This presentation Ten years at the helm of Corporate Communications an international journal, in which I reflect on the state of the profession and study into Corporate Communication and reflect upon the current state of CCIJ the Journal.
2. Conference on Corporate Communications
• CCIJ is proud to be involved & will be
involved in the future
• CCI is THE platform for the exchange of
research and insights in Corporate
Communication that is vital for our field of
study
• The conference showed the increasing
importance of Corporate Communications
and its internationalization over the years
3. Agenda
• Developments in Corporate Communications
• Developments in CCIJ over the 10 last years
• Relation CCIJ with CCI and this conference
• Current position of CCIJ
– ISI Ranking update
– Best Papers Volume 19 (2014)
• New editor in chief of CCIJ
• Closing remarks
4. Corporate Communications (CorpCom)
• Scholars & practitioners from
– PR
– Marketing
– Communication
– Management
– Organization
…. look for similarities in terms of challenges, foci and
driving forces across different fields, acknowledging that
such similarities are often more important than the
differences
7. CorpCom
Corporate communication is the notion, the ideal and the
managerial process of communicating the organization
as a unique, coherent and credible entity (Elving, Illia, Christensen,
Podnar, Lurati, Golob, Romenti & Invernizi, forthcoming)
8. The notion
• Great persuasive power, because it suggests a focus on
the corporation as a whole
• It is a more contemporary and sophisticated version of
public relations, marketing and / or mass communications,
• Includes elements from these fields in addition to
specialized communication practices such as crisis
communications, media relations, community relations,
investor relations, employee relations, public affairs, etc.
(Goodman, 1994; Argenti, 1998; Dilenschneider, 2000)
• Corporate communication is an umbrella term for a field of
practice that draws on multiple communication and
management activities (Shelby, 1993)
9. The ideal
• Corporate Communication represents an significant
and managerial ideal:
– The organization can be and must be accessible and
manageable as a whole
• Manage all communication that involve an
organization as a corporate entity (Harrison,1995)
• As an all embracing framework designed and
organized to integrate ‘the total business message’ (Van
Riel, 1995)
10. A central managerial activity
• Orchestration of different messages and behaviors
becomes a central managerial activity
• The set of activities involved in managing and
orchestrating all internal and external communications
aimed at creating favorable starting points with
stakeholders on which the company depends (van Riel &
Fombrun, 2007)
• Rather than pursuing different identities vis-à-vis
different audiences or letting different departments
handle their communications autonomously, the vision
of corporate communication, in other words, is to
manage all communications under one banner.
11. Reasons
• … are multiple, but often cohere around on issues of
identity and legitimacy
• In a globalized world of increased complexity,
organizational existence hinges on the ability to
establish and maintain the organization as a unified
whole across a pool of different and often critical
stakeholders
• This belief increasingly shapes the communication
strategies of contemporary organizations e.g. branding
themselves rather than their products, attempting so to
speak to “sell” the company behind the product
12. Umbrella
The fact that many organizations now place their
communication activities under the umbrella of
corporate communications, however, reflects
more than a shift in branding strategies.
Orientation with total images of organizations –
images that are able to cover physical, symbolic
and behavioral dimensions of an organization’s
life.
13. Study & practice of CorpCom
• Develop and refine a particular mind-set, that is, a
certain way of thinking about and approaching an
organization’s communication, focusing on unity,
wholeness and coherence
• Many disciplines may contribute to the development of
such mind-set, as evidenced by the growing number
of conferences, journals and study programs that
show interest in corporate communication as a field
and practice
• For historical, political and/or pragmatic reasons, not
all programs that develop such corporate
communication mind-set use CorpCom as label
14. Masters in CorpCom (MCC’s)
• Offered in a big variety of settings
• Business schools, humanities, language departments,
social sciences offer MCC’s with their own emphasis
and ideas
• We need a system in which MCC’s are constructed to
ensure employers with the knowledge of what they are
hiring with a Master in Corporate Communication
• We need to set up a set of core elements and core
competencies of MCC’s and create Benchmarks
between these
15. Masters in CorpCom (MCC’s)
• In the long run this might lead to accreditation like the
European EQUIS for MBA’s
• If we don’t take the initiative in this, our administrators
will do and in the best option will force us to do
• We started with this several years ago with scholars
from various Universities in Europe and US
– Copenhagen Business School; U of Amsterdam; U of
Lugano; IE U Madrid; IULM, Milano; U of Ljubljana;
LSE, London; Brunel U.; Harvard U.; Aarhus U.; Free U.
Amsterdam, Middlesex U, London; Erasmus U,
Rotterdam; Stern U, New York
16. MCC’s
• We had five different sessions over the last seven
years with colleagues of several European and US
CorpCom programs
• Position paper on MCC’s soon in CCIJ
• What elements should a MCC have, what should be
taught etcetera
• Not a blueprint, but a set of guidelines to construct
programs, or to benchmark programs
• First step to accreditation
• If we as a community do not take this 1st step, our
administrators will force us to do so in the long run
17. Masters in CorpCom (MCC’s)
• In the long run this might lead to accreditation
• The Position paper will be published in CCIJ, and will
be starting point (hopefully) for an extended
discussion in this
• We will include the associations of professionals
(international, but also local) in to this
• It is a very necessary step for getting to the next level
with CorpCom
18. CorpCom as a field of study
• Is and has been partially dominated by a
functionalistic view (Shannon & Weaver,1949; Schramm, 1954)
• Reality exists and communication has the function
conveying it in a controlled way (Christensen et al., 2005)
• An organization must determine what it wants in
response from a particular constituency before it
decides to communicate (Argenti, 1996)
• Drivers informing the evaluation of the firm (reputation)
and the need to project what the organization is about,
its identity (Van Riel, 1997)
19. CorpCom activities
• designed starting from stakeholders’ concerns
• differently from traditional PR, corporate
communication considers the identity of the
organization, its raison d’être, as the second central
area in the development of a sustainable corporate
story
• We have seen an increase of studies into ‘corporate
identity’ and ‘corporate branding’, which allow to
explicitly link communication to corporate strategy
(Cornelissen, et al., 2006)
• In particular to acknowledge that communication plays
a role in defining corporate strategy
20. Organizational communication
• An organizational communication view, that allows to
foreground how “communication organizes rather than
the traditional focus on the organization of
communication”, provides a better equipment to fully
comprehend this (potential) evolution of corporate
communication (Christensen and Cornelissen, 2011)
• Organizational communication framework allows to
move from a macro perspective to a micro perspective
and from a functionalist to an interpretative view, and
therefore to go beyond the conduit and deterministic
understanding of communication
21. Sensemaking
Communication is seen as a complex sense making process
driven by individuals and their agency.
• This change has not to be associated with the concern of
alignment across identities, cultures and reputations (Christensen
& Cornelissen, 2011; Fombrun & Rindova, 2000; Hatch & Schultz, 2001 & 2008; Van Riel, 2012)
Organizations are considered as realities that needs to be
discovered and represented
• Communication is
– an active driver in the definition of organizational reality” (Weick, 2004)
– and that “organizations to a great extent create their environment”
(Christensen, et al, 2007)
22. Saying & Seeing
• Reality is co-created by actors through discourse,
which is here seen not anymore as only saying, but
also as seeing (Weick, 2004)
• Seeing being meant in socio-constructivist terms,
where meaning, and therefore reality, emerge from
conversations through interpretation and joint-
authorship (Putnam, et al. 1996)
• Conversations and texts coexist (Weick, 2004)
23. CCO
• Existing identities, expertise, responsibilities, material
artefacts, etcetera matter not because they are conveyed by
communication, but because they act in communication and
as such they become part of the co-creation of reality, i.e. the
organization
• As such they also assume meaning, following a co-
orientation process, which takes the form of a self-organizing
loop between text and conversation (Cooren et al., 2011).
• Organizations are constantly (re)produced, (re)incarnated,
and (re)embodied in local interactions, and thus subject to
change and renewal”.
• Communication is at the heart of this process
24. 2 sides of the same coin?
Organizations are constantly monitored by an increasing
number of internal and external stakeholders who look
for gaps, discrepancies and contradictions in
organizational messages and actions and who
participate in conversations that influence the
environment in which firms compete and how firms
decide to compete
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMUNICATION
CORPORATE
COMMUNICATION
25. Organizational approach to CorpCom
From functionalistic to interpretative
Methodological
• observing conversations requires relying on inductive,
interpretativist, and qualitative methods
Strategic focus
• Not only cognitive, i.e. the constituency’s response
(Argenti, 1996)
• But also corporate and business, i.e. the production of
organizations in communication (Cooren et al., 2011), and
organizational, i.e. the agency of individuals, in
particular associated to “political, cultural and structural
aspects related to practice CC” (Cornelissen et al., 2006)
26. Organizational approach to CorpCom II
Interpersonal communication
• For instance
– dialogic communication for making “the world come
alive” by having people think together (Isaac, 1999) and
storytelling as the method that acknowledges the
“discursive, social nature of the strategy project” (Barry and
Elmes, 1997: 430).
28. 2006
• I took over from Sandra Oliver
• Main first task was to set up a robust double-blind
review procedure
• Prior to Scholar one, by hand we had to select
reviewers, and copy/past the feedback provided
31. Country of 1st author 2006 - 2014
USA & Canada,
55
Scandinavia, 64
Rest of Europe ,
60
UK, 20
Australia & NZ,
15
Asia, 26
Africa, 2
South
America, 2
32. Topics 2008 – 2013(Elving, 2014)
INTERNALCRISIS
COMMUNICATION
BUSINESS
WRITING
COMMUNICATION
MANAGEMENT
FINANCIAL
COMMUNICATION
CRISIS
COMMUNICATION
CORPORATE
REPUTATION
CSR
COMMUNICATION
SOCIAL
MEDIA
STAKEHOLDER
THEORYINVESTOR
RELATIONS
LANGUAGE
33. Role Name H-Index Citations
Regional Editor Joep Cornelissen 17 891
EAB John M.T. Balmer 14 925
NEW Editor W. Timothy Coombs 13 549
EAB Juan Llopis 12 611
EAB T.C. Melewar 12 570
EAB Judy Motion 9 250
Regional Editor Shirley Leitch 8 183
OLD Editor Wim Elving 8 247
EAB Juliet Roper 8 230
EAB Sabine Einwiller 7 191
EAB Peggy Simcic Bronn 7 139
Regional Editor Shaun Powell 6 63
EAB Lars Christensen 6 174
EAB Irene Pollach 6 143
EAB Pertti Hurme 6 139
EAB Sabrina Helm 6 108
EAB Friederike Schultz 6 147
EAB Oyvind Ihlen 6 108
EAB Klement Podnar 6 122
EAB Mette Morsing 5 113
EAB Dejan Verčič 5 63
EAB Paul Capriotti 5 98
Regional Editor Michael B Goodman 5 120
EAB Paul Argenti 5 185
Regional Editor Finn Frandsen 4 40
EAB Winni Johansen 4 40
EAB Laura Illia 4 59
H-index
Editorial
Advisory
Board
(average of EAB is 5)
34. Statistics
Usage
2013 - 149,143 (YTD - 74,203)
2014 - 195,106 (YTD - 88,266)
2015 (YTD 22.5.15) - 92,665
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
2013 2014 2015
downloads
YTD
5% ahead of this
time last year
35. Scopus Data
2012
Citations = 341
Impact factor = 1.042
2013
Citations = 397
Impact factor = 0.905
2014
Citations = 412
IPP = n/a
SCImago
H Index = 18
Category: Business, Management
and Accounting
Quartile: Q2
36. No. of Original Submissions
2012 = 86
2013 = 106 (REF year)
2014 = 91
2015 (YTD) = 27
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
2012 2013 2014 2015
Increase of words per
Manuscript from 6,000
8,000
Increase from 6 papers to
8 papers per issue
37. Best Papers Volume 19, CCIJ (2014)
1. A multidisciplinary approach for a new understanding of
corporate communication -Alessandra Mazzei
2. Repertoires of the corporate past: explanation and
framework. Introducing an integrated and dynamic
perspective - Mario Burghausen & John Balmer
3. Negotiating crisis in the social media environment:
evolution of crises online, gaining credibility offline -
Augustine Pang
Best Reviewer Award:
• Anne Ellerup Nielsen, Aarhus School of Business,
Department of Language and Business Communication
38. Most popular articles from CCIJ
Last year Most cited
The role of communication in
Organisational Change – Wim J.L. Elving
(2005)
Corporate reputation: seeking a definition
– Manto Gotsi & Alan Wilson (2001)
Developing internal crisis communication
– Mats Heide and Charlotte Simonsson
(2014)
CSR expectations: the focus of corporate
marketing – Klement Podnar & Ursa
Golob (2007)
Rethinking internal communication: a
stakeholder approach – Mary Welch &
Paul Jackson (2007)
Rethinking internal communication: a
stakeholder approach – Mary Welch &
Paul Jackson (2007)
Integrated marketing communication:
from tactics to stratey – Olof Holm (2006)
Ethical branding and corporate reputation
– Ying Fang (2005)
Corporate reputation: seeking a definition
– Manto Gotsi & Alan Wilson (2001)
Can a city communicate? Bradford as a
corporate brand – Myfanwy Trueman,
Mary Klemm & Axele Giroud (2004)
39. Relation with CCI @BARUCH U.
• CCI Conference on Corporate Communication is one
of the drivers of progress of CorpCom
• A conference, truly international, aimed at the
exchange of insights and research in CorpCom
• CCIJ is proud to be involved with this conference, and
the prominent role at the conference
• No special issues but special sections (as of 2015)
• Papers still can be submitted and we will have a
special section in each volume on the conference of
the previous year
40. Why NO Special Issues anymore
• To develop the journal and be eligible for an ISI
ranking we need to have Special Issues around
special themes
• Papers from CCI conference are general
• A special issue of this conference has no SPECIAL
feature, since these can be in regular issues as well
• Special issues need to have a particular theme, like
CCIJ has these on Corporate Apologia, CSR
Communication, and Corporate Marketing
• These Special issues attract more downloads and
interest in the journal
41. Ranking
• CCIJ is ranked high in some countries (Scandinavia it
is considered as top journal, as well as in some other
countries)
• CCIJ has a B ranking in the Australian Business
Deans Council
• CCIJ has another submission for an ISI ranking
(Thomson)
– ISI is to some extension self oriented; once a journal is
in the list, it is hard to get out
– A new field of study as CorpCom is complex
– Citations in listed journals (..) are needed
42. New Editor in Chief
• As of Next years Volume Timothy Coombs, currently
in Central Florida State University, but as of this
summer at Texas A&M University will take over my
role as Editor in Chief
"Corporate communication is a
unique mix of academics and
practitioner interests that provides fertile
ground for future research. In part the
future is so bright given the unique
fields that flow together to create
corporate communication. I look
forward to expanding the number of
people involved with the journal through
submissions and reviews."
43. Sum up
• State of our CorpCom field is progressing
• CCIJ needs an ISI ranking!
• We need to
– Include regions of the world like South America, Africa
and some parts of Asia
– Come up with benchmarks in Master programs
44. It was an honor to serve the CorpCom
community by being editor in chief of
Corporate Communications, an International
Journal
Thank you all for making this possible
45.
46. Best Papers CCI conference 2015
Highly commended applied paper
From Output to Impact: How to Increase the Accountability of Your Communication Department by Making Use
of Available Data within Your Organization - Carlijn Remmelzwaal and Caroline Wehrmann, Department of
Science Education and Communication, Delft University of Technology; and Frank Körver, GKSV (consultancy
on Reputation & Communcation & Public Affairs), The Netherlands
Best applied paper
“Visual Press Release”: A Qualitative Analysis of Public Relations Infographics as Brand and Reputation
Management Tactics - Candace P. Parrish, Ashley O. Jones and Jason A. Fuller, Richard T. Robertson School
of Media & Culture, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
Highly commended theoretical paper
A Micro-Ethnographic Perspective on Strategy Change Communication: Framing Downsizing as an
Institutionalized, Strategic Process - Helle Kryger Aggerholm and Birte Asmuß, Department of Business
Communication, Aarhus University, Denmark
Best theoretical paper
Developing a Thematic Categorization System for Corporate Leaders' Web-based Communication in Greater
China - Cindy Sing Bik Ngai, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University and Rita Gill Singh, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
