Journal of Public Affairs Volume 2 Number 3 Regular Feature Analysis and analytical tools for managing corporate public affairs Craig S. Fleisher Received: 13th February, 2002 Odette School of Business, 508 Odette Building, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON N9B 3P4, Canada; tel: þ1 519 253 3000; fax: þ1 519 973 7073; e-mail: fleisher@canada.com Craig S. Fleisher holds the Odette Research Chair in Business and is Professor of Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Previously President of the Canadian Council for Public Affairs Advancement, he has written several books and scores of articles on public affairs related topics. ABSTRACT This paper examines the place of analysis in corporate public affairs practice. It examines analysis in the larger context of organisational decision making, examines models, tools and techniques available to the CPA practitioner, and identifies factors why analysis has not received the prominence it deserves in the field and beyond. KEYWORDS: analysis, education, methods, models, professionalisation, techniques INTRODUCTION In two previous articles for the Journal of Public Affairs, it was suggested that the author did not believe that the field of corporate public affairs (CPA) had yet met all the crucial tests that would warrant it being named among the so-called professions. Cor- porate public affairs might be alternatively labelled a discipline, an area of knowledge, a field of study, or a collection of associated concerns. Whatever it is called, for CPA to attain professional status, it must be associated with knowledge, expertise or skills that are unique to it and not shared with other fields. Whether it is a medical doctor studying bodily symptoms to proclaim a diagnosis or a lawyer studying criminal evidence to piece together a plausible pattern of action, all professions entail practical applications of their underlying unique knowledge bases to improve the human condition. This process is arguably the most fundamental knowledge-based task underlying any profession and requires the professional to skilfully convert inputs into outputs of value. Despite the typical absence of discussion or empirical research on this topic, CPA practitioners also perform the process of analysis. In this article, the focus will be on the process and techniques of analysis used by CPA practitioners. Positioning analysis in the context of the larger organisation’s decisionmaking process will come first. Next, two dozen unique tools by which CPA practitioners can analyse just two facets of their Journal of Public Affairs Vol. 2 No. 3, 2002, pp. 167–172 & Henry Stewart Publications, ISSN 1472-3891 Page 167 Analysis and analytical tools for managing corporate public affairs environment, issues and stakeholders are identified, to give the reader a better sense of the breadth and depth of models and techniques that are potentially available in the CPA analysis tool kit. Last, a number of key reasons are examined as to why CPA analysis has not received more attention and prominence. THE PLACE OF CPA ANALYSIS IN DECISION MAKING Every strategic business decision entails opportunity or risk. So how are socio-political strategies formulated and how do firms ensure that they are the ones that maximise opportunities and minimise risks? The answer — it is only through the careful collection, examination and evaluation of the facts, that appropriate strategic alternatives can be weighed in light of organisational resources and requirements. Despite the seeming obviousness of this statement, as strategy guru Michael Porter noted in a recent article, very few managers actually receive analysed information for their decision making or even have a strategy (Hammonds 2001). Every successful CEO recognises the need for systematic analysis of their organisation’s external environment. Nevertheless, few academic studies have formally assessed how CPA practitioners actually perform the analysis process and what methods they utilise in different analytical contexts; however, this absence of study does not negate the importance of analysis in the overall CPA task. What is analysis in a CPA context? Both a product and a process, analysis involves a variety of scientific and non-scientific techniques to create insights or inferences from data or information. CPA analysis is the multifaceted combination of processes by which collected socio-political information is systematically interpreted to create intelligence and recommendations for actions. Analysis answers that critical ‘so what?’ question about the gathered information and brings insight to bear directly on the deci- Page 168 sion-maker’s needs, helping the client to make enlightened decisions. Most managers implicitly or explicitly recognise the need for more systematic analysis of their public policy environment (Fleisher 1999). However, recognising there is a need for the capability and putting into place the systems, structures and skills needed to exploit the capability are very different things. Numerous researchers through the years have identified enduring gaps between what is viewed as being needed for decision making in organisations (ie expectations) and what is actually being delivered by organisational analysis systems (ie performance) (Ghoshal and Westney 1991). Experience and observation suggest that these gaps also exist prominently in CPA. The essential responsibility of a CPA analyst is to protect and enhance their company’s competitive and non-market interests by providing useful and high-quality analysis about the ‘4Is’, interests/stakeholders, intelligence, institutions and issues (Baron 1995) to their decision making, policy making, and/ or resource allocating clients. Analysis is provided to these clients in the form of analysis products such as assessments, briefs, bulletins, charts, conclusions, estimates, forecasts, issue reports, maps, premonitory reports, profiles, recommendations, and/or warnings. These analytical products are the most tangible manifestations of the outcomes of the CPA analysis process. My view is that CPA has made strides in recent decades in developing a collection of rigorous analytical methods, models or techniques. Practitioners can utilise these techniques and make worthwhile contributions to effective organisational decision making. Some of the tools are mostly unique to CPA itself, but the majority of techniques have been borrowed from related fields like administration, management, marketing, political science, public policy, and public relations. In the next section, the analytical tools available to the CPA practitioner to do Fleisher just two of the tasks underlying their responsibility set, analysing issues and stakeholders will be briefly illuminated. KEY ELEMENTS IN THE CPA ANALYTICAL TOOL KIT In the following section, some of the more popular tools in the CPA analytical tool-box for assessing issues and stakeholders are identified—two of Baron’s (1995) four non-market strategy framework elements. It might strike a casual reader that these are a substantial set of tools, models and frameworks that can be applied in assisting them to do analysis of their issues and stakeholders. In reality, the number of unique tools to assess just issues and stakeholders is substantially larger than the ones listed, and, from the author’s research and teaching well over 100 that have been practised and proven in use can be identified. Research currently and prospectively being conducted about these fields will only serve to extend and to validate new ways of assessing these critical CPA task components. It is not the intention to be exhaustive in this characterisation, although it would be useful to the field for scholars to someday make this important contribution. The goal in this paper is to provide the reader with a keener sense of the range and value of analysis that can be performed using these frameworks, models, techniques and tools. Issue-related CPA analytical techniques These techniques include the many tools by which CPA practitioners identify, understand, research and assess how the organisation should address critical socio-political issues. Heath (1997: 84) defines an issue as a ‘contestable point, a difference of opinion regarding fact, value or policy the resolution of which has consequences for the organisation’s strategic plan.’ Prominent among these issue tools are: • issue scanning-monitoring-analysis system model (Johnson 1983) • issue life-cycle charting (Buchholz 1995; Corrado 1984) • issue source assessment (Bartha 1982; Molitor 1979) • issue priority scoring (Gollner 1983; Sopow 1994) • issue impact/occurrence or probability assessment (Bartha 1982) • issue congruency test (Bartha 1993) • issue distance mapping (Corrado 1984) • issue expansion mapping (Mahon 1989) • issue frequency model (Mack 1989) • issue response patterns (Buchholz 1990; Mahon 1989) • issue typing schemes (Bartha 1982) • issue implementation planning schemes (Fleisher 1999) • strategic issue management model (Ansoff 1980) • strategic management model for issues (Ryan, Swanson, and Buchholz 1987), etc. Stakeholder-related analytical CPA techniques A key stakeholder is an individual or group that can materially affect or can be affected by a company’s actions, decisions, goals, policies or practices. CPA tools used to identify, understand and assess stakeholders include, but are not limited to, the following: • influence/importance matrix (Bartha 1982) • stakeholder cooperation/threat diagnosis matrix (Savage et al. 1991) • pyramid of corporate social responsibility (Carroll 1991) • social actions modelling (Jackson and Aldag 1993) • social context stakeholder model (Buchholz 1990) • stakeholder mapping (Michaelove 1985) • stakeholder responsibility matrix (Carroll and Buchholtz 2000) • stakeholder view of the firm (Freeman 1984) Page 169 Analysis and analytical tools for managing corporate public affairs • three attribute stakeholder (Mitchell et al. 1997) typology Analysis using the items above is carried out by using a variety of research-based applications. This can include, but is not limited to: attitude and opinion polls, survey techniques, focus groups, expert panels, observation, scenario development, content analysis, Delphi methods, event and/or trend analysis etc. Like other fields, CPA is amenable to the application of a wide range of traditional qualitative and quantitative research approaches, and practitioners need to be informed of and able to choose and use the appropriate ones for the relevant analytical tasks they face. WHY IS CPA ANALYSIS SHORT-CHANGED IN MANY ORGANISATIONS? Why hasn’t CPA analysis become more prominent in the training and practice of CPA practitioners? In the following section, several of these forces are outlined that need to be dealt with before progress can be made. Some of the more important ones are summarised in the following categories: individual, organisational and institutional. These are dealt with in turn below. Individual-level factors There are few CPA practitioners who will admit that they cannot do analysis; however, few besides the most fortunate of CPA veterans actually can do it effectively. Despite the popular misconception that everybody can naturally do it, studies have shown that analysis is a task that is substantially learned over time and through experience. If they were ever to be truly tested, undeniably some practitioners will demonstrate they have learned how to do it better than others. Not all CPA practitioners are born with the same proclivity to perform rigorous analysis. Some have an inclination to perform lateral thinking and analysis, such as ‘NTs’ from Myers Briggs Profile Typing (Fleisher Page 170 and Bensoussan 2002). It would behove companies to hire those individuals with the highest level of capability to perform analysis positions. Most HR departments do not perform this testing at present, not the least because there are few reliable ways of testing analytical capability in CPA. Last but not least, analysis is hard work and many people prefer paths of lesser resistance than having to perform rigorous thinking and assessment. Organisational factors Analysts do not make the organisation’s public policy-related decisions. Their task is to advise and/or to make recommendations to their clients based on the best objective assessment they can deliver. Unfortunately, many organisations have decision makers who do not know quite what to make of CPA analyses and recommendations, sometimes due to their lack of education and familiarity with the field. Few organisations provide the CPA practitioner the time necessary to truly think strategically and analytically and to rigorously apply analytical tools such as those previously outlined. Also, how will analysts get beneficial practice in applying these techniques if their formal or on-the-job schooling does not allow them ‘safe’ case studies and projects to apply it to without the real-world organisational pressure? What makes this situation worse is that CPA practitioners are often blamed for non-market organisational failures but are rarely given praise for successes. Good analysts need to be given opportunities to fail without it causing them irreversible career damage. CPA analysts rely upon good data collection of both hard information and soft information (human intelligence). Any CPA practitioner knows that the most critical public policy positioning intelligence will come from dialogues, conversations and discussions. If only hard data is collected from, say, the Internet, then the analytical task will be biased and, in turn, so will the output. Fleisher Remember the old GIGO adage — garbage in, garbage out. Unless analysis encompasses both hard and soft information, garbage will come out. Formal and informal education about the task of actually gathering quality data through primary methods is another one that is sorely lacking in the field. Institutional factors Analytical capability in CPA requires instruction, training, development and experience — practice helps in analysis, the more experience one gets in doing good analysis, the better they become. The author is not aware of a single university course that teaches the fundamentals of CPA analysis, and the many concepts and tools underlying the task are only available in fragments among a wide variety of mostly academic research and scholarship. Furthermore, there are few mentors or instructors who could disseminate this scholarship. Most practitioners never received training in CPA analysis, and there is no handbook they can pull off their shelves to guide them through the process. These and other factors mean that analysis will remain under-emphasised in CPA. There is much work to be done by a variety of stakeholders, including academics, associations, managers, practitioners and scholars, in order to overcome the factors identified above. Although some groups, including the Issue Management Association and Public Affairs Council, have recently organised task forces to study the questions of providing education, the field is a long way from meeting this essential underlying characteristic of the established professions. SUMMARY The task of analysis requires a delicate balance of art (creativity, insightfulness, resourcefulness) and science (methods, techniques, processes) that few can effectively manage. The process of CPA analysis has never gained prominence as a sub-discipline within the field. As long as this remains the case, CPA and its practitioners will never exploit the field’s vast potential to simultaneously increase both its value and legitimacy. 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