Communicating Community at Tesla Motors: Maintaining Corporate Values in Blogging Communities

Abstract

Knowing how organizations engage employees can help researchers and practitioners better understand how to effectively communicate and engage employees to create an efficient and collaborative work environment. This research sought to discover if Tesla Motors strategically communicated values from its Master Plan through company blogs to create an imagined community. The theory of imagined communities provided the theoretical foundation. This research used a content analysis of words and phrases within Tesla's Master Plan and 2015 corporate blog. Although the blog provided some indication that it was communicating values, this study concluded that the Master Plan did not provide enough value information to support a strategic imagined community. This study does, however, imply that imagined communities can be used in public relations research.