Corporate Communication: Core Elements

Corporate Communication

• A management function coordinating internal and external communication to establish favorable reputations with stakeholders.
• A current challenge is balancing strategic "one-to-many" with "many-to-many" communication.

Core Elements of Organizational Identity

• Mission: Explains a company's core purpose, values, and culture in a concise statement.
• Purpose: Defines the reason an organization exists beyond profit, specifying its contribution to society.
• Vision: Represents the organization's desired future state and high-level objectives.
• Corporate Objective: States overall aims in line with the corporate purpose.
• Strategy: Defines how corporate objectives are achieved.
• Corporate Identity: The profile and values communicated by an organization.
• Corporate Image: An individual's immediate associations in response to signals from an organization.
• Corporate Reputation: An individual's collective representation of an organization's past images over time.

Stakeholders and Markets

• Market: A defined group for whom a product is in demand.
• Integration: Coordinating all communication to consistently convey corporate identity to groups.

Communication Technologies

• Social Media: Internet-based applications allowing user-generated content creation and exchange, building on Web 2.0.
• Web 2.0: A shift in online technologies.
• Broadcasting: A mass communication model where an organization informs or persuades a large audience at once.
• Positioning Model: When practitioners assume reputation can be strengthened through adverts and PR.
• Paid Media: Paid-for content on non-owned online media.
• Earned Media: Online media an organization controls.
• Rich Media: Enables face-to-face conversations or instant messaging, allowing frequent updates and feedback.
• Poor Media: Information encoded within a medium, retrievable but not actively discussed.
• Social Presence: Acoustic, visual, and physical contact individuals have while communicating making them both feel ‘present’.
• Blogs: A controlled web-based medium for individuals or groups to publish diary-style information.
• Collaborative Projects: Simultaneous collaboration between individuals online.
• Social Networking Sites: Allow users to present personal information, create profiles, and share with others.
• Content Communities: Applications through which users share media content.
• Conversational Voice: An engaging and natural communication style perceived by stakeholders.

Theories of Organizational Responsibility

• Neo-Classical Economic Theory: The corporate responsibility is to make a profit (prioritizing economic growth).
• Socio-Economic Theory: 'Who counts' extends beyond shareholders to groups important for continuity and societal welfare.
• Input-Output Model: Depicts the organization at the center of the economy, with contributors.
• Stakeholder Model: Recognizes all with a legitimate stake in the organization.

Stakeholder Model Details

• Used for descriptive, instrumental, and normative reasons.
• It helps to visualize and strategically map the organization in its environment (descriptive)
• It enables communication goals and segments groups into categories of importance (instrumental)
• It acknowledges legitimate stakes beyond financial claims (normative).
• Stake: An interest or share in an undertaking.
• Stakeholder: Any group or individual affected by the organization's achievements.
• Equity Stakes: Ownership stakes (shareholders, directors).
• Economic/Market Stakes: Economic interest without ownership (employees, customers, suppliers).
• Influencer Stakes: No ownership/economic interest, but interests as advocates, groups and agencies.
• Primary Stakeholders: Essential for financial transactions and the organization's survival.
• Secondary Stakeholders: Influence or are affected by the organization, but not in financial transactions.
• Contractual Stakeholders: Legal relationship with the organization during exchange of goods/services.
• Community Stakeholders: Non-contractual relationship with impact.
• Stakeholder Salience Model: Identifies and classifies stakeholders based on salience.
  • Classified and prioritized based on power, legitimacy, and urgency.
  • Power: A stakeholder group's influence on the organization.
  • Legitimacy: The validity of a stakeholder group's claim.
  • Urgency: The degree to which claims need immediate action.
• Latent Stakeholder Groups: Possess one attribute of the stakeholder salience model.
  • Dormant: Have power but lack legitimacy or urgency.
  • Discretionary: Have legitimacy but lack power or urgency.
  • Demanding: Have urgency but lack power or legitimacy.
• Expectant Stakeholder Groups: Possess two attributes of the stakeholder salience model.
  • Dominant: Have both power and legitimacy, giving them strong influence.
  • Dangerous: Have power and urgent claims, but lack legitimacy.
  • Dependent: Lack power but have urgent, legitimate claims.
• Definitive Stakeholders: Have legitimacy, power, and urgency, with full attention and priority.
• Power-Interest Matrix: Used to formulate appropriate communication strategies.
• Stakeholder Communication Strategies: Informational, persuasive and dialogue.
  • Informational: Informing someone about something (one-way symmetrical model).
  • Persuasive: Changing stakeholder knowledge, attitude, and behavior (two-way asymmetrical model).
  • Dialogue: Mutual exchange of ideas and opinions (two-way symmetrical model).

Issue and Crisis Management

• Issue: A public concern about an organization's decisions, potentially conflicting with stakeholder opinions.
• Issues develop over time and gain salience through media attention and public concern.
• Stages of managing issues include environmental scanning, issue identification, response strategies, and evaluation.
  • Environmental Scanning: Acquiring information on events outside the company to spot potential trends.
    • Uses DESTEP and SWOT analyses.
    • DESTEP Analysis: Broad analysis of demographic, economic, political, technological, ecological, and political factors.
    • SWOT Analysis: Investigation of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
  • Issue Analysis: Determining the intensity of an issue in the public domain.
    • Position-Importance Matrix: Analyzes issues in terms of stakeholder interests and position.
      • Problematic stakeholders: Likely to oppose or be hostile to the organization but are relatively unimportant.
      • Antagonistic stakeholders: Likely to oppose or be hostile and hold power or influence.
      • Low priority stakeholders: Likely to support but are relatively unimportant.
      • Supporter stakeholders: Likely to support and are important.
  • Life cycle of an issue: Emergence, debate, codification and enforcement
  • Issue-Specific Response Strategies: Including buffering, bridging, advocacy, and thought leadership.
    • Buffering Strategy: Stonewalling to delay an issue.
    • Bridging Strategy: Being open to change and recognizing an issue.
    • Advocacy Strategy: Changing stakeholder expectations.
    • Thought Leadership Strategy: Proactively stake out a leadership position on an emerging issue.
  • Issue Evaluation: Evaluating issue development and changes in stakeholder opinions.
• Issue Arena: Platforms where actors engage in discussions about a topic.
  • Issue Framing: Emphasizing certain aspects while downplaying others.
    • Figurative Frames: Using devices such as metaphors and irony.
    • Moral Frames: Drawing on different moral values.
  • Public Sphere: A space where issues are discussed to influence political action.
  • Two Approaches to Issue Arenas: Functional and Societal.
    • Functional Approach: Focuses on relations between organizations and stakeholders, with conflict.
    • Societal Approach: Focuses on issue-based relations between organizations and stakeholders, with conflict.
• Issue Management: Prevents issues from evolving into crises.
• Issue Arenas as a Bridge: There is reciprocal influence between stakeholder and issue management.
  • Informing decisions on environmental scanning
  • Identifying known active stakeholders
  • Identifying new stakeholders
  • Informing decisions regarding non-issue-related communication
  • Informing decisions regarding issue-related communication
• Organizational Legitimacy: Whether an organization's actions are accepted by stakeholders.
• Issue Management Embedded within Issue-Based Public Sphere:
  • Public sphere determines conditions for public issues communication
  • Selection bias marginalizes the public sphere
  • Issue management may facilitate or inhibit engagement in issues
• Crisis Management: Dealing with and avoiding crisis scenarios.
  • First step: anticipation, is predicting and preventing potential crisis scenarios.