Chapter 1: Defining Corporate Communication
How organizations communicate to its stakeholders externally and internally
● “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” (Cornelissen, 2021, p.4)
○ Includes, marketing communication, public relations, and organizational
communication
■ Overall concerns stakeholder communication and corporate reputation
■ Subroles: corporate design, corporate advertising, internal communication,
issues and crisis management, media and investor relations, PR, etc.
● Instead of a very specialized focus (e.g. with branding, public affair, HR, etc.), corporate
communication must harness the strategic interests of the organization at large
● Corporation: specific legal form of organization, but ultimately a group of people
working together strategically
● Metony: using a single association to speak about a much larger and complex construct
(e.g. a logo as a representation of an entire organization)
List of concepts used in corp comm:
Mission: overarching purpose in line with the values and expectations of stakeholders (what
business are we in?)
Vision: desired future state; the aspiration of the organization
● Like the mission but more reachable (but still pretty far out)
Corporate objectives: more precise statements of overall aims in line with the overall purpose
Strategy: means by which the corporate objectives are to be achieved/put into effect
Corporate identity: the profile and values communicated by an organization
Corporate image: immediate set of associations of an individual in response to one or more
signals/message from or about a particular organization at a point in time
Corporate reputation: individual’s collective representation of past images of an organization
Stakeholder: any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the
organization’s objectives (e.g. employees, consumers, investors, shareholders, society, at large
etc.)
Market: defined group for whom a product is or may be in demand
Communication: tactics and media that are used to communicate with internal and external
groups
Integration: the act of coordinating all communication so that the corporate identity is
effectively and consistently communicated to internal and external groups
● Before, communication disciplines in organizations were fragmented and not under one
or very few departments
, ○ This lead to a process of sub-optimization where each department optimizes its
own performance instead of working for the organization as a whole
● The integration of communication was also important as companies began to realize how
useful/important communication was to strategically position the organization in the
minds of stakeholders (positioning model)
○ But this has a downside in that it frames stakeholders as very passive and easily
manipulated, seeing communication as linear and not as a joint activity
■ This is being changed in modern age where stakeholders now have more
say and are more empowered esp with the development of media
technology (stakeholder engagement)
■ But it could also be said that the mechanism of how organizations
communicate with stakeholders have changed, but old principles of
strategic messaging and reputation management still prevail
Trends in corporate communication:
● The challenge today: how to balance strategic ‘one to many’ vs. ‘many to one’ and ‘many
to many’ communication?
● When individuals hold an organization in esteem, value its reputation and decide to buy
from, work for, invest in or otherwise decide in favor of that organization, they are more
likely to become genuine advocates and supporters.
Chapter 3: Corporate Communication in a Changing Media Environment
● Introduction of new web 2.0 applications such as facebook, wiki, youtube, social media,
etc. changes the classic model of communication practitioners liaising with official news
outlets into a new models where, via social media and these other web 2.0 apps
stakeholders are receiving info on organizations elsewhere
, ○ Also employees can directly communicate externally without any interference
from higher ups
The New Media Landscape:
● Gives everyday people more of a voice, the potential to be a (citizen) journalist/publisher
of content
● Two way communication
● Growth in communication with one another, creating communities and sharing
information
● WEB 2.0: platforms where users are participatory and collaborative and where
content/apps are continuously generated/modified by users (includes social media)
● Social media characterized as a form of crowd-casting (stakeholders can self-organize as
a crowd to produce/disseminate content about an organization. Stakeholders are active
participants in the communication of an organization)
○ Traditional media environment follows a broadcasting approach (one way from
organization to stakeholders/audience)
, Classifying social media:
● Owned media: media/channels that are directly owned such as a company website
(partially owned is like a company social media account)
● Paid media: media/channels that the company pays to spread traffic to their owned media
(e.g. adverts, links, etc.)
● Earned media: online-generated word-of-mouth about an organization (user-generated
content)
● Social presence theory: media differ in the degree of ‘social presence’ (acoustic, visual,
and physical contact that individuals can have with one another as they communicate)
○ Social media is distinctive as a piece of media in that it has high social presence
● Media richness: media differ in their degree of ‘richness’ (amount of info and cues that
can be exchanged between individuals as they communicate in real time)
● Social media is also distinctive in that it allows self-disclosure and self-presentation of
individual stakeholders (+ it allows individuals to interact with each other to achieve
impression formation through self-disclosure)
● OVERALL CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES OF THE CURRENT MEDIA
LANDSCAPE:
○ Challenges:
■ Developments in digital media move quickly, making it hard for
professionals to keep up
■ Self-organization of stakeholders
