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Access to top management *Quote of the day*

2/12/2015

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Stumbled upon something interesting:

"Symmetrical communication inside the organization and participative culture largely result from the structure that top management chooses for the organization. Communicators cannot be successful, therefore, unless they have access to the top-management team that develops an organizational structure (Grunig, Grunig & Dozier, 2006, p. 55)."
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If your CEO or CFO ever asks the question of financial ROI you say:

2/11/2015

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Is it possible to determine an exact monetary value for the relationships created through the work of the public relations function?


==> Possibility rejected for reasons explained on p. 35 (more elaborated upon in the first and last of the Excellence books by Grunig)



In a nutshell (p. 35):

  1. Not possible because no exact correlations between PR actions and financial performance can be established (too many confounding variables affecting the dependent variable)
  2. Some costs are evaded (cf. bad publicity, litigation). However: not possible to calculate the cost of something that did not happen
  3. Return on relationships is delayed
  4. Return on relationships is lumpy (and therefore difficult to measure)

"Compensating variation, as economists term this process, provides a way of transforming nonmonetary values, such as the benefit of good relationships to the organization and to society, into monetary values. The idea behind the method is simple. You ask people how much they would be willing to pay to have something. For public relations, you ask members of the dominant coalition or public relations managers how much public relations is worth to them on either a monetary or nonmonetary scale (p. 36)."


Working with a "fractionation scale" in which 100 stands for the typical department "our survey research showed that CEOs and communicators alike agree that public relations returns significantly more than it costs - and more than the typical department in their organization. CEOs estimated the average return-on-investment for public relations to be 186%. This ROI increased to 225% under conditions of excellence. It was 140% for the least excellent public relations departments. CEOs estimated values for public relations in comparison with other management functions to be 160 (where 100 was average) for all departments, 232 for excellent departments, and 109 for less excellent departments (my emphasis, p. 37)."

All this information comes from the following book:

BOTAN (Carl) & HAZLETON (Vincent) (Eds.). Public Relations Theory II. Mahwah (New Jersey), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006, 528 p.

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Working on a list to help other researchers

2/11/2015

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Hi all,

This won't be the most "sexy" blog post I have ever written but it might help researchers to straighten their thoughts. Unfortunately when working on a research project on internal communication you won't find academic conferences dedicated to the subject matter. As researchers in this domain we still need to present our work at PR or corporate communication conferences. The same goes for publishing your work. As far as I know (if there are other scholars reading this, please comment and feel free to contribute to this website if you think I'm omitting important information) there are only a handful of conferences where you can go to. I will make a short list. I'm planning to make a more "formal" list/tab one of these days, so people won't have to go through the blog to find this post.

Conferences:

  •     International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications (CMC): this year is the first year I will be attending this conference. So I cannot give you feedback on my experiences here just yet. Planning to update you on this conference in April.
   
  •     CCI Conference on Corporate Communication: this year is the second time I will be presenting here (normally this conference takes place in June). The fact that I'm going back has nothing to do with the magnificent venues (NY in 2013, 2015 and Hong Kong in 2014) - or maybe a little - but with the quality of the speakers and the international background of the participants. I experienced heavy scouting from academic journals here, so a great place to present something. Also the networking possibilities here are one of a kind.
   
  •     International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC): never submitted something here but the conference is mentioned in the book "Public Relations Theory" by Botan & Hazleton (2006). No idea how valuable this conference is. Maybe worth considering in the future. Submissions here are due end of October/beginning of November

  •     Bled Conference: I'm not hearing much about this conference. The newsletter they send is worthless and often has nothing to do with the conference itself. No call for papers sent through the regular channels (ECREA & IAMCR announcements). I have colleagues who went but they were not really positive about the quality of the presenters.

  •     ECREA Conference: a typical venue for (European) communication scholars. They have a section "organizational and strategic communication" but the focus is not often on internal communication. Experienced no scouting by academic journals. Although some of the sections launch ebooks afterwards.

  •     EUPRERA Annual Congress: preceded by a PhD seminar. I am planning to submit (deadline for abstract submission end of February, conference taking place in October). I have been to this Conference as an attendee, not as a presenter. The quality of the research papers is fair with an interesting focus on alternative (not management focused) theoretical frameworks. Experienced no scouting by academic journals (but this might be the result of the fact that I was not presenting) 

  •     Quadriga conference on internal communication: Don't be fooled here like I was. Although you can find a link with the "Quadriga University of Applied Sciences", this     Conference offers nothing more than a venue for networking amongst communication professionals. The conference is ridiculously expensive and as a researcher on internal communication you do not get anything out of it (except maybe the opportunity to network with potential research participants and an empty wallet). All in all: to be avoided.
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    Mark Verheyden

    Blogging away about my PhD. My goal is to keep you up to date about the progress made in my research. Stay tuned for more news and feel free to interact and comment.

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