organizational democracy and decision‐making; and pedagogy in higher education. Recently she has worked on teaching deliberation in academic and community settings as a means of improving civil discourse and civic engagement.

Rebecca J. Meisenbach PhD Purdue University, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. She studies issues of identity and ethics, particularly in relation to nonprofit and gendered organizing. She is currently studying how television shows can be understood as organizational rhetors and how individuals manage nested and stigmatized identities. She currently serves as the Associate Editor of the Americas for the journal Culture and Organization.

Amy O’Connor is Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Her work is at the intersection of public relations and organizational communication. Her research is devoted to issues surrounding corporate social responsibility (CSR) including employee and community response to CSR messages; the ability of CSR communication to enhance corporate legitimacy and reputation; the types of social issues corporations chose to support; and the role of communication in shaping societies expectations of corporations. O’Connor’s research has been published in Business and Society, Communication Monographs, Journal of Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Management Communication Quarterly, Public Relations Review, and in edited collections. Her publications have been featured by the Conference Board of Directors, Sage Video Series, and at regional colloquia.

Michael J. Palenchar PhD University of Florida, is Associate Dean and Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, and has three decades of professional and academic public relations experience. Primary research interests include risk communication, crisis communication, and issues management. He has presented his research, consulted, and conducted workshops throughout the United States, and in China, Germany, Turkey, Norway, Spain, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Canada, Ecuador, Belize, and Denmark.

Peter Seele is Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, where he also directs the Ethics and Communication Law Center. He has studied Philosophy, Economics, and Theology in Germany at the Universities of Oldenburg, Düsseldorf, and Witten/Herdecke as well as the Delhi School of Economics.

Graham Sewell PhD Cardiff University, is Professor of Management and Associate Dean, Research of the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne, Australia. He has held full‐time or visiting appointments at several major universities including University of Manchester, Imperial College London, Berkeley, and Pompeu Fabra. Graham is best known for his work on the disciplinary effects of surveillance but he has published on many topics in leading journals including the Academy of Management Review, the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Research Policy, Sociology, and Organizational Research Methods. He is currently a senior editor of Organization Studies. Underlying Sewell’s work is a strong interest in the philosophy of language, especially the ontological role played by myths in sustaining long‐term research programs.

Ford Shanahan PhD Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, is the General Counsel for a multinational group of companies in the healthcare sector. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Franklin University in Lugano, Switzerland, where he teaches courses in business ethics and business law. He obtained his law degree and MBA from the University of Denver.

John A. A. Sillince PhD London School of Economics, is Research Professor of Organization Studies and Strategy at Newcastle University Business School. His research interests are in discourse, narrative, and rhetoric, and in institutional theory. He is a Senior Editor of Organization Studies.

Peter L. Scisco PhD leads the Center for Creative Leadership’s (CCL) publishing program in producing books and related content for CCL’s audience of corporate and nonprofit leaders and managers. He is the co‐author of Change Now! Five Steps to Better Leadership (2013) and CCL Compass: Your Guide to Leadership Development, and co‐editor of The CCL Handbook of Coaching: A Guide for the Leader Coach (2006).

Michael F. Smith PhD, is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Communication Department at La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA. His work on activism and public relations in community building has been published in Public Relations Review, Quarterly Journal of Business Disciplines, Business Review Yearbook, and The Sage Handbook of Public Relations and presented at the annual conferences of the National Communication Association, the International Association of Business Disciplines, and the International Communication Association.

Peter M. Smudde PhD Wayne State University, is Professor of Communication at Illinois State University. After 16 years in industry he moved to higher education in 2002. Accredited in public relations (APR) through the Public Relations Society of America, Smudde researches public relations in the areas of corporate strategy, discourse and message design, and education. Pete has presented numerous conference papers and published many book, including journals such as Public Relations Research, Public Relations Inquiry, Public Relations Journal, Public Relations Review, Corporate Reputation Review, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Journal of Promotion Management, Review of Communication, and Technical Communication. He co‐authored (with Jeffrey Courtright) Power and Public Relations (2007) and Inspiring Cooperation and Celebrating Organizations (2012); and authored Public Relations as Dramatistic Organizing (2011) and Humanistic Critique of Education (2010). His textbook, Managing Public Relations (2015), is intended for capstone PR courses.

Ashli Q. Stokes PhD University of Georgia, is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the New South at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her award‐winning research specializes in using rhetorical approaches to analyze public relations controversies, frequently concerning activism and social movements. In addition to her recent book about the rhetorical nature of Southern foodways, Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South (with Wendy Atkins‐Sayre, 2016), she co‐authored a global public relations textbook Global Public Relations: Spanning Borders, Spanning Cultures with Alan Freitag. She has also published in journals such as Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Communication Management, Public Relations Review, among others.

Maureen Taylor PhD, is the Director of the School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Tennessee. Taylor's public relations research has focused on nation building and civil society, dialogue, the use of websites, and new technologies. In 2010, Taylor was honored with the Pathfinder Award, presented by the Institute for Public Relations in recognition of her “original program of scholarly research that has made a significant contribution to the body of knowledge and practice of public relations.” Taylor is a member of the Arthur S. Page Society and serves as co‐editor of the Public Relations Review.

Simon Møberg Torp PhD, is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and a member of the Executive Board at University of Southern Denmark. Previously he has been Head of Department of Marketing and Management and Director of research in strategic communication and management. Torp has written numerous journal articles and contributed to handbooks and anthologies published by a number of major academic publishers; he has also edited and co‐authored two textbooks. In 2008, he won a Best Paper award at the 13th International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications (CMC).

Alison E. Vogelaar PhD University of Colorado‐Boulder, is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Co‐Director of the Center for Sustainability Initiatives (CSIF) at Franklin University, Switzerland. While studying for her PhD in Communication, Vogelaar also completed a certification program in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. She teaches in the Communication and Media Studies program where she focuses upon courses that explore the relationship between media/communication and power.

Damion Waymer (PhD, Purdue University) is Professor/Chair of Liberal Studies at NC A&T State University. Prior to his arrival at NC A&T, he led aggressive faculty recruitment initiatives in his role as Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs, Development, and Diversity at the University of Cincinnati. His research centers on organizational discourse, particularly regarding public relations, issues management, corporate social responsibility (CSR), branding, and strategic communication. Via his research, he addresses fundamental concerns about issues of power, race, class, and gender, specifically, and how these social constructions shape and influence the ways that various stakeholders receive, react, and respond to messages.

While the disciplinary study of rhetoric is alive and well, there has been curiously little recent specific interest in the rhetoric of organizations. “Let us have a one stop shop for scholars and advanced students that want to get the latest and best overview and discussion of how organizations use rhetoric”––with that incentive and goal began the idea for this volume in 2015.

It is a great pleasure to finally see the book come together with contributions from organization centered fields such as organizational communication, public relations, marketing, management, risk, crisis and organization theory. Scholars based in the United States, the UK, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, as well as Australia, helped bring the current treatment of organizational rhetoric alive. It is an understatement to say that we learned a lot from our colleagues through putting this volume together.

Our thanks go out to these contributors who stuck with us through the whole production process, and of course the reviewers: Andrea Catellani, Bruce Humann, Charles Marsh, Damion Waymer, Elisabeth Hoff‐Clausen, George Cheney, Graham Sewell, Heidi H. Edwards, John Sillince, Josh Boyd, Keith M. Hearit, Michael L. Kent, Michael J. Palenchar, Orla Vigsø, Pete M. Smudde, Peter Hamilton, Peter Scisco, Rebecca Meisenbach, Roy Suddaby, Scott Davidson, Simon Møberg Torp, and W. Timothy Coombs. Our research assistant Erika Ribu was also of invaluable assistance in the pursuit of getting those reference lists in order and generally enforcing APA style. Research assistant Truls Strand Offerdal deserves thanks for helping out with the indexing.

Øyvind Ihlen would like to state that it has been an honor to work together with so many prominent scholars, some of whose work he has used and admired for years. Bob Heath and George Cheney deserve special mention for their shepherding of rhetorical and critical perspectives on public relations and organizational communication. In addition, however, he wishes to thank what are arguably the best rhetoricians around, namely his wife and daughters––––Hilde, Ina, and Eira.

Bob Heath would like to thank the founders of what evolved into the National Communication Association for believing that rhetoric is essential to human existence, and who later crafted the discipline of Organizational Rhetoric on a solid and enduring foundation. Here Charles Redding’s pioneering work is to be acknowledged. Many writers inspired and guided Heath’s understanding and belief in the fact that rhetoric matters—and never is “mere.” One special tip of his hat goes to Marie Hochmuth Nichols who directed his dissertation and convinced him that he could write a book on Burke’s “theory.” A final wink goes to Burke himself whose work inspired many because he so readily and insightfully found rhetoric—as symbolic action—in all he read and witnessed. He could craft more provocative thought into a single paragraph than others could get between the covers of a book. Humans truly are the symbol using (and misusing) animals who are inspired by perfection, challenged by the dialectic of the positive and merger and confounded by the negative and division, and separated from reality by our terministic screens, but nevertheless committed to identification and courtship as solutions and stumbling blocks.