Handbook of Corporate Communication and Public ... - Blogs Unpad

events, and crises before they occur. Through
its messages and themes the organisation conveys
its desired image and persona’ (Dolphin,
1999).
Heath (1994) also endorses corporate communication
as a management function and
argues that an understanding of communication
can help managers and their personnel
co-ordinate efforts needed to achieve their
company’s mission. Varey and White (2000)
state that the debate continues about that part
of the overall management task having to do
with the management of important relationships
and with communicating with groups in
these relationships. Introducing, and critically
analysing, this model of the CorpCom system
of managing – integrating internal with external
communication systems and processes,
Varey and White (2000) ‘urge stronger, direct
linkages between those who need to communicate
and those who are charged with
enabling and facilitating these interactions’.
None of these academic writers and researchers,
from our research and from the
information available, appears to draw a
distinction between listed enterprise, and unquoted
family enterprise, although the
emphasis in the literature is clearly weighted
in favour of debating issues relating to the
functionality of CorpCom in listed enterprise
(Van Riel, Dolphin, Oliver et al.).
A role for CorpCom at
governance
Academic research appears to have overlooked
governance and corporate communication.
Research shows there is no debate on
the issues as to whether corporate communication
should have director responsibility on
the boards of listed or unquoted enterprises.
Corporate communication as a governance
duty and responsibility for board directors is
of specific interest here. As a practitioner
working with business and industry in Ireland
the challenge is to persuade board directors of
unquoted enterprises and their senior
management to establish sustained planned
business-objective-driven corporate communication
programmes aimed at supporting
their strategic and corporate business objectives.
Oliver (1997) argues that firefighting
responses to communication problems are not
strategic and endanger the corporate mission
at a number of levels. Practitioner experience
in Ireland suggests that communication
management in enterprises operates as Oliver
(1997) terms the current practice, as a ‘shortterm
management imperative’. CorpCom is
reflected in Ireland primarily as a mediarelations-driven,
PR function. Varey and White
(2000) make a strong argument in favour of
managers’ need to recognize the CorpCom
managing system ‘as central to the work of
the enterprise community’: ‘The corporate
communication approach enables the reconstitution
of social and economic interests, for
business is in reality a socio-economic institution
upon which we are all dependent’ (Varey
and White, 2000).
Corporate community is the new form of
organization governance that shifts emphasis
from profit to democracy by unifying the
goals of all parties and while the old model of
business is too limited because it is ignoring
the reality that business is both an economic
and a social institution, corporate governance
can evolve towards collaboration amongst all
stakeholders (Varey and White, 2000). They
discuss the changes in corporate governance
and the growing influence of stakeholders on
management and suggest that collaboration
with stakeholders is now occurring as the
stakeholders gain power and because managers
need their support (Varey and White,
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors