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The Organization of Communications 137

identity considerations may more easily be factored into the process of organizational
21
decision making. The academic Wright furthermore notes that the credibility of
communications executives may also be open to question unless they are seen to
report directly to senior executive officers. 22
The results from a number of studies indicate that in the large majority of cases,
there is indeed such a direct reporting relationship from the staff communications
department to the CEO and/or executive team. The Public Affairs Council study
observed that in most US corporations, communications directors report directly to
the CEO or the board, with a few exceptions.The Centre for Corporate and Public
Affairs study shows similar findings for the UK,where of the 85 companies surveyed,
only one did not report directly to the board (the ‘PR & Communications’ depart-
ment in BAE Systems, an aircraft manufacturing company, reports to the human
resources department). Results of studies in continental Europe equally present
strong evidence that the head of the communications department has a direct report-
23
ing relationship to the executive board. Little if any evidence was found for the
existence of dual reporting relationships, where a communications specialist reports
to both the director of communications and a director of another department, either
in the US, UK or Europe.This finding indicates that a matrix structure for commu-
nications with dual reporting relationships, a suggestion made in the academic liter-
ature, is so far rare if not non-existent in practice.
Commentaries at the practitioner end mirror these results from academic research,
and all claim that many companies have indeed moved communications up into the
ranks of senior management.Troy, author of the influential Conference Board report
on corporate communications, stated that the communications manager is now
recognized by a majority of organizations as an executive with a role of increasing
strategic importance and that, as a result, many communications practitioners have
24
become strategic advisers to their boards. The international distribution group
Inchcape has even gone as far as restoring communications to the boardroom.
Inchcape’s CEO described the seat on the executive board for communications as not
only reflecting ‘the value Inchcape places on its corporate communication activities,
but also the wider contribution that I expect the corporate affairs function to make
in the day to day running of an international company’.The promoted director of
communications welcomed ‘the move [as it] ensures that corporate communication
implications are considered in every business decision that we make’. 25
Such inclusion in the executive team or board is, however, far from common
across the business world.While such companies as Marks & Spencer and Sony have
indeed recently promoted their corporate communications directors to a seat on the
executive board, many, if not most, companies still have a communications depart-
ment linked to the executive board in a more advisory capacity through a direct
reporting relationship. In a recent study in the UK, Moss and his colleagues found
that within all of the UK companies studied communications directors report
directly to the CEO or chairperson of the senior management team, but were not
formal members of the senior management team (dominant coalition) responsible
for determining corporate strategy and strategic decision making. In other words, all
of the managers in the study indicated that ‘they were often consulted on important
issues likely to affect their organizations, [but] their involvement in key operational
decision-making was often limited to advising on how best to present policies to the