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

will see wider ramifications in society and for
the citizen as a whole: for those who inhabit
the global corporate marketplace as citizens,
rather than for those who just work in the
global corporation or local enterprise.
These trends in information and knowledge
management are already impacting on corporate
communication, through digital media
and electronic business and commerce.
Citizens in general and in their roles such as
employees and consumers, as well as other
stakeholders, are discovering new means of
empowerment through the information and
communication technologies (ICTs). Such empowerment
has to be understood by the practitioner
and reflected in new methods, means
and balances of communication activity.
The domain and discipline of knowledge
management has emerged partly as the information
and communication technologies
have come to form an infrastructure for many
kinds of data and information related activities
in organizations and society. It has also
emerged in relation to secular and structural
changes in markets, business environments,
global conditions and new technologies.
Knowledge management extends the already
developed concept of information
(explicit knowledge) and intelligence (often
a hybrid of explicit and tacit knowledge) as a
resource, by incorporating, amongst others,
the concepts of tacit and shared knowledge as
leading paradigms. Knowledge management
extends existing concepts of comparative
and competitive advantage in the corporation
or firm (based on strategic use of IT and transaction
cost concepts) through to the idea of
knowledge resources (intellectual capital and
intellectual assets), which thrive best in holistic
and synergistic environments characterized
as the knowledge organization and the learning
organization.
The corporate communicator has always
been an information worker, and can ever
more now be considered a knowledge worker.
Corporate communicators will find it vital to
incorporate knowledge-related concepts into
their professional practice in a more explicit
way than hitherto. Knowledge-based organizations
and clients will be best served by
knowledge-sensitive corporate communicators.
The theories and practices of information
management, organizational management
and behavioural science as leading tools and
techniques provide the tools and techniques
for knowledge management as an integrated,
hybrid and synthetic methodology which
exploits information as a resource, facilitates
organizational and individual decision making,
and acknowledges the ways in which the
resourcefulness of information (and knowledge)
produces and necessitates change in
organizational and individual behaviour as
goal fulfilment is sought.
The rationale for this application to corporate
communication lies in the progressive evolution
of information and communication
activities in a global setting. Information systems,
information management and information
services provide the platform upon which
the higher order range of knowledge-related
activities are built. In the education of the
corporate communicator the incorporation
of these studies and practices is a natural
progression for intellectual and professional
development.
Informational aims and
objectives
In developing a programme for knowledge
management in corporate communication the
following aims can be selected:
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors