Page 131 - Corporate Communication

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120 Corporate Communications in Practice

Table 4.1 Roles of communications professionals and their strategic input

Role Description Strategic role
Communication Production of communications Little if any involvement in the process of
technician ‘products’ for organizations and defining organizational problems and solutions.
dealing with the media. Practitioners just produce communications products
and implement programmes, often without the
full knowledge of organizational motivation,
larger organizational goals or intended results.
Expert Regarded as the authority on Communications is compartmentalized, often
prescriber communications problems and apart from the mainstream of the organization.
solutions. Communications Communications practitioners may work only
issues are defined and periodically with senior management (e.g. crisis
programmes run, but situations).
independently from senior
management.
Communication Practitioners act as liaisons, Emphasis on providing management and
facilitator interpreters and mediators stakeholders with the information they need to
between the organization and make decisions of mutual interest.
its stakeholders, Communications practitioners occupy a boundary-
communicating and spanning role – linking organizations and
maintaining a dialogue. stakeholders and thereby improving the quality
of decisions by facilitating communications.
Problem-solving Practitioners collaborate with Practitioners are recognized as part of the
process other managers to define and strategic management team, engaged in the
facilitator solve organizational problems. formulation of strategies. Incorporates the
boundary-spanning function of corporate
communications.

only contributes but also fully participates in the achievement of strategic corporate
objectives.This means, among other things, that communications practitioners not only
understand corporate strategy making, including the concepts, tools and financial terms
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that are used within it, but also that they are able to identify communications issues at
the level of corporate strategy – at the level of the whole organization and its business
operations – and develop an integrated communications strategy for it.A craft approach
to communications management, in contrast, resonates with the ‘technician’ roles
outlined above, and suggests that the role and practice of communications is refined
to being a tactical support function concerned with producing and disseminating
communications materials simply to effectuate and announce corporate and managerial
decisions made higher up within the organization.A craft approach to managing com-
munications then also suggests that the subject of communications strategy is thought
of in tactical terms as simply campaign planning.
A strategic approach to communications thus requires that practitioners have an
understanding of strategic management and corporate strategy making and that they
know how they can integrate and link communications counsel and strategy into it.
This in itself asks for a process or framework of connecting or integrating corporate
and communications strategies, such as the one outlined above in Section 4.3. But it
also means that many communications practitioners, who until now have been cast