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

Information resources provide the evidence
base for the process (data, factual information,
published information, etc.) but the
major drivers of corporate communication
will be intelligence and knowledge based,
derived from both internal and external
sources. The knowledge based information
resource must also be managed; hence strategies
and tactics for handling implicit, hidden
and individual knowledge are required.
The knowledge based resources show that
the users and actors are themselves producers
of further resource. Knowledge management
has therefore to capture this resource, process
it, store it and make it available through sharing,
communication and demonstration and
so on such that its value is realized. In this way
existing knowledge will breed more knowledge.
Management of this resource needs to
generate explicit evidence of the tacit and
implicit features of knowledge. Purposive
social and organizational communication, acts
of recognition, sharing, analysis, critique and
exchange promote tacit revelation. Meetings,
acts of recorded communication, archives,
databases, indexes, search tools and strategies,
intranets and other technology mediated
communication form part of this process.
Vian and Johansen (in Ruggles, 1997) summarized
features of the role of technology:
intensive personal interaction, emphasis on
the group, users working with producers, the
valuing of chance encounters, asynchronous
communication and asynchronous thought,
divergence, informality, and the acceptance of
technology as a participant.
Information and communication
skills
Successful corporate communication is indubitably
about information and communication
skill combined with all the other requisites
of knowledge and practice in the field.
The assertion made in this chapter is that this
has to be supplemented with enhanced
management capacities: these will be partly at
the personal level (in the form of the information
and knowledge aware practitioner) and
substantially at the corporate level where
greater support will be beneficial. Individual
knowledge and information resources need to
be opened up for sharing and collective
appraisal and utilization.
Vital personal skills include knowing about
information and needs and requirements, skill
in selecting and retrieving information, tools
for building messages, selecting communication
channels fit for the task on hand, exploiting
informal communication and formal
information resources, and skills in oral, written
and visual communication.
Dissemination, projection and
mediation
These three functions are amongst the roots of
public relations practice and have a proportionate
presence in corporate communication.
By defining them as within the scope of
information and knowledge management
their range of effect is extended.
Whilst the distribution of a press release is
an act of dissemination so also is the wider
scale of tackling the dissemination of knowledge
within the group and between stakeholders.
Vian and Johansen’s view of computer
mediated communication indicates the
more extensive scope and effects which can
be secured through the use of technology to
manage knowledge.
The three functions are also roots of knowledge
management: dissemination requires
sharing and exchange; projection considers
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors