By Bill Valentino
Business communication has become an important topic included in the MBA curricula of many universities because in business, it is essential to have good clear channels of communications. Communicating is as much a matter of human relationships as it is about transmitting facts. Good communication skills develop good relationships, and relationships are essential for successful business.

Teaching future managers the tools needed to promote a product, a service, or the organization is aimed at ultimately achieving business success, a good image and creating, maintaining or protecting a valuable brand.

In the wide spectrum of business communications, Corporate Communications focuses specifically on the organization. It encompasses a large range of communications channels critical to the success of every company. These include corporate advertising, public relations, media relations, community engagement, research and measurement, reputation management, internal communications, employee engagement, government relations, online communications, and event management. Whatever form corporate communications takes, the objective remains the same: to enhance the brand, the image and reputations of a company and to drive profitability.

The new business environment is one in which companies are being held accountable not only for bottom line results, but also more and more for the social and environmental impacts of their businesses. Because of this, the credentials and reputations of companies are being carefully scrutinized more than ever before. In this context, communications present an opportunity for companies to align themselves with the concept of corporate social responsibility to create the best conditions for successful corporate branding and image building while at the same time doing good to do well and doing well to do good.

Because of the increasing relevance that CSR has for brand and corporate reputation management as well as for risk management, it is emerging as being very closely aligned with strategic corporate communications in many companies. This serves the dual purpose of building relationships of trust with internal and external stakeholders but also setting the foundation for achieving sustained profitable growth through efforts that contribute to the sustainable development of society. This reinforces the principle that in addition to providing products and services, companies can also contribute to the development of society through business activities

In the organizational structure of a company, ideally, there should be a CSR leadership team which needs to include representatives from the board of directors and top management, as well as senior personnel from human resources, environmental services, health and safety, community relations, legal affairs, finance and communications. In reality, in many companies today, the struggle to understand how to integrate CSR into the business process or even communicate it causes it to be scattered across the organization chart. This is why corporate social responsibility ends up being arbitrarily relegated to communications, corporate affairs, health safety and environment, government affairs, human resources or even to the marketing departments in many companies.

Corporate Communications is the process of facilitating information and knowledge exchanges with internal groups and stakeholders who have a direct relationship with an enterprise. The Corp Com function in companies is increasingly taking on a critical leadership role in building a company's reputation among stakeholders. They are no longer just a service provider. Their work is very concerned with internal communications management from the standpoint of sharing knowledge and decisions from the enterprise with employees, suppliers, investors and partners. This underscores communications as being the most important liaison between an organization and the public.

In recent years, corporate social responsibility has gained importance in such fields as compliance, risk management, environment, social investment and community engagement. These are increasingly critical issues for companies. They are forcing companies to become more strategically engaged through communications.

Under these new circumstances, how companies are managing to meet the increased demand for CSR performance information becomes a complex issue because various corporate stakeholders and key corporate audiences including the investment community, employees, suppliers, customers, governments, regulators and the media all have varied requirements for this type of information. Many companies are placing CSR in the hands of the Corporate Communications department because this is where companies are proactively and professionally engaged in safeguarding, enhancing and communicating their company's corporate purpose, image and reputation. This why Corporate Communications and CSR meld so well with one another.

In all companies, communications impact all functional areas and this has resulted in it becoming a key factor in the creation, implementation, monitoring and reporting on all corporate activities. From a CSR-dominated viewpoint, it plans and implements various CSR related activities in an integrated manner, with the aim of strengthening organizations by defining purpose beyond just the bottom line.

No matter where CSR is located in the organization, it is clearly understood that, a company's CSR approach is an integral part of its core business objectives, approaches and competencies. This purpose alone places communications and CSR in a position to have a direct and constant impact throughout an entire organization. It is for stakeholders the source of understanding about what a company's purpose, goals and values really are. It is equally important for employees via internal communications aimed at influencing everyone's attitude toward the workplace and developing loyalty and pride in the company they work for.

Theoretically speaking, Corporate Communication plays a critical role in building and maintaining relationships with the stakeholders of a corporation. Thus, it is an indispensable reputation-management tool. Empirically we argue that the key issues that dominate the Corporate Communication profession, reputation management, and corporate identity, are the same drivers that dominate the rational for undertaking CSR in a company. But it remains also to recognize the impact that CSR can have on bottom-line issues which makes it also important as a part of the business process itself and not just a channel for PR or a marketing tool in communications.

Corporate Communications is the processes a company uses to communicate all its messages to key constituencies. It encodes and promotes a strong corporate culture, a coherent corporate identity, an appropriate and professional relationship with the media, and quick, responsible ways of communicating in a crisis. In the toolkit for the MBA, it can be the source of a genuine and authentic demonstration of corporate citizenship. It is how an organization communicates with its stakeholders and how that brings a company's values to life.

Corporate Communications are often defined as the products of communications, be they memos, letters, reports, Web sites, community engagement, social and environmental initiatives or programs. These make up most importantly an aggregate of messages that a company sends to its constituencies whether internal or external. The annual "Sustainability" or "CSR" report has become a fixed annual publication for most companies focused on reporting and measuring what a company has achieved through its CSR efforts.

It is important for companies to align their voice and image with who they are, to demonstrate integrity, to listen as well as speak to stakeholders, and when they speak to do so honestly. This makes corporate social responsibility a vital component of Corporate Communications, making it a strategic tool that makes a company stand out by creating competitive advantage.

CSR communicated via Corporate Communications influences the external stakeholders to every company in a variety of ways. A company's reputation can affect the ability to negotiate a contract or make a sale. Communications with a community can effect whether attempts to extend the business into that community are greeted with enthusiasm or hostility. Public trust or distrust of business is fueled by an accumulation of media reports about responsible or more often these days irresponsible corporate behavior.

We are living in an "Age of Transparency", a time in which business are forced to operate on the premises that all of its actions will ultimately be made public. It is an environment in which corporate reputation will be based less on the information that a company's professional communicators can shape and control and more on third party perceptions. Working to create these perceptions is where Corporate Communications using the tools of CSR ethically and authentically seek to demonstrate influence on reputation and the perceptions about a company over a longer period of time.

In an interconnected and chaotic business environment, corporations must have a coherent consistent voice and image. They need to become adept at articulating their own voice and getting that voice heard. When dealing with stakeholders, especially the media everyone knows that things out of sight are also out of mind. Companies who are out of transmission range when it comes to communicating with stakeholders do not earn their respect or attention. This is where communications and what they communicate play a critical role.

The majority of stakeholders are looking for signs that a company is visibly committed to a cause, both internally with its own vision and externally through active involvement. There is no better medium to achieve this than through CSR programs that support systemic changes in the form of conscientious environmental and social initiatives.

Donations of money alone are not particularly compelling. Instead a company needs to encourage employees to participate actively in local programs that also commit a company's time and energy in addition to whatever funds it donates.

Through communications, employees must be familiar and comfortable with, and informed about, all the messages a company is delivering to its stakeholders. If they are loyal to a company's vision, employees can assume the crucial role as the best advertisers for all a company stands for, and all they want to convey to stakeholders. The public is more likely to believe messages delivered to them individually by a personable individual rather than the anonymous proclamations of an organization through news releases or paid advertisements. Communications can show the results of CSR programs are having an impact on the welfare of the community so the public themselves can judge that they are more than just an act.

CSR, in terms of corporate communications presents the best means for a company to humanize its programs so that the community will identify with them. This especially gives a company's management the opportunity to consciously reinforce the organization's purpose, goals, and vision to ensure that these core messages are internalized first among employees before they are communicated to external stakeholders to understand them. For employees, communicating CSR internally gives them a sense of pride through association with a firm's good deeds and public recognition of those deeds.

Getting a reputation as a socially and environmentally conscious company gives a company political leverage and public support in times of need. Given identical or similar companies, a good CSR legacy would weigh more positively in a company's favor. This is what is called by social investors "positive screening", which is important for all stakeholders of a company, not just investors.

CSR is just one of the many criteria that stakeholders heed, but more and more it is clear that products and services alone are not the only parts important factors of a company that attract attention. Stakeholders form perceptions of a company based on all the messages it sends out through names and logos, through self-presentations based less on what they say but more and more on what they do. That is, putting the words used to communicate about who they are into action. This is how CSR initiatives activities serve to build a company's reputation as a good corporate citizen, socially responsible to the communities in which they operate, and in doing so get the word out about what the company stands for.

When a company contributes resources to causes that have a universal appeal, like public health, education, poverty alleviation, community investment and the environment, the company's reputation can dramatically improve across all stakeholders.

A company's reputation can be quite fragile as it is subject to the changing perceptions of key stakeholders. Here corporate communications crafts identity and build public awareness for a firm by building corporate reputation that serves the public good. Here is where a pattern for communications emerges based on CSR: civic mindedness, the reliance on employee volunteerism, the attempt to match company strategy and core competencies to corporate giving, the emphasis on giving to the local communities where they have a presence and the selection of social issues that have global impact and resonance.

The power of media hardly needs to be emphasized. The media pervades all aspects of our lives as a result of the technological advances and new media that are available. Media communications are an essential channel through which all stakeholders receive information and develop perceptions of a company.

More than any other stakeholder, the media has the power to expose a company's flaws or herald its achievements. For this reason, strong media relations have become one of the most crucial corporate functions. Owing to their extraordinary widespread reach, TV, print, radio and the Internet and new media are the primary means by which stakeholders attain valuable corporate information. This directly affects the company, its reputation and ultimately its bottom line. This is where CSR in Corporate Communications plays an immensely important role in the content of messages and perceptions that companies are transmitting to their stakeholders.

In the big picture if a company believes it is important always to align the direction it sets to achieve sustained profitable growth with its efforts to contribute to the sustainable development of society, the actions and the telling of why and how are where Corporate Communications and CSR intersect. Communications grounded in CSR are the most important way of building relationships of trust with internal and external stakeholders.

In conclusion, corporate communications represents the corporation's voice, its reputation, integrity and the images it projects of itself on a global and regional stage populated by its various audiences and stakeholders. It needs to be emphasized that aligning CSR and Corporate Communications in the MBA's toolkit is not about public relations and publicity. It is about the perceptions that for a large part are the products of CSR, the actual transformation of what companies say they are in into actions that have a beneficial impact on society as well on the business. This communicates a much deeper message, which is best described by the words of Peter F. Drucker, "The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."

About the author:
Bill Valentino, continuously working for Bayer in China since 1987, holds a MBA from Thunderbird, the Gavin School of Management, and a MA in Technology and Communications from Columbia University, New York. He co-directs the Tsinghua-Bayer Public Health and HIV/AIDS Media Studies Program and is a Senior Guest Lecturer at the Center for International Communications at Tsinghua University. He is also currently the Chairman of the European Chamber's CSR Working Group and a long-standing member of the AmCham CSR Committee in Beijing.

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