Summary of Corporate Communication, International business communication, Radboud University, LET-CIWB150-IBC
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Course
Corporate communication (LETCIWB150IBC)
Institution
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
Book
Corporate Communication
This is a summary of all the relevant topics regarding the corporate communication exam. Not only is it a summary of the lectures, but also of the book; Corporate communication: A guide to theory & practice (6 th edition). With this summary, I obtained a 7.8 on the exam.
Chapter 1: Defining corporate communication
It's about how corporate communication is used and managed strategically as a way of guiding how
organizations may communicate with their stakeholders. Stakeholders are people or groups of
people that are relevant to an organization, such as customers, employees and shareholders.
Managers now believe that their organizations’ success and future depend on its reputation, so how
it is viewed by their stakeholders. This objective of building, maintaining and protecting the
company’s reputation is the core task of corporate communication practitioners. They should
recognize communication related management problems and know how to deal with it by using
strategies.
An organizations reputation is affected by advertising, direct experiences and (negative) news.
Until the 1970s they used the term ‘public relations’ to describe communication with stakeholders.
This largely consisted of communication with the press. When people wanted more information from
the company, they started to look at communication as more than just public relations. Corporate
communication focusses on the entire organization (internal and external), and how it presents itself
to stakeholders. Corporate communication nowadays has a wide range of disciplines.
Corporate communication practitioners have 2 main tasks:
--> Managerial tasks: planning, coordinating and counselling CEO’s and senior partners.
--> Tactical tasks: producing and disseminating messages to relevant stakeholder groups.
Definition: Corporate communication is a management function that offers a framework for the
effective coordination of all internal and external communication with the overall purpose of
establishing and maintaining favorable reputations with stakeholder groups upon which the
organization is dependent.
It is complex: it consists of different disciplines with different stakeholders, multinationals (wide
corporate range), wide range of products. Key concepts:
- Mission: organizations overall purpose, should be in line with stakeholders’ expectations.
Vision: What an organization wants to become in the future. Objectives: Short-term aims in
line with the mission. Strategy: How the vision is realized, how we achieve the goal.
- Corporate identity: The profile and values communicated by an organization. What the
organization feels it’s all about. Corporate image: From the perspective of stakeholders, their
immediate association at a point in time. Corporate reputation: A representation of the
image of an organization over time.
- Market: A defined group for whom a product or service may be demand, for whom the
organization maintains products.
, - Communication: All the media and tactics that an organization uses to communicate with
stakeholders. Integration: coordination of all the communication with visuals and logo’s. It
can affect the corporate identity to other stakeholders and groups. (Bavaria)
Because of favorable images and reputation, costumers will purchase products and services, and the
community will appreciate the organization. The difference between corporate and business- /
management communication is that corporate communication focusses on the organization as a
whole. Management and business communication are focused on smaller groups within the
organization.
Trends in corporate communication:
1980: Before 1980 corporate communication was fragmented into separate segments. It didn’t work
because those separate segments put there own growth as a priority, instead of the organization as a
whole. So then those segments became integrated departments in 1980. Marketing and public
relations became corporate communication.
1990/2000: Organizations aimed to communicate through the minds of their stakeholders. Corporate
identity and -reputation became important. But this gave the impression that stakeholders can be
controlled, and their reputation can be controlled, which indicates that stakeholders are passive.
2010: Stakeholders become more active in voicing their expectations. New media technologies also
encourage stakeholders to be active. Because they can criticize or leave positive comments online,
they have eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth). With that they can influence other stakeholders
through peer-to-peer influence. People doubt the credibility of corporate communication nowadays
because they are aware that organizations influence their vison.
So corporate communication went form communication as a tactical support, to communication as a
strategic tool. It is now crucial that stakeholders are engaged by organization through different
platforms. If they become properly engaged, they become advocate in an organization. They can also
protest easier if they think an organization is not honest. Advocacy, interactivity, transparency and
authenticity are key to nurture positive relationships with stakeholders.
Chapter 2: Corporate communication in contemporary
organizations
Corporate communication began in het industrial revolution. Mass production and consumption
rose, so the competition between organizations increased. That’s when marketing communication
became important. The communication were focused on publicity, promoting and selling products.
They did not have to answer to a government or institution and the public is not as media orientated
as nowadays, so they were quite gullible. Organizations exaggerated in their corporate messages.
In the early 20th century, muckraking journalism rose as a consequence of public relations. They were
investigative journalists that exposed scandals associated with power, capitalism and government
corruption. They raised awareness for unethical practices, so organizations hired journalist as public
relations specialists, to gain the public approval. The market decreased so they hired advertisement
specialists to get their sales up again.
Then in 1920-1930 there was an economic crisis. The public was again sceptic so organizations had to
hire experts on public relations and marketing. They became separate external disciplines.
Marketing communication focusses on the markets and products. It aims to serve costumer needs
with a profit. Public relations deals with wider public and its issues. They provide goodwill to the
public, so they don’t want to make a profit.
, People began to notice that PR and marketing had some things in common, so in the 1980s they
integrated the segments to marketing public relations: publicizing of news and events related to the
launch and promotion of products. MPR involves the use of public relations techniques for marketing
purposes. That’s when we saw the rise of branded content. Branded content is content on an online
marketing platform that presents a product, but also appeals to peoples general interest while being
positive about the corporation.
Integration started in the 1980s, that’s when Kotler & Mindak came up with 5 different models to
charactering the relationship between marketing and PR.
First model: marketing and PR are distinct disciplines, consisting in isolation.
Marketing and PR are seen as complementary disciplines, with common ground. (most companies
nowadays)
PR can be seen as part of marketing.
Marketing can be part of PR.
Marketing and PR are fully integrated disciplines.
The integration of marketing and PR became important because of a few drivers:
Organizational drivers:
- Organizations want to be more efficient: efficiency (using management time more productively).
- It increases the accountability of communication functions because it reduces costs.
- Communication can become more strategic with stakeholders and in the interest of the
organization as a whole.
- The disciplines overlap in goals, tools, skills, merging them brings the joint expertise together.
Communication-based drivers:
- The integration can break through the enormous amount of commercial messages. It can be hard
for organizations to make their message so unique, that it breaks through the message clutter.
- Message effectiveness: integration can make messages more consistent, stand out more.
- Because of the many media that organizations can use, it is wiser to integrate, so that the costs can
be reduced and control is increased.
Market- and environment-based drivers:
- Its becomes more and more important to be transparent, stakeholders want more information.
(important nowadays).
- It is difficult to sperate internal from external communication because people have multiple
stakeholder roles. Employees can for instance also be costumers.
Communication used to be a strategic tool, used by organizations to communicate their decisions to
stakeholders. Nowadays organizations largely base their decisions on the possible communicative
effects of corporate communication, because reputation is so highly valued now. Because it’s so
important to keep stakeholders happy.
The integration has lead to new corporate communication departments that arrange all corporate
communication. This made corporate communication more important within organizations: raising
the department to a higher vertical position in the organization. Vertical structures is the way tasks
are divided into departments. These structures are used by large companies. The communication
department is high up, next to senior management. They have links to the CEO and are part of the
corporate headquarters and the executive board.
The horizontal structures are enable organizations to respond fast to emergent issues: they are agile.
They also make sure vertical structures are controlled and there is consistency in the communication
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