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

the Nazi SS, and that this amendment
must not appear in France. Sometimes organizational
survival is seriously influenced by
communication: witness how a short, scatological
remark in 1991 by the eponymous
chairman of Ratners ruined his high street
jewellery business. There are, however, limits
to the pluralist competition which prevent
it deforming into a social darwinian struggle
for survival at any cost: law, culture, and
ethics.
Second, UK corporate communication come
from many different types of organization and
group. Modern British pluralism is a highly
variegated and pervasive phenomenon across
its civil society and political economy.
It would be inadequately descriptive to
narrow the term ‘corporate’ just to business.
Friends of the Earth, the Trades Union Congress,
and Help the Aged are as structured,
hierarchical and stable as McDonalds, the
Institute of Directors and EMI. Churches, synagogues
and temples are more communicative
than many boardrooms. Think of the
Board of Deputies of British Jews and the
Catholic Media Office. The professional associations
for teachers, nurses and police speak to
the media and lobby government as often as
many industry and trade associations. The
definition here of ‘corporate’, however, does
not include anti-globalization, anti-capitalist
groupings. Corporate communicators from
many sectors are concerned about messages
from them, respond to them, and study their
techniques, but the anti-globalizers are not
the subjects of this chapter as their spokespeople
are often anonymous, often speak for
themselves, and the fluid combinations of
activists around them lack a stable organizational
basis. But this exclusion of anti-globalizers
as corporate communicators does not
deny the importance of their messages. They
come from another important tradition in
liberal, democratic societies – anti-establishment
thinking and street protests by marginalized,
anarchic groups.
Third, accelerated pluralism is not the same as
neo-liberalism, the ruling conservative ideology
of much of the Anglo-American world
since the 1980s. Apart from any coincidental
identity, they are separate: the pluralism
described here is a social phenomenon and
process; neo-liberalism is a philosophy. A neoliberal
government may welcome pluralism
as an agent for the expression of individualism
and free association, but it would also
note that pluralism is a process of interest
intermediation and that many of these interests
are inimical to a neo-liberal government.
For example, environmentalism and consumerism
have flourished during the period
of accelerated pluralism, but they are viewed
with suspicion by the neo-liberal as imposed,
external costs on markets, and as the cause
of increased government regulation. Some
industries have ambiguous, if not hostile, attitudes
towards free trade. For example, the UK
drinks and tobacco trade towards wine and
cigarette allowances for holiday makers, and
British farmers towards cheap food imports
by supermarkets. Pluralism allows views to
countervail each other, without regard to consistency
with neo-liberal values.
The fourth contextual point is that corporate
communication is, mostly, public activity, even
though its subject matter is sometimes about
private behaviour. Corporate communicators
are known and accountable officials for their
organizations and their work is trackable
(mostly). Corporate communication is the
public relations of communication: public
communicative relations of display-for-attention-and-advantage
aimed at a distinct public
‘other’. Corporate communication sometimes
deal with private matters but mostly in a
public way. For example, the pay rise of an
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors