DIGITAL AGE AND INTEGRATED COMMUNICATION
LAIZER EDWIN N
BAPRM 42691
07/06/2016
Barriers to integrated corporate communication 

The concept of integration is warmly embraced by some but argued against by others, sometimes for what they consider to be the sheer impracticality of integration. What is indisputable, however, is the fact that the whole communication business is going through a period of change which is having a significant impact upon working practices and philosophies. Developments in database technologies are encouraging and facilitating integration but as Fletcher et al. (1994) have discovered there are major organizational barriers which can arise when a company attempts to move towards database management in any significant way.

Mind-set

The mind-set built up over many years of practice has rewarded specialization and over looked the need for, and benefits of, integration. Gonring (1994) has identified the fear of change and loss of control felt by individuals associated with the communication business. Robbs and Taubler (1996) have highlighted creatives’ aversion to integration and their lack of willingness to work across the media and communication mix. Schultz (1993) has commented on the cult of specialization and the history, tradition and experience of companies as limiting factors to the fulfilment of integration. Moreover, there is the question of what it is that we wish to integrate.

Taxonomy and language

The very taxonomy and language that are used to describe the communication mix have a detrimental effect on the integrative process (Hartley and Pickton, 1997). The result is that we perceive and encourage the uses of communication as discrete activities. This taxonomy (albeit it in simplified form) which typically identifies the mix as personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, sponsorship, publicity and point-of-purchase communication (Shimp, 1997), is increasingly inadequate in expressing the range of activities it seeks to describe and presents major classification difficulties. It is difficult, for example, to know where to place within the mix categories such varied activities as direct mail, product placement and endorsement, exhibitions, internal forms of communication, etc.

Structure of organizations

The structure of organizations may make it difficult to co-ordinate and manage disparate specialisms as one entity. Organizations have typically subdivided their tasks into subunits (departments) in order to cope with the magnitude of operations. Management’s response when faced with large, many faceted tasks has been to disaggregate them and give them to specialists. While project teams and cross- functional assignments can help to break down organizational barriers there still remain problems of hierarchical structures, vertical communication, ‘turf battles’, power and ‘functional silos’ (Gonring, 1994; Schultz, 1993) in which individuals and groups are protective of their own specialization and interests. Significantly, the increasing use of database technology and systems offers new structural mechanisms for facilitating organizational integration.

Elitism

Not only do organizational structures encourage separatism, there is a sense of perceived elitism exhibited by individuals within each communication specialism. Public relations specialists extol their superiority over advertising specialists who likewise extol their virtues over public relations, direct mail and sales promotion, etc. (Varey, 1998). For as long as such views are held it is not likely that they will come as equals to the ‘communication discussion table’ to determine what is best for the total corporate communication effort.

Magnitude of task

It is very difficult to conceptualize the ‘big picture’ and to muster all the organizational influences needed to achieve integration. There are many levels and dimensions to integration which all pose their individual and collective difficulties. To be implemented, integrated corporate communication requires the involvement of the whole organization and its agents from the chief executive down- wards. It needs consideration from the highest, corporate, strategic level down to the day-to-day implementation of individual tactical activity.