Papers from the CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2007

Citation

Goodman, M.B. (2008), "Papers from the CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2007", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2008.16813aaa.001

Papers from the CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2007

Challenges for corporate communication

Consensus among corporate executives is that the “perfect Storm” in 2001 – the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; the collapse of trust in the capitol markets after the high-tech investment bubble; and the implosion of Enron and the scandals that followed – dramatically changed the way corporations communicate. How it has changed is up for debate.

But in a flat, hyper-connected communication technology environment where transparency is becoming wider and deeper, the focus now, more than ever, is on who corporations are and what they do.

The complex challenges facing corporations in the twenty-first century are:

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  greater media democratization and individual power through really simple syndication (RSS), blogs, cell phones;

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  greater disparity between the haves and the have-nots highlighted by excessive executive compensation – creating a greater need for trust in corporations and capital markets;

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  greater skepticism and distrust of corporations fueled by scandals;

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  new issues created by the spread of global growth in the so-called BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India, China – nations, especially the need for global sustainability and the triple bottom line – social, financial, environmental – concerns;

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  increasing changes in the way people work through the enhanced ability for work to be distributed globally through technology and the internet;

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  greater necessity for corporations to act as diplomats as a result of the rise in importance of public diplomacy, soft power, and corporate influence;

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  growing realization that talent no longer owes loyalty to any corporation or organization;

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  the understanding that corporate communication is a strategic management function that incorporates internal and external constituencies – employees, partners, shareholders, investors, analysts, the general public, NGOs;

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  increased power of NGOs to influence corporate behavior; and

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  short-term obsession of investors as a business model and focus.

What should corporations to do? How should they behave? Who in the twenty-first century corporation should join the chief executive officer in such leadership? Research on corporate communication practices (see Goodman, 2006) indicates the chief communication officer, and paths toward solutions lie in the strategic functions of corporate communication.

Focus on recent issues

Two issues are the focus of recent work by the Corporate Communication Institute (CCI):

1. 1.

   Corporate Communication Practices and Trends: A China Benchmark Study, 2006;

2. 2.

   “The role of business in public diplomacy” in a special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy (Vol. 27 Number 3) 2006.

What's the state-of-the-art for corporate communication in China? The results of the CCI's Study of Corporate Communication Practices and Trends in China are a first-of-its-kind benchmarking study in China undertaken in 2005 – 2006. This investigation identifies corporate communication structure, practices and trends among Chinese companies, and seeks to understand perceptions and practices related to corporate social responsibility as part of the corporate communication function. The study was conducted through a partnership with CCI, Beijing Horizon Research Group (one of the leading market research companies in China), and Dr Jay Wang of Purdue University. The research was underwritten by Prudential Financial. A total of 23 Chinese companies took part in the survey. The inclusion of companies of varying sizes in a variety of industries provided some “representation” of the Chinese enterprise landscape. And four follow-up interviews with Chinese communication executives were held to better understand the issues addressed in the study. The paper is on the CCI web site at: www.corporatecomm.org/pdf/ChinaBenchmarkStudy.pdf

What is the role of business in public diplomacy? Business has a considerable role to play in public diplomacy, which was defined in 1965 by diplomat Edmund Guillion, and later Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, as dealing with the influence of public attitudes on the forming and carrying out of foreign policy. And it is an activity in international relations beyond traditional political diplomacy that includes actions by governments to “cultivate” public opinion in other countries and to communicate with foreign correspondents. It is also the county to country interaction and intercultural communication of private groups such as businesses.

Substantial agreement now exists that global business can and must act to solve problems that have often been handled by government. In the decades following the end of the Cold War government systematically backed away from issues of economic development, as the “conflicts” at the core of the aftermath of World War II seemed to evaporate along with the fall of the Soviet Union. However, the economic and social issues that were masked during the ideological conflict of the Cold War surfaced, as did the suppressed desires for political and social ambition.

Excesses in the emerging market boom took center stage at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. In particular, American businesses were, and are, faced with eroding trust in the wake of global scandals, the perception of globalization as exclusively an American initiative, and a widespread disagreement with US policy abroad, particularly with the military involvement in Iraq.

There is, however, agreement that action must be taken, and that business can and must act. The role of business is more vital now than ever, as businesses, even small ones are, global in their practices. And as the internet and new forms of digital media make communication instantaneous and ubiquitous, the call to action is even more urgent.

Business has rediscovered its purpose in this context as global citizen, expanding beyond Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Freidman's definition more than three decades ago that the purpose of business is to create wealth for its owners, within the rules. The understanding of owners has expanded to include:

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  NGOs who are also investors;

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  investors who are also employees;

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  employees who are also customers;

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  consumers who are also local business partners;

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  business partners who are also local stakeholders;

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  local stakeholders who are also media;

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  consumers who are also media; and

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  media who are also NGOs.

Now, the role of business as citizen reminds us that corporations must behave as good citizens, or lose their license to operate. All business, as legendary AT&T executive Arthur W. Page observed more than 3/4 of a century ago, begins with public permission and exists by public approval. And that a company's enlightened self-interest will also cause it to contribute to the social good within its own areas of competency at intersection of society's needs and its own interest.

And as Baruch Lev and others have observed, more than 50 percent of the market value of a business can be attributed to intangibles. Indeed, institutional investors now make a substantial percentage of their decisions based on the intangibles they see in a corporation.

Global corporations can adopt guiding governance principles, particularly for countries where the rule of law does not exist, or laws are not enforced, to short circuit poor social and environmental performance. To overcome an obsession with the short-term management, they can adopt a long-term performance model. To create a culture of accountability, they can adopt a policy of transparency based on a clear communication of their progress, and by aligning with other initiatives such as the global reporting initiative (GRI).

They can also build relationships with numerous constituents by engaging in a multi-stakeholder dialogue on key issues. And this way they can manage and narrow their reputational risk exposure through proactive stands on critical issues.

Global companies and their brands touch the lives of more people than government representatives ever could. Businesses have often served a larger role in our society than that of carrying on the activities of commerce. From Marco Polo to Bill Gates, business professionals have acted as diplomats and as a global force for good citizenship.

Business professionals in global companies are more likely to be citizens of the country they are in, as well as representatives of their companies. They then can serve a diplomatic function because of their cultural sensitivity to their own environment as well as the world at large and the global enterprise they work for. The role of business now includes public diplomacy. In a world of instantaneous media coverage, transparency, and intangible value drivers, a successful company will welcome this diplomatic challenge.

3. The CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2007

The annual CCI Conference on Corporate Communication is a clear opportunity for corporate communicators to develop professionally and to bring value to their companies. It is also an opportunity for scholars to share their knowledge and research. It has been the premise of this conference that relationships among scholars and practitioners are an essential element of the social glue that binds civilized people together. And international meetings are important to build and maintain trust among professionals with common interests and goals, but who are disbursed around the world.

It is in this spirit that once again corporate executives and university scholars met in Wroxton, England from June 2 to 5 to exchange information and explore communication from a global perspective.

The CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2007 is intended to:

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  illuminate the interest in corporate communication as a strategic function in organizational success;

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  explore the influence of globalization on the corporate communication profession as it relates to theory, practice, roles, processes, and ethics;

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  continue as a forum for the exchange of ideas and information among industry and university representatives;

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  indicate trends and provide analysis for communication professionals, university faculty, and others interested in corporate communication; and

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  disseminate the conference discussions through the publication of the conference Proceedings, and selected in Corporate Communication: An International Journal.

The three-day conference featured speakers from 17 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK, and the USA.

My country is different: defining drivers of excellence in the global communications organizations of large multinationals, was the subject of the keynote address delivered by Peter Hirsch, Partner and Global Leader – Corporate Affairs Discipline at Porter Novelli. Hirsch's practice is responsible for corporate image, financial communications, investor relations, business-to-business marketing, internal communications and crisis management. He has more than 20 years of experience in corporate communication and crisis management in the USA and Europe. The narrative of his remarks is presented here.

And the other papers that follow reflect some of the presentations and discussions of essential issues:

Sharing Yalumba: communicating Yalumba's commitment to sustainable winemaking. Cecil S. Camilleri, Senior Technical Manager, Environmental Matters, Yalumba Wine Company, Australia, offers insight through a case study Yalumba Wine's redesigning and implementing a communication strategy to deliver an authentic environmental message to its stakeholders.

Constructing corporate commitment amongst remote employees: a disposition and predisposition approach. Glenda Jacobs, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Division, UNITEC Institute of Technology, New Zealand, and PhD candidate, University of Waikato, New Zealand, addresses the issues of corporate commitment based on an investigation of field service engineers and their managers. She proposes a framework for examining and understanding corporate commitment that expands on contemporary thinking to suggest new relationships and combinations of conditions that have an impact on the communication practices of managers as well as employees.

Hearts at stake – a theoretical and practical look at communication in connection with mergers and acquisitions. Nana Balle, Communication Manager, IBM Global Business Services DK, IBM Denmark, presents a model for communicating mergers and acquisitions, emphasizing the importance of empowering and enabling middle managers for the communication task in order to act as change agents.

Between global and local: hybridized appeals in China web auto ads. Doreen D. Wu, Associate Professor, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong, Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China, investigates the “glocalization” of advertising in the Peoples Republic of China. She argues that the global-local hybrid character in Chinese advertising and in other forms of corporate practice in contemporary China indicate the process of cultural development through the hybridization of the foreign and domestic cultures.

Communication to a diverse workforce: employees' perceptions of symbolic corporate identity elements. Lida Holtzhausen, Lecturer, School of Communications Studies, North West University, South Africa, studied the management of corporate identity for internal stakeholders made up of a workforce of different levels of education, language proficiencies, and races. The case study of one of the largest platinum producers in the world, underscores the need to focus the corporate communication strategy on the needs of the employees who represent all levels of a developing society.

Intranet editors as gatekeepers and agenda setters. Sari Lehmuskallio, PhD candidate, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland, explores the decision-making practices of corporate intranet editors as they gather, select, write, and publish news. They act as gatekeepers and agenda setters for the company in this role.

Medieval origins of corporate communication: Sampson of Oxford and the “Method of Letter-Writing”. Martha Wetterhall Thomas, Director, Center for Business Communication, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, USA, discusses the fourteenth century educational entrepreneur Thomas Sampson as a historical model for integrating theory and practice in corporate communication, as well as contributing to the origins of corporate communication as we know it.

This issue could not have been possible without the insight and expertise of the CCI Conference on Corporate Communication 2007 Program Committee:

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  Stacey Connaughton, PhD, Purdue University, USA;

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  Krishna Dhir, PhD, Berry College, USA;

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  Finn Frandsen, PhD, Aarhus University, Denmark;

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  John Leipzig, PhD, Alma College, USA;

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  Roslyn Petelin, PhD, University of Queensland, Australia;

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  Pat Scott, PhD, Ultimate Synergy & University of Pennsylvania, USA;

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  Daniel W.C. So, EdD, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China;

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  Don Swanson, EdD, Monmouth University, USA and Conference Coordinator;

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  Christina M. Genest, MA, MHSA, MIA, Associate Director, Corporate Communication Institute, USA and CCIJ Editor; and

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  Wim J. L. Elving, PhD, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, The Netherlands.

Michael B. GoodmanCorporate Communication Institute, Madison, New Jersey, USA and Baruch College, The City University of New York, New York, USA

ReferenceGoodman, M. (2006), “Corporate communication practice and pedagogy at the dawn of the new millennium”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 193-213.

About the authorMichael B. Goodman, PhD is the Founder and Director of the Corporate Communication Institute, and Professor and Director of the MA Program in Corporate Communication at Baruch College, The City University of New York. He has taught business and corporate communication courses at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Aarhus School of Business (Denmark), Bangkok University (Thailand), New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and SUNY at Stony Brook. Since 1981, Dr Goodman has been a consultant in corporate communication, managerial communication, problem solving, new business proposals, change, and corporate culture. He has published widely, most recently: Work with Anyone Anywhere: A Guide to Global Business; “Today's corporate communication function” in Handbook of Corporate Communication and Strategic Public Relations; Corporate Communication for Executives. He is at work on While You Were Looking the Other Way – Forces Redefining Corporate Communication Strategy with Cleve Langton and Peter Hirsch. He is a member of the Arthur W. Page Society, a Fellow of the The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), and a Fellow of The Society for Technical Communication. He is VP Eastern Region and Member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Business Communication. He received his BA from the University of Texas at Austin, and his MA and PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.