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The Organization of Communications 135

these studies have moved beyond this simple observation and have started to explain
why across companies and continents such consolidation exists.The following three
sets of reasons figure most prominently as explanations.

1. Staff versus line. A traditional explanation for having a central communications
department separate from marketing is that certain areas of communications fall
outside the operational and more tactical orbit of the marketing department. 17
Marketing is a so-called line function concerned with producing, distributing and
promoting the company’s products within selected markets, which includes market-
ing communications (advertising, promotions, publicity and selling). All other
communications disciplines have a more general corporate (rather than product)
focus, and are also more supportive and advisory in nature rather than being directly
involved in the core business process of bringing products to markets.These other
communications disciplines (e.g. issues management, investor relations, media rela-
tions, public affairs and government relations) have therefore been brought together
into a separate staff department as a staff function.A staff function is a function where
the manager has no direct executive power over the primary process or responsibil-
ity for it, but fulfils an advisory role, based on specific expertise, to all departments
within the organization (see Figure 5.1 for an illustration).A line function such as mar-
keting, in comparison, is concerned with the primary operating activities of the
company.As a staff department, communications is enabled to counsel the CEO and
the senior management team, and to support and assist line managers with strategic
communications advice, whereas when it would have been organized as a line
department (or incorporated into, for instance, marketing), communications would
be cast in the role of a tactical support function or production unit supporting the
primary operating activities.

2. Domain similarity and resource dependencies. A second explanation for the group-
ing of communications disciplines into communications and marketing departments
is that this reflects astute domain similarities and task dependencies between certain
disciplines. Domain similarity is defined as the degree to which two different individ-
uals or disciplines share similar goals, skills or tasks. Resource dependence is the depen-
dence of a practitioner in one communications discipline on obtaining resources
(e.g.advice,assistance or communications products) from another discipline to accom-
plish his or her objectives.The explanation provided here is that separate communi-
cations and marketing departments exist as the practitioners and disciplines within
each department share the same technical skills, knowledge and a focus on either
corporate or marketing stakeholders. The disciplines in each department are as
a result highly dependent on each other’s knowledge, skills and resources.The survey
findings of the UK study of the Centre for Corporate and Public Affairs supports
this explanation in that managers of communications and marketing departments
suggested that the domains of their respective departments while showing some
overlap are sufficiently distinct (indicating significant differences in the skills of prac-
titioners, the work performed by the unit, the operating goals of the unit, and the
sources from which the departments obtain their funding) to warrant a departmen-
18
tal separation. In this sense, as the organization theorist Pfeffer has suggested, this
departmental separation into communications and marketing, with the latter carrying