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Faculty Profile
Maria Isaksson
Associate Professor - Department of Communication and Culture
Biography
I am an Associate Professor at the BI Norwegian Business School. I have a Ph.D. degree from Åbo Akademi University from 2000 with a thesis on cross-cultural argumentation, and a Master's degree from Purdue University. I was a faculty member of the English Department, Åbo Akademi University, and worked as teaching assistant in the ESL Rhetoric program at Purdue University. After joining BI in 1997, I was head of Department of Communication, Culture and Languages in 1998-2004.
As a board member of the Nordic Network for Intercultural Communication I co-chaired the conference in 1999, and was co-chair for the 8th European Convention of the Association of Business Communication.
Research areas
My primary research interests are in leadership rhetoric, political and religious rhetoric, corporate website rhetoric, organizational identity discourse, cross-cultural communication. My current research focuses on leadership rhetoric, epideictic rhetoric, corporate website rhetoric.
Teaching areas
I teach rhetoric and leadership communication in executive programs, both Master's and Bachelor's.
This article suggests that current research on the use of new digital technologies by the public sector should move beyond its focus on their facility for e-government and e-democracy. It is important to observe that the same technologies can also be a resource for developing public enthusiasm and identification with local authorities by adopting a rhetoric of friendship. The backdrop of the study is the forthcoming Norwegian reform of municipal structure, informed by a similar reform in Denmark in 2006/2007. If Norway, like Denmark, significantly reduces its number of municipalities, the majority of municipalities will undergo significant change and risk losing citizens’ sense of local identity. Each new municipality will need to create meaningful community building to ease the public’s fear of losing their good life. The study examines how municipalities reach out to connect with their publics, and whether they employ emotional and engaging discourse to achieve this. Our data consist of twenty Norwegian and twenty Danish municipal websites.
Isaksson, Maria (2016)
Ytringsanstendighet. Norsk utenrikspolitikk i møte med moskéens retoriske ytringsrom
Alm, Kristian; Brown, Richard Mark & Røyseng, Sigrid (red.). Kommunikasjon og ytringsfrihet i organisasjoner
Jørgensen, Poul Erik Flyvholm & Isaksson, Maria (2015)
The compassionate organisation: Contesting the rhetoric of goodwill in public sector value statements