Page 21 - Corporate Communication

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12 Mapping the Field

Table 1.1 Academic and practitioner orientations to corporate communications
Academic orientation Practitioner orientation

Value assumptions
(1) Objective Basic understanding Accomplishment
(2) Criteria of excellence Validity Effectiveness
(3) Application Abstract/general Concrete/specific
(4) Relation to subject area Reflection (independent Action and creation
and objective) (involved and subjective)

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understanding per se, rather than understanding for use by professionals; and the
academic orientation to corporate communications in theorizing and research is as a
result distinct and far removed from practitioner reflections on the profession. This
distinction in academic and practitioner orientations is based upon the idea that,
typically, the academic researcher sacrifices a detailed description and analysis of the
specific features of a subject in order to illustrate the general and abstract relations
among theoretical concepts – rather than to provide a comprehensive understanding of
the subject – while the practitioner focuses on a single and specific problem with the
purpose of designing strategies and courses of action for dealing with it (Table 1.1).From
this perspective,and as Table 1.1 outlines,knowledge is constituted differently in the aca-
demic and practitioner realms according to varying interests, purposes, conventions and
criteria of adequacy,and consequently theory (as the outcome of academic deliberations
and research) and practice are seen as disparate, with the two domains being too far
removed and insulated to have any direct and sustained impact on one another.
As a result of this rift between the academic and practitioner domains many com-
munications practitioners for their part have often turned their back upon theory
and research, as they feel that it does not appear to provide anything useful or rele-
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vant to their day-to-day affairs. Communications practitioners,it needs to be under-
stood, are, like managers in other fields, typically concerned with short-term actions
in response to the specific pressing problems that they are confronted with, and their
primary reason for informing their practice with theory would be that it would help
them understand their own specific problems better or aid them in identifying
scenarios and available courses of action to address them.As much theory and research
is pitched at a high level of abstraction, many communications practitioners often
have not resorted to theory, as most of it read to them as a paean to inutility.

Towards a theory-informed practice of corporate communications

Yet, while recognizing the apparent differences between the academic and practi-
tioner orientations, I (and others with me) do not favour a juxtaposing or strict sepa-
ration of both the academic theory and practice domains. In fact, a closer link
between both domains will have a number of benefits and not only will aid our over-
all knowledge of the field, but also will advance professional practice (Figure 1.1).
Our knowledge of the field will be enlarged when academic theorizing and research