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Corporate Communication Assignment: Issues Pertaining in an Organization

Question

Task: your boss, the CEO of MnM company , has asked you to prepare a report investigating the question: ' why and how should managers master the corporate communication function '? in so doing she expects you to examine the following four subfunctions within the function :

  1. identity , image and reputation
  2. stake holders
  3. crisis management
  4. corporate responsibility

Each topic for 1500 words please make sure that i may get some good marks. because it has more marks percentage.

Answer

Abstract
This corporate communication assignment mainly highlights the importance of corporate communication within the current business contexts, through focusing on the subject question of ‘Why and how should managers master the corporate communication function?’. During the discussion of this corporate communication assignment, total four sub-functions remain integrated with the assignment, for exploring the professional relationship among the functions and corporate communication process. The first sub-element is brand identity, image, and reputation. The main two area of issues in this case described in this corporate communication assignment are presence of internal confusion and absence of consistency as well as connectivity. Followed by this, the second area of concern is the corporate social responsibility, in which organisations often face obstacles due to the changing human rights and less integration of CSR activities with the main business strategies. Additional to this, the next sub-topic of this assignment is stakeholder relation, which is completely dependent on the process of corporate communication. Absence of stakeholder communication might lead to the development of lack of congruence and generational differences, which causes internal conflicts and change resistance. In the crises management process, companies often experience various internal pressures as well as friction, along with the unavailability of resources. All the issued areas related with the sub-functional regions of an organisation have direct or indirect connections with the corporate communication process, for example, arrangement of different communication groups, organisation of different connective forums, application of various communication tools, and implementation of 10-step strategic process for crises solution.

1. Introduction
Although every human are very familiar with the term ‘corporate communication’, however, many of the business entities do not have the clear idea that without proficient and effective communication process, business operations cannot be done properly. As per the previous evidence described in this corporate communication assignment, corporate communication strategies have the potentiality of improving the decisional quality, which is essential in achieving the targeted organisational success. Corporate communication strategies can be considered as one of the potential management function, which is essential for maintaining the positive workplace culture as well as employees satisfaction level. Therefore, managers need to understand the every pace of corporate communication for maintaining employee engagement, customer loyalty, and stakeholder satisfaction level. However, in order to manage the corporate communication standards, managers want to focus on several sub-standards, such as identity, image, reputation, corporate responsibility, media relations, and crisis management, which are the focus of this assignment.

2. Identity, Image, and Reputation
Introduction: The identity, image, and reputational standards can be considered as significant aspects of any business, as they have direct connection with the existence of business operations performed by different companies from past several years. On the other hand, it can also be considered as the identification sign of the business, along with the unique service or products they deliver. As like the other elements, such as customer satisfaction and employee engagement, for managing the brand identity and reputation, corporate communication is essential. However, most of the times, managers avoid this significant connection, due to which the entire business becomes affected.

Through expanding from the previous paragraph, it can be stated that brand image and brand reputation can add extra value to their products and services, which is often used as the identifier among the similar other service or products. According to the statement of Mitra (2019), brand image and identity can make an external impression among the domestic and overseas customers, through which people can point out and recognise them spontaneously. There are several steps, which are required to be followed during the image building, such as adoption of appropriate strategies, selection of appropriate message for the customers, selection of suitable media or channels, dissemination of active information, and analysis of the external responses. Apart from this, various other steps are also needed to understand, while developing and creating the brand image and reputation. However, some common brand identity and brand reputation crisis are as follows-

2.1. Internal confusion: However, the managers of MnM Company might face various obstacles while stepping towards the development of brand reputation and brand identity. For example, one of the major obstacles in creating brand identity is the internal confusion state. As per the statement of Mahesh Chandra Guru et al. (2013), it is often observed that the organisational members, who have the primed responsibility of brand identity, could not understand properly the values, behaviours, objectives, and targets of the company. This problem might often reach to the depth of company’s root, when the management becomes less flexible and less understandable to such issues. Urde and Greyser, (2016) mentioned that since brand identity is embedded in the root views of the organisations, therefore, understanding its significance for the company and its value among the customers is essential for all the internal organisational members. Without understanding, they cannot explain their brand image before their potential customers.

2.1.1 Reasons behind the internal confusion: The main reason behind the internal confusion described in this corporate communication assignment is absence of proficient communication among the managers and employees involved with the organisations. In most of the cases, Lauritsen and Perks (2015) reported that employees often could not reach to the top-level management standards, for discussing about their points of the disengagement. The managers could not understand the types of problems faced by the lower level staffs, as they often overlook the significance of communicating with them. Apart from this, due to the presence of global framework, most of the companies incorporate multi-cultural employees for strengthening their workforce. However, presence of multiculturalism leads to the necessity of using multiple languages inside the work premises, which is also a reason of internal confusion, as the other linguistic employees could not understand the explained vision and mission statement. Absence of effective training and orientation programs might also influence the overall positivity and engagement level of the employees.

2.2 Absence of consistency and connectivity: Apart from the above-mentioned conflicted situation in this corporate communication assignment, it becomes often essential for the managers to maintain the consistency as well as connectivity level through developing brand image and brand identity. Based on the viewpoints of Balmer and Wang (2016), generally every brand logos or other brand markers are developed through including number of unique selling points of the companies. Therefore, every time, when a customer interacts with their preferable brands, they can form association with the company. It reflects on the fact that every external customer also could influence the direction of company’s business. Therefore, the companies require maintaining the consistency over the period of business, across all the platforms they acquire. However, it is often observed that brand consistency often could not be managed due to the less knowledge regarding consistency management.

Tran et al. (2015) mentioned that the term consistency can often remain associated with the connectivity, as customers are mostly remain loyal to the brands, who fulfil their desires through a consistent and connective way. Therefore, loss of consistency often results in loss of connectivity also. Apart from this, connectivity also can be shown through the adoption of preferable channels, by which they can efficiently reach to their target customer groups, or vice-versa. Such connectivity is beneficial for all the smaller and larger organisations, as brand loyalty often makes highly loyal customer groups. Absence of proficient connectivity affects the reputation of the company, and ultimately, the companies often go to ‘out-of-sight/out-of-mind’ from the customers, which become a highly adverse point in case of maintaining the brand identity and brand image.

2.2.1 Reasons behind the absence of consistency and connectivity: Brand crisis is often caused by the above two mentioned aspects, which can be considered as the output of poor corporate communication standards. Like the above internal confusion statement, it often becomes necessary to provide them suitable and appropriate training for exploring the process of maintaining brand consistency. For example, it is often observed that many companies have good reputation in e-commerce industry; however, their social media presence is lower. On the other hand, Balmer et al. (2016) mentioned that many companies often show various commitments for the benefits of their customers, however, they often have the least standard customer services. These examples show that in many cases, employees could not maintain the consistency among the created brand and their services, especially due to the reason of less understanding about the company’s brand values, less understanding about the brand image, and presence of poor communication standards.

Conclusion
Therefore, it can be stated that the above two issues dicussed in this corporate communication assignment and the underlying reasons reflects the fact that implication of corporate communication is essential for maintaining brand identity, image, and reputation. However, not only in this case described in this corporate communication assignment, corporate communication is essential in many other sub-areas, and the absence of proficient communication standards might affect them greatly. One of them is Corporate Social responsibility, which is illustrated in the following section.

3. Corporate Responsibility
Introduction: Like the above-mentioned brand identity, image, and reputation, CSR is another area of significance, which is essential for promoting the vision of business operations along with their accountability standards, in front of the wide range of internal and external stakeholders. Through aligning with the part of brand image, it can be stated that corporate responsibility is one potential strategy for building the brand reputation among the customers, as the organisations can develop a positive image among the customers through performing several well-designed and well-farmed activities, mainly for protecting their internal and external environmental standards. The activities would be done through such ways, by which the surrounding societies and communities can acquire long-term benefits.

Benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility: The activities corporate social responsibilities are not only associated with the social improvement process, it is also beneficial for improving the operational sustainability standards. According to the statement of Crane and Glozer (2016), the company can improve their strategic financial performance, reduce their costs of existing operations, and enhance the percentage of quality as well as productivity. Apart from this, reduction in the regulator oversights and production of the safety liability standards are some other achievements of the changed CSR tactics, followed by the globalised companies. Not only the companies themselves, CSR activities are essential for charitable contribution in the social improvement process, voluntary programs, and so on, along with addressing some environmental requirements also.

There are different drivers behind the increasing necessity of performing proficient CSR activities. For example, from the reports of MnM Company, it is necessary to work on the required social areas of improvement, for shrinking the roles and responsibilities of local governing bodies. Apart from this, due to the impacts of globalisation, the demands and expectations of the external corporate world, such as communities, customers, suppliers, investors, and active organisers, are continuously changing. This can also be controlled through the designed CSR activities as well. Additional to this, according to the statement of Edinger-Schons et al. (2018), proper and adequate CSR activities often help in building better customer interest along with developing effective positive relationship with the suppliers and investors. However, there are different issues, often faced by different organisational management, while performing the CSR activities, some of which are discussed as follows.

3.1 Frequent changing social, communal, and human rights requirements
From the past few years, the societies and communities are constantly evolving, therefore, the several integrated factors of human lives are also changing continuously. On the other way, as per the different perspectives of Gruber et al. (2017), it can be stated that for fulfilling the changing requirements of customers, all the ongoing and future corporate projects need to be restructured and remodelled, due to which the associated economic, social, and political stakes of the existing projects would also become modified.

Therefore, it can be assumed that the companies need to undergo through frequent transition stages, during which they cannot remain static at their CSR decisions and strategies. They often need to change the programs initially started for the social development, which has no importance in the current contexts. Due to such reasons, it becomes more common to reinvest in similar projects, after changing the requirement objectives of this program, which can cause an economic burden over the organisation. Therefore, Correa-Garcia et al. (2018) mentioned that such unfavourable conditions often affect the CSR programs, as management often start avoiding the program conduction for eliminating possibilities of such adverse consequences.

3.1.1 Factors behind the frequent changing environment: The main external factor behind the changed human rights context is impacts of globalisation. As mentioned in the earlier part, globalisation reduces the distance among the people living in different countries and continents, due to which they start understanding the trends and patterns of lifestyle in other countries. Apart from this, along with globalisation, digitalisation is another external driving factor in changing the basis and fundamental requirements of the surrounding environment (Kim, 2019). In order to become a part of these continuous changing aspects of society as well as human lives, government initiatives and project programs started changing their project objectives.

However, less understanding about the alignment of Human Rights and less knowledge regarding the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights often creates issues for the companies in meeting the changing social needs (Crane and Glozer, 2016). For example, due to the increasing environmental pollution, different companies need to make necessary changes in their environment protection policies and guidelines, including the waste management cycle, natural environmental resource protection, and so on. The unfortunate fact is that absence of sufficient collaboration and communication among the government, corporate organisations, and public mostly affects the CSR activities of the companies.

3.2 High competition and absence of Proficient integration of CSR with mainstream business
Most of the globalised companies provide their concentration on different CSR fields, such as environment, health, education, disaster management, livelihood, women empowerment, education, and so on. Therefore, it is often observed that almost 50% of the companies do not follow any specific CSR strategies as per their personal business standards, they are generally copying each other, by designing similar sort of projects within similar geographical locations. Therefore, such spirit often enhances the competitive nature of the companies, and almost all of them try to create some social obstacles for the others, instead of working as an alliance for the welfare of the nation (Crowther and Seifi, 2018). Along with the above, several smaller organisations even do not have the idea of aligning the CSR activities with their mainstream business, as they often work as the associates of other larger companies without developing personal CSR focus. Due to this reason, the societies and communities could not reach to the certain improved position.

3.2.1 Reasons behind the above issue: The main reason behind the above condition described in this corporate communication assignment is absence of mentioning CSR roles and responsibilities in the business education, due to which the new business entrepreneurs do not have any specific idea about the CSR activities, what to do and how to do. Apart from this, business personnel could not make efficient strategies for the CSR activities, due to the incomplete ideations about the topic. This is the main reason behind such copying activities conducted by different companies as well, which triggers the competitive environment. According to the statement of Chaudhri (2016), absence of corporate communication is another reason in both of the CSR issues, as the companies would not communicate for aligning their social welfare activities, in order to improve the condition of societies and communities.

Conclusion
Therefore, based on the entire above discussion of this corporate communication assignment, it can be stated that understanding the needs of societies and communities require high level of corporate communication, as without communication, they cannot fulfil the changing demands of the surrounding environment. Thus, it can be mentioned that managers of MnM Company need to develop strategies for corporate communication, in order to reform the CSR structure and strategies. However, this is not the end of the list. Efficient CSR and positive brand image often creates positive media relation, which is also highly dependent on the corporate communication strategies, which would now be mentioned in the following section.

4. Stakeholder Relations
Introduction: From the initial period of business operations in this corporate communication assignment, it is proved that any business entity cannot function solely for running their business operations in this competitive age; therefore, they need to depend on several other bodies for supporting their operational services. Such supportive bodies can be considered as stakeholders, who have direct or indirect connection with different corporate organisations. The prime contribution of the stakeholders is they help in taking effective decisions according to the requirements of the customers, by which the organisations can receive more revenue from their planned services or products.

There are different types of stakeholders, such as internal and external, who have different aspects and interests level on the success of the company. The internal stakeholders are employees, managers, and top management level, whereas the external stakeholders are customers, suppliers, investors, government bodies, and community members. Schnackenberg and Tomlinson (2016) stated that both group of stakeholders have different power and interest level. For example, employees and customers are the most priority stakeholders of a company, as employees are the productive unit, whereas the success ratio of the company is dependent on the customers. The opinions of stakeholders can change the decisions taken by the top-level authorities. On the other hand, any company cannot take any operational decision without analysing their feedbacks. Therefore, it can be easily assumed that since stakeholders have essential roles in the business decisions; thus, Caputo (2016) mentioned that range of challenges and obstacles are integrated within the stakeholder relationship management.

4.1 Internal conflicts due to lack of congruence
As mentioned in the earlier part of this corporate communication assignment, it is already mentioned that the different group of stakeholders retain different viewpoints about a specific business operation, such as changes in a service or putting innovation in existing products. Therefore, it is highly possible that there will be some contradictory points among the stakeholders about the decision. Such as for example, in case of IT sector organisations, it becomes often necessary to install effective anti-hacking software for protecting the confidential data from the risk of hacking. The customers might support this, as they can achieve benefits from this process, whereas certain stakeholders might not support this as this can cause excessive financial burden over the organisation. According to the statement of Brunton et al. (2017), it is reported that when stakeholders have different set of norms and values, which do not match with the organisation, then the company members can face issue like lack of congruence.

4.1.1 Reasons behind lack of congruence: It is often observed that stakeholders often retain different perspectives about an organisation, as their priorities are different from each other. One of the main prominent reasons behind this is absence of sufficient connection among the stakeholders, which leads to the development of various wrong perceptions. Noe et al. (2017) mentioned that most of the organisations have different types of stakeholders, and all of them remain associated with the organisational process. Therefore, without communicating with each other, they cannot even understand what are their actual requirements and priorities and what they want from the business success. Apart from this, due to the reason of less collaboration and communicational relationship among the stakeholders, it becomes often difficult to develop effective professional relationship among them. Confusion among the internal and external stakeholders affect the smooth transition process of the organisations, due to which the companies often face reduced customer loyalty along with the downward brand reputation.

4.2 Resistance to change due to generational differences
This is a most sensitive challenge for the traditional organisations, who generally operates their business from the initial time of business operations. According to the statement of Martínez et al. (2016), the issue of generation gap is integrated in the process of employee motivation and customer expectations. For example, it is often observed that the organisations, started their business around 50 years ago, have different business strategies and objectives, as per their traditional customer standard. However, they often could not cope up in the present competitive market environment. It is reported that most of the companies operating from the previous decades provide long-term commitments to their customers, whereas the companies operating in the modern age require providing short-term commitments to most of their younger generation people. Due to this reason, the stakeholders also require adopting changes and modifications in their business viewpoints, at which stage, the main issue occurs. Martín?de Castro et al. (2016) reported that the generational differences often create obstacles in understanding the exact changing needs and expectations of the customers, which ultimately results in the development of change resistance process.

4.2.1 Reasons and impacts of change resistance: Like the other issues, the change resistance process is also another result of the absence of corporate communication. The corporate communication assignment suggest that stakeholders often misunderstand the changing needs of different generations, due to the lack of proficient communication standards among them. On the other hand, in most of the cases, stakeholders think that after adopting the changed business operations, the organisations might also change the partnership relations with the stakeholders, and create new partnership with such organisations, who have the capacity of meeting their changed needs (Martín?de Castro et al. 2016). For example, the most significant internal stakeholders, employees, often resist the changes, as most of the old-aged workers have the wrong conception that change management process might increase the risk of job loss or unemployment.

Due to this reason, especially suppliers and investors concentrate on resisting the modified operational aspects, instead of understanding the area of changes. Agudo?Valiente et al. (2015) reported that change management process also requires changes or modifications of policies and regulatory frameworks, which is another reason behind the resistance, as most of the existing employers do not have the desire of learning new things after working such a long time of their lives. Apart from this, the changing requirements of the organisations also need to modify the leadership and management structure of the organisations, which is another point of conflicts, as the stakeholders think that the new management and leadership structure might not be suitable for the existing business models. Therefore, they might become forced for accepting the modified regulations, policies, leadership, and management elements

Conclusion
Therefore, through considering the above aspects related with stakeholder relationship in this corporate communication assignment, it can be stated that corporate communication plays highly contributory roles in maintain positive relation with the internal and external stakeholders. The above issues reflect that both formal and informal types of corporate communication are necessary for involving the stakeholders in the standardised process of operation. However, the fact is that, although all of the above sub-functional element can be controlled through the incorporation of corporate communication, however, several crisis points also remain embedded in the operational process of companies, which are discussed in the following part.

5. Crisis Management
Introduction: Crisis can be considered as some events, which generally occur at an unexpected manner, and provide detrimental impacts over the surrounding events. It is evident that crisis could not occur as per the internal size and shape of the organisations, therefore, all the larger and smaller organisations might face crisis due to varieties of reasons. In case of company reputation and public relations, the presence of crisis can be considered as a threat for the organisations, as these have negative consequences over the reputational and relational management standards. As per the corporate language, it can be mentioned that crisis can cause potential damage to the business, its associated stakeholders, and the operative industry.

According to the statement of Bundy et al. (2017), the crisis conditions can be occurred due to various reasons, either manufactured or natural. For example, among the distinctive types of crisis, some of the most common types of crisis are product or service related issues, natural disasters, and technological crisis. Apart from the internal crisis, organisations often face several obstacles due to the occurrence of human resource crisis, political or financial crisis and so on. It is previously proved that all the crisis conditions have certain specific features and characteristics, based on which the companies need to identify the suitable strategies for managing the adversities. The characteristics would help the companies in developing practical as well as reliable responsive strategies in order to protect the business operations (Coombs, 2015). However, during the integration of crisis management, the companies might face some internal challenges, which might often lead to enhance the negative impacts instead of lowering it.

5.1 Presence of high pressure, confusion, friction and stress
From most of the previous evidence, it can be stated that almost all the large and small organisations currently operating in the world, face the above-mentioned issue, during their corporate age. As per the statement of Mukkamala et al. (2015), employees often remain under highly stressful condition, and such as meeting the pressures of workload and deadline. Therefore, they cannot assess or identify from which and what way, the crisis condition might enter into their workplace. For example, a most common event causing crisis condition is the presence of excessive workload and the absence of sufficient employees for managing the workload. On the other hand, employees often remain confused about their duties and responsibilities, especially when require dealing with the crisis conditions. Additionally, during crisis, since organisations often undergo through some economic adversities, therefore, employees become stressed due to the fear of unemployment or job loss. Such excessive level of stress and confusion might trigger the problematic situation as well.

5.1.1 Reasons behind the confusion, stress and friction: The main reason behind this issue is absence of communication. As mentioned in the first section, in most of companies, there remains a huge communication gap between the upper level and lower level workforce groups, as they do not share their opinions about the process of working or other positive and negative factors. Such less interaction with the employees causes the main confusion among them, as they could not understand their duties, especially during the process of crisis management (Civelek et al. 2016). Apart from this, the less cooperative management body often creates some negative environment among the employees, due to which they think that they might lose their jobs or employment, if they cannot fulfil their work targets. Such pressurised conditions often affect their physical and mental body, as high workload destroys their work-life balance on the other hand, excessive stress might deteriorate their internal strengths. All of these situations can cause the high occurrence of employee disengagement and absenteeism, which can lead to further crisis condition inside the workplace.

5.2 Unavailability of appropriate resource integration
As mentioned in the earlier part, many organisations do not arrange required resources for mitigating the risk conditions, and therefore, the companies might face different kinds of obstacles while try to perform their planned tasks or operations. As per the statement of Al Shobaki et al. (2017), the resources might be any types, human resources, physical resources, or monetary resources. For example, since maximum numbers of organisations are currently running on technological operations, therefore, absence of technical expert might become the reason of crisis, as they could not deliver the desired products or services to their potential customers within time, which reduces the percentage of brand loyalty. Apart from this, crisis often occurs when the relationship with investors become deteriorated, as the companies then face especially monetary burden, due to which they need to reduce their production cost and employee remuneration. Kim and Krishna (2017) mentioned that this might affect employee engagement standards, which ultimately lead to the situations of production delay or service delay.

5.2.1 Reasons and Impacts of unavailability of resources: As per the evidence collected by different researchers, it is proved that running a business operation smoothly requires integration of sufficient resources. Since the business service or products are highly dependent on the process of combining strategies and available resources, therefore, the organisational management requires focusing on the arrangement of adequate amount of physical or human resources, for delivering the expected products or services to their customers. Seiffert-Brockmann et al. (2018) mentioned that unlike the other issue mentioned in 4.1, the main reason behind unavailability of human resources might be the absence of effective education among the neighbouring people; therefore, the companies often could not get sufficient talent pool from their neighbourhood.

For example, software development companies or companies dependent upon the IT operations, situated in rural areas, often could not get proficient IT technical operators from their surrounding regions, as most of the rural people are still unaware about the usage of technology due to absence of business education opportunities. Apart from this, the confusion, stress, and work pressure causes the high level of absenteeism, which is another reason of human resource unavailability. Negative workplace conditions often affect the relationship with stakeholders, and therefore, the companies often could not get sufficient amount of physical or monetary resources from the suppliers and investors (Johansen, 2017). Absence of monetary strength often affects the company’s capacity of outsourcing physical and human resources.

Conclusion
Henceforth, from the above discussion in this corporate communication assignment, it is proved that analysis, assessment and evaluation of the embedded issues, its associated crisis conditions, integrated risks, and impacts on reputations is essential for running the business operations smooth and transiently, which can be mostly achieved through the incorporation of corporate communication. Therefore, it can be stated that like all the above-mentioned functions, corporate communication is essential for managing the internal and external crisis conditions, and for overcoming from the crisis, the managers need to align the corporate communication strategies with the crisis management frameworks.

6. Conclusion
Therefore, based on the entire discussion of this corporate communication assignment about the sub-functions of corporate communication, it can be concluded that it is necessary for the managers to understand every smaller details about the process of communication. The assignment sheds light on the relationship of corporate communication with the different sub-functional areas, such as development of brand identity and reputation, management of stakeholders, improvement in the CSR activities, and modification in the crises management plans. In case of the first sub-functional element, it is necessary to arrange some group discussion sessions or periodic team meeting for retaining the customer loyalty, through which the companies can hold their reputational status. On the other hand, for improving the CSR activities, communication is essential for understanding the exact needs of the social and communal people. The next sub-function stakeholder management is highly dependent on the strategic corporate communication process, through using different internal and communication tools. The last critical sub-function of crises management requires integration of 10-steps of crises communication plans, for eliminating the crisis conditions and maintaining competitive positions. Corporate communication assignments are being prepared by our quality management assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable best assignment help service.

7. Recommendation
7.1 Identity, Image, and Reputation
Involving reputation framework and maintaining communication consistency for developing stronger reputation
Through considering the above two issues related with brand identity and brand reputation, it can be stated that all the managers of corporate industry requires understanding about the process of reputation management, in which corporate communication plays a bigger role. The framework of reputation management includes several key steps, through which the organisational management can efficiently understand the adversities present in the business operation. The areas of adversities are often used as the pointers of improvement, as the organisational management would create the reputation management plans based on the pointers. According to the statement of Ver?i? and ?ori? (2018), the steps of reputation management framework are illustrated in the following image (Figure 1).

steps of reputation management framework

Figure 1: Reputation Framework
(Source: Balmer and Wang, 2016, p.21)

Among all of these steps, the aspects of communication is common, as without proficient communication the managers could not take any decisions for building the brand identity for their companies. At this viewpoint, it can be assumed that implementation of corporate communication is one of the best way for dealing with such problems in brand identity crisis. During the implementation of effective communication standard for reputation management, the MnM Company managers at first require to understand the gaps between ‘see’ and ‘say’. Lauritsen and Perks (2015) mentioned that communication gaps are mainly developed due to the presence of differences among messaging, perceptions, behaviour, and media presence. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce all the gaps, by incorporating proficient channels of communication.

The managers and employees need to communicate about the image, for measuring the point of its current position and the point to be reached. Therefore, based on the viewpoint of Mitra (2019), incorporation of internal communication channels can reduce the communication gaps. Through the channels, employees can easily reach to their supervisors and managers, and clarify their doubts about the services or products. On the other hand, periodic informal team meeting and group discussion session can also help the internal members in properly understanding the brand value of the services and products, and try to develop strategies accordingly for managing the level of brand consistency. In various cases, the managers often focus on the Proactive and Reactive Theory, in which different organisational elements like promotion of brand values, implementation of customer feedbacks about the brand power, and strategies for maintaining brand loyalty through Turn-Around-Time remain included.

7.2 Corporate Social Responsibility
Reviewing CSR needs of societies and planning according to the needs
In order to develop the CSR strategies, at first the companies need to understand their competitive advantages, which can be utilised effectively while designing their CSR policies and programs. According to the statement of Chaudhri (2016), involvement of not only the organisational personnel, government bodies, political members and community personnel is also required, from whom the companies can get adequate information about what are their needs and expectations from the companies. At this point, the managers need to integrate the process of corporate communication. For example, the companies can open an official page or discussion forum, by including all the internal and external stakeholders, as in this page, all involved person can express their opinions about the necessary CSR activities.

Apart from this, in order to develop alliance for the social welfare, companies need to maintain the positive relationship among them, through reducing the competitive nature and enhancing the communication as well as collaborative aspects. After understanding the necessities, companies need to assess their capabilities by measuring the available and required resources. Lim and Greenwood (2017) stated that successful implementation of CSR can lead to enhance the ROI rate, along with creating a trustworthy relationship with the surrounding societies and communities. However, companies need to remain static in the process of corporate communication, for informing their customers about the changes they made and the initiatives they taken for the external societies.

7.3 Stakeholder Relations
Implementing improved connectivity by using corporate communication tools
Like the above two aspects, integration and maintenance of corporate communication theories and strategies can be considered as beneficial for maintaining the relationship with stakeholders. However, in order to maintain the relationship with internal and external stakeholders, the companies require using different communication tools, some of which are as follows.

Intranet

This is mainly used for communicating with internal stakeholders, such as multilevel employees and other workers. Through the intranet, the organisational members can communicate with easily with all of their team members and supervisors, which is effective in eliminating the possibilities of internal conflicts. The language of communication could be both formal and informal (Schnackenberg and Tomlinson, 2016).

Round table discussion

Round table discussion is a program for communicating with the CEO or other executive team members of an organisation, for discussing about any types of serious events or communicating about implementation of any necessary procedures, through formal language.

Focus groups

Fombrun et al. (2015) mentioned that focus groups are a set of some people, among whom the characteristics are more or less similar. Therefore, based on their opinions, the organisations could understand the needs of similar category people.

Website

Informing about the integrated changes in the existing operations and the newly modified promotional strategies can be performed through using the websites, as this can convey the message to a broad range of population.

Media Relations

Noe et al. (2017) mentioned that the organisational authorities often use different media-based communication tools, for unifying the stakeholders, such as press release, press conference, by-lined articles, and press briefings.

Conference/Seminars

This can be used for both the internal and external stakeholder management, as in such conferences, representatives of all the partnered organisations, community groups and internal leaders remain involved.

Table 1: Application of Communication Tools for managing stakeholders
(Source: Created by learmer)

7.4 Crisis Management
Creating, developing, implementing and monitoring the 10-steps crisis communication strategies

Pre-crises

Description

Post-crises

Description

  • Anticipation of Crises
  • Identification of crises communication team
  • Identification and recruitment of trained spoke-person (Civelek et al. 2016)
  • Conduction of training
  • Establishing proficient monitoring system
  • Identification of potential stakeholders
  • Developing the holding statements
  • During the first phase, the organisational managers need to identify the possible internally preventable crises and the required external resources for crises management.
  • Development of a crises communication team would help in understanding the associated risk factors while crises occurs, and the team members can effectively communicate and distribute the roles of other team members.
  • Recruitment of properly skilled and properly trained personnel as a spoke-person would help the companies in understanding the possible upcoming risks. For example, in an IT sector, the spoke-person can explore the risks regarding cyber hacking.
  • Involving all the stakeholders in the crises management plans and monitoring their feedbacks while taking preparation would be helpful for mitigating the post-effects of risks (Johansen, 2017).
  • Assessing the possible situation of crisis
  • Finalising and adapting key message
  • Analysis of post-crisis situation
  • After crises occurrence, the organisational personnel can focus on assessing the crisis characteristics.
  • Crises communication team would follow the process of corporate communication while exploring the crises key features, based on which they would take a functional message for dealing with crises (Bundy et al. 2017).
  • After successful elimination or overcoming, the crises communication team would then evaluate the after-impacts of crises and the learning learnt by the members from this situation.

Table 2: 10-steps Crisis Management Strategies
(Source: Created by learner)

Reference List
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