Strategic communication to engage stakeholders in the creation of shared value

Abstract

This research combines management and communication research fields through an interpretivist approach, to unveil how is strategic communication formulated and implemented to engage stakeholders in the creation of shared value. No organization exists in a vacuum. Every organization has a place in, and impacts upon, its own environment. Each organization is defined by the communication established with those key publics whose perceptions and opinions it deems important, regardless of the prevailing direction of the economic cycle. In a context of economic crisis, organizations tend to re-evaluate their investment decisions, particularly with regard to action in the field of corporate social responsibility as this usually represents an economic cost. When this happens systematically a paradox arises, as it is precisely during an economic crisis that society as a whole needs more investment from the corporate world. As a result, several multinationals are breaking away from the conventional paradigm of corporate social responsibility and adopting a new one, the creation of shared value, whose central premise is that the competitiveness of an organization and the health of the communities around it are mutually dependent. Once it adopts a position of creating shared value, an organization needs to engage with most, if not all, of the stakeholder groups upon which it depends, and the challenging task arises of developing an integrated strategic communication that clearly signals the strategic direction of the organization and demonstrates a commitment to its stakeholder groups. This research therefore analyses the formulation and implementation of strategic communication that resulted from the transformation of a real estate organization’s sustainability strategy from one of corporate social responsibility, to one of creating shared value with its stakeholders. In terms of research design and bearing in mind the novelty of the concept of creating shared value in both academia and the industry, we adopted a case study approach gathering data from interviews and documents from a real estate organization; and then adding a contextual layer with the analysis of documents from other organizations in the same industry. The data was based on actual organizational systems, practices and 6 processes, and was collected in real-time as the implementation took place. For comparison purposes, the research included data from before the change of strategy. Extensive exploratory reading in both the fields of management and communication unearthed no evidence of existing theoretical or empirical work that combined management theories on stakeholder engagement and creating shared value, with communication theories on strategic communication. Thus, benefitting from this interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this research brings a unique perspective on a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context. The findings of this research have led us to propose a new stakeholder-centric strategic communication model, one that calls for increasing integration between the interests of the organization and its stakeholders.

Date of Award	30 Apr 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	José Manuel Seruya (Supervisor)