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In other words, communications practitioners need to work at the image that
they have with senior managers by quantifying and actively communicating their
added value. Pincus et al. refer to a belief commonly held among senior management
that they believe that communications adds little to corporate performance and is
5
often described and seen as ‘fluffy’. This is the image that needs to be worked on and
debunked by communications practitioners, so as to avoid being sidelined and com-
munications being treated as a peripheral management discipline – one unimportant
to the overall successful functioning of the corporation.
These are the challenges that lie ahead for communications practitioners and that
in essence determine whether communications will effectively evolve into a strate-
gic management function for most, if not all, organizations across the globe, or
whether it remains to be cast in the role of a technical support function.This book
has argued that such evolution and further development into a management function
is indeed needed, in the light of the historical changes in communications practice
and the stakeholder society and business climate faced by many corporations today.

7.3 Chapter summary

This brief chapter has discussed the challenges faced by communications practition-
ers for securing their strategic involvement in the organization, and also indicated
ways of meeting them. Communications management has made considerable
progress in recent years in the sophistication of its practices and the quality of people
working within it, but further development, the chapter suggested, is still needed.
When practitioners rise to the occasion and meet the challenges described, the
prospect for the practice of communications and its strategic acumen is bright.
If, however, they fail to do so, communications is likely to be cast in the role of a
support function rather than a management function within organizations across
the globe.

Notes
1 Hines,V. (2002), ‘Human resources is not fluffy’, Financial Times, 29 January, 9; see also
Skapinker, M. (2002),‘A higher status for the people person’, Financial Times, 29 January, 9.
2 Dolphin, R.R. (2000), The Fundamentals of Corporate Communication. Oxford:
Butterworth-Heinemann.
3 Fleisher, C.S., and Burton, B. (1995),‘Taking stock of corporate benchmarking practices:
panacea or Pandora’s box’, Public Relations Review, Spring, 1–19.
4 Finlay, J.R. (1994), ‘The tasks and responsibilities of public affairs’, Business Quarterly,
58, 105–110.
5 Pincus, J.D., Rayfield, B., and Ohl, C.M. (1994), ‘Public relations education in MBA
programs: challenges and opportunities’, Public Relations Review, 20 (1), 55–74.