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112 Corporate Communications in Practice

the strategic options for their communications strategy. Dependent upon the strategic
direction taken at the corporate and business unit level, the generic strategic options
are that communications either plays a lead or support role in effectuating the corporate and/or
market strategy. At the corporate level, a lead role is taken when communications is
key to gaining legitimacy with important stakeholder groups upon which the organi-
zation is dependent. Here, communications may be used to enhance the organi-
zation’s reputation and perceived legitimacy or to alter the definition of legitimacy
with stakeholder groups so that it conforms to the organization’s present practices,
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output and values. At the business unit or market level, a lead role for communi-
cations coincides with a differentiated competitive strategy, where communications
and imagery are key to a differentiated product or service offering. A support role
for communications comes into play when it is employed at the corporate level just
to make decisions of the organization and its operations public and inform relevant
stakeholder groups (e.g. investors, government officials), and communications thus
takes a back seat. This happens when an organization lacks fully developed pro-
grammes of engagement with a wide range of its stakeholder groups, or when instead
of relying on communications it rather strategically adapts its output, goals and
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methods of operation to conform to prevailing definitions of legitimacy. At the
business unit or market level, communications typically has a support role within a
low cost competitive strategy, where it is put to use as a promotional tool at a level-
playing field with instruments such as pricing and distribution.
All of these considerations are important to developing a strategic intent and for
determining the role of communications within the overall strategy of the organiza-
tion, and thus need careful consideration. Indeed, in developing strategies, a poten-
tial danger may be that managers do not consider any but the most obvious course
of action – and the most obvious is not always the best. A helpful step in strategic
intent can therefore be to evaluate and limit strategic options.

3. Evaluation and selection of strategic options. Strategic options can be examined in
the context of the strategic analysis to assess their relative merits.In deciding between
options open to them, managers may ask themselves a series of questions. First,
which of these options builds upon strengths, overcomes weaknesses, and takes
advantage of opportunities, while minimizing or circumventing the threats that the
business faces? It can be thought of as a ‘fit’ between the organization, its resource
capability and its environment.This fit is an assessment of the suitability of the strategic
option.The differentiated competitive strategy of Orange discussed above (see Box 4.1),
for example, minimized its weakness of being last in the UK market, while taking up
the market opportunity for developing a fully rounded brand identity.A second set
of questions is also important. To what extent can a strategic option be put into
effect? Can the required finance be raised? Is it reasonable to expect that corporate
reputations with stakeholders can shift in the direction anticipated by the strategic
option? Can staff be recruited and trained to help reflect the sort of image that the
company wants to project? These are questions of feasibility. A final set of questions
over and above the criteria of suitability and feasibility is whether an option would be
acceptable to stakeholders within and outside the organization. For example, suppose,
in reviewing strategic options, management could see logic in diversifying the
company into new products and markets.Would this be acceptable to the staff, and