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

due to ‘handicaps in status’. Dahl (1961: 76)
calls business people ‘economic notables’ and
observes that ‘their authority is particularly
great when policies impinge directly on business
costs, earnings, investments and profits’.
Marsh and Locksley (1983: 1–21) judged
that the power of capital was ‘qualitatively
as well as quantitatively different’ from other
groups. Dunleavy and O’Leary (1987: 293–7)
wrote that ‘business interests occupy a
position of special importance compared with
other social interests when it comes to influencing
public policy-making’. The neo-pluralists
Lindblom (1997) and Smith (1990) argue
that elected governments and business need
each other to produce prosperity and employment.
(See Held, 1996: 215–18, for a succinct
summary of neo-pluralism.) Business people
need skilled employees and consumers with
disposable income in order to make a profit.
Governments need satisfied voters to vote for
them. Politicians would be other than representative
and accountable – and other than
elected – if they do not listen and reply.
The neo-pluralist perspective outlined
above suggests that business communicators
will be listened to more than others. Another
author on pluralism, meanwhile, has calibrated
the potential any group has for being
listened to. Grant (1995, 2000) puts interest
and pressure groups on a scale between ‘insiders’
(much access and influence) and ‘outsiders’
(little) and he concludes his 2000
analysis of ‘insider’ influence with pessimism
about the future predominance of democracy
over special interests.
How do organizations
communicate with government
The professional cadre employed to communicate
are variously titled, with descriptors
such as ‘public affairs’, ‘communication’,
‘information’, ‘public relations’, ‘government
relations’, ‘corporate relations’ being common;
and with government and the noncommercial
sectors showing a preference for
‘information’ and ‘communication’. These
corporate professionals work with senior
decision makers as planners, executives and
advisers. It is this coalition of functional
communicators plus the dominant coalition
inside an organization which ‘do’ its communication.
The values, knowledge, skills and
attitudes needed to be a corporate communicator
are well set out in various texts (Oliver,
2001; Theaker (ed.), 2001; Heath (ed.),
2000; Harrison, 2000; Kitchen (ed.), 1997;
Van Riel, 1996; White and Mazur, 1995).
What can be distilled from this professional
practice of communication are some underlying
elements on which the superstructure of
professional practice rests. First among these
elements is issues management – the organizational
response to matters in the operating
environment which can be either opportunities
or threats. An example is a UK government
consultation paper (July, 2002) to build
four more runways in the south east of
England: an opportunity for British Airways; a
threat to environmentalists and country life
enthusiasts such as the Council for Protection
of Rural England (CPRE). The classic role of
corporate communicators in issues management
is: to scan the boundary of the organization
to spot issues; to research them; to plan
with others an integrated response by the
organization, and then to communicate to
stakeholders, government and the general
public what that response is. Issues management
developed in the 1960s in the United
States as a business response to a hostile
reform agenda from environmentalists,
workers’ rights campaigners, and consumers
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors