Page 191 - Corporate Communication

Cornelissen-07.qxd 10/9/2004 9:06 AM Page 179

The Future of Corporate Communications 179

design of short-term and long-term organizational philosophies, and counselling of
senior management.This developmental shift can be more clearly circumscribed and
pinpointed with a number of challenges in the three central areas of communica-
tions practice that the chapters in Part 2 of the book described:strategy,structure and
people. Each of these challenges needs to be met by practitioners with appropriate
strategies in order to develop and sustain communications as a strategic management
function.

Challenge 1 (strategy): communications programmes need to be linked to corporate
and/or market objectives to show the wider contribution and added value of
communications to the corporation.
Strategy 1: this first challenge is about ensuring that communications has a wider
organizational remit than just a tactical or operational orbit in terms of crafting
and running communications campaigns. Adaptive strategies that practitioners
can follow to this end include: (a) thinking and reflecting upon the wider organi-
zational consequences of their work, (b) starting to build an intimate under-
standing of the organization, (c) couching the use and effect of communications
in terms of wider organizational consequences and contributions with the stake-
holder, identity and reputation concepts, (d) developing expertise on the role and
use of communications in organizational development and change trajectories,
(e) developing communications programmes from the mission and vision of the
organization, (f) developing expertise on corporate, market and communications
strategy formation.
Challenge 2 (structure): communications needs to be structured and organized in a
way that enables an effective coordination of communications staff and activities,
and with ready access to corporate decision makers.
Strategy 2: This challenge refers to the need for communications, in order to fulfil
its strategic potential, to be structured in such a way that it is a visible and
autonomous management function within the organization (rather than commu-
nications being fragmented or relegated to support units) and whereby senior
communications practitioners are involved (in an advisory or executive capacity)
with the decision makers or dominant coalition (CEO and the executive team)
of the organization. For practitioners, this challenge means that they have to vie
for one or a few departments of communications within the organization with a
direct reporting relationship to the CEO. Adaptive strategies that practitioners can
follow in this regard include: (a) convincing the dominant coalition that senior
managers need ready access to communications advice on stakeholder, identity
and reputation issues, and (b) showing the cost of a fragmentation of communi-
cations into separate units or delegation to other functions (instead of having one
or a few departments) in terms of loss of expertise and control, inconsistent
images, and inefficiency because of the costs of greater cross-unit interaction.
Challenge 3 (people): communications practitioners to a greater degree than before
need to enact the manager role.
Strategy 3: the third and final challenge suggests that many more practitioners now
need to enact the manager role, and thus embed their technical and program-
matic activities in the context of research, strategic planning and the overall cor-
porate strategy of the organization. Strategies for practitioners here lie in the area