Corporate Communication

A Marketing Viewpoint

Klement Podnar

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317619154
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Business Communication

Corporate Communication: A Marketing Viewpoint offers an overview of the framework, key concepts, strategies and techniques from a unique marketing perspective. While other textbooks are limited to a managerial or PR perspective, this book provides a complete, holistic overview of the many ways communication can add value to an organization. Step by step, this text introduces the main concepts of the field, including discipline and function frameworks, corporate identity, corporate and employer branding, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder management, storytelling, corporate associations, identification, commitment and acceptability.

In order to help reinforce key learning points, grasp the essential facts and digest and retain information, the text offers a comprehensive pedagogy, including: chapter summaries; a list of key words and concepts; case studies and questions at the end of each chapter. Principles are illustrated through a wealth of real life examples, drawn from a variety of big, small, global and local companies such as BMW Group, Hidria, Lego, Mercator, Krka, Barilla, Domino's Pizza, Gorenje, Si Mobil, BP, Harley-Davidson and Coca-Cola.

This exciting new textbook is essential reading for all professional corporate marketing and communication executives, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students of marketing and public relations, not to mention managers who need a complete and accurate view of this increasingly important subject.

1

CORPORATE COMMUNICATION FRAMEWORK

CONTENTS

This chapter presents various definitions of corporate communication. It underlines the integrative role of corporate communication and distinguishes it from similar disciplines dealing with organizational communications. Further, we highlight how important a good understanding of the duality of organizations is for a holistic approach to corporate communications. We also present the main focuses and tasks of corporate communication in an organization.

1.1 The concept of corporate communication

David Bernstein (1986, 1999), who is one of the first scholars to understand the concept of corporate communication in a modern way, warns that companies should adopt a holistic approach to the understanding of their communication, because they communicate continuously with their various audiences. A similar suggestion was made by Aberg (1990) in his model of total communications.

Both authors take into account the famous Watzlawick’s axiom that one cannot not communicate, meaning that everything that an entity says, does or make (or doesn’t say, do or make) is communication (Watzlawick 1976). That is why companies and other entities must assume control over and manage all their communications.

The basic idea of corporate communication (CC) is a synchronization of different aspects of communications by an entity and the integration of messages that this entity is sending to its audiences. An early definition of corporate communication says that CC is an ‘integrated approach to all communication produced by an organization, directed at all relevant target groups’ (Blauw 1986). Jackson (1987) similarly defines corporate communication as the total communication activity generated by a company to achieve its objectives. Corporate communications are defined by van Riel as the ‘instrument of management by means of which all consciously used forms of internal and external communication are harmonized as effectively and efficiently as possible, so as to create a favourable basis for relationships with groups upon which the company is dependent’ (van Riel 1995, 26). Corporate communication is a set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications with a purpose to create favourable starting points with stakeholders on whom the entity depends (van Riel and Fombrun 2007, 25). Corporate communications is an umbrella term for all forms of behaviour and communication that are performed (within or outside of an organization) by a certain corpus (van Riel 1995).

Corporate communication is the aggregate of all messages, either from official or informal sources, that are transmitted through a variety of media, and by which the entity conveys its identity to its stakeholders (Gray and Balmer 1998, 696). Corporate communication can be a method of the overall presentation of the organization to external and internal publics, because it constructs and expresses the identity of the organization (Gray and Balmer 1998).

Although authors tend to use the term corporate communication mostly in an organizational context, the term corporate should not be understood as an adjective derived from corporation, but should be interpreted in relation to the Latin word corpus, denoting a body or, in a figurative sense, meaning ‘relating to the total’ (van Riel 1995, 26). In this broader sense, the application of the term corporate communication can be expanded outside profit-oriented organizations offering products and services, to a number of other organizations such as NGOs, political parties, not-for-profit organizations, government institutions and even broader – to cities, towns, regions, countries or people who are active in the public sphere and have, in terms of their activities and recognition, a character of institutions or brands.

1.2 Overview of corporate communication

Van Riel (1995, 1997) writes that corporate communication is not just another discipline, but a new view on the complete area of communication. That is why corporate communication should be understood as an umbrella term for a field that combines knowledge of various disciplines concerned with organizational communications. ‘Corporate communication takes into account both the total of marketing communication and the large range of forms of organizational communication and management communications’ (van Riel 1995, 21). This opinion is shared by several other authors who deal with corporate communication in connection with management, business and organizational communications, and public relations (Argenti 1996; Dolphin 1999; Argenti and Forman 2002).

In the academic sphere, corporate communication is understood as a framework for a holistic approach to individual fields in communications of organizations and for integration of knowledge and findings of different disciplines and traditions, including (see Figure 1.1):

FIGURE 1.1 Framework of corporate communication

• Business communication. Applied science dealing with the construction and application of modes of expression, symbols and signs that accompany profit-oriented activities, related to offering products and services for satisfying human needs and desires (Reinsch 1991a, 1991b). Business communication is principally a link among participants of a business process that helps to accomplish a specific business task. This discipline deals with topics such as communication skills, use of technology and media in the communication process, types of business communications (e.g. interview, meeting, presentation, speech, written communications), use of business communications (e.g. negotiations, communication of salespeople, counsellors), and the aesthetics and ethics of business communications.

• Organizational communication. This focuses on analytical and critical capabilities that enable the interpersonal, collective and total understanding of the organization through a communication perspective. The main focus of the discipline is studying vertical, horizontal and transversal information flows in an organization, studying the content and meanings of messages, analysing the communication climate, and studying organizational development and personal training for competent communication activity on a systemic level (Greenbaum et al, 1988). Organizational communication is primarily understood as the glue that holds the organization together (Ivancevich and Matteson 1996) and influences the success of the organization’s activities.

• Management communication. This combines the knowledge of business and organizational communications and transfers it to the management context. This discipline tries to explain structural, systemic and functional aspects of communications and to provide knowledge of communication techniques among managers in the internal and external environment of the organization. Argenti writes that the basic domains of management communication are ‘communication strategy; skills, including writing and speaking; process, including teamwork and interpersonal behavior; the global environment, which focuses on cross-cultural communication; and function, which gets us to the connection with corporate communication’ (Argenti 1996, 83). Every communication – written or oral, personal or impersonal – that is used for reaching a (measureable) goal and is undertaken by managers, regardless of their hierarchical position, is management communication.

• Public relations. This is a discipline and a management function that deals with planning, execution and evaluation of organizational communications with internal and external publics, or with managing communications between an organization and its strategic stakeholders (Grunig and Hunt 1995, 6). The main objective of public relations (PR) is to establish and sustain mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the public, upon which the success of the organization depends (Cutlip et al, 2000, 6). The basic resources of PR are, among others, relations with media and its instruments (press conferences, announcements, press materials, publicity, etc.), lobbying, organization of events, crisis communication, annual and other reports, internal newsletters and publications, speeches and presentations, donations and special programmes for relations with employees, local communities and the financial public aimed at informing, persuading and involving different stakeholders.

• Marketing communication. This is an instrument aimed at involving consumers in an exchange relationship with an organization. Each marketing communication is target-oriented in the sense that it directly or indirectly supports the selling of the product (Burnett and Moriarty 1997, 4). Marketing communication includes all communication activities by a company to inform, present, persuade and remind buyers and business partners in the target market about their activities and offer (Podnar et al, 2007). Everything that draws the buyer’s attention to a selected offer can be, in a broader sense, understood as marketing communication, which is a ‘strategic business process used to plan, develop, execute and evaluate coordinated, measurable, persuasive brand communication programmes over time with consumers, customers, prospects and other targeted, relevant external and internal audiences’ (Schultz and Schultz 1998, 18). Classic tools of marketing communication are various forms of advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, personal selling, etc.

Corporate communication emphasizes the interdisciplinary view on communication of organizations and sees communication as a resource that enables the existence, motivation and development of an organization. Because of its interdisciplinary design, we must keep in mind that the term organization can be understood in different ways, which reflects its duality – in business and organizational communications,organization denotes a group of people with a common goal, whereas PR and marketing communications implicitly define an organization as an independent social subject (Podnar and Kline 2003). We need to keep in mind the duality of organizations in order to understand better the interdisciplinary field of corporate communication, its individual disciplines and different theoretical approaches, and to deal in full with the phenomenon of comprehensive communication of such entities as companies.

1.3 Duality of organizations

We speak of an organization when there are people who can communicate with each other, are ready for cooperation and are capable of achieving common objectives (Lewis 1975, 19). This is a basis to the understanding of an organization that, on a group level, presupposes that individuals have a common primary goal – group members function as a unit in order to achieve their primary goal. Every individual within a group has a defined function that contributes to the achieving of the goal or purpose. It would be impossible or nonsensical if each individual did their work separately from other individuals, because every person in the group is in some way connected to other group members. That is why the organization is seen as a network of interdependent relations that have been created as a means for achieving certain goals and is understood as a series of functionalized groups with different goals and purposes. Organizations are not monolithic entities but coalitions of cooperating individuals and groups with different aims. Individuals negotiate their goals, actions and meanings to achieve a common direction, but they never cast aside their own interests and goals (Putnam 1983, 37). But, as highlighted by Handy (1974), an organization is not only a collectivity of individuals. It does not only exist within the intersubjective level – it is more than that. It is a phenomenon that is created during the process of generic subjectivity and is reflected as an independent (socially) functioning unit. The functionalists see the organization as a social fact or a concrete entity, therefore on the level of generic subjectivity. From a deterministic point of view, the structure of an organization remains static and determines the goals and activities of its members. An organization can be seen unitarily; it is a cooperative system that pursues certain interests and goals. Individuals are only a means of purpose-rational activities demanded by technological success and organizational efficiency (Putnam 1983, 36).

Therefore, to understand the concept of organization, one must be aware of its duality – on the one hand, an organization is a group of people joined together by a common goal, and on the other, it is an autonomous social subject. Although bot...