Marketing communication: principles and practice

A C O M M U N I C A T I O N C O N C E P T
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BOX 2.3
REFLEXIVE COMMUNICATION
Recognition that each person’s worldview is culturally conditioned and
individually developed. Reflexive communication is a practical and
pragmatic approach to mitigate the problems of stereotyping. It considers
effective communication to be more than information transmission, 
it is mutual understanding. The approach addresses the problem of
communicating from different cultural paradigms. Reflexive communication
is non-hierarchical, collaborative, and inclusive.
(See Kikoski and Kikoski, 1996)

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the basis for control, motivation, and the performance of roles. Meaning
helps us to understand information and to define relationships and the com-
munication that is appropriate within them. The job of the corporate 
communication manager is to act as a boundary-spanner who represents
constituents in bringing differing zones of meaning into sufficient alignment
for cooperative working to achieve corporate and personal goals.
COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
Communicators (persons, groups, corporations, market sectors) become
interconnected in patterns of communication to a greater or lesser degree of
integration or connectedness. Communication systems are collectivities 
of interacting (inter-acting) communicators who modify their apprehension,
interpretations, judgements (values), and actions in taking account of each
other and fellow members of the ‘net’, ‘web’, or network. 
•
prescribed network
formalized patterns of communication brought
about through intended structures
•
emergent networks
informal and dynamic patterns of communi-
cation that emerge in response to the social and task needs of the
participants
This approach to understanding what happens when people act with others
as their context or environment is entirely compatible with the notion of
relational exchanges that is the basis of contemporary thinking in the field
of marketing. The patterns of communication within social networks at least