Page 10 - Corporate Communication

Cornelissen-Preface.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page 1

Preface

I cannot remember exactly when I first encountered the term ‘corporate communi-
cations’. I probably reacted to it in much the same way as I did to the various other
concepts and terms in the professional communications and marketing fields that
have come and gone over the past couple of years, expecting that it would disappear
in time or simply lose its allure as a fashionable set of ‘new ideas’.
However, it seemed as if the clamour of arguments in favour of corporate com-
munications, or the so-called corporate communications view of an organization’s
communications practices, increased rather than diminished with time. Deeply con-
nected with structural changes in practice and the allied professions of marketing and
public relations – including the need for a make-over term for ‘public relations’ or
‘public relations department’ because of their negative ‘spin’ connotations – and a
whole arsenal of other new themes and ideas, most notably stakeholder management
and the integrated, holistic perspective on communications practice, corporate com-
munications appeared more and more as a powerful configuration of new sentiments
and thoughts. In its early days, at the start of the 1990s, it seemed set fair to play a
crucial role in defining communications practice and the trajectories of professional
development involved.And in recent years, as this book testifies, the corporate com-
munications concept has in effect come to full gestation and now across many parts
of the world defines contemporary communications practice.

Purpose of the book

This book is about corporate communications.Its chief purpose is to provide a com-
prehensive and up-to-date treatment of the subject of corporate communications –
the criticality of the function, strategies and activities involved, and how it can be
managed and organized properly. The book incorporates current thinking and devel-
opments on these topics from both the academic and practitioner worlds, combining
a comprehensive theoretical foundation with numerous practical insights to assist
managers in their day-to-day affairs and in their strategic and tactical communica-
tions decisions. Illustrative examples and case studies are based on companies in the
US, UK, continental Europe and elsewhere.
Specifically, the book provides insights into the nature of the corporate commu-
nications profession, the issues that define this profession, the strategies and activities
that fall within its remit, and the ways in which it can be managed and organized in
companies. It addresses three important questions: