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88 Mapping the Field

management of the organization.This centrality will become clearer in the following
chapters, which discuss the strategic and organizational issues around the practice of
corporate communications in more detail.One important observation that was made
in this chapter is that managers would be wise to look inside their organizations for
core values that define their business and that can give them a competitive edge in
contacts with their stakeholders.While the evidence for this is so far restricted to case
studies it does appear to make sense. In fact, companies that have not thought
seriously about their corporate identity and whether their profile is appreciated by
stakeholder groups, often appear to hire and fire outside agencies with regularity,
trying to find the one with the ability to ‘sell’ a message that people do not seem to
be ‘buying’. In other words, such companies have not given enough care to craft
an identity that is authentic and distinctive, and also meaningful to stakeholders.The
following chapter goes beyond the observations and theoretical overview presented
here, and considers the actual process of developing communications strategies in
practice.Based on research and materials from practice,Chapter 4 outlines in detail how
communications practitioners can map and analyse an organization’s stakeholders
and the reputations that they hold before choosing a strategic corporate identity
profile and running and managing stakeholder engagement and communications
programmes.

Key Terms

Brand(ed) identity Legitimacy
Cob-web method Neo-classical economic theory
Corporate identity Organizational identity
Corporate image Projective technique
Corporate reputation Publicly syndicated rankings
Corporate social responsibility Q-sort
Economic/market stake Repertory grid
Equity stakes Socio-economic theory
Focus group Stakeholder
Influencer stake Transparency
Laddering Triple bottom line

Notes

1
Preston, L.E., and Sapienza, H.T. (1990), ‘Stakeholder management and corporate
performance’, Journal of Behavioral Economics, 19, 361–375.
2
Social Economische Raad (2000), De winst van waarden: Ontwerpadvies over maatschappelijk
ondernemen. Den Haag: SER, p. 3.
3
Friedman, M. (1970),‘The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits’, The
New York Times Magazine, 13 September.
4
See Donaldson,T., and L.E. Preston (1995),‘The stakeholder theory of the corporation:
concepts, evidence, and implications’, Academy of Management Review, 20 (1), 65–91.