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use of communications in and for organizations, as this will provide practitioners
with a domain of expertise that is legitimately theirs, difficult to emulate and also
valued by senior managers within the organization. In this sense, professional devel-
opment is directly tied in with a further enactment of the manager role across
organizations. Several studies have indicated in this regard that enactment of the
managerial role is associated with multiple benefits: enhanced expertise, greater
status within the organization, lower possibility of encroachment (i.e. being taken
over by another function or department), and a powerful indicator of an expert and
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strategic approach to communications management. Such a link between manager
role enactment and professional development does not devalue the role of skilled
technicians, but nonetheless suggests that technician activities need to be embedded
within a larger domain of expertise and associated activities (i.e. environmental scan-
ning, programme evaluation, issues management, strategic planning) directed towards
how communications can be put to use in and for organizations. In other words, as
Dozier and Broom have suggested, technical activities continue to be vital to com-
munications management, but are not ends in themselves and rather need to be
embedded in manager role enactment.
Recent studies suggest that many practitioners also realize themselves that the
greatest stride in professional development comes with the development of further
expertise and the enactment of the manager role, which would also define commu-
nications management more by its expertise and strategic use, rather than by its skills
and techniques. Indeed, there seems to be a growing sense among practitioners
that they should now take on this professionalization agenda, and start enacting the
manager role through reflective and experiential learning on the job or through learn-
ing from formal education and training provided by the higher education sector and
professional associations.
An across-the-board move into manager role enactment would also suggest that
considerably more emphasis is placed on competencies (i.e. knowledge that is diffi-
cult to emulate) rather than simply skills, as has been the focus in the past.This, in
turn, not only would provide a cognitive base in the form of expert knowledge of
the field of communications, and an associated increase in status and legitimacy (i.e.
acceptance of its role and acknowledgment of its standards of practice), but also
would provide greater barriers for entering communications practice. In the past, the
focus on skills created relatively low barriers for entry, as these could be relatively
quickly learned, with the result that people with various backgrounds and with little
formal education were often found within communications practice.Adding a set of
competencies as expected and required of practitioners would greatly raise the
barrier for entry, comparable to other, more established professions, as it would stipulate
the need for more knowledge and skills (acquired through formal education, train-
ing or on the job experience) before one qualifies as a full professional and is also
seen by others as such.

6.4 Chapter summary

Although the field of communications has already come a long way in its develop-
ment towards a profession, it still largely fails to receive the recognition and status