Strategic Communication as Institutional Work

Abstract

Informed by the insights from neo-institutional theory this paper seeks to discuss the problematic and often contradictory efforts of organisations to employ and follow the ideas of strategic behaviour in their communicative activities. In the first part of the paper we analyse strategic communication as determined and limited by structural conditions (i.e. rules, norms and cognitive categories) arguing that strategic behaviour of organizations is institutionally bounded. In the second part we re-address the notion of strategic communication as directed towards these institutional structures rather than specific organizational aims and goals. In this context we use the concept of institutional work performed as providing, promoting and co-opting through which organisations actively and strategically relate to and handle institutional pressures. Thereby, strategic communication of organizations is both subjected to prevailing institutional structures as well as it is constitutive for these structures.