Page 67 - Corporate Communication

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Chapter 3
Corporate Communications in

Theoretical Perspective: Stakeholders,
Identity and Reputation

Central themes

Three concepts form the cornerstones of corporate communications: stakeholders, identity
and reputation.

Understanding stakeholder management facilitates the ability of organizations to manage
within the current business environment.

An organization needs to attend to a rich variety of claims and interests of stakeholder
groups in the environment, yet at all times needs to profile a coherent corporate identity of
itself to each and every one of these groups.
Corporate identity involves the self-representation of an organization through communica-
tions, products and services, and employee behaviour. It is based on the basic, distinct and
enduring values of an organization that guide its operations and that, when figuring in
communications, set it apart from rival organizations in the eyes of important stakeholder
groups.

The ways in which stakeholder groups regard and value the organization is defined as corpo-
rate reputation. Ideally, from a corporate perspective, such a corporate reputation is in line
with the communicated corporate identity and thus broadly consistent with the way in
which the organization wants itself to be understood.

3.1 Introduction

The previous two chapters have circumscribed the field of corporate communications,
its historical antecedents and its uptake in the contemporary world of organizations.
The present chapter follows on from these chapters and provides a theoretical exten-
sion of the strategic management perspective on corporate communications that was
introduced in these first two chapters.Three theoretical cornerstones are presented
in this chapter – the concepts of stakeholder, identity and reputation – that together
provide the groundwork for the strategic management view of corporate commu-
nications. Each of these concepts is central to the theory and practice of corporate
communications.The theoretical overview presented in this chapter is therefore also
a necessary hurdle that needs to be overcome before the reader is able to delve into the