Marketing communication: principles and practice

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meanings, identity, and knowledge (Deetz, 1992), and shared organizational
(business) goals. We urge stronger, direct linkages between those who need
to communicate and those who are charged with enabling and facilitating
these interactions. A value-creation perspective (of managing) on the
departmentalization issue is required if the power–control assumptions and
desires of the traditionalist manager (managerialism) are to be overcome for
the benefit of the corporate community. This will require that managers
recognize the corporate communication managing system as central to the
work of the enterprise community. The corporate communication approach
enables the reconciliation of social and economic interests, for business is in
reality a socio-economic institution upon which we are all dependent, and
may allow the vista of a ‘life ethic’ to temper the debilitating effects of the
mutation of citizens into consumers. Figure 18.1 represents the determinants
of corporate performance.
The interests of the few (corporate owners, managers, and their customers)
are no longer given greater value than the interests of the many (all other
stakeholders). Arrogant managers who do not value relationships and
stakeholders’ interests (or even stakeholders themselves), and do not value
leadership and other change-orientated actions (Brown, 1995) will find it
more difficult to keep their licence to operate.
Carroll’s (1993) stakeholder view of the firm requires that managers see
stakeholders groups and their subgroups, at least until the legitimacy of claims
and respective power have been examined, as both:
1. those who the management group thinks have some stake (an interest,
right, or ownership) in the firm
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Environment
(context)
Corporate capability
Corporate history
Corporate culture
Stakeholder interests,
expectations and power