The Changing Role of Communication in Organizational Management
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Kollmannová Denisa Kasl
Head of Department, Assistant, Professor, Ph. D.
Department of Marketing Communication and PR, Charles University in Prague Smetanovo nábr. 6, 110 00 Praha 1 Czech Republic
The aim of this article is to analyse the changing role of communication within management of an organisation and its goals. The communication is increasingly relevant due to rising communication channels and communicators, so the stakeholder approach is becoming more suitable than Grunig's excellence theory. The one-way communication and dissemination of news via traditional ways and tools of public relations is becoming less efficient and the term PR itself is disputed. However, the role of communication within the companies is becoming more important and it is shifting from advisory to executive influence. Within the management, the traditional directive and top-down model of leadership is being changed towards more conversational process that starts within the company. This article summarises the trends in communication and gives clear managerial implications on how to redirect the communication from one-way to more dynamic process, which enables more flexible communication in the era of digital evolution, when the communication power of stakeholders is rising.
Keywords: communication, management, public relations, organisational behaviour, leadership, communication in organizations
1. Introduction
Communication can be taken in two different levels, firstly as a process, which enables the process of human thinking, social interaction and which is a inevitable part of the public sphere [1-3], and secondly as a product, which is a result of a focused, strategic and management-driven effort of a company or organisation to inform the stakeholders, promote products, build reputation and achieve communication goals [4-6]. The role of communication in management has undergone a long development throughout the 20th century. With the rise of the mass media and the emergence of joint-stock companies, communication's role has been rising and today serves as an important part of company's management, as it affects the product sales, company's reputation and stock prices, yet up until today its role in management is not clearly defined. According to [7], the discussions of communication management have not changed much since the publication of Kotler and Mindak's article in 1978.
2. Strategic use of communication
When talking about the strategic use of communication, the two primary communication functions are marketing and public relations (PR). However, the definitions, its use and roles differ depending on the character of a company or organisation, and also on the theoretical approach
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and practical implications. We can differentiate several " terms and concepts, which are describing the role of communication in contemporary companies and organi- ^ sations. The departments and positions within companies w which deal with communication are called marketing com- m munication, public relations,
corporate communication, communication management, integrated, business or organisational communication. 3 However, within this field, neither the practitioners, nor ï academics agree upon one definition. <
Two major tendencies can be observed across the Í theoretical approaches and definitions: <
1) Communication as a way to achieve goals, seen more as a one-way process to disseminate information and reach desired image (as described e. g. in Grunigs' Excellence theory [4].
2) Communication as a way to keep balance, seen more as a mutual process of sharing information between the organisation and its stakeholders and publics (stakeholder theory [8; 9].
The professionalization of communication took place mostly under the term of "public relations" [4; 10]. Van Ruler and Heath [11] define PR as "a professional practice and academic discipline dedicated to spreading rational and trustworthy information, evaluative judgment supporting enlightened choices, policy recommendations, and appeals for co-created identification".
PR is the keyword connecting several national and international professional associations, which help to constitute and professionalize communication as a profession and an integral part of controlling processes within organisations, such as IPRA (International PR Association), PRSA (Public Relations Society of America), CIPR (Chartered Institute of PR, Great Britain) or EUPRERA (European PR Research and Education Association) and many others. But when we have a look at the largest European research, European Communication Monitor (ECM 2011) questioning over 2,200 communication professionals across Europe, one can see that the term "public relations" itself is disputed and is no longer regarded as suitable for the communication role within the management of an organisation (see Fig. 1). According to the ECM 2011, companies favour the term "corporate communications, whereas nonprofit organisations and governmental bodies prefer "strategic communication" [12].
The reason why PR is disputed among communications professionals is not because of the decline of communication as such. On the contrary, the role of communication within organisations is rising from advisory influence to executive influence [Ibid.]. In 69.4% of European organisations, recommendations of the communication function are taken seriously by senior management, and in 72%, the communication professionals are taking part in senior-level meetings dealing with organisational strategic planning [13]. In the USA, the numbers are even higher, as 73.7% or organisations report executive influence of communication professionals and 82.8% take communication professionals as advisors [Ibid.].
The traditional role of communication professionals within the institutions is experiencing several challenges.
< >
Corporate Communications
Strategic Communication
Communication Management
Public Relations
Integrated Communications
Business Communication
Organisational Communication
45.9
34.0
32.6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 %
Suitability of alternative concepts to describe the various internal and external communication activities by an organisation
Fig. 1. Changing definitions of communication profession Source: European Communication Monitor, 2011.
Note: "Public relations" is no longer regarded as a suitable label for the profession compared to other concepts.
The three most important challenges are 1) the changing role of communicators and rising role of stakeholders; 2) professionalization and legitimization of communication professionals within their own organizations; 3) change of the communication processes from management-driven to conversational.
Firstly, the traditional concept of one spokesperson or communication department being responsible for the public and media image of a company is no longer sustainable within the online evolution and the rise of the stakeholder's voice. Today, the opinions of employees, CEO's and other individuals can become equally important, as we have seen in several cases. Today unsatisfied employees are likely to talk about the negative aspects — problems or controversies — to other publics ("negative megaphoning"). On the other hand, during the crisis times, satisfied employees can stand behind their organization which faces unexpected problems and communicate their support [14, p. 46].
Secondly, the communication managers challenge to legitimate their own role within the management. As Heath quotes, some top managers hold the position "all anyone needs to know about communication can be learned by 30 minutes of reading if the person reads slowly" [15, p. 2]. The professionalization of communication and in-stitutionalization the role of communication within the management faces several challenges, as Zerfass et al. [13] explored on the sample of communication managers from 42 European countries. 84.2% of communication managers are dealing with the lack of understanding of the communication practice within the top management of private and public companies. This number goes hand in hand with the second most often barrier (see Fig. 2) which is the difficulty in proving the effectiveness of communication activities as such. Because the whole paradigm of economical management is driven by "numbers", depicted often as Excel charts, the "soft" power of communication is often hard to explain to the CFO's, as mostly the processes of communication require long term evaluation [16].
This necessity of every-day legitimizing the communication role and function within the changing world of
communication tools, such as the online communication, social media and instant messaging, is closely tight to the problem which 53.9% of communication managers perceive as a challenge in professionalization: shortage of up-to-date communication training and education (see Fig. 2).
And thirdly, there is a changing role of communication channels from traditional mass media, which spread the word via few main channels with the minimal role of feedback, depicted as sender—message—receiver model, or in Lasswells formula [17]."Who, says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect" towards the more interactive and interpersonal media, represented by web 2.0 and the rise of social media. The nature of communication thus changes from one message disseminated to widespread publics with a little chance to give feedback (one-to-many), to more ballanced, symetrical communication, where the participators of the communication act are equal, no matter of their hierarchical position within the company (one-to-one). Groysberg and Slind [18] say that the also the management have to rethink the way they handle the flow of information — and they put the internal communication on the first place (to, from and among their employees).
The new nature of communication
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