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150 Corporate Communications in Practice

departmental arrangement of communications, for whether communications
disciplines are taken together or split up into separate departments. Both these
elements – size, and domain similarities and resource dependencies – are factors in a
company’s internal and external environment, and thus point to a contingency
explanation of communications structure.At the same time, however, the location of
communications departments in the hierarchy of the organization seems to be associ-
ated with managerial discretion.When senior managers value communications for its
input into decision making, the senior communications manager may be promoted
to a seat on the executive board or management team, or, alternatively, may be work-
ing in a close reporting relationship with senior managers. In other words, the
reporting relationship, and particularly the variance in whether the senior commu-
nications manager just reports to the CEO and executive team or whether he is
really a member of that dominant coalition, can be more aptly explained with power-
control theory. Box 5.2 proceeds from these observations and explanations, and
provides a management brief of key steps in deciding upon an effective organizational
structuring of communications.

Box 5.2 Management brief: steps in organizing communications

In January 1982, AT&T agreed to divest itself of the wholly owned Bell operating
companies that provided local exchange services following an antitrust suit by the US
government. Divestiture took place on 1 January 1984; the regional business units
became independent Bell companies separate from the AT&T company, which from
then on would focus on the long-distance telephone market. This new focus required
a new corporate identity and logo (a stylized globe and the monogram AT&T) and a
more aggressive marketing strategy of the AT&T company, so that it would success-
fully compete in the intensely competitive long-distance telephone market. The
divestiture also meant a change in the way in which communications was organized
and managed. In the original company structure, a small staff communications
department at group headquarters had acted only in an advisory capacity to commu-
nications professionals in the regional Bell business units, as communications was
largely decentralized. But with the change to the AT&T company, and the separation
from the regional business units, a more centralized approach to communications
was taken to guard and control the monolithic AT&T brand. The staff communica-
tions department was enlarged and charged with company-wide decision-making
power over communications. In 1995 another new structure was announced. AT&T
decided that because of few synergies between its communications and manufac-
turing businesses, it would restructure into three separate publicly traded companies:
a systems and equipment company (which became Lucent Technologies), a computer
company (which was named NCR), and a communications services company (which
kept the AT&T name). Again, communications staff were reshuffled across the three
different companies, but the central communications department was kept in place.
And in 2000 and 2001, the AT&T company was once again subject to a restructuring
into a family of separate publicly held companies: AT&T Wireless, AT&T Broadband
and AT&T. This obviously meant that more communications staff would once again
be placed in the separate companies, and that responsibilities would to a large extent