ABSTRACT
Enlightened companies know that an effective corporate or organizational communication process can both enhance and protect its reputation. And they also know that the reputation, while an intangible asset, provides a number of tangible benefits to the company. A significant challenge for those who run corporate or organizational communication functions is to manage the ways the organization engages its key stakeholders. Because an organization competes for the positive attention of the groups who matter to it, how it engages those stakeholders has meaningful bottom-line impact. Those who preside over corporate or organizational communication need to understand these links and to be able to harvest the best knowledge about any given stakeholder group. The key to successful corporate and organizational communication is to have clarity about the destination—the reputation that will help a company better accomplish its goals—and of the best path by which to get there.
