Companies that communicate

Professor Mette Morsing is the co-author of a new book about corporate communications

Many organisations realise that corporate communication is of increasingly strategic importance in a global world, and many are working towards developing more sophisticated and integrated communication strategies to come across as legitimate players in society. A new teaching book “Corporate Communications – Convention, Complexity, and Critique” takes a critical view of this phenomenon.

Professor Mette Morsing, from the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management and Director of CBS Center for Corporate Social Responsibility, is one of the three authors of the book:

- Corporate Communications is a relatively new strategic field, which bridges the gap between internal and external communication and integrates theories on corporate branding, public relations, stakeholder management, reputation, organisational communication, and organisation. The widespread view in corporate communications is that companies should communicate with one voice to all audiences. In the book, we analyse what lies behind this view from communicational and organisational-sociological perspectives, says Professor Mette Morsing.

Speaking with one voice

Among other things, the authors look at the origin of corporate communications and the new strategic importance that has been placed on corporate communications in both private and public companies. While the authors outline the mainstream mindset behind corporate communications, they unfurl a critical theoretical analysis of the implications of the ideal practice and exemplify this through a series of cases. For example, the limitations of speaking with one voice:

- The ideal behind corporate communications can downright hamper a company’s development. Because a company must be able to speak with one voice and, at the same time, maintain its ability to address and respond to complexity, and listen to the many voices, points out Mette Morsing and elaborates:

In the modern company’s effort to come across as a legitimate and credible organisation, more resources are being used to streamline and centralise the company’s communicative effort so that it appears as having one expression. This doesn’t leave room for individuality and doubt in the way that the company communicates about itself. The ideal of appearing with a clear and consistent voice is understandable, but it leaves the company in a potentially vulnerable position. The risk of centralising the communication effort is that it becomes blind to other voices than the agreed message, that the strategic communication is disconnected from the rest of the organisation, and that it locks the organisation to one self image and reputation. So the modern company needs corporate communications, but it also needs a keep a critical distance to the phenomenon.

Read the book’s introduction here

Facts:

“Corporate Communications – Convention, Complexity, and Critique” by Lars Thøger Christensen, Mette Morsing, and George Cheney. The book is published by SAGE Publications, London, 2008.