Communicating In Digital Age Corporations

Strategic Corporate Communication in the Digital Age explores how contemporary communication approaches are crossing boundaries as innovative media formats and digital transformations offer new challenges and opportunities to academia and practitioners.

The distinctive point of the book is its innovative interdisciplinary approach to business communication, with interconnections between linguistics, sociology, and critical organisational studies as applied to the corporate world. It offers a first-hand insight into primary business discourse with a deeper understanding and analysis of business processes and mechanisms underlying and reflected in enterprise software-mediated communication. It answers the question what ‘doing business’ in the digital age is about and illustrates ‘business discourse’ from practitioners’ point of view. Grounded in the analysis of empirical data, pertaining both to internal and external business communication, the author reflects on the reality of accelerated and pressurised communication in global IT corporations. Following a communication-centred approach, this monograph puts the topic of enterprise software-mediated business discourse into a multi-layered perspective of how global corporations operate, what their primary goals are, and what kind of (political) power they execute. Moreover, it demonstrates how profit-driven corporations can be viewed and interpreted as strategically acting systems within a specific sociological framework.

The explosion of blogs, social networking sites, wikis, video sharing sites, and other powerful digital communications platforms may be the biggest game-changer to impact business since mechanized manufacturing. In today’s Web 2.0 world, company stakeholders--including employees, customers, and investors--are empowered in ways unimaginable just a few years ago, and traditional corporate hierarchies are yesterday’s news. Rather than attempt to turn back the clock and reassert strict, top-down control over stakeholder relationships, the smartest companies worldwide are responding with bold new digital communications strategies based on transparency, authenticity, and inclusion, instead of secrecy, artificiality, and exclusion. International corporate communications guru Paul A. Argenti provides a lively, up-to-the- minute review of the Web 2.0 landscape and analyzes the increasingly central role corporate communications plays in virtually every organizational function. Argenti and coauthor Courtney Barnes advise corporate leaders on how to deploy proven strategies for using new and emerging digital platforms to Manage brand identity and company reputation Build a culture of engagement and transparency Turn stakeholders into “company evangelists” Manage internal communications across time zones and language barriers Recruit and retain the best talent Develop compelling messages based on customer and investor needs and desires Argenti and Barnes provide case studies illustrating digital communications best practices at HP, Southwest Airlines, Sony, Dell, IBM, Starbucks, HBO, FedEx, GE, and other major players. This groundbreaking book will teach you how to gain real, manageable control over your organization’s communications in today’s virtual world.

Strategic Corporate Communication in the Digital Age explores how contemporary communication approaches are crossing boundaries as innovative media formats and digital transformations offer new challenges and opportunities to academia and practitioners.

Over the course of recent years, in countries with high crisis expectation and risk probabilities, such as Turkey, a significant rise in the number of crises has been observed. Since current crisis practices are incident-specific, the role of public relations is largely overlooked, and, furthermore, crisis communication studies in non-Western cultures are scarce; this book fills these gaps through two distinct studies. The first highlights crisis management types and strategies by reflecting on interview responses collected from 35 different sectors and sub-sectors in Turkey. While interview findings are used to inform strategical know-how regarding the shift from crisis to opportunity during times of turbulence, the elicited responses reveal how practitioners perceive and respond to crises in the contemporary media landscape. The second analyses the recent upheaval caused by Watsons Turkey as a case study to stress the vital role of public relations in times of crisis.

Although literature on corporate social responsibility is vast, research into the use and effectiveness of various communications through digital platforms about such corporate responsibility is scarce. This gap is surprising; communicating about corporate social responsibility initiatives is vital to organizations that increasingly highlight their corporate social responsibility initiatives to position their corporate brands for both consumers and other stakeholders. Yet these organizations still sometimes rely on traditional methods to communicate, or even decide against communicating at all, because they fear triggering stakeholders’ skepticism or cynicism. A systematic, interdisciplinary examination of corporate social responsibility communication through digital platforms therefore is necessary, to establish an essential definition and up-to-date picture of the field. This research anthology addresses the above objectives. Drawing on marketing, management, and communication disciplines, among others, this anthology examines how organizations construct, implement, and use digital platforms to communicate about their corporate social responsibility and thereby achieve their organizational goals. The 21 chapters in this anthology reflect six main topic sections: Challenges and opportunities for communicating corporate social responsibility through digital platforms. Moving toward symmetry and interactivity in digital corporate social responsibility communication. Fostering stakeholder engagement in and through digital corporate social responsibility communication. Leveraging effective digital corporate social responsibility communication. Digital activism and corporate social responsibility. Digital methodologies and corporate social responsibility.

With social and digital media reshaping the way business is conducted, and the number of companies embracing the new social medium, this book revisits CSR practices from a digital perspective. The volume explores the impact and influence of the new 'social' on responsibility and its feasibility, measurability and success in a boundary-less world.

Effective corporate reporting and disclosure are critical in financial markets to promote vigorous competition, optimal performance, and transparency. This book examines whether existing disclosure frameworks in eight countries with the world's most significant securities exchanges achieve these objectives, and then, drawing on extensive empirical findings, identifies the policies and practices that contribute most to improving the overall quality of listed company reporting and communication. Contending that public disclosure of listed company information is an essential precondition to the long-term efficient operation of financial markets, the book provides analysis of such issues and topics as the following: - arguments for and against mandatory disclosure regimes; - key principles of periodic and continuous disclosure regulation; - tensions between direct and indirect investment in financial markets; - assumptions concerning the need to maintain a privileged role for financial intermediaries; - intermediary, analyst, and research incentives; - protection of individual investors; - selective disclosure; - disclosure of bad news; - the role of accounting standards; - public access to company briefings; - long term performance reporting and analysis; and - company reporting developments. A significant portion of the book provides an overview of disclosure regulation and practice in the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore. A highly informative survey looks at company reports, disclosures, and websites of large listed companies, including Microsoft, Citigroup, Teck Resources, Deutsche Bank, BP, Sony, PetroChina Company, BHP Billiton, and Singapore Telecommunications. The book discusses common disclosure issues that arise across jurisdictions, provides valuable insights on the efficacy of existing disclosure regulation and practice, and highlights the important principles, processes, and practices that underpin best practice company disclosure frameworks. It will be welcomed by company boards and executives and their counsel, as well as by policymakers and scholars in the areas of corporate, securities, banking and financial law, accounting, economics and finance.