Please send your research for publication in CCIJ

Citation

Elving, W.J.L. (2011), "Please send your research for publication in CCIJ", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 16 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2011.16816baa.001

Please send your research for publication in CCIJ

Article Type: Editorial From: Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Volume 16, Issue 2

My editorial in this, the second Corporate Communications: An International Journal (CCIJ) issue of 2011, comes in the form of a call for papers. I have suspected for some time that CCIJ does not receive as many quality submissions as, anecdotally, I am told the journal deserves. I therefore make a general call for papers aimed at all readers, practitioners and academics: both our older colleagues who deserved their spot within corporate communications, and also the novices in our field, the PhD students, the upcoming gurus – please submit your work to our journals!

I especially frame this as a call for “our journals”, because this includes journals like Journal of Communication Management, Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, Journal of Strategic Communication and all other journals in the field of corporate communication and adjacent fields as well. To establish ourselves as a field of study, we need manuscripts that explore and develop our discipline; not only what triggers us, but also what we see, observe, witness and research in the coordination of all kinds of communications of organizations.

I realize that in achieving an academic career our departments and universities ask us to publish in ranked journals. Unfortunately the ranking of journals is, to put it mildly, a non-transparent, one-dimensional approach that serves to create some kind of qualification. The Social Sciences Citation Index (ISI), for instance, is something of a circular system: once a journal is in ISI, it is rarely removed, but only when papers from CCIJ are cited in other ISI-ranked journals will CCIJ itself be considered for inclusion in ISI as well. Emerging fields of study – of which corporate communications is one – are at a significant disadvantage, because established indexing systems mitigate against them. In our case, it forces corporate communications scholars to reframe their work, to make it suitable for a more generic journal that is listed. Indeed, we take comfort from the fact that ISI is not the only ranking used, but that every country has at least one system of journal ranking, and some individual universities use their own rankings. Fortunately CCIJ is in several of these rankings positioned in the highest, or almost highest, category.

But if we want corporate communication (or communication management, strategic communication) to be established as a field of study, we do need to prove this by the quality of research we are doing. The published papers in CCIJ certainly have their value: evidenced, for instance, by the 170,000 downloads CCIJ had in 2010! On the one hand, this means that CCIJ has significant value for the field and the users of the journal, but on the other hand we need to more firmly establish our field of study with rigorous research, debate and discussion.

There is a rich variety of subjects published in CCIJ, but since communication is based on behavior of individuals, we have not found the definite answers yet. Various corporate communication issues needs to be discussed further in an academic way in order to understand different processes and to deal with them using the newest theoretical and empirical support. In the past decades, we have witnessed all kinds of new developments where corporate communication acts more and more as the eyes and ears of the organization. These days, organizations need to be sustainable, to monitor how they are portrayed within all kinds of media and to act upon this in a fast and clear way to avoid reputational damages.

The essence of the organization, its corporate identity, which is bound to the image and ultimately the reputation of the company, becomes more and more the most valuable asset of the organization. There are several models presented on the corporate Identity construct, within CCIJ and in other journals as well, but it remains an issue of debate. The concept of corporate identity and related concepts of corporate image, corporate personality and corporate reputation can be traced back to the 1950s. More recent and helpful definitions for corporate identity include that of van Riel and Balmer (1997, p. 341) who hold that “a corporate identity refers to an organization’s unique characteristics which are rooted in the behavior of members of the organization”. Similarly it can also be described as the projected corporate personality, where corporate personality is “[...] at the heart of the organization and embodies the corporate mission, corporate philosophy and core values of the organization” (Stuart, 1998, p. 357). Much of the existing literature relating to the management of an organization’s identity and corporate brand leans towards the suggestion that alignment and consistency in employee behavior is an ideal. Others have indicated that the multi-faceted nature of organizations needs to be taken into account. Thus, commitment to the communicated vision and/or values of senior management, especially if focused on a “desired” rather than “ideal” identity (Balmer and Greyser, 2003, p. 17), may risk misguiding the actions of employees as they interact with or on behalf of important others including clients. One particularly useful piece of earlier research in this regard is the development of Balmer’s “acid test” of corporate identity management (Balmer and Soenen, 1999) followed by later versions of the same test (Balmer, 2001). The aim of that work was to develop a model that would help to identify and avoid potentially harmful identity misalignments in practice (Balmer and Greyser, 2003). However, empirically based case studies or reports of the test being used in practice remain relatively scarce to date (Powell et al., 2009). Branding, positioning, creation of a vision, sensemaking, all are based on interactions, language and communication. Weick et al., (2005, p. 409) state that: “[S]ensemaking is an issue of language, talk, and communication. Situations, organizations, and environments are talked into existence”.

The vision of an organization, the way it is presented and positioned, the people working in it and who are in charge of the organization form the organization. How organizations respond to crisis, how they operate within the media, how they use (or not use) media, but also how representatives of these organizations treat stakeholders in interactions, make how the reputation of the organization is made or broken. Not communicating seems no longer to be an option. Social media makes organizations, but also nations, very vulnerable for misconduct and acquisitions of bad service or products. In the first months of 2011, we witnessed the potential of connections created with social media like Facebook and Twitter in the political shifts in Arab countries.

Connections of individuals can become very powerful; can create reputational risks for any company, but also create a lot of opportunities. This can be understood as communication feeds connections, and connections, in turn, are perceived as the essence of meaning (Baumeister and Vohs, 2002). The connection with others keeps the sensemaking process going, continually shaping shared understanding of the content and significance of each person’s contribution to the organization (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003). The emergence of sensemaking as a topic of interest in organizations is striking (van Vuuren and Elving, 2008).

But since we study corporate communication, we need to study these phenomena in practice as well. The linkage between corporate communication and what takes place in organizations might be seen by others as a weak starting point for corporate communications (or strategic communication or communication management). It is not rocket science, but insights from our field of study are not only for entertainment and “nice to know”. The usage of the journal shows that we are making good points, and that academics and practitioners use our created knowledge for their everyday performance. For instance, within the longstanding tradition of issue and crisis communication research, which was reflected in the special issue, we had recently (issue 15.3) on corporate apologia, practitioners are able to learn real lessons, and scholars and researchers can do further research on cases and issues – all for a better understanding of what happens during a crisis and how this can be effectively communicated.

Change communication also still remains an important field of study. Changes in society and in organizations are for some a reason to live, but for others they present uncertainty, job insecurity and as a result negative consequences for health and wellbeing. With the knowledge we have created so far we can help communication professionals and managers to create better communication, dealing better with the negative consequences of change. Communication is essential in getting organizations ready to make the necessary changes for growth and to help to meet stakeholder demands. To organize is to connect, to interact, to coordinate, and to make a decision that is the best for the organization and their stakeholders. The connections and interactions, the way the organization organizes communications to facilitate these and how to improve these in a more globalized and connected world is a field of study which deserves debate, discussions, empirical and conceptual work from a corporate communication perspective.

Within society, but also within individual organisations, there seems little doubt that the introduction of all kinds of communication technologies has been important for the development of corporate communication as a field of study. But also for practitioners, information and communication technologies proof an enormous impact. Especially with the introduction of new forms of communication, we should realize that all kinds of applications are being used in practice before they have been tested on their effectiveness. We can now witness this with the influence of so-called social media. Corporate communication managers see the benefits of social media for their work, start using it, or have been forced by stakeholders to use it, but we still have not seen a decent body of research on the topic of which ways we can use social media at the best. The introduction and use are faster than the evaluation and research around the topic. That does not have to been a problem, since doing scientific research requires time. But, there is a need to study the effects social media have on corporate communication and all its aspects.

Owing to the financial crisis the transparency of communication of the financial institutions became more important as well. The way these institutions were involved in products and how they were traded and sold was the ground for a crisis which still is not solved, and which still needs companies and nations to reshape their financial household. The impact on capital disclosure, the way organizations present their key data, and also how they present themselves and their role in society has become more and more important. Only a few years after the financial crisis, the financial institutions seem to act like nothing have happened, and they started with exaggerated compensations for their CEOs and other board members, whereas these financials needed to be saved by a nation. On one hand, this is part of corporate governance, but on the other hand communication professionals are left with the problem of how to communicate these compensations (bonuses) in a changing landscape where financial institutions suffer from perennially negative reputations. This is related to CSR communication, which is another interesting phenomena within our field. Many corporations see it more and more as their responsibility to give back to society. Organizations have realized that operating in a connected world means also that they need to operate in a sustainable way, limit their energy use and amount of waste. It seems that all organizations have a form of CSR, most of the times listed on their company web site. Extensive communication of a CSR program can lead to acquisitions of greenwashing. (This is the theme of a special issue and a unique event in Amsterdam sponsored by CCIJ: in October 2011 scholars and practitioners will join together to exchange the latest knowledge on CSR communications – in what situations will organizations be accused of greenwashing? To what extent are organizations truly sustainable? For more information see the web site of the conference: www.csr-communication-conference.org, or the advertisement at the end of this issue.)

Best papers Volume 15, 2010

The members of the editorial advisory board voted to select the best papers of Volume 15 of CCIJ. A total of 15 members of the EAB responded, some listed a top three, others only one paper. After reviewing all scores, we now can present our top three. The paper that came in third place of Volume 15 is: “Creating esprit de corps in times of crisis: employee identification with values in a Danish windmill company” by Mona Agerholm Andersen (15.1, pp. 102-123). The second best paper of 2010 is: “Towards a more dynamic stakeholder model: acknowledging multiple issue arenas” by Vilma Luoma-aho and Marita Vos (15.3, pp. 315-331). The winners of the best paper award for CCIJ Volume 15 (2010) are Friederike Schultz and Stefan Wehmeier with their paper: “Institutionalization of corporate social responsibility within corporate communications: combining institutional, sensemaking and communication perspectives”. Congratulations Friederike and Stefan. We extend to you a warm invitation to present your paper at the CCI annual conference, which will be held in New York City in June 2011.

The current issue

In the current issue, we have five different papers. The paper by Anne Gregory was selected as one of the best contributions of the Euprera conference 2008, which was held in Milan, Italy. We agreed to publish the best papers of the Euprera conference in CCIJ as well as in Journal of Communication Management. The study by Gregory deals with the professionals within the UK. The paper by Aggerholm et al. deals with employer branding combined with CSR of companies. The authors present a model that integrates these two concepts. The paper by Sagar et al. on the ethical positioning index shows the benefit of having ethical elements included in the positioning of the organization. The paper by Helen Stuart touches the same subject: how to create a sustainability brand. The last paper in this issue is an analysis by Waters and Lemanski. They compared the web sites of Fortune 500 listed companies to the theories put forward in PR and corporate communications.

Finally I hope that you will forward on the message for the need for papers to your colleagues and students. We need to prove our existence as a field of study. Now is the time.

Wim J.L. Elving