Search results

Managers are one of numerous stakeholder groups for whom the chief executive officer (CEO) statement, published with the annual report and accounts, would have visual impact. Addresses components of traditional print design by measuring areas of interest (attracting initial attention) and retaining interest (dwell times). Eye movement data analysis reveals that employees spend similar amounts of time reading their CEO messages regardless of time available, content, design, status or corporate culture. Implications for print design and image for the learning organisation include a hypothesis that a self‐imposed three minute rule operates in this area of corporate communication.

Addresses the value‐added benefit to be gained from employee communication costs. Asserts that psychological profiling does not always acknowledge or process identifiable communication variables as competence factors in decision making or for advanced training needs analysis. Supports the notion that information is driven by demand or “pull” rather than supply “push” as a measure of sound communication policy and practice, with implications for HR concepts of internal markets, empowerment and organisational climate. A UK pilot study supports the findings of a major US survey that up to a quarter of middle managers may not feel free to express their views in terms of emotional and intellectual capital that could contribute to enhanced quality assurance and other measurable performance assets. Concludes that lack of symmetrical communication leaves a credibility gap between policy and practice that creates a vacuum and makes the organisation vulnerable, especially during crisis management

Reviews symmetrical communication as corporate strategy. Qualitative data gathered from owners and managers of a wide variety of small businesses, using both questionnaires and interviews, points to the fact that, in common with many other areas of small business management, the practice of corporate communication is largely unplanned. Concludes that it is an area which is characterized by a lack of understanding both of what corporate communication is and how it can be of benefit to the small business.

This paper considers the relationship between pre‐ and post‐technology assisted teaching and learning (TATL) based on models of learning, the learning context, programme design and the establishment of evaluation criteria. It hypothesises that current communication management theory and practice faces an opportunity and a threat but that the subject discipline can meet the challenge of the internet through ongoing academic/professional partnerships. The purpose of this paper, in raising awareness about current research issues being debated in colleges over course planning and design, is to see where to go from here and what contributions can be offered by academics, practitioner consultants and students. The medium is not the message and delivery must be learner‐centred, allowing for reflection and adaptation at all times. The technical aspect of subject‐based criteria‐setting through benchmark design is outside the scope of this paper and can be revisited. Nevertheless, benchmarking per se is standard validation practice for all academic courses and the author's hypothesis points to the dangers of underestimating the difficulties associated with this element of distance learning for new and evolving interdisciplinary studies such as public relations, where even semantics are problematic. For example, in this post‐technological era, multinational companies are renaming their public relations departments ‘corporate communications’ or ‘corporate relations/corporate affairs’, to better reflect reality and the functional role played in terms of integration, monitoring and evaluation of and within corporate strategy. Those companies in which the dominant focus for public relations was marketing in the recession driven 1980s are finding the 1990s paradigm shift more complicated than envisaged. They are finding that meaning and message is more than a clichéd slogan or soundbite, especially where corporate policy is still driven more by customer relations than, say, employee or government relations. As a consequence of technology (medium/multimedia) and human networking (message/meaning) via the internet, the pressure of a new world order affects everyone in one form or another. The race is on for global corporate and cultural domination, what some sociologists call the ‘new imperialism’. This inevitably brings conflict, along with a range of developmental arguments about context, consensus and other issues. The implications and range of arguments surrounding the sample of models selected here are vast. The models themselves are therefore presented as concepts rather than analytical tools or techniques. However, with the subject so topical at the moment, no doubt this and other journals will see the publication of a debate in future issues around technology assisted teaching and learning for business communication and public relations and the emergence of some valuable subject specific aids to lifelong learning for students, teachers and trainers alike. Teaching is a ‘rhetorical activity … it is mediated learning, allowing students to acquire knowledge of someone else's way of experiencing the world’. The British qualification to date has been the Communication, Advertising and Marketing Diploma (CAM). Now that some of the tools of public relations are taught to marketing students under the auspices of the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing, the UK's Institute of Public Relations, in its 50th birthday year, recognises that the profession must get to grips with the changes wrought by this and the growth of the digital arts industry, although it has placed its own diploma squarely within the management discipline for purposes of future professional membership. Regardless of student background, so long as candidates meet university entry requirements and universities abide by national quality assurance criteria, professional partnership programmes in this field, delivered by distance learning mode through the medium of the internet and other techniques, will mirror the strengths and weaknesses of those in more established fields. Novices become experts through a combination of knowledge and skill in all professions and all professions are struggling with the impact of technology. Differences between theory and practice are justifiably losing their deterministic significance through mutual respect, understanding and accessibility to and from a wider reach via the internet.

An investigation into the process of cross‐fertilisation on MBA programmes is reported. An interview schedule was devised as a basis for discussions with a sample from each of three MBA programme types: open, in‐company and consortial. It was concluded that: learning from and acting upon ideas gained from fellow set members is seen as an important element in the MBA programme by associates: cross‐fertilisation tends to be recognised and recalled mainly in terms of personal skills; open sets would potentially appear to be a better medium for fostering cross‐fertilisation, but in‐company sets are more empowering in ensuring the implementation of ideas from such cross‐fertilisation as does occur, while consortial sets would appear to combine the best of both worlds – though no evidence emerged to support this last contention. Recommendations are made for further research.

A questionnaire‐based survey of a business school′s MBA graduates draws conclusions on their entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial leanings. The authors suggest that specific combinations of personal characteristics and support systems will make implementation of MBA project findings more likely.