CALL FOR PAPERS - Issue 46. Organizational, corporate, and public relations communication in Latin America: Approaches and practices under tension amid changing contexts

2026-03-04

Submission timeline: March 15 to June 1, 2026

Publication date: December 1, 2026

Dossier editors

Manuel Santillán Vásquez, PhD. (Universidad de Lima, Peru)

Claudia Labarca, PhD. (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Larissa Conceição dos Santos, PhD. (Universidade Federal do Pampa, Brazil)

Alejandro Álvarez-Nobell, PhD. (Universidad de Málaga, Spain)

 

APPROACH

Corporate communication, organizational communication, and public relations mark a shared territory whose boundaries remain a subject of academic and professional debate in Latin America. There is no doubt that these are expanding strategic fields, which evolve heterogeneously in dialogue with international theoretical traditions, yet are also shaped by the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions particular to the region. Recent studies have highlighted both the growing Latin American production in public relations and the persistent asymmetries in its international circulation (Thelen, 2021; Moreno et al., 2023).

International literature underscores the need to understand communication as a strategy that generates organizational value, rather than solely as an instrumental function (Zerfass & Viertmann, 2017). In this manner, corporate communication may be conceived as a strategic and managerial umbrella that integrates internal and external communication and aligns it with executive leadership and institutional performance, thus contributing to organizational value, legitimacy, and sustainability. Likewise, organizational communication can be seen as more strongly oriented toward the study and intervention of meaning-making, interaction, culture, and coordination processes that sustain organizational life. Public relations, for their part, emphasize the construction of legitimacy and the management of relationships with publics and stakeholders. As a result, rather than establishing rigid boundaries, this dossier proposes the need to make this conversation visible, as well as its convergences, tensions, and terminological nuances, to promote situated, critical, and comparable perspectives that strengthen the field from and for the region.

Debates on artificial intelligence, the crisis of institutional trust, sustainability, the creation of communicational value, and the management of legitimacy (now increasingly exposed to contexts of uncertainty), conflict, and public scrutiny, make it even more necessary to highlight contributions and research that, from the Global South, examine what is happening: how these processes are being implemented, what advantages and opportunities they offer, and what risks or potential threats they entail. This is particularly important considering that much of the debate remains fragmented and dominated by normative frameworks centered on organizational realities of the Global North, leaving underexplored areas regarding how these processes manifest, are challenged, re-signified, and take original forms in Latin America, as recent work on conceptual construction of the field from the South and North–South dialogue as a space of translation, re-signification, and situated theoretical production suggests (Vásquez Donoso et al., 2023; Ángel et al., 2025).

This dossier aims to recover and make visible recent, diverse, and situated contributions from researchers across the region, who address corporate and organizational communication and public relations through concrete empirical problems, plural theoretical lenses, and methodologies attuned to Latin American contexts.

Beyond gathering recent research, the dossier seeks to articulate these contributions and consolidate a reference space for the study of corporate and organizational communication from Latin America. To this end, it promotes a plural, critical, and contextualized perspective oriented toward strengthening the development of the field both regionally and in dialogue with international discussions. The purpose is to contribute to the consolidation of a field of study that engages with global agendas while producing situated knowledge, generated from and for the region.

The aim of the dossier is to bring together academic contributions that critically analyze the contemporary challenges of corporate communication, organizational communication, and public relations in Latin America. It is also important to make visible theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches developed in different countries of the region. In doing so, the dossier seeks to advance the understanding of the role of communication in organizational legitimacy, sustainability, and governance, and to strengthen dialogue between academic research and professional practice.

 

THEMATIC AXES 

This dossier invites empirical research articles and case studies with analytical contributions structured around three thematic axes that seek to capture central concerns of Latin American scholarship on organizational, corporate, and public relations communication.

The first axis, Communication, legitimacy, sustainability, and trust in contexts of crisis and uncertainty, assumes that communication cannot be understood apart from the social, political, and socio-environmental conflicts that shape the region. Within this framework, communication is conceived as a contested process associated with the construction of legitimacy, the management of public trust, the social license to operate, and organizational narratives about sustainability, always traversed by ethical dilemmas, power relations, and territorial dynamics.

The second axis, Technological transformations and the reconfiguration of the communication field: strategic management, value creation, and evaluation in changing contexts, proposes addressing digitalization, automation, and the use of artificial intelligence not as mere technical innovations but as processes that reconfigure decision-making, professional autonomy, and organizational governance. From this perspective, technology is understood as a social and political phenomenon closely tied to ethical tensions and the challenges that emerge in digital environments.

Finally, the third axis, Professional role, training, and communication governance: theoretical and methodological approaches situated in Latin America, emphasizes the construction of the academic and professional field, underscoring that the role of communicators working in organizational contexts is intertwined with ethical commitments and that knowledge production is not neutral. This axis integrates discussions on professional identity and training, tensions between practice and theory, as well as critical contributions, situated methodologies, and comparative studies aimed at strengthening a contextualized, plural, and regionally relevant body of knowledge.

 

POSSIBLE FIELDS OF RESEARCH

1. Communication, legitimacy, sustainability, and trust in contexts of crisis and uncertainty

  • Crises of institutional, organizational, and media trust
  • Organizational communication in contexts of political and social polarization
  • Public opinion, reputation, legitimacy, and social license to operate
  • Communicational challenges and strategies in the face of disinformation and delegitimization
  • Organizational narratives of sustainability, impact, purpose, and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) practices
  • Communication and management of socio-environmental conflicts
  • Social responsibility, communication ethics, and organizational coherence
  • Tensions between discourse, practice, and social expectations
  • Third sector, social mobilization, and communication with communities

 

2. Technological transformations and the reconfiguration of the communication field: strategic management, value creation, and evaluation in changing contexts

  • Public relations, corporate communication, and organizational communication practices mediated by digital technologies
  • Artificial intelligence, automation, and COMMtech in communication management
  • Algorithmic governance, ethics, and decision-making in communication
  • Unequal technological impacts across Latin American organizations
  • Measurement and evaluation of communication in complex environments
  • Creation of symbolic, social, political, and organizational value
  • Limits of traditional strategic management models
  • Innovations in planning, indicators, and decision-making
  • Relationship management in virtualized contexts, organizational positioning strategies, and engagement

 

3. Professional role, training, and communication governance: theoretical and methodological approaches situated in Latin America

  • Reconfiguration of the role of organizational and public relations communicators
  • Power, ethics, and participation in organizational decision-making
  • Working conditions, leadership, and emerging work models
  • Academic training, competencies, and tensions with professional practice
  • Contexts, practices, experiences, and challenges in teaching organizational communication and public relations in Latin America
  • Critical, interpretive, and decolonial approaches
  • Situated approaches and knowledge production from and about Latin America
  • Qualitative, mixed, and innovative methodologies
  • Comparative studies, literature reviews, and assessments of the regional field

 

EDITORIAL POLICY AND AUTHOR GUIDELINES

To access the journal’s editorial guidelines, click here.

 

REFERENCES

  • Angel, A., Vasquez, C., Rabello de Lima, G., & Aguilar-Ramírez, L. A. (2025). Metaphors of organizational communication in Latin American scholarship: A North-South dialogue. Management Communication Quarterly, 0(0), 3–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/08933189251369758
  • Moreno, Á., Argüello-González, C. E., Zurro-Antón, N., & Athaydes, A. (2023). The state of public relations research addressing Latin America: Analysis of published articles in the region’s official languages between 1980 and 2020. Public Relations Review, 49(5), 102383. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.102383
  • Vásquez Donoso, C., Marroquín Velásquez, L., Guillén Ojeda, G., Montoya Robles, M. de J., & Rabello de Lima, G. (2023). Definiendo la comunicación organizacional desde el Sur: En búsqueda de perspectivas latinoamericanas. Organicom, 20(41), 257–274. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2238-2593.organicom.2023.200272
  • Thelen, P. D. (2021). The status of public relations research addressing Latin America: A content analysis of published articles from 1980 to 2020. Public Relations Review, 47(4), 102079. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102079
  • Zerfass, A., & Viertmann, C. (2017). Creating business value through corporate communication: A theory-based framework and its practical application. Journal of Communication Management, 21(1), 68–81. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-07-2016-0059