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This guest editorial article considers the extent to which the corporate communication function in the UK context is adequately funded. It concentrates on what appears to be the entirely neglected research area of whether or not organizations consider that the competitive advantage that successful communications can bring is worthy of the financial investment on which such success may well depend crucially. The article concludes that a sizeable minority receives little or no investment in the communication function. It notes that a large majority of communication executives feel that they are adequately resourced; but it questions whether their competitive advantage would be enhanced through more substantial funding. It also suggests that substantial resourcing may well go hand in hand with the controversial nature of the organization itself.

This article reports an empirical study conducted in 20 British organisations with a focus on the director of corporate communications. It examines the origin and role of corporate communication executives and identifies those essential characteristics that constitute the most successful communication practitioners.

Examines the role of public relations (PR) officers in British companies and the use of corporate communications. States that the PR role covers a wide area and varies from company to company. Concludes, however, that the role of the PR officer directly impacts on the strategy of the company and its strategic communications.

This paper reviews an empirical study into corporate reputation strategies in large UK organizations. It considers what is meant by corporate reputation and its role in the strategic marketing communications mix. The findings confirm not only that over the past decade planning and implementation of reputation strategies has become a dominant focus of those concerned with corporate governance but also that the organizational communicator now perceives his or her role as one of guardian of that reputation. It notes further, that between academics and practitioners alike there remains much confusion over the terms reputation and image; are the two one and the same? The findings have implications not only for senior management but also for the development of communication strategies aimed at enabling an organization to gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly overcrowded market place. Evidentially corporate reputation has developed more and more in the UK context – and is now recognized by enlightened management as a key weapon in organizational strategy formulations.

This paper reports an empirical study conducted in British organisations focussing on the role of investor relations as part of a co‐ordinated marketing communications strategy. Consequently this study considers the greatly neglected research area of the management of relationships between national and international organisations and both investors and those others who might consider themselves significant financial stakeholders. It examines the organisational role of investor relations within a co‐ordinated communication programme and suggests that communication with financial stakeholders has a significant role to play as part of a developed corporate communication strategy.

Advertising and sponsorship are both key areas of concern to management scholars. In the dynamic and sophisticated market world in which integrated marketing communication strategies play roles of increasing importance, this paper reflects on the extent to whcih sponsorship has moved away from being a philanthropic approach to communication and has taken a key role as a strategic approach to marketing (and thus corporate) strategies. The article note the problem prestented by the lack of a clear theoretical definition, considers the strategic objectives that result in sponsorship programmes, reflects on the difficulties (or downright lack) of measuring the success of sponsorship programmes (noting that organizations will judge success in different ways), reflects on the controversial aspects of some sponsorship programmes and examines groups at which sponsorship might be targeted. It concludes that sponsorship has a significant (some would say major) role to play in increasing sales, enhancing corporate image and leveraging employee morale. It concludes by suggesting significant areas that merit further research in this greatly neglected academic area.

Corporate communications, or public relations (PR) has become an increasingly important function in business organisations. Yet little has been published on the role and function of communication executives. This paper reports an empirical study conducted in 20 British organisations with a focus on the director of corporate communications. It examines the role and tasks of corporate communication executives and discusses their status within organisational structure and the impact of corporate communications upon the formulation of corporate strategy.

This chapter examines the role of the person in modern constitutional law. Through a reading of two Canadian Supreme Court decisions – RWDSU v. Dolphin Delivery and R. v. Malmo-Levine – it suggests that while the person is the subject of modern constitutional law’s protective gaze, it can also sometimes function as a scapegoat, taking the fall for harms engineered in part by the state (harms, in other words, that really ought to attract constitutional scrutiny given constitutional law’s orienting preoccupation with ‘state action’). Rather than dismissing these gestures as a result of defective legal reasoning in the cases examined, the chapter suggests that the selective erasure or forgetting of state action is in fact essential to the production of the suffering subject – the constitutional person – that modern constitutional law is supposed to protect, precisely, from the state. In effect, then, the chapter claims that modern constitutional law produces the person by ignoring or at least downplaying the role of the state in certain contexts and, hence, by reneging intermittently on its primary task: the application of legal scrutiny to coercive state action.

The next month or two behind us and this decade will have passed, to merge in the drab background of the post‐war years, part of the pattern of frustration, failure and fear. The ‘swinging sixties’ some called it, but to an older and perhaps slightly jaundiced eye, the only swinging seemed to be from one crisis to another, like the monkey swinging from bough to bough in his home among the trees; the ‘swingers’ among men also have their heads in the clouds! In the seemingly endless struggle against inflation since the end of the War, it would be futile to fail to see that the country is in retreat all the time. One can almost hear that shaft of MacLeodian wit christening the approaching decade as the ‘sinking seventies’, but it may not be as bad as all that, and certainly not if the innate good sense and political soundness of the British gives them insight into their perilous plight.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.