Joep Cornelissen CorporateCorpora te CCommunicationsommunications Theory and Practice Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page i Corporate Communications Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page ii Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page iii Corporate Communications Theory and Practice Joep Cornelissen Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page iv © Joep Cornelissen 2004 First published 2004 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 4435 4 ISBN 0 7619 4436 2 (pbk) Library of Congress Control Number: 2004094664 Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page v Contents List of Boxes, Figures and Tables vii Preface 1 Part 1 Mapping the Field 7 Chapter 1: Circumscribing Corporate Communications: Theory and Practice 9 1.1 Introduction 9 1.2 The intersection of theory and practice 11 1.3 Theory and practice perspectives on corporate communications 16 1.4 The strategic management perspective on corporate communications 20 1.5 Chapter summary 28 Chapter 2: Corporate Communications in Historical Perspective: Marketing, Public Relations and Corporate Communications 32 2.1 Introduction 32 2.2 The birth of communications management 34 2.3 Communications management comes of age 41 2.4 Corporate communications and communications management 46 2.5 Chapter summary 52 Chapter 3: Corporate Communications in Theoretical Perspective: Stakeholders, Identity and Reputation 56 3.1 Introduction 56 3.2 Understanding stakeholder management and corporate communications 57 3.3 Understanding identity and corporate communications 67 3.4 Understanding reputation and corporate communications 79 3.5 Chapter summary 87 Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page vi vi Contents Part 2 Corporate Communications in Practice 93 Chapter 4: Communications Strategy: Theory and Practice 95 4.1 Introduction 95 4.2 Perspectives on strategy in corporate communications 96 4.3 Making strategy: the process and practice of communications strategy 102 4.4 Challenges and issues in communications strategy 118 4.5 Chapter summary 121 Chapter 5: The Organization of Communications: Theory and Practice 125 5.1 Introduction 125 5.2 Perspectives on communications organization 126 5.3 Vertical structure 132 5.4 Horizontal structure 142 5.5 What explains structure? 147 5.6 Chapter summary 152 Chapter 6: Communications Practitioners: Theory and Practice 156 6.1 Introduction 156 6.2 The roles and practices of communications practitioners 158 6.3 The status and development of the communications profession 164 6.4 Chapter Summary 171 Part 3 Retrospect and Prospect 175 Chapter 7: The Future of Corporate Communications 177 7.1 Introduction 177 7.2 The challenges ahead 178 7.3 Chapter summary 181 Glossary 182 Index 199 Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page vii List of Boxes, Figures and Tables Boxes 1.1 Management brief: how to ‘use’ corporate communications theory in practice 14 2.1 Case study: Barclays Bank (UK) 43 2.2 Case study: stakeholder management in the petroleum industry 49 3.1 Case study: the Co-operative Bank and corporate social responsibility 64 3.2 Management brief: corporate social responsibility reporting 65 3.3 Case study: corporate identity in the financial sector 74 3.4 Starbucks Coffee Company: an exercise in aligning identity and reputation 80 4.1 Case study: the launch of Orange in the UK – clarifying the link between corporate strategy and communications strategy 101 4.2 Management brief: stakeholder mapping 108 4.3 Case study:Wal-Mart and its communications strategy 116 5.1 Case study: Sara Lee/DE – organizing communications in a multinational coporation 140 5.2 Management brief: steps in organizing communications 150 6.1 Management brief – using role types for professional development programmes 163 Figures 1.1 The intersection of theory and practice in corporate communications 13 1.2 Theory and practice perspectives upon corporate communications 16 2.1 The historical development of public relations and marketing 36 2.2 Public relations and marketing activities and their overlap 40 3.1 Input–output model of strategic management 58 3.2 Stakeholder model of strategic management 59 3.3 Identity, reputation and stakeholder management 69 3.4 The corporate reputation of two companies compared 85 4.1 A traditional process of developing communications campaigns 100 4.2 The communications strategy model 104 5.1 The vertical and horizontal structure in communications organization 129 5.2 A matrix structure of communications organization 131 Cornelissen-Prelims.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page viii viii Boxes, Figures and Tables Tables 1.1 Academic and practitioner orientations to corporate communications 12 1.2 Theoretical perspectives upon corporate communications 18 1.3 Characteristics of strategic management and operational management 22 1.4 The vocabulary of corporate communications 25 2.1 Historical models of public relations 35 2.2 Examples of marketing public relations worldwide 39 2.3 Drivers for integration 42 3.1 Contractual and community stakeholders 62 3.2 Identity structures 72 3.3 Organizational identity research methods 76 3.4 Overview of the Fortune, Reputation Quotient and Financial Times reputation surveys 82 3.5 Corporate reputation research methods 86 4.1 Roles of communications professionals and their strategic input 120 5.1 Consolidation of communications disciplines in US companies 134 6.1 Practitioners’ views about the qualities needed in communications 166 Cornelissen-Preface.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page 1 Preface I cannot remember exactly when I first encountered the term ‘corporate communi- cations’. I probably reacted to it in much the same way as I did to the various other concepts and terms in the professional communications and marketing fields that have come and gone over the past couple of years, expecting that it would disappear in time or simply lose its allure as a fashionable set of ‘new ideas’. However, it seemed as if the clamour of arguments in favour of corporate com- munications, or the so-called corporate communications view of an organization’s communications practices, increased rather than diminished with time. Deeply con- nected with structural changes in practice and the allied professions of marketing and public relations – including the need for a make-over term for ‘public relations’ or ‘public relations department’ because of their negative ‘spin’ connotations – and a whole arsenal of other new themes and ideas, most notably stakeholder management and the integrated, holistic perspective on communications practice, corporate com- munications appeared more and more as a powerful configuration of new sentiments and thoughts. In its early days, at the start of the 1990s, it seemed set fair to play a crucial role in defining communications practice and the trajectories of professional development involved.And in recent years, as this book testifies, the corporate com- munications concept has in effect come to full gestation and now across many parts of the world defines contemporary communications practice. Purpose of the book This book is about corporate communications. Its chief purpose is to provide a com- prehensive and up-to-date treatment of the subject of corporate communications – the criticality of the function, strategies and activities involved, and how it can be managed and organized properly. The book incorporates current thinking and devel- opments on these topics from both the academic and practitioner worlds, combining a comprehensive theoretical foundation with numerous practical insights to assist managers in their day-to-day affairs and in their strategic and tactical communica- tions decisions. Illustrative examples and case studies are based on companies in the US, UK, continental Europe and elsewhere. Specifically, the book provides insights into the nature of the corporate commu- nications profession, the issues that define this profession, the strategies and activities that fall within its remit, and the ways in which it can be managed and organized in companies. It addresses three important questions: Cornelissen-Preface.qxd 10/9/2004 9:03 AM Page 2 2 Preface 1. What is corporate communications, and how can it be defined? 2. What strategies and activities are central to this profession? 3. What is the organizational location, status and role of this profession? In addressing these questions, the book is written to deliver a number of benefits. The reader will learn the following: • The nature of the corporate communications profession, its historical emergence and its role in contemporary corporations. • The critical role of the corporate communications function in building and maintaining relationships with the stakeholders of a corporation. • The key issues – corporate social responsibility, reputation management, corpo- rate identity,integrated communications – that dominate this profession, and how to deal with them. • Different approaches to develop corporate communications strategies and to implement communications programmes. • Different approaches to measure and monitor the impact of communications upon the images and reputations that stakeholders have of a corporation. • Different ways of organizing communications practitioners within a corporation and of maximizing their performance.