Extract

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Communication and Transformation in the Global Corporation

This chapter explores corporate communication as both a strategic management function and a strategic process in corporations. To understand how radical changes in business and the media have influenced the practice of corporate communication, this chapter examines those changes themselves—globalization, the Web, the Networked Enterprise, uncertainty, privacy, and “big data.” It reflects on the relationship between the behavior of multinational corporations and the political world order following World War II—globalization. It describes the nature of the far-reaching technological changes that have transformed communication media in the last decade—the Web. It explores the impact of technological data-gathering on privacy—big data. It examines the ways in which changes in the global economic system have combined with technology to alter the role and structure of the multi-national corporation—The Networked Enterprise as the new corporate business model. Volatility in global financial and commercial markets; political turmoil in Western democracies and the developing world, combine to make planning for the future a high-risk activity—uncertainty. This framework enables us then to analyze the role of corporate communication and how it should be defined in order to address how the forces described here have shifted the context of corporate communication.

The Changing Role of the Global Corporation

The world of business in the 21st century has generated nearly impossible demands on corporations. The role of the corporation has been transformed by the...