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178 Retrospect and Prospect

strategy of the organization. Rather, prior perspectives in both the marketing and
public relations literatures had simply emphasized the artistries and creativity
involved in producing communications materials and the tactics (media planning,
budgeting, and so on) employed when planning a communications campaign.
The corporate communications philosophy of managing communications thus
presented a break with the past, particularly in its premise of viewing and develop-
ing communications as a fully fledged management function within the organization.
Such a view of communications also required a new theoretical vocabulary and con-
cepts that would allow practitioners to enact their managerial roles, and to have a
strategic input into corporate strategy making. The key concepts of stakeholder,
identity and reputation that have emerged to this end may indeed enable practitioners
to couch and communicate the use of communications in more general, corporate
and organization-wide terms. In a more general sense, these three concepts are also
indicative of the theoretical change that corporate communications has brought and its
suggestion to base and ground communications, as a management function, to a
greater extent than before in management theory and thought instead of vocational
skills-based or communications knowledge alone.
The chapters in Parts 1 and 2 of the book have elaborated in quite some detail
on the different managerial theories and frameworks for managing, structuring and
staffing communications within an organization.These chapters have also suggested,
based on evidence from academic research and practice, that there may still be a gap
between the stated aspiration of corporate communications to practise communica-
tions as a management function and the actual reality. In many companies across the
world, communications practitioners still enact largely technician roles, generally
wary of the strategic importance and contribution that communications can make
to the organization.This is unfortunate, as today’s business climate indeed requires
such a strategic input from communications within the overall strategic management
of the company. Further professional development of practitioners and a number of
structural and practical changes are, as the book has already suggested, therefore
needed for the corporate communications function to come to full fruition and to
play its part as a management function in each and every organization.
The following section of this brief chapter picks up on this point and suggests a
number of scenarios and challenges for the future development of the field.

7.2 The challenges ahead

In terms of the way in which communications is currently still practised, organized
and staffed in many organizations, further professional development and changes are
needed.The guiding idea in this regard is to have an across-the-board developmen-
tal shift from a ‘craft’orientation to communications,characterized by technician role
enactment and communications service departments or units carrying out low-level
communication mechanics, to a strategic management function. As a management
function, communications practitioners would then enact managerial roles by parti-
cipating in strategic decision making of the dominant coalition and by overseeing a
range of management and decision-making oriented activities including analysis and
research, the formulation of communications objectives for the organization, the