Integrated Organisational Communication

Citation

Cornelissen, J. (2006), "Integrated Organisational Communication", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 424-426. https://doi.org/10.1108/13563280610713888

The first thing that I should say about this book is that I found out about it through the editor of this journal who sent me a copy to review. I had not heard about it, or come across it, prior to that. Part of the reason for this may have been the fact that the book is brand new. More importantly, however, it seems that the publisher of the book (like most publishers) is not practising what the book preaches: namely integration, a seamless blending of communications tools to reach as many prospects (including me!) and with maximum impact. Integration is at the core of this text, not just involving marketing communications, but also management, business, organisational and corporate communications. As such, the perspective is rather broad, involving all disciplines of communications management, and how they hang together in the context of communications within and across organisations. There is an interesting overview of these disciplines in line with Shelby's (1993) classification in Chapter 1, and rooted in a functional or managerial view of communications. Organizational communication, for example, is defined as communication happening within the container of the organization, with individuals, dyads and groups that need to be communicated with to support and enhance performance (and avoid losses from, for example, decreased staff morale). The whole book follows the same functional or mechanistic view to communications and extends it to the level of groups, the organization, markets and stakeholders. More recent perspectives in organizational communication that adopt different views of the field (see the work of, for example, James Taylor and Linda Putnam) are not mentioned at all, and the book, therefore, misses crucial insights and new advances on how communication is constitutive of organization (and not just a process within an organization). Having said all this, the book does cover quite a lot of ground consistent with its functional view, and as mentioned at various levels of analysis; individual, dyad, group, organization and organizational fields.

The book is structured into four parts. The first part lays out the perspective of communication as an instrument and process within the boundaries of an organization as well as outside of it with customers and other stakeholders, and addresses the rationale for integration, including, but not restricted to, integration in marketing communications (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 discusses approaches towards integration including management models and mantras. My feeling was that this chapter is rather biased towards integrated marketing communications (IMC) approaches, and I also found the overall discussion of the management of integration rather dated and incomplete. Surely Gronstedt's (2000) studies of integration processes (see also Cornelissen, 2004) should have been included in the discussion, and could have added richness to the chapter that I feel at present is not there. The case study of Barloworld at the end of Chapter 2 provides for interesting reading. Part 2 of the book focuses on particular disciplines of communication, including organizational communication (Chapter 3), change communication (Chapter 4), marketing communications (Chapters 5 and 6), public relations (Chapter 7) advertising (Chapters 8 and 9) and on‐line communications (Chapter 10). The choice for these disciplines and leaving out others such as direct marketing, sales promotions, and marketing public relations was not clear to me, and I also found the balance somewhat odd; there is quite a lot on marketing communications but a lot less on corporate communications or public relations. Chapter 3 is a rather basic discussion of organizational communication, covering topics such as organisational culture, group communications and communication media use. The chapter provides as mentioned little detail on recent developments in organizational communication and also the discussion of theories is rather brief and abstract (for example, media richness theory is just referenced and hardly explained). The chapter on change communication (Chapter 4) provides more detail particularly on practical implementation, although again much of the chapter dealt with theoretical perspectives, without implications. When I then read Chapters 5 and 6 on marketing and IMC, again I found the same storyline. By now, I realized that this book may have been designed and written with a specific purpose and audience in mind; as a set of basic readings on communications with very little practical detail. The other chapters in this part of the book followed the same pattern: theoretical snapshots on public relations, including issues and crisis management, advertising and on‐line communications. The two chapters in part three of the book that deal with assessment of communications are also rather abstract; there is very little on communication audits and measures in Chapters 11 and 12 discusses again a lot about processes and models of integration (similar to Chapter 2) without a clear steer on measurement of communications outputs and their contribution to the achievement of corporate and/or marketing objectives. The final chapter, Chapter 13, in the fourth and final section of the book provides practical detail on the development and execution of integrated communications campaigns. The De Beers case study is rather interesting.

Ultimately I think this book need to be seen for what it is; it does not push the boundaries on the topic of communication management, it does not include recent developments in theory and practice on organisational, corporate and marketing communications, and the role of integration, and it is not particularly strong on practical detail and guidelines for implementation. What it does do is provide readers with a basic introduction to some (functional) perspectives and theoretical frameworks on communications, and with some interesting case studies of companies on the African continent that are otherwise not available to Western readers.