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20 Mapping the Field

has over the past decade been rivalled by an increased uptake of corporate
communications (as a separate degree or module) in management departments and
business schools worldwide (e.g. the Tuck School of Business, Leeds University
Business School and the Rotterdam School of Management). Paul Argenti, a profes-
sor who teaches corporate communications on the MBA programme at Tuck School
of Business, Darthmouth College, gives the following explanation for this trend:

business schools are the most appropriate home for the discipline, because like other func-
tional areas within the corporation (such as marketing, finance, production and human
resource management), corporate communications exists as a real and important part of
most organizations.As such, it should rightfully be housed in that branch of the academy
that deals with business administration or graduate schools of business. 26

In 1996, the Education and Training Committee of the Institute of Public Relations
in the UK struck a similar chord when it suggested that on the whole it preferred
to see corporate communications located in business and management curricula
rather than in schools of communications and journalism, from the perspective that
the standing of corporate communications needs to be protected and promoted ‘as a
strategic and vigorous management discipline. 27
While not ignoring the importance of vocational skills to past and present com-
munications practitioners, the current view in practice is indeed very much geared
towards promoting and adopting communications as a management discipline. Recent
surveys indicate, however, that despite this interest, and the related understanding
among practitioners that new sets of management competencies need to be learned,
the large majority of them are still lagging behind in their professional develop-
28
ment. The need for an understanding of corporate communications as a manage-
ment function is thus timely, requiring first of all a greater understanding of the
strategies and activities that it involves as well as the competencies and skills that it
requires from practitioners.The following section outlines this strategic management
perspective on corporate communications, and the themes and topics that will be
discussed in the remainder of the book.

1.4 The strategic management perspective on
corporate communications

Corporate communications can be seen as a management function; a perspective
favoured and aspired to by communications practitioners,and a view central to much
corporate communications theory and research.

Corporate, management and business communications

When seen in such a manner, corporate communications can, for definitional pur-
poses, be further distinguished from other professional forms of communications
within organizations, including business communications and management commu-
nications.Corporate communications focuses on the organization as a whole and the