Conceptual approach to corporate communication

Challenges and proposals

Abstract

During the last twenty years, the definition of corporate communications (CC) has followed a polysemic path of changing meanings, determined by a markedly instrumental perspective that privileges the role of the techniques, tools, and instruments of administrative management and execution. In this context, we note how corporate communications respond to a strategy of conceptual stretching, since they include elements and attributes of marketing, administration, branding, and design, so that professionals within this field can respond to the challenges and obstacles of the globalized world. At the same time, these last twenty years have seen an expansion of the role of corporations in people’s lives and a rise in investments by corporations looking to inflate their image, strengthen their identity, and keep pace with the exigencies of the market, in an economy in which services impose themselves over raw materials. Image, identity, and organizational culture are the intangibles of today and tomorrow. One of the objectives of this article is to open up the debate on corporate communications through a bibliographic overview, in order to leave behind the prototypical viewpoints of the press and of labor activism.