Corporate Communication

Abstract

Perhaps the best way to define corporate communication is to look at the way in which the function developed in companies. Until the 1980s, professionals responsible for communication within their organizations had used the term → “public relations” to describe communication with stakeholders (a term still used in academic circles across the world). This public relations (PR) function, which was tactical in most companies, largely consisted of communication to the press. When other stakeholders, internal and external to the company, started to demand more information from the company, communication professionals within organizations subsequently started to look at communication as being more than just PR. The roots of the new corporate communication function started to take hold. This new function came to incorporate a whole range of specialized disciplines including → corporate design (→ Design), corporate → advertising, employee or internal communication, issues and crisis management (→ Issue Management; Crisis Communication), → media relations, investor relations, change communication, and → public affairs. An important characteristic of the new function was that it consolidated a range of communication disciplines and expertise into a single corporate communication or corporate affairs department. This department has a single mandate that is focused on the organization as a whole and on the important task of how an organization is presented to all its key stakeholders, both internal and external (→ Stakeholder Theory).