ABSTRACT
“My job is to get Allen-Bradley to appear as one company in the marketplace, and combine and leverage our resources,” ventures Edson Allen, reflecting on his role as VP of strategic communications. He is faced with the challenge of aligning the work of communications staffs at Allen-Bradley’s four separate business units, which develop and manufacture plant-floor automation products, such as pushbuttons and sensors for industrial computers. “The need to integrate communications is obvious, since the different units are making products designed to work together, which a lot of times are sold to the same customers,” says Allen. But the job of Edson Allen is a lot like running a cemetery: he has a lot of people under him but cannot make them do anything. Allen doesn’t have official authority over the individual marketing and communications departments outside of corporate headquarters. They report to their business line managers in the interest of being integrated with the business and close to the customer, and have only a “dotted line” matrix reporting relationship to the corporate communications office. Yet Edson Allen has developed an effective participatory approach in the absence of a central authority.
