Introduction to Contemporary Corporate Communication
4 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2008
Abstract
This technical note provides an introduction to corporate communication, including a discussion of recent trends.
Excerpt
UVA-BC-0201
Introduction to Contemporary
Corporate Communication
Corporate Communication has its origins in public relations and to a surprising degree people still associate corporate communication primarily with external communication. Because of its origins many managers of communication in large organizations traditionally began their career as print journalists writing about business and then went on to work for the kinds of companies they once covered. Without drawing a direct correlation, it is fair to say that the corporate communication function has changed as dramatically as the role of print news in our contemporary media environment. While a press release or a speech given by a top executive may still play a role in an organization's efforts to get its message across, it is very likely seen by more people on the corporate Web site than read in a newspaper or heard in a public meeting. The central shift in the function has been towards communication playing a role in the development of strategy. As one communication executive put it succinctly, the purpose of the corporate communication function today is to convey key strategic messages internally and externally and to remove obstacles that prevent the implementation of corporate strategy.
Aligning Messages to Stakeholders
One major advance in understanding the communication function as more than internal public relations is to see it through the lens of stakeholder theory. From this perspective a key goal of the communication function is aligning messages to stakeholders, or to use another term, constituencies. Stakeholders differ in kind and influence according to the organization but in general terms break out much as they would in mapping stakeholders in strategy or ethics: employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders, regulators, the communities in which the company does business, and so on. Each of these constituencies may have a dedicated “subfunction” such as employee communications, public affairs, investor relations (which often reports to the CFO), corporate advertising, community relations, corporate philanthropy, crisis communication, and increasingly either a direct or complementary relationship with corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
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Keywords: corporate communication
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