INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND THE CORPORATE COMMUNICATOR

LAIZER EDWIN N. BAPRM 42691

The principles discussed here are designed to underpin the skills and competences of corporate communicators by providing a disciplined understanding and insight into information and communication. Some familiarity with the professional world of information and knowledge management practice will help corporate communicators explain their information needs to information specialists and provide a body of knowledge and competence to achieve a degree of autonomy in working with information both with corporate communication colleagues and with clients. This autonomy and competence will increase the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of the corporate communicator. This will help to underpin corporate communication techniques and solutions by providing sound information and communication strategies.

The information and communication cycle

The idea of an information and communication cycle is one of the fundamental concepts of information analysis. The corporate communicator will already be familiar with analogies to the information and communication cycle (ICC) in marketing and media activity. Rowley (1999) offers an interpretation of the ICC from the perspective of information management. Such a model can suggest the intensities and directions of flow of information (for example from a demand and supply perspective) which can be applied to corporate communication settings. Questions for the corporate communicator include: how much information exists about a given issue; who is in possession of such information; what is the level of quality of the information; what is the nature of the com- munications activities used and preferred; how can information be processed and managed at different points in the cycle to relate to different needs and conditions; what are the optimum methods to gather, store, analyse and retrieve information; how can relevant information be targeted to the stakeholders and their concerns. 
Communication refers to the process of information transfer and the initiation and reception of communicated content. Information refers generically to content which can take many forms: data, information, intelligence, knowledge. The variety of forms of both information and communication are numerous. Two related concepts can also be introduced. Supply denotes broadly the avail- ability of content. Demand implies states of want, need and requirement for content which may or may not be expressed or realized. Demand and supply are also used as more technical terms in economic analysis, and these analyses are also relevant to the study of information. Information management is concerned centrally with the management of information supply and the mediation of information demand. This information management activity can be carried out individually, collectively and institutionally; in reality the three con- texts are frequently simultaneously active. 
This suggests that information management is a dynamic area; it is active and proactive, rather than passive. The central task is under- pinned by techniques in data and information (and document) storage, handling, retrieval analysis and exploitation. Nowadays these technical resources can be delivered equally to the desktop and to the field of operation using mobile communications. There are many circumstances where these techniques have to be practised and applied in varied and unstable field conditions. It is in these circumstances that the information and know- ledge experienced corporate communicator will have the advantage.