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'Corporate Communications: Theory and Practice' Joep Cornelissen (Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2004; ISBN 0 7619 4435 4 and ISBN 0 7619 4436 2 (pbk); $34.95)
It may be the spate of corporate scandals in the USA, it may be the growth of personality cults in the world of business but the fact remains corporate communications has evolved into a discrete discipline within the public relations diaspora. Once upon a time companies either threw their budgets behind brands, 'sales are everything' or they argued that corporate communications was the chairman's job. He was expected to handle it. 'It' being the government, the City or the media, through his 'wealth of personal contacts'.
In fact many PR practitioners saw little difference in technique between the way they handled brands and how they projected the company that manufactured them. Sloppy terms like 'corporate branding' were used to reinforce the argument that companies should be treated as if they were just another brand.
During the last decade, however, attacks on the private enterprise culture, combined with the intensity of political concern over how companies behave in a fragile socioeconomic...