Abstract
We all love to be connected. Today we are saturated with opportunities to make friends, meet up with colleagues, find new partners and search for old ones. It is surprising we can keep any relationships as we solicit, pursue, build, relocate and re-establish numerous individual and group relationships. And this is just in our private lives. As communicators we then overlay this with professional work contacts, which spread and grow particularly over social media platforms. But it has always been this way for the professional communicator with a journalistic lineage to the ‘contacts’ book. So how does this play out in today’s world? And, explicitly, in the contemporary communication department? How do the best communicators within these excellent departments manage relationships? In this chapter we explore the challenges of what we discuss as the key criteria of excellence in this eighth commandment: be intricately linked both inside and outside the organisation.
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Notes
- 1.
Nothhaft (2010).
- 2.
Zerfass et al. (2016), pp. 42–50.
- 3.
Zerfass et al. (2016), p. 44. n = 2,710 communication professionals across Europe. Q: Please think about how you spend most of your time at work. Please divide your productive time spent at work (values should add up to 100 per cent). In a typical week, I spend the following amount of time with…figure displays median for each item; values have been rounded based on mean values.
- 4.
Zerfass et al. (2016), p. 63, n = 2,583 communication professionals across Europe; Macnamara et al. (2015), n = 1,148 communication professionals across Asia-Pacific; Moreno et al. (2015), n = 803 communication professionals across Latin America. Q: How important are the following methods in addressing stakeholders, gatekeepers and audiences today? Scale 1 (not important) – 5 (very important). Percentages: frequency based on scale points 4–5. Overall evaluation based on 4,534 respondents in 84 countries.
- 5.
Zerfass et al. (2016), pp. 51–53.
- 6.
Zerfass and Viertmann (2016).
- 7.
Zerfass et al. (2016), p. 51. nmin = 1,907 communication professionals who spend at least 10 per cent of their time for coaching, training, consulting and enabling. Q: When you coach, advise or enable executives/senior managers or other members of your organisation/client, how often do you practice the following activities? Scale 1 (not at all) – 5 (very often) for both categories. Percentages: frequency based on scale points 4–5.
- 8.
Johansson and Ottestig (2011), p. 164.
- 9.
Valentini (2010), p. 158.
- 10.
Valentini (2010), p. 160.
- 11.
Arthur W. Page Society (2008).
- 12.
Arthur W. Page Society (2008).
- 13.
Gregory (2011), p. 99.
- 14.
Zerfass et al. (2016), p. 116. n = 1,504 communication professionals working in communication departments across Europe. Q: Within your organisation, the top communication manager or chief communication officer…is a member of the executive board (strongly aligned)/reports directly to the CEO or highest decision maker on the executive board (aligned)/does not report directly to the CEO or highest decision maker (weakly aligned). Highly significant differences (Kendall rank correlation, p ≤ 0.01, τ = 0.169).
- 15.
Watson and Sreedharan (2010).
- 16.
PRCA (2014).
- 17.
Pozin (2014), p. 1.
- 18.
Pieczka (2002), pp. 321–322.
- 19.
Zerfass et al. (2008), pp. 61–62.
- 20.
Zerfass et al. (2014), pp. 60–71.
- 21.
Valentini (2010), p. 156.
- 22.
Zerfass et al. (2014), pp. 63–71.
- 23.
Giddens (1991).
- 24.
For example, see Lee and Jeong (2014).
- 25.
Verhoeven and Aarts (2010), n.p.
- 26.
Zerfass et al. (2015), pp. 82–95.
- 27.
Zerfass et al. (2015), p. 89. n = 1,277 communication professionals working in communication departments and n = 652 communication professionals working in agencies and consultancies. Q: Why does your organisation work with agencies, freelancers and communication consultants? Q: Why does your average client work with agencies, freelancers and communication consultants? Scale 1 (not important at all) – 5 (very important). Mean values. ** Highly significant differences (one-sample t-test, p ≤ 0.01). * Significant differences (one-sample t-test, p ≤ 0.05).
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Tench, R., Verčič, D., Zerfass, A., Moreno, Á., Verhoeven, P. (2017). Commandment 8. In: Communication Excellence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48860-8_8
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