“Issue” is the foundational stage that carries the possibilities for actualizing argument, conflict, and crisis in the marketplace. Scholars and practitioners in rhetoric, corporate communication, public relations, and organizational communication define issue in various ways. Robert L. Heath1 reflects on the importance of issue from a rhetorical perspective, defining the term as “contestable questions of fact, value, or policy that affect how stakeholders grant or withhold support and seek changes through public policy” (Heath 1997, p. 44). His approach is influential in the work of numerous risk and crisis communication scholars, who argue that the persuasive nature of issue is a defining factor in determining the salience and future impact of given, or potential, problems. An issue emerges as stakeholders identify “missing” elements of concern that influence organizational relationships (Grunig and Repper 1992, p. 146). An issue is a communicative event that demands attention; it is potential performative content that arises between and among stakeholders with immediate and long-term consequences for the organization. An explication of three elements of issue clarity follows in three sections:
1. Performative Content: Issue Definition,
2. Theory and Strategy: Issue Discernment, and
3. Leadership: Issue Responsiveness.
To arrive at issue clarity, one must engage in rhetorical invention, requiring both discernment and responsiveness in strategic corporate communication. Timothy L. Sellnow2 unites discernment and responsiveness with risk and crisis communication. Johnson and Sellnow (1995, p. 54) argue that crisis management is a “two-step process” dependent upon assessing “causes” leading up to the crisis and requiring “deliberative rhetoric” that clarifies issues, making a case for the reputation of the organization. Organizations that fail to attend to potentially relevant and significant issues court their own demise. Issue clarity is a decisive fulcrum upon which the vitality of organizational health hinges.
Performative Content
Issues are markers for deliberative consideration about potential problematic actions and consequences. Issue clarity carries the potential for action between stakeholders and organizations. Heath (1994, p. 277) asserts that issue clarity permits organizations and stakeholders to construct narratives, publicly agreed upon story-informed practices, that “constitute the opening frameworks and standards of corporate responsibility companies need to meet or alter.” Issues are “problems ready for some solution” when they are clearly identified (Coombs and Holladay 2012, p. 53).3 Lack of agreement on issue definition invites an escalation of the problem. Heath (1994) argues that issues emerge between and among constituencies, and inside and outside a corporate structure; organizational mission, values, and actions lend clarity to the interpretation of the importance of a given issue (Heath 1994, p. 116). He also argues that narrative tied to organizational mission provides an interpretative lens for understanding the parameters and potentiality of a given issue. He equates issue clarity with strategic corporate communication; improving “standards of corporate responsibility” begins with issue definition within social, political, and public spheres (p. 273).
This section, “Performative Content: Issue Definition,” examines the necessity of clarifying the concept of issue through three significant considerations: (1) responsibility, (2) judgment, and (3) framing attentiveness. Together, these crucial communicative notions demonstrate the performative nature of issue clarity, requiring communication between and among constituencies that shape organizational identity and reputation.
Issue Clarity: Responsibility
Issue clarity begins with the responsibility of recognizing the potential existence and prominence of an issue. W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry Holladay outline the importance of issue through the notion of corporate social responsibility, which accounts for the social concerns surrounding a given issue.4 Attentiveness to issue requires knowledge of both background and foreground characteristics of a given concern. Background consists of mission and narrative, stories and practices that have public presence within a particular corporation. Foreground questions emerge from the internal and external environments that challenge and potentially propel the enhancement of a specific corporate communication identity and reputation. According to Coombs and Holladay (2012), issues reflect “social concerns” as they demand alertness to foreground and background issues in relation to stakeholders (p. 53). Clarifying issues requires “scanning” a “corporation’s environment,” which identifies challenges and social concerns before problematic escalation commences (p. 54). Corporate communication practices related to issues must be dynamic, not static; they require constant monitoring and deliberation. Engaging in issue clarity is the first responsibility of organizational leadership because it makes judgment possible.
In addition to carrying the weight of responsibility, issue clarity involves a judgment on the timeliness of an issue. This judgment involves determining whether or not immediate or preparatory action is necessary. Marita, Schoemaker, and Luoma-aho (2014)5 link issue judgment to corporate communication practices that exist in particular and distinctive political, economic, and social contexts. These issues arise in performative engagement between and among stakeholders in acts of public contention. When public debate over issues occurs, organizations “aim at legitimacy,” demonstrating a willingness to communicate about publically contested issues (p. 202). According to Vos et al. (2014), it is necessary for an organization to exercise judgment in responding to these issues. Issues emerge within historical and temporal contexts, understood through “historical background and associations” that illuminate appropriate and distinct business practices (p. 207). Organizations must respond to historical conditions while demonstrating acknowledgment of stakeholder public opinions. Leadership reflects on central corporate issues, knowing that success and failure follow the implementation of these practices.
Issue Clarity: Framing Attentiveness
Issue clarity involves framing attentiveness to a specific issue, discerning the necessary degree of attention. One must understand the background narrative that gives interpretative shape to foreground issues. The interplay of attentiveness, response, and potential efforts at change is at the heart of Martin Buber’s understanding of guilt. Buber (1947, pp. 121–148) articulates the importance of guilt, which distinguishes between destructive and constructive manifestations of natural links between behavior and narrative identity. Destructive guilt is what Buber termed “neurotic,” involving constant looking over one’s shoulder in an effort to discern if one is being watched or judged in the doing of every action. Neurotic guilt is toxic to productivity. It shifts attentiveness away from genuine issues at hand and thus eclipses pathways to creative responsiveness. Conversely, Buber’s conception of genuine, or authentic, guilt functions as a creative and constructive nexus connecting narrative, identity, and behavior/practices within an organization. Authentic guilt awakens us when behavior violates the narrative identity that constitutes a given place and/or a given set of practices (Arnett 1986, p. 89). Authentic guilt reconnects our actions with the clarity of known narrative practices, “grounded” within a tradition that “bends, alters, or changes the acceptable laws that govern the general situation in order to meet the specific requirements of the moment” without ignoring those situational laws (Arnett, 1986, p. 89; Buber 1947). Authentic guilt protects and promotes narrative identity, attending to practices that demand responses to genuine issues confronting and challenging an organization. Buber’s notion of guilt signals the originative form of issue clarity. Guilt is a communicative call to align behavior with a given narrative and organizational identity.
Summary
Issue clarity emerges through responsibility of issue definition, judgment about issue importance, and attentiveness to an issue’s reality and/or falsity. Issue Definition considers the significant communicative implications of issue clarity through the following:
1. Responsibility—issue clarity is the first stage of responsibility within an organization;
2. Judgment—issue clarity requires discerning whether performative action is necessary immediately or whether preparatory action is most appropriate; and
3. Framing Attentiveness—issue clarity assumes that an organization requires a direction; leaders must creatively and thoughtfully decide what specific issues require, and then demand immediate response and/or preparatory engagement.
Issue clarity is performative, necessitating quickness of response and ongoing alertness. What separates outstanding organizations from others is the ability to identify and define issues. This first responsibility of issue clarity enacts performative content in the immediate historical moment, responsive to the “public, in general, and stakeholders” (Heath and Palenchar 2009, p. 7). As Coombs and Holladay contend, issues are social concerns. For example, issues of safety include the social concerns of environment, culture, and politics. Identifying issues is a crucial communication skill, sharpened and enhanced by theoretical discernment of issues.
Theory and Strategy: Issue Discernment
A theoretical/strategic perspective should align with corporate mission and direction. Issue discernment is a practice of identifying the nature of an issue, its salience to stakeholders, and the appropriate potential responsive actions. Heath (1994) argues that managing communication around a particular issue requires corporations “to harmonize their interests with those of their stakeholders” (p. 271). Leaders must discern how to align issues with stakeholder interests and corporate mission. Heath claims that managing issues is akin but not identical to public relations. Managing issues creates “harmony” through various corporate communication practices, including but not limited to public relations. Managing issues unites “external messages” with internal concerns, yielding a persuasive influence on the “organizational culture” (p. 276). Managing an issue works within chaos, bridging public opinion and organizational standpoint with the hope of reaching creative solutions.
This section examines the communicative necessity of discerning issue(s) as they emerge in the public sphere through three concepts: (1) understanding the why, (2) the how of differentiation, and (3) the when. Together, these corporate communication practices, tied to issue discernment, emerge through rhetorical persuasion, prompting particular actions. Clarity and discernment define basic steps of issues management.
Issue Discernment: Understanding Why
Issues point to values, facts, and questions manifested in communication between and among internal and external stakeholders. Issue discernment originates with understanding why an issue emerged, why it is important, and why it pragmatically influences an organization’s health. James E. Grunig6 rhetorically examines issue discernment and its importance in developing and maintaining stakeholder relationships. Grunig and Repper (1992) argue that publics (stakeholder constituencies) are strategic and naturally create issues that require immediate and/or preparatory responses (p. 146). This strategic component of public relations rhetorically engages contestable issues, discerning a “why” in response to historical and contextual insights and demands. Issue-discerning rhetoricians underscore the persuasive nature of topics and concerns as “problematics,” or opportunities that require distinctive attentiveness to varied audience perspectives. In a similar manner, corporate communication scholars recognize that issue discernment requires pragmatic and thoughtful rejoinders consistent with organizational concerns and needs.
Grunig (1992a) connected public relations practices with “socially responsible” strategies (p. 10). For Grunig, this unification is socially pragmatic, providing public disclosure of a “how” and a “why” of practices that display social responsibility or its lack. Issue discernment lives within the interaction between pragmatic thoughtfulness that displays the “how” of action and the socially responsible implications that house the “why” of sentiment for action. Grunig (1992b, p. 546) suggests that organizations are rhetorical entities; persuasive organizational communication “created by people” embraces “symbolic, rhetorical actions” that explicate and frame a “why,” a grounded perspective on a given issue.
Grunig contends that communication is crucial to effective maintenance of stakeholder relationships, and attentiveness to communication is one of the ways leadership cares for organizational health. Grunig (1992c, p. 18) advocates a two-way “symmetrical system of communication,” attentive to internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, he discusses a two-way “asymmetrical model” that seeks to influence stakeholders to behave in accordance with organizational “wants.” Symmetrical communication is persuasively more intense; it commences with a position on issue discernment. Both symmetrical (two-way) and asymmetrical (one-way) models of communication take issue discernment standpoints into public opinion with the objective of assisting organizational meaning and identity. Understanding meaning necessitates differentiation between issues of immediate concern and those requiring long-term preparatory consideration.
Issue Discernment: The How of Differentiation
Issue discernment commences with “why,” which then organically suggests a “how” of action. Heath and Michael J. Palenchar7 identify communal responses (the interactions between internal and external stakeholders) as requiring linkage between the “how” and “why” of issue differentiation (Heath and Palenchar 2009, p 239). Engaging issues in the particularity of their temporal moment requires understanding background issues that shape the “why,” the saliency that can shape the “how” of foreground actions. Heath and Palenchar (2009) argue that “issue stances enlist audiences to take actions in support of policies” (p. 148). Issue discernment persuasively articulates the positions held by internal and external stakeholders in relation to an organization’s identity, actions, and future. Healthy organizations seek “harmonious relationships” within environments characterized by diverse public perspectives on issues; vibrant professional groups attend to the importance and validity of multiple interests and vested parties.
Heath discerns issues by differentiating among “fact,” “value,” and “policy”; each of these perspectives influences internal and external organizational stakeholders. Heath and Palenchar’s research pivots around this trinity of standpoints (fact, value, and policy); each position differentiates important social elements of an issue. The function of fact does not necessarily announce its value or its potential policy in an age of contention and dispute. Heath and Palenchar argue that one must pragmatically understand that a fact is “thought to be true” by a given stakeholder (p. 12). Recognizing a fact differentiates between truths emerging within differing situations and among contrary perspectives. Value, the next standpoint, guides “wise policy,” offering clarity of meaning and public direction (p. 93). Policy, which value depends upon, is the result of an issue being “resolved” in public contexts (i.e., government intervention, “social convention,” and so on) (p. 93). Issues of policy emerge based upon specific actions, differentiated in social, economic, and political contexts, each of which stipulates a distinctive “how” of response. Each term (fact, value, and policy) differentiates aspects of issue discernment, which begins with a standpoint that includes timing, a sense of “when.”
Issue Discernment: When
Issue discernment is dependent upon the recognition of “when;” issues are temporal, grounded in a particular place, time, and distinct group of individuals. Rhetorical approaches to corporate and organizational communication provide touchstones illuminating appreciation of the temporal nature of issue discernment—the “when” of communicating with stakeholders. Rhetoric is a vehicle of “continuity and of change, of tradition and of revolution.” Rhetoric offers a communicative moment of persuasion that shapes and defines environments, traditions, and responses to issues (McKeon 1987, p. 2). Shaping the environment requires persuasive intervention that is situationally appropriate. The contextual and temporal responsiveness of the rhetorical tradition is central to the classical perspective called “stasis theory.”8 Heath’s differentiation of issues through fact, value, and/or policy mirrors the insights of stasis theory, which has ancient Greek and Roman rhetorical roots connected to Hermagoras 9 and Hermogenes.10 Heath (1994, p. 114) defines stasis as issue: “the facts are agreed, and the dispute is about how to categorize these facts.” Hermagoras distinguished between and among definitions of what we would term an issue by “fact,” “definition,” “quality,” and “jurisdiction” (Gross 2004, p. 141). Stasis theory articulates issue clarity discovered through agreement as one prepares to frame a persuasive message for the public sphere. Stasis theory has contemporary currency, as Alan G. Gross11 states in his crediting of Richard McKeon12 with reviving this rhetorical perspective (Gross 2004). McKeon argues that stasis, beginning in the Greek state and continuing in the Roman state, is robustly evident today. He works with Aristotle13 and Cicero,14 rhetoricians addressing persuasion as a productive public art form, to demonstrate the development of stasis theory.
Aristotle expanded the theoretical scaffold of stasis theory, developed by Hermagoras and Hermogenes, with his introduction of four scientific questions that brought a sense of clarity to the identification of an issue. These questions mirror Hermagoras’s original four questions (fact, definition, quality, and jurisdiction) that call for a response in the midst of debate on issue (Gross 2004, p. 141). McKeon (1987, p. 6) argues that stasis theory emulates Aristotle’s “four scientific questions: (1) Is it? (2) What is it? (3) What properties does it have? (4) Why?” In Aristotle’s model, stasis is functional and tied to predetermined environments. He further argues that these questions permit discovery and establishment of “facts and causes” (p. 6). With a principal emphasis on “why,” or juxtaposition, Cicero asks rhetoricians to consider context while discerning “when” to respond to relevant issues. Cicero adapts a form of stasis theory in his explication of rhetorical situations; Cicero attends to “facts, words, values, and judgments” to discern appropriate responses to emerging issues (McKeon 1987, p. 6). Cicero and the Greek scholars before him situate stasis theory within a rhetoric that structures meaning and is contextually responsive, thereby differentiating between and among perspectives on issues. Issue discernment, stasis theory, and rhetoric actively converge to produce meaning in specific contexts. Issue discernment concurs with stasis theory in that clarity and direction are impossible without differentiation.
Summary
The work of Grunig, along with that of Heath and Palenchar, tied to McKeon’s work on stasis theory, elucidates issue discernment as a matter of communicative responsiveness and attentiveness to situation and circumstance in the public sphere. This section emphasized the rhetorical practices found in issue discernment through the following:
1. Why—issue discernment articulates the meaningfulness and importance of an issue for internal and external stakeholders;
2. The How of Differentiation—issue discernment pragmatically differentiates particularities of an issue, lending insight into appropriate courses of action; and
3. When—issue discernment recognizes issues as perspectival and time sensitive.
Corporate communication from a persuasive stance argues for an attitude that attends to context and acknowledges the importance of timing. Such attentiveness manages issues within cultural, social, and other types of distinct environments. Leaders understand that the move from potential performative content to issue discernment requires responsiveness shaped by perspective, context, and temporality.
Leadership: Issue Responsiveness
Issue clarity and discernment within an organization are defining leadership characteristics. Leaders must engage issues responsively shaped in interaction with diverse stakeholders. Issue responsiveness, for Heath (1994, p. 273), defines leadership as a “creative and constructive attempt” to enact “corporate responsibility” through strategic planning, management, and organizational direction. Leadership attends to the effect of issues as they influence internal and external constituencies (Cha, Jee, and Jangyul 2015). Issues can escalate or dissipate depending on timeliness of recognition and response. Gail T. Fairhurst15 theorizes the notion of communicative framing as a key leadership construct that illustrates the performative content of issues in action. Framing meaning in particular contexts is an essential communicative tool for leaders who bear the responsibility of clarifying and discerning problems and opportunities.
This section examines: (1) issues management, (2) scanning and monitoring, and (3) responsibility and leadership. Together, framing practices tied to corporate communication concerns with issue clarity can prompt responsive leadership in the discerning and clarification of problems/opportunities between organizations and stakeholders. Framing and managing issues requires clarity and discernment in responsibility, judgment, and attentiveness (Fairhurst and Sarr 1996).
Issue Responsiveness: Issues Management
The art of framing issues is a leadership responsibility; one must judge the severity of the situation and the immediacy of attention it requires as one engages an issue (Fairhurst and Sarr 1996). (see Figure 1.1) Fairhurst and Sarr examine framing as a leadership practice, arguing that issues and events are often outside a leader’s immediate control; nevertheless, leadership responsibility necessitates the framing of meaning and response. Such a contextualizing ability denotes leadership aptitude (Fairhurst 2011, p. 2). Framing molds meaning in situational responsiveness by selectively highlighting, acknowledging, and disregarding different issue considerations (p. 3). Clarifying an issue demands framing meaning and its significance.
Figure 1.1 Framing in context
Fairhurst describes effective leadership as a communicative ability to structure issue clarity and differentiation, a perspective, which aligns with scholarship on Issues Management, the subfield term coined by Chase (1977); Jones and Chase (1979). Issues Management is a “proactive identification and subsequent defusing of problems” that counters disproportionate responses that invite escalation. More recently, Luoma-aho and Vos (2010) defined Issues Management as a strategic corporate communication practice that frames the meaning and salience of particular issues with and among a diversity of stakeholders. Issues Management “develop[s]” clarity and discernment about problems/opportunities within the public sphere, determining “appropriate” communicative action responsive to social and political cues constituted externally and internally (Johnson 1983, p. 22, 24), where leaders must publicly adopt an “advocacy position” on given issues, requiring ongoing deliberation and communication with stakeholders from acknowledged perspectives. Issues Management unites clarity and differentiation of issues, defining leadership as an act of communicative responsibility that includes judgment and attentiveness to public opinion.
Fairhurst, as well as Fairhurst and Sarr, emphasizes framing coupled with Issues Management, highlights alertness and responsibility in issue clarification and discernment. Issues Management invokes interpretations alert to the distinctiveness of contexts and situations. Leaders assume immediate and preemptive approaches to framing issues, shaping interpretation and significance for organizations and stakeholders. Issues Management, as a corporate communication practice, effectively protects and promotes organizational goals and desires that align with stakeholder interests and opinions. Implementing responses to issues begins with a discerning look at “why,” “how,” and “when” an issue gains and maintains salience in the public domain.
Issue Responsiveness: Scanning and Monitoring
Leaders frame and manage issues as they outline the “why” of an emerging concern, “how” it generated attention, and “when” response is appropriate. Implementation is a strategic corporate communication practice, articulated by Coombs and Holladay (2012), with attentiveness to the “why,” “how,” and “when” of issue clarity and discernment. They suggest that the escalation of issues can be problematic; nevertheless, there is potential for organizational opportunities (p. 53). One discerns this possibility through implementing strategic corporate communication practices that yield insights into the internal and external communicative environment. Coombs and Holladay (2012) elucidate two strategic Issues Management practices that require attentiveness to issues and function as signposts for issues: scanning and monitoring.
“Scanning” yields clarity similar to the emphasis, placed by Issues Management practices, on a “radar system” that searches for potentially meaningful situations that can positively or negatively affect an organization. Leaders must be knowledgeable as well as sensitive to the pulse of an organization’s internal and external environment. Like scanning, “monitoring” allows organizations to address “social concerns,” responding to stakeholder interests. Monitoring illuminates and exhausts “all possible issues or trends” that might possibly influence organizational health (Johnson, 1983, p. 23). Discerning when an issue becomes significant is an important component of Issues Management, with an external and an internal effect permeating all levels of discussion on a given issue. Framing issues is a dynamic communicative process that holds leadership responsible for the maintenance of stakeholder relationships. Leadership must identify why an issue has gained saliency, how an issue has emerged in a particular context, and when action is required; clarity and discernment of issues are leadership practices essential for organizational health.
Issue Responsiveness: Responsibility and Leadership
Framing an issue is a communicative leadership action acknowledging the responsibility of influencing a problem/opportunity emerging between and among stakeholders and an organization. Heath and colleagues (Shin, Heath, and Lee 2011, p. 168) conceptualize leadership as a “shadow concept” that carries “assumptions” about “socially useful outcomes” that influence behaviors, practices, and choices within organizational contexts. These communicative practices benefit internal and external constituencies, demonstrating the corporate responsibility to engage public opinion and align organizational goals with stakeholder desires and needs. Heath, as early as 1988, defined the global marketplace as “uncharted” and “uncertain” (p. 1). The best an organization can do in the midst of uncertainty is to engage in pragmatic leadership wisdom: to clarify and differentiate issues and to understand problems/opportunities as moments of creative tension capable of determining the future health of an organization. This chapter offered theoretical scaffolds from rhetorical, philosophical, and corporate communication scholars who have united issue clarity, discernment, judgment, and action. The responsibility of leadership commences with issue clarity and differentiation, and it finds testing in everyday organizational life in the framing of response or appropriate restraint. This section emphasized framing issues by:
1. Responsibility, Judgment, and Attentiveness—framing begins with issue clarity, is textured with issue differentiation, and is tested in issue implementation;
2. Why, How, and When—framing clarifies the significance, the origins, and the timing of issue response; and
3. Framing—framing management issues in context and particularity defines leadership.
Framing and managing an issue is a leadership responsibility that is contextually driven, and offers clarification and discernment in the midst of uncertainty.
Framing and managing issues is a path to strategically discern what matters for internal and external constituencies. Timothy L. Sellnow, Deanna D. Sellnow, Derek R. Lane, and Robert S. Littlefield (2012) argue that the postmodern marketplace, where little agreement guides us, is a harbinger of crisis. Issues Management is a strategic corporate communication practice necessitating response to issues before, during, and after a crisis. Issues demand thoughtful framing; issues are potential internal alerts. Leaders define their careers with such strategic responses. Issues in the public sphere, connected to social problems, require persuasion in the ongoing efforts to clarify and discern. Leadership tied to the concept of issue begins with responsibility for enacting clarity and differentiation that yields to judgment and the test of action. Leaders seek clarity. Great leaders recognize it is an ongoing task. Issue clarity and differentiation makes responsive leadership possible while demanding ongoing attentiveness to a basic organizational fact: issues require constant vigilance. Simply put, issues change.
Issue clarity attends to locality, context, and the industry at large. The impact of recognition of and about a given issue dominantly concerns internal and external stakeholders. Issues emerge within an environment composed of concerned constituents. Their perspectives on issues align with synergy or begin to announce points of separation and even hint at later organizational fragmentation. Chapter 2, “Issue and Stakeholder Influence,” unites the importance of issue with stakeholder recognition and action.
1 Robert L. Heath’s work and rhetorical perspective are central to this project. Heath is an authority in public relations and corporate communication, and has published over 100 book chapters and journal articles.
2 Timothy L. Sellnow is a national scholar in the field of risk and crisis communication. He publishes extensively on risk communication and works with a number of national and international organizations on the effects of crisis responsiveness.
3 Coombs, W.T., and Sherry J. Holladay. 2012. Managing Corporate Social Responsibility: A Communication Approach, 53. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
4 W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry Holladay are professors of communication at Texas A&M University. Coombs is a consultant for Communication Resources Northwest. He has written award-winning books on crisis communication and has consulted with companies in various industries on crisis-related topics. Holladay is an award-winning scholar on the topics of crisis communication and public relations.
5 Marita Vos is professor of organizational communication and public relations at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Vos publishes extensively on risk and crisis communication, issues, and innovation. Henny Schoemaker is a communication consultant and author of multiple publications in which he examines organizational communication. Vilma Luoma-aho is professor of organizational communication and public relations at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has published in areas such as media studies, public relations, advertising, stakeholder relations, and corporate citizenship.
6 James E. Grunig is a prominent figure in the field of public relation with over 20 years of experience; he has over 250 publications addressing media, organizations, and issues tied to public relations and corporate communication practices.
7 Michael J. Palenchar is a professor of public relations, with over 30 years of professional experience in various business environments working with crisis communication responses. His scholarly corpus includes two books and several articles on risk and crisis communication.
8 Beginning with Hermagoras and the Ad Herennium, followed later by Hermogenes and Aristotle, Roman rhetorician Cicero refined the theory.
9 Hermagoras was an ancient Greek rhetorician and teacher of rhetoric in Rome during the first century BCE.
10 Hermogenes was a second-century BCE classical rhetorician who is responsible for the popularity of stasis theory tied to public debate and argumentation in the public sphere.
11 Alan G. Gross is a professor of rhetoric and communication studies at the University of Minnesota. He has published seven scholarly books on rhetorical theory, the rhetoric of science, and visual communication.
12 Richard McKeon (1900–1985) was a philosopher and a prominent figure in the revival of rhetoric as an intellectual art during his academic career. McKeon published over 150 articles and twelve books during his lifetime.
13 Aristotle was a fourth-century BCE Greek rhetorician and philosopher who significantly influenced many disciplines and academic areas of study.
14 Cicero was a first-century BCE Roman philosopher, rhetorician, and politician known as one of Rome’s greatest orators.
15 Gail T. Fairhurst, an organizational communication scholar, is principally known for her theoretical and practical explication of framing and leadership. She is the author of over 60 scholarly articles and multiple books on organizational communication.