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122 Corporate Communications in Practice

corporate strategy of an organization,and thus within the overall strategic management
of the interactions between an organization and its environment. The chapter has
made an attempt to describe these strategic dimensions of communications and
outlined a process that may guide its use and help implement it.This process builds
from the understanding that corporate communications is a ‘boundary-spanning’
function between the organization and stakeholders in its environment, and that it
needs to contribute to the achievement of corporate and/or market strategies that
target those stakeholder parties if it is to have a genuine strategic role.
However, a number of challenges exist for the corporate communications func-
tion to be put to its fullest strategic use,including the need for communications prac-
titioners who can think and act strategically – at the level of the corporate and/or
market strategy – and senior managers valuing and including corporate communi-
cations for its strategic input into decision making. Only when these challenges are
fully met and overcome will communications staff be included in decision making
at the senior management level, and will corporate communications strategies be
integrated within the overall corporate and market strategies of the organization.
It also follows from these deliberations that communications strategy cuts across
different hierarchical layers, as well as different departments (e.g. marketing, public
relations) of the organization, which points to questions about how organizations can
design structures that enable communications practitioners to interact and coordinate
their work, and to have a strategic input into corporate and market strategies. The
following chapter, Chapter 5, answers these questions in detail.Academic research and
cases are sourced to outline the various ways in which communications may be organized
so as to ensure its strategic input into decision making and its strategic role within the
management of relationships between an organization and its stakeholders.

Key terms

Communications effects Organization-environment analysis
Communications strategy Process effects
Competitive forces Stakeholder analysis
Corporate strategy Stakeholder mapping
‘Craft’ communications Strategic action
DESTEP Strategic analysis
Differentiation competitive strategy Strategic intent
Evaluation Strategy
Low cost competitive strategy SWOT
Market and competitor analysis Value recognition
Marketing strategy Zero-based media planning

Notes

1 Shrivastava, P. (1986), ‘Is strategic management ideological?’, Journal of Management,
12, 363–377.
2 See for instance Mintzberg, H. (1989), ‘Strategy formation: schools of thought’, in
Frederickson, J. (ed.), Perspectives on Strategic Management. San Francisco, CA: Ballinger;