ABSTRACT
The purpose of corporate public affairs is to attain sufficient power to enable an organization to achieve preferred outcomes in the political arena and to forge and maintain a sociopolitical environment favorable to it. To achieve this goal, public affairs professionals identify and analyze the environmental forces in the political arena and engage in political activities and various forms of communication to craft public policies. Political scientists, too, recognize the importance of the constant flow of messages among participants who initiate and influence what policies, laws, and regulations will govern society.1 The process can aptly be called strategic communication, which seeks to manage the behavior of people and organizations to enhance the chances of achieving a desired outcome. As described by Jarol B. Manheim of George Washington University, it is “a term of art that refers to the use of sophisticated knowledge of such attributes of human behavior as attitude and preference structures, cultural tendencies, and media-use patterns, as well as knowledge of such relevant organizational behaviors as how news organizations make decisions regarding news content and how legislatures and government agencies form their agenda, to shape and target messages so as to maximize their desired impact while minimizing collateral damage.”2
