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132 Corporate Communications in Practice

5.3 Vertical structure

To reiterate,communications organization consists of a vertical and horizontal structure.
The vertical structure refers to the way in which different communications disci-
plines are arranged into departments, and the formal reporting relationships that
these departments abide by.The horizontal structure,which is discussed in Section 5.4,
refers to the cross-functional mechanisms that are horizontally laid over departments
and connect communications practitioners with one another and with professionals
from across the organization.
In recent years there has been a lot of discussion around the departmental
arrangement of communications and the reporting relationship of the communica-
tions department. Ultimately, the stakes of this discussion are about the professional
status of corporate communications (vis-à-vis other established functions such as
human resources, marketing and finance) and its strategic involvement in decision
making at the highest corporate level. Claims that have been made to this effect
include the arguments that different communications disciplines should be consolidated
in a single department, and that the head of this department should report directly
to the CEO or the senior management team (or be a member of this team) to bolster
and secure the functional expertise as well as the strategic involvement of corporate
communications in decision making.The scholars Broom and Dozier characterized
this involvement in organizational decision making as perhaps most important to the
communications practitioner than any other measure of professional growth. 10
The following paragraphs discuss the extant research on the departmental arrange-
ment of communications and the reporting relationships involved within large man-
ufacturing and service companies, before moving on to a more general discussion of
the vertical structuring of communications across different types of companies: the
small business, the multinational corporation, the public organization and the profes-
sional service organization.

The departmental arrangement of communications

There are in principle many different ways in which organizations can arrange their
communications disciplines, and the staff responsible for them, into departments.
Depending on the range of communications disciplines (e.g. advertising, publicity,
community relations, corporate advertising, crisis communications, internal commu-
nications, financial communications, government relations, investor relations, issues
management,lobbying,promotions,sponsorship and public affairs) present in a com-
pany, such disciplines can be brought together into one or two central communica-
tions departments, be devolved as stand-alone units (e.g. a governmental affairs unit),
or be subordinated to other functions such as marketing,human resources or finance.
Given these organizing options open to companies, much academic research has in
recent years aimed to describe and explain how different communications disciplines
are mapped on to organizational units or departments, and whether this mapping
reveals tendencies towards consolidation or, alternatively, towards a dispersion of
communications responsibilities.