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

products. Its purpose to a large degree has
been to ‘create the soul’ of the corporation, as
noted by Roland Marchand. Marchand traces
the use by many corporations of advertisements
that portrayed the corporation has having
a high moral value, and often linked small
towns and the initial small businesses to their
now hugeness in terms of hard work, artisanship,
and power. The purpose was to gain the
allegiance of the people across the country,
and gain a presence in their community.
Throughout this period the large corporations
were gaining the position and status of
real entities and the messages were designed
to support this growth and overcome the fears
of the general public that the corporation
lacked conscience. The efforts were initially to
demonstrate that ‘Victorian’ values were part
of the corporations being paternalistic, linking
their business to family and community
(Marchand, 1998).
In the year 2002 much was written concerning
the lack of accuracy in corporate
financial reporting, as well as the attempts to
hide unhealthy financial situations. There
was a twenty-year period of deregulation of
corporations accompanied by almost the
same period of continual growth in the economy
and in corporate profits. It was a period
of great change in business operations and
the technology supporting these businesses.
The advance of the computer, the internet,
telecommunications and globalization of business
served to accelerate the rate of change.
While the accounting firms may have played a
significant part in reporting financial data, the
corporate communication professional has
certainly had a large part in the activity as
well. Some of the creative ways that losses
are downplayed and that wordsmithing has
been used to cover detrimental news demonstrate
how communication professionals have
played their part.
As these changes occur and as society
adjusts to the changing environment of business
several serious complications have arisen.
The employee has become increasingly
responsible for his own welfare. After some
three decades of the government being responsible
for the welfare of its people through
such programmes as Social Security, Medicare,
welfare supports, pension regulation,
and various laws affording the right to work to
a multitude of people, there has been a shift
in power back to the corporation. Many corporations
have found that layoffs and labour
reductions are greeted by a rise in stock price.
The adoption of ‘pay for performance’ for
executive compensation seems appropriate at
first glance and works well during a rising
business cycle. The link to stock price as being
an indicator of that performance has led to
executives acting at times only in the shortterm
interest and can create some ethical
dilemmas during a business downturn. There
has also been a transfer of the previously
corporate responsibility for health insurance,
pension benefits and long-term employment
to the individual. The employee must now
select the health care plan that best serves his
or her needs, and in most cases participate
financially in it on an increasing scale. The
employee must maintain a skill level to
maintain employment, often obtaining these
skills outside of the work environment. The
employee in many situations has been given
the responsibility to manage their own retirement
funding either through 401(k) programmes
offering some degree of selectivity
and individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
from their own salaries. Gone is the paternalistic
approach to employees that was so much
a part of the business environment of thirty to
fifty years ago. But often these very plans
offered by the company are subject to investment
in the companies’ own stock. This is part
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors