Global Stakeholder Relationships Governance

An Infrastructure

M. Falconi, J. Grunig, E. Zugaro, J. Duarte

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349484713, 9781137396808
• eBook ISBN: 9781137396822
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

By arguing and detailing the elements of a soft and hard infrastructure approach to the process of global stakeholder relationships governance, thisstudy integrates advanced, flexible and feasible tools to develop an organization's listening culture; integrated reporting as an ongoing process of continued multi-stakeholder reporting.

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Global Stakeholder Relationships Governance: An Infrastructure

Toni Muzi Falconi

Abstract: Muzi Falconi articulates why and how managements of private, social and public-sector organizations may improve the quality of their decision-making process and accelerate the implementation of those decisions by developing a soft/hard infrastructure to govern stakeholder relationships. He argues that today these are by definition global, regardless of the size and location, and that a listening culture is necessary to involve and engage stakeholders by implementing a continued, integrated, multi-channel and multi-stakeholder reporting activity. The chapter explains the two dominant approaches: the symbolic interpretive management communicating-to, and the stakeholder relationships with governance approaches; the alignment of internal-/external-communication in an updated generic principles and specific applications policy, in parallel with an 11-step relationships governance process defined as gorel (governance of relationships).

Muzi Falconi, Toni. ed. Global Stakeholder Relationships Governance: An Infrastructure. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137396822.

Introduction

Is there an inherent contradiction in conceptualizing a generic and systemic, yet situational,¹ approach to the practice of global stakeholder relationships governance² (intended here as the planned and aware activity by an organization to create, maintain and develop effective relationships with its diverse stakeholders in different territories in order to improve the quality of its decisions and accelerate their implementation³)?

This text attempts a somewhat rational response to that question by:

1 Evoking some of the more relevant constitutive elements of the two prevailing approaches to the field (the symbolic-interpretive management approach and the strategic-behavioral governance approach).⁴

2 Advancing the notion of a stakeholder relationships “infrastructure” as being a conceptual and material system integrating the paradigm of generic principles and specific applications, with the paradigm of global stakeholder relationships governance (gorel) – as the two principal “soft” components of that infrastructure.

3 Analyzing the dynamics and increasing relevance of more recent organizational activities, such as:

developing the organization’s listening culture;

aligning internal and external communication;

incorporating integrated reporting as a “hard” component of that infrastructure, alongside the more traditional “hard” practices, such as public affairs, investor relations, community relations, government relations and others.

The text illustrates the current status of my analysis but also summarizes, adapts, interprets and is inspired by the content of selected recent online conversations posted by reputed scholars and professionals in the www.prconversations.com⁵ blog.

I selected this approach also to advance the idea that active and accessible online collaboration amongst and between scholars and professionals can strongly accelerate the development of the existing body of knowledge. It goes without saying that I have extracted from those conversations the discourses I deemed more relevant to my thinking and, therefore, I take full responsibility for potential misunderstandings or unintentionally biased selections, for which I apologize in advance.

The global context of deceleration⁶

The value of trade (goods and services) as a percentage of world GDP increased from 42.1 percent in 1980 to 62.1 percent in 2007, foreign direct investment increased from 6.5 percent of world GDP in 1980 to 31.8 percent in 2006; minutes spent on cross-border telephone calls, on a per-capita basis, increased from 7.3 in 1991 to 28.8 in 2006; and the number of foreign workers increased from 78 million (2.4 percent of the world population) in 1965 to 191 million (3.0 percent of the world population) in 2005.

Today however (2013) the world is significantly less globally connected than it was in 2007. Distance and borders still matter and most international flows take place within rather than between regions – even online connections are mainly domestic and decline with distance, while capital markets are fragmenting and services trade has been stagnant since 2009.

Moreover, during this current period of deceleration, amongst business leaders there remain serious misperceptions that are likely to contribute to misguiding their thoughts and, as a result, the quality of their decision-making processes:

Of all the telephone-call minutes in 2012, only 2 percent were cross-border calls. By also adding online calls, the percentage rises to 6 or 7 percent. Yet, when 400 readers of Harvard Business Review (HBR) were asked to guess the cross-border percentage in 2011, they estimated a much higher 30 percent;

We also tend to assume significant movement between countries, given that immigration is so widely discussed, yet first-generation immigrants make up just 3 percent of the world’s population. HBR readers estimated this to be over 20 percent.

Less than 10 percent of all new investments in 2010 were direct foreign investments, but HBR readers overestimated it to be more than 30 percent.

Some other interesting data indicating generalized misperceptions tell us that:

In France, where tensions are high over immigration, people believe that immigrants make up 24 percent of the population. The real figure is actually 8 percent.

Americans believe that 25 percent of the federal budget is devoted to foreign aid and say that 10 percent would be “appropriate”. Yet, just 1 percent of the U.S. federal budget goes to foreign aid.

People estimate their countries give large amounts of aid to the poor in other nations. A survey by the World Bank finds that the ratio of aid given per domestic poor person compared to aid given per foreign poor person, is 30,000 to 1.

People estimate that international shipping and air transport account for 20 percent of all energy-related CO2 emissions. Yet it accounts for 2–3 percent.

If the world is not as fast or as “flat” as we believe and/or say it is, this can be attributed, at least in part, to the increasing and more or less conscious but widespread activities of that global legion of public relations and communication professionals⁷ who, from different interests and perspectives and with diverse profiles, direct or consult organizational narratives.

In 2008, the University of Cardiff⁸ demonstrated that some 82 percent of the contents of the upper levels of U.K. mainstream media were, in fact, created and developed by organizational communicators, to the point that these results have led to the creation of the term “churnalism” as a new descriptor of contemporary journalism.

What is more, most organizations have also become publishers in their own right and reach out directly 24/7 to their many stakeholders with information on and interpretation of trends, issues and other developments concerning business, politics and society.

I advance the hypothesis that two of the principal driving factors of this structurally misleading, always-on global 24/7/365 syndrome, can be traced to fear (speed has, today, become mainly qualitative, and no organization wishes to be left behind) and expectations (we have convinced ourselves of our own hype around the “holy” sacrosanct effects of the presumed absence of distance and time).

As professionals in the areas of stakeholder relationships, public relations and communication, we are called to at least acknowledge that we greatly contribute to the advocacy, affirmation and legitimization of this always-on 24/7/365 syndrome.

Therefore, rather than insisting on trying to dismantle the widely consolidated perception that ethics and public relations are an oxymoron – most professional associations today only act as if they are concerned (pay lip service) – we, professionals and educators alike, should much more seriously ingrain in our day-to-day activities, as the “Melbourne Mandate”⁹ rationalized only a few months ago, the various nuances of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1 Global Stakeholder Relationships Governance: An Infrastructure
• 2 Replacing Images, Reputations, and Other Figments of the Mind with Substantive Relationships
• 3 From the Field: Six Steps toward Stakeholder Relationships Listening
• 4 Challenges and Tools for Mapping and Managing an Organization’s Relationships Networks
• Appendix: Best Practices in Global Stakeholder Relationships Governance
• Index