Now available, the report of the third annual Academic Symposium hosted by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The event was sponsored by the Institute for Public Relations and the Arthur W. Page Society. The 30 attendees included thought leaders from the academic community as well as corporate and agency leadership.
The 2008 symposium featured academic, corporate, and agency responses to the The Authentic Enterprise, a Page Society report which examines the core drivers of the 21st century’s business environment and implications for communicators. Business school, communications school, and practitioner perspectives on the publication produced additional insights into the Chief Communications Officer’s (CCO) role today and tomorrow:
- Whose job is it to manage corporate authenticity? More specifically, where does the CCO role begin and end, and how does it mesh or overlap with a Chief Marketing Officer’s responsibility? Both are struggling today with their respective identities (and often, “they is us”).
- The notion of authenticity requires communicators to not only take responsibility for promise-making, but also promise-keeping. In this context, CCOs must be more astute about presenting the communicator’s roles and functions to the rest of the corporation.
- Corporate authenticity is not functional, but must exist enterprise-wide, permeating all levels and areas of an organization. This hands CCOs an excellent opportunity to step forward and assume leadership in defining a corporation’s values – the cornerstone of character and authenticity – and instill senior leader commitment.
- The Authentic Enterprise constitutes a call for CCOs to lead the process of achieving corporate authenticity rather than attempting to own the process. This will involve working with all functions- marketing and beyond- to gauge whether or not the corporation is truly authentic and realigning it wherever it falls short.
The full report on the 2008 Tuck School Academic Symposium is available now on the Institute’s website.
Excellent overview of an impending paradigme shift (p.21 – 22). An intriguing phenomenon, the first era lasted for 50 years (1945-1995, the next for only 12 (1995-2007). Can this short span only be explained by the absence of globalisation and the the internet (now Web 2.0) in the first era?
As in all other areas of corporate endeavours, the communication arena is also afflicted by the omnipresent gap between knowledge and action—walking the talk.
Having seen and read some of the material that is published on the web I would be
wary of betting the farm on “ billion publishers”. Channel selection will still remain a crucial concern of the CCO.