Business communication: a problem-solving approach PDF

Corporate communication, or corporate communication, refers to that complex of activities and interactions in which the company is engaged and which aim to influence attitudes and behaviour towards it on the part of various interlocutors.

Business communication a problem-solving approach 2nd edition PDF

In short, when we speak of corporate communication, the definition and structure change, even considerably, depending on the theoretical approach to which we refer and not infrequently from scholar to scholar. In all cases, however, the fundamental premises are those of the ninety-five theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto, summarised not incorrectly in the famous 'markets are conversations'. It is a catchy formula intended to emphasise that the company today can no longer be considered a closed, isolated system, finished in itself but, by necessity, enters into relations with a series of very different subjects.

These are obviously customers - potential or prospects - but also suppliers and partners, other competitor companies, financiers and stakeholders and, last but not least, regulators and institutions. Each of these subjects enters into relations with the company in a different way and is, for this very reason, a possible recipient of corporate communication.

Internal communication, as the expression itself suggests, is that complex of communication activities directed at a target within the company itself. Employees, white-collar and blue-collar workers and, more generally, the workforce, but also executives, managers, supervisors and owners are at the same time senders and recipients of internal communication. In fact, the classic top-down model that made even communication flows top-down appears to have been largely superseded, and, as will be seen below, the objectives of this form of corporate communication are also beyond the simple organisational and management objectives of the past.

Business communication a problem-solving approach 2nd edition PDF

External communication, on the other hand, refers to the communicative interchanges that the enterprise has with external systems and others. It is not difficult to understand that, in this case, the reference targets are, if possible, even more differentiated: outside the company there are, in fact, current or potential consumers, other subjects that are upstream or downstream in the same production chain, competitors, regulating figures of the market in which one moves for example, and to each of these subjects the company has the duty to address communications as targeted and customised as possible.

Business communication: a problem-solving approach PDF

Finally, public relations is not considered by many to be so much a form in which corporate communication is articulated as a technique. They are, in fact, activities that are profoundly targeted and addressed to equally specific targets such as the media, public opinion and public decision-makers that have, to simplify greatly, the objective of creating a favourable climate for the existence and activities of companies, in jargon a certain goodwill.