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Introduction
To be most effective within an organization, both theory and practice point to the need for communication managers to belong to the dominant coalition, or elite group of executives who make the key business decisions of a company. When they belong to the dominant coalition, communication managers are better able to institute ethical and excellent communication practices both within and outside of the organization.
While scholars and practitioners agree that communication managers are usually not included in the dominant coalition, they believe that exploring and understanding the characteristics of this group will help managers ultimately crack the code and become members of the group. The dominant coalition is often defined as the power circle within the firm; thus to belong, a communication manager must have power. But how is power defined for a communication manager? In other words, what are the attributes of power that communication managers have when they are members of the dominant coalition?
Does admission to the power group simply require that communication managers report to the chief executive of the firm - or that they practice a certain style of communication - or that they make strategic decisions? Or are the characteristics of the "power team" more nuanced? This study examines the attributes of power exhibited by communication managers who work at top US corporations. It also looks at their management and communication practices and demographic information to add to our understanding of the characteristics of communication practitioners in decision-making groups. The study draws on data from a survey of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 companies (n =161) to explore these issues.
Though other projects have studied the composition of dominant coalitions - and the qualities of communication managers who have obtained membership - few have been based on quantitative data that can be generalized to a larger population of corporations. Results of this study suggest that four key attributes of informal power relations differentiate communication managers who are in the dominant coalition from those who are not: reciprocal trust, strategic business decision making, social inclusion and communication expertise. By identifying these four dimensions, this study, first, can propose guidelines that may be useful to practitioners who want to better understand the circumstances under which a communication manager would...