By corporate communication we mean the corporation’s voice and the images it projects of itself to the various stakeholders. This includes areas such as corporate reputation, corporate advertising, and employee for communications, government relations and media management. We shall be discussing them at a later stage one by one.
These days most of the bigger organizations have departments of corporate communication which appeared on the organizational chart along with traditional functions like marketing or accounting.
The addition, corporate communication is also the processes accompany uses to communicate all its messages to key constituencies – a combination of meetings, interviews, speeches, reports, images advertising, and online communication. Ideally, corporate communication is an attitude of toward communication or a set of mental habits that employees internalize. The result is good communication practices that permeate an organisation and are present in all its communications with constituencies.
Corporate communications are defined as the products of communication, be they memos, letters, reports, websites, e-mails, speeches or new releases. In the aggregate of these messages is what a company sends to it constituencies, whether internal or external.
Corporate communication can be one the major ways to counteract the persistent scrutiny and negative attention that businesses face. Second, a good strategy can offset the technological advances that enhance the scope of the publicity Barrage for stop. Third, numerous lessons from corporate world and demonstrate the harsh consequences of avoiding corporate communication. And finally, corporate communication can serve as differential advantage for your organisation. So few companies practice this art that they leave those that do, and does it well, standing out from the crowd.
Corporate communication has a direct impact on your work, no matter which were located on the organizational chart. Every manager needs to understand corporate communication, not just those officially in charge of public relations or communications. Think for a moment about the ways that corporate communication may affect you work life. Most obviously, as an employee, a company’s internal communication influences your attitude towards the workplace: do you work in an atmosphere of trust or anxiety? Are you confident that the messages you hear about your organisation are timely and economist? Are there forums for voicing a concerns and offerings your perspective?
If you work with constituencies external to a company – and this applies to most of us – corporate communication influences these relationships. For instance, your company’s reputation can affect your ability to buy equipment, and negotiate a contract, or make a sale. A communications with the community can affect whether attempts to extend a business in to the community are greeted with enthusiasm of hostility. Solid relations with investors can cushion or accentuate the reaction of financial markets to union unrest, reports have defective products, and announcements of anticipated failures to meet project financial goals even those of you in start-up companies have to account corporate communications because the very survival of entrepreneurial organizations depends on their ability to manage communications with investors, potential and current partners, employees, suppliers and customers.
Mini Case Study: Nike’s Trouble in Asia
Nike faced severe troubled situation when it failed to respond to allegations that its suppliers were using child labour in Southeast Asia and paying less than subsistence wages. When the charges were first made, Nike chairman Philip Knight denied them. He later he offered a weak rationalization – other companies abused overseas workers as well – that only served to inflame a public opinion against the company. The media has perception of Nike became increasingly negative, and US television networks encouraged public criticism by showing images of Malnourished Asian children working in sweatshops. Only after several years – India of 1998 – did Knight Institute a plan to remedy the problems, promising to raise wages and improve working conditions. The silence cost is company an enormous amount of good will.
Nike’s Limited response to criticism was especially surprising for two reasons. First, according to research conducted Nike workers in Vietnam were paid above average wages and treated very well relative to the local economic conditions in Southeast Asia. The second, although unresponsive to the negative press, Nike was astute in using external communications to its advantage. It has done a great job of building its popular image among consumers with it’s “just do it” advertising campaign and the use of famous spokes people such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. In all likelihood, the company found it much easier to promote its brand than to respond to the bad publicity.
The costs to Nike of doing too little too late were substantial. The lesson here – for us as individuals as well as for companies – is that if you don’t pay now, you pay later and you pay a lot more. Yet in many instances, companies are unwilling to take preventive measures by launching and sustaining credible defenses for their actions. If initiated properly, these actions can actually result in shaping positive impression is in the minds of a company’s key constituencies. The cost of denial has also risen in recent years because new communication technologies make a corporation’s activities are increasingly open to public scrutiny. Internet chat rooms along with the of proliferation of cable TV channels, allow for the immediate dissemination of potentially damaging information about companies and for the repeated airing of these accusations. If you all remember, the recent case in India of pesticides been found in cold drinks and worms being found in Cadbury’s are an example of how modern technology can ruin a company’s hard built image. Therefore, we can now understand that companies have a tough task to deal with both legitimate and false claims against them in this rapid-fire, technologically assisted environment.
External Links:
- Corporate Communication Resources (USC MCM)