International Journal of Strategic Communication
ISSN: 1553-118X (Print) 1553-1198 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hstc20
Communication Theory: An Underrated Pillar on
Which Strategic Communication Rests
Betteke van Ruler
To cite this article: Betteke van Ruler (2018) Communication Theory: An Underrated Pillar on
Which Strategic Communication Rests, International Journal of Strategic Communication, 12:4,
367-381, DOI: 10.1080/1553118X.2018.1452240
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2018.1452240
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Published online: 13 Aug 2018.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
2018, VOL. 12, NO. 4, 367–381
https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2018.1452240
Communication Theory: An Underrated Pillar on Which Strategic
Communication Rests
Betteke van Ruler
Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam, Heemstede, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
This article addresses the concept of “communication” in strategic communication, and proposes a new lens through which to view communication in
order to deepen knowledge of strategic communication, as well as to
significantly improve the alignment of strategic communication with the
demands of today’s strategy development process. Looking at modern
strategy theory, this article focuses on communication theory as an ongoing
process of meaning construction. It posits that communication is a process
that is interactive by nature and participatory at all levels. This process is
not necessarily two-way but omnidirectional diachronic, with an emphasis
on the external and internal arenas of continuous meaning presentations,
negotiations, and constructions. Strategic communication, therefore, needs
to be conceptualized as an agile management process in which the focus is
on feeding these arenas for strategy building and implementation, and on
testing strategic decisions by presenting and negotiating these in a continuous loop.
Introduction
As a research field, strategic communication is said to examine how organizations use communication purposefully to fulfill their mission (Hallahan, Holtzhausen, van Ruler, Vercic, & Sriramesh,
2007; Holtzhausen & Zerfass, 2015). Because communication is an integral part of the field and the
purpose of communication is essential to the concept of strategic communication, we should
consider communication as the pillar on which the field rests. However, what is fundamentally
meant by “communication” remains rather unclear, as do the metatheories or lenses through which
the field views the concept. Unraveling the often rather implicit concept of communication that
strategic communication scholars seem to employ, it is questionable whether the lens through which
communication is viewed is appropriate for today’s demands of organizational life. In this article, I
will elaborate on this issue and propose a lens with which to examine communication within the
context of strategic communication, in such a way that fits modern forms of strategy development.
Communication theory
The term communication theory refers to the body of theories that constitute our understanding of the
communication process (Littlejohn, 1983). Theories represent various ways in which observers see their
environment, and as Littlejohn claims (1983, p. 12), because theories are abstractions, every theory is partial.
Each theory delineates a way of looking and, therefore, its truth value can only be measured in term of how
well it is constructed. This is the reason why there is much disagreement about what constitutes an adequate
theory of communication. The search for who is doing what in a communication process and with what
CONTACT Betteke van Ruler
Netherlands.
ruler@telfort.nl
University of Amsterdam, Hagenduin 20, 2104 AT Heemstede, The
Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC © 2018 [Betteke van Ruler]
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
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effects, to paraphrase Lasswell (1948), is the basic question of every communication theory, although it
might be studied from different angles or by looking at different facets.
There has never been agreement on what “communication” or “to communicate” means. Even in
classical Latin, communicare meant “to share with,” “to share out,” “to make generally accessible” or
“to discuss together” (Glare, 1968, p. 369). Rosengren (2000) suggests that, above all, communication
concerns the process of meaning creation: questions concerning how people create meaning psychologically, socially, and culturally; how messages are understood intellectually; and how ambiguity
arises and is resolved. For Littlejohn, “communication does not happen without meaning, and
people create and use meaning in interpreting events” (Littlejohn, 1992, p. 378). Thus, the crucial
question concerns our understanding of “meaning” and how the process of meaning creation works
(for an overview of the concept of meaning, see Littlejohn, 1983, pp. 95–113).
In communication theory, there are at least three different lenses with which to view how this
process works: communication as a one-way process of meaning construction, in which the sender
attempts to construct or reconstruct the meaning developed by the receiver; communication as a
two-way process of meaning construction, in which two or more people construct new meanings
together; and communication as a omnidirectional diachronic process of meaning construction, in
which the focus is on the continuous development of meaning itself.
Communication as a one-way process from sender to receiver
Early theories of mass communication were focused on communication as a one-way process in which a
sender does something to one or more receivers. However, the identity of this something remained a matter
of debate. Some theories viewed communication as a process of dissemination, a flow of information in
which a sender disseminates a message to receivers by revealing its meaning within this message. In this case,
the focus is on the flow of information, where this information is seen as objective, as in the mathematical
communication theory developed by Shannon (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). In this model, reaching the
receiver is sufficient to make the communication successful. In relation to this one-way transmission
perspective, other theories view communication as an attempt by a sender to produce a predefined
attitudinal change in the receiver; that is, a change in the meaning of the situation as perceived by the
receiver. One well-known theory of this type is Two-Step Flow (Lazersfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948),
which stipulates that the mass media informs certain people, who in turn influence the meanings perceived
by others. There is also the personal influence model of Katz and Lazersfeld (1955), which considers that
responses to media messages are mediated by interpersonal communication between members of one’s own
social environment. This theory uses a lens through which communication is seen as a process directed from
a sender to one or more receivers, in which the meaning construction of the receivers is mediated by certain
influential others, or by peers.
Although the one-way approach might be convincing in relation to information giving and
persuasive communication, more recent approaches to the concept of communication view it as a
fundamental two-way process that is interactive by nature and participatory at all levels (for an
overview, see Servaes, 1999). This involves the paradigmatic change from the sender/receiver
orientation into an actor orientation, in which all actors may be active and take initiatives. This
implies that sharing meaning is not so much seen from a perspective by which the receiver should be
willing to share the meaning originally expressed by the sender, as is the case in the one-way
perspective. The emphasis today is much more on communication as a process in which meanings
are created and exchanged, or even shared, by the parties involved.
In the 1960s, Dance (1967, p. 294) discussed the issues that communication scholars had with
Shannon’s rather simple one-way transmission approach. At the time, they wanted to replace this
theory with a more circular model in which feedback became important or was at least not neglected.
The concept of feedback stems from Wiener (1961), who studied cybernetics from the early 1940s
on. Cybernetics is interested in purposeful levels of behavior within systems. Wiener concluded that
feedback mechanisms are essential in communication theory, whether in a machine or in an animal.
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All purposeful behavior requires feedback to be adjustable and therefore remain purposeful and have
a particular effect. However, “adding a feedback loop to a linear process model does not make that
model circular or dynamic – it is there to increase the effectiveness of the linear process” (O’Sullivan,
Hartley, Saunders, & Fiske, 1983, p. 90). Thus, this feedback idea of interaction has nothing to do
with a two-way lens on communication.
Communication as a two way process between actors
When looking through the two-way lens of communication, interaction is vital. However, there are
different interpretations of what “interaction” means in this context. The term comes from Latin and
not only means “direct reciprocal dialogue,” but also “to act upon each other and have influences on
each other” (Neumann, 2008, p. 2307). Thus, the term may refer to feedback processes as well as to
direct interaction between people, but it can also refer to a more abstract concept of interaction
concerned with how people relate to other meanings in developing their own meanings.
In interpersonal communication theory, interaction is usually seen from the angle of person-to
-person interaction or group interaction, as in Bales’ interaction process analysis or Fisher’s
interaction analysis (for an overview, see Littlejohn, 1983, pp. 227–240), in which people respond
to each other. This notion can also be found in relational communication theory as constructed
by Bateson, who concluded that every interpersonal exchange bears a message that contains the
substance or content of the communication, as well as a statement about the relationship itself.
Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967, pp. 48–51) called this latter part of the message
“metacommunication.” Watzlawick et al. (1967) also claimed that relationships emerge from
the interaction between people, with many kinds of interaction rules being set that govern
their communicative behaviors. By obeying the rules, the participants sanction the defined
relationship. In these models, interaction is focused on how people engage in conversations
with each other and literally converge in creating meaning. Thus, from this perspective on
interaction, the focus is on interpersonal conversations, whether mediated or not. In some
instances, the concept of dialogue is used, in this respect, to mean: focusing on the acts of
turning toward the other, and listening to each other with respect to differences in order to
enhance the quality of the communication (Broome, 2009, p. 305).
In strategic communication theory, the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO)
approach is becoming increasingly important as a lens through which to examine communication. According to Ashcraft, Kuhn, and Cooren (2009), CCO thinking begins with the premise
that communication is not just a peripheral epiphenomenon of human actions, but the primary
model of explaining social reality (see also Schoeneborn & Blaschke, 2014, p. 302). This interpretation relies on the Chicago School of Urban Sociology (cf. Rogers, 1997, pp. 137–202) and
has been popularized by Berger and Luckmann (1966) in their explanation of reality as not
“something out there,” but as something that human beings construct themselves. Typical of
CCO and related approaches is the idea that this construction is achieved through interactive
conversations between people.
Taylor and Van Every (2000) constructed the Montreal CCO model based on speech theory and
looked at communication from a co-orientation perspective. They focused on daily human interpersonal exchanges, by which, they argue, organization arises “through the laminated sense-making
activities of members, endlessly renegotiated” (Taylor & Van Every, 2000, p. 33). They suggest that
people orientate themselves toward each other, leading to moments of consensus, but this consensus
is endlessly renegotiated. For Taylor and Every, co-orientation is an ongoing, emergent process of
these interactions.
In a written conversation concerning different approaches to CCO (Schoeneborn & Blaschke,
2014), Seidl describes his own approach based on Luhmann’s theory of social systems, explaining
that Luhmann:
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argues that what matters is not how a particular individual understands a communication but how a subsequent
communication interprets the preceding communication it is connected to; only a communicative event can
determine the particular way in which the immediately preceding communicative event is understood (Seidl in
Schoeneborn & Blaschke, 2014, p. 290).
Here, co-orientation is also seen as an ongoing, emergent process.
Examining the CCO approach as a whole, it is obvious that emergence is an important concept: in
communicating, the people within and around an organization order and build the organization by
negotiating their meanings over and over again. Interaction is not so much a matter of how
meanings converge, but how meanings are continuously created in this manner, and developed in
this ongoing process of conversations.
Communication as an omnidirectional diachronic process of meaning development itself
There is yet another approach to communication. Through this lens of communication, interaction
also plays a key role, but in a different way to the approach previously discussed. In two-way models,
the notion of interaction is normally narrowed to a consideration of the concrete interactions of
those who are literally engaged in conversations with each other. Through a lens of communication
as omnidirectional diachronic process of meaning development itself, interaction is seen as a
dynamic interplay between actors in their roles as senders and receivers, which influences the
consequences of the communicative transactions at a fundamental level (for an overview, see
Stappers, Reijnders, & Möller, 1990). Through this lens, interaction is focused on the social acts of
all those engaged in a relationship with the communicative process itself and not so much focused
on their relationship with each other. This is to be seen as a virtual process occurring at the level of
the interpretations made by senders and receivers, which influence the meanings they give to a
message and consequently the effects of the message. Seen through this lens, actors are not
necessarily related or in proximity to each other.
In his seminal book on the process of communication, Berlo (1960) explained that a communication process is not a sequence of events, one following the other, but a continuous and
simultaneous interaction of a large number of variables that are moving, changing, and affecting
each other. Thus, interaction means that the sender plays a role in the interpretation of the receiver
in the context and situation in which the communication is taking place but does not necessarily
entail a conversation. This view is rooted in constructivism (Lindlof, 2008) and echoes Thomas
Theorem. As Lindlof argues, “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,”
which can be said to be a typical constructivist explanation. This perspective on communication
considers that “communication is the chief means by which the social world is created, understood,
and reproduced across time and space” (Lindlof, 2008, p. 947). For Burleson and Bodie (2008,
p. 953), “constructivism assumes that humans actively interpret the world, construct meaningful
understandings of it, and act in the world on the basis of their interpretations.” In this context, a
distinction is made between “constructivism” and “constructionism,” where the focus is often more
on how people construct meaning in their interactions. However, to avoid discussion about
constructivism and constructionism, I prefer to call the approach under examination here an
omnidirectional diachronic lens on communication.
The lens on communication as an omnidirectional diachronic process of meaning development
itself can also be found in the ritual model of communication as developed by Carey (1975, 2009).
Influenced by theorists such as Dewey, Innis, and McLuhan, Carey made the distinction between
transmission and ritual models of communication that occur in society. Transmission models are
classic sender-receiver models, yet a ritual model sees communication as a symbolic process,
whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed, over and over again, in a very
dynamic and uncontrolled way. Carey’s ritual model reflects the diachronic view of communication,
which, as Thayer (1968, 1987) argued some years earlier, stipulates that communication can best be
seen as an ongoing and complex process of learning in which meanings develop. By using the
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371
concept of the diachronic—which means developing over time—he focused on ongoing meaningcreation over time, instead of focusing on the transmission or the effectivity of messages, or on the
interaction between actors as people involved in communicating.
Dance (1967) further emphasized this notion of diachronism in his proposal of the helix as a
metaphor for the communication process in which meanings develop. He claimed that the image of
communication, viewed as a circular two-way process:
does make the point that what and how one communicates has an effect that may alter future communication.
The main shortcoming of the circular model is that if accurately understood, it also suggests that communication comes back, full-circle, to exactly the same point from which it started. … The helix gives geometrical
testimony to the concept that communication while moving forward is at the same moment coming back upon
itself and being affected by its past behavior, for the coming curve of the helix is fundamentally affected by the
curve from which it emerges. (Dance, 1967, p. 294).
For this reason, he proposes to focus on the communication process as constantly moving forward
and yet always to some degree dependent upon the past, which informs the present and the future
(Dance, 1967, p. 295). This is also why this kind of lens on communication is sometimes called an
evolutionary or transactional model (Stappers et al., 1990). Consequently, we should talk about
plural meanings creations, instead of meaning creation, and as an ongoing process that develops as it
occurs and cannot be predicted. From this perspective, feedback is still an important concept but
only as a formative monitoring tool to steer follow-up action.
Although at first sight, the helical model of Dance (1970), the ritual model of Carey (2009), and the ideas
of Berlo (1960) look similar to the CCO approach suggested by Taylor and Van Every (2000), unlike the
latter, Dance, Carey, and Berlo consider communication on a cultural, societal level, and look at meaning
development as such. From their perspectives, the concept of interactivity is not understood as entailing
interaction between two or more people. They look at the more abstract level of the interplay between social
actors, acting as senders and receivers, related to each other only in the context of developing their own
meanings continuously over time, thereby constructing society itself and, consequently, also constructing
ideas about how organizations in society should behave.
Krippendorf (1994) mentions the recursiveness of communication: it is an ongoing social process of deconstructing and reconstructing interpretations. This is not exclusively done in direct conversations, but is
an ongoing process, insofar as people orient themselves toward others, and again, not necessarily toward
their interaction partners (alone). This is why Faulstich (1992) and other German mass communication
scholars state that “Öffentlichkeitsarbeit” (which is often translated as “public relations” in the sense of
organizational work with and for publics and in public, e.g., as a part of strategic communication, BvR) is not
so much about interaction between individual human beings, but rather concerns societal action itself.
From my perspective, this is an interesting addition to the CCO approach, as it concentrates on
meaning creation itself, and therefore on the role of the organization in society, as one of the actors
in the arenas of ongoing meaning construction. Furthermore, it stipulates that people present and
propagate their own meanings but do so in a reflective and evolutionary way.
The premise that human beings reflect themselves, the other, and social reality in a constant
process of deconstruction and reconstruction is not new. Mead (1934) may have been the first to
bring the concept of “reflexivity” to the attention of the social sciences.1 As Ritzer (2000, p. 398)
states, “the general mechanism for the development of the self is reflexivity or the ability to put
ourselves unconsciously into others’ places and to act as they act. As a result, people are able to
examine themselves as others would examine them.” Mead had earlier explained this in these terms:
It is by the means of reflexiveness—the turning back of the experience of the individual upon himself—that the
whole social process is thus brought into the experience of the individuals involved in it; it is by such means,
1
Similarly to Holmström (2000), I use “reflectivity” instead of “reflexivity,” for two reasons: First, because of the psychological
behavioral connotations of the word “reflexivity” (which suggests a rather routine action: “reflex”), although here I refer to
reflection as a conscious cognitive process; and second, related to the background of the word, “reflex” is the perfectum of the
Latin verb “reflecto.” “Reflexive,” therefore, refers more to a state, whereas “reflective” refers to an ongoing process.
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which enable the individual to take the attitude of the other toward himself, that the individual is able
consciously to adjust himself to that process, and to modify the resultant process in any given social act in
terms of his adjustment to it. (1934/1962, p. 134)
Reflexivity or reflectivity, which I prefer to use, is the counterpart of causality: it is an ongoing,
interactive process, and not a discrete, linear one. Along these lines of thinking, reflectivity must be
seen as the core concept of societal interaction because it provides a better explanation of what
happens than causality. Human beings reflect upon themselves in relation to individual others and
the social group as a whole, and as a result their knowledge is reflective. The question of which of
these three lenses on communication is helpful for strategic communication depends on the question
of what strategic communication actually is.
Strategic communication defined
The concept of “strategic communication” suggests that not all communication can be seen as
strategic. One definition that can currently be found on Wikipedia states that: “Communication is
strategic when it is completely consistent with the organization mission, vision, values and when it is
able to enhance the strategic positioning and competitiveness between their competitors” (retrieved
23rd March 2017). In this case, communication is only strategic when it has a certain quality. When
attempting to define a field, this is problematic.
Like the unknown Wikipedia author, most known authors on strategic communication quote the
seminal article by Hallahan et al. (2007), who argued that the essence of strategic communication is
being purposeful, in order to advance an organization’s mission through communicating (Hallahan
et al., 2007, p. 3). When communication helps to move the organization’s mission forward in a
purposeful way, we may speak of strategic communication. Therefore, only communication that has
the intention to advance an organization’s mission can be defined as “strategic.” For these scholars, it
is not the quality that makes communication strategic, but its purpose of enhancing the organization’s mission. Many other authors echo this definition.
The next question concerns which aspects of all communication originating in and transmitted by
organizations belongs to strategic communication. Hallahan (2004) wrote about the different communication fields in organizations, such as management communication, marketing communication, public relations, technical communication, political communication, and information/social
marketing campaigns, sometimes covered by the umbrella term “integrated communications.” He
proposed that all these forms could be called “strategic communication.” He did not mention
organizational communication in his list, which is regarded, at least in the scholarly communication
field, as a separate field of communication in the context of organizations. However, in 2007,
Hallahan et al. claimed that: “Strategic communication examines organizational communication
from an integrated, multidisciplinary perspective by extending ideas and issues grounded in various
traditional communications disciplines” (Hallahan et al., 2007, p. 4). Although this suggests that
strategic communication is about organizational communication from a specific perspective, the
authors add that:
The emphasis is on the strategic application of communication and how an organization functions as a social
actor to advance its mission. … Whereas academic research on organizational communication broadly
examines the various processes involved in how people interact in complex organizations, strategic communication focuses on how the organization itself presents and promotes itself through the intentional activities of
its leaders, employees, and communication practitioners. (Hallahan et al., 2007, p. 7)
As a result, the authors focus on how an organization functions as a social actor, which suggests that
strategic communication is only about the integration of external communication fields. In the
explanation of this often-used definition, we can learn that what differentiates strategic communication is the fact that it is concerned with the intended communication that presents and promotes the
organization in all its utterances to the outside world.
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Thorson (2013) provides another rationale: “The strength of the approach [of strategic communication, BvR] is its emphasis on strategy rather than on specific tactics as well as its focus on
communications understood holistically.” In addition, Johnson and Scholes (1999, p. 17) called this
the difference between “strategic” and “operational.” Thorson does not explain what she means by
“holistically,” but we can assume that this aligns with the statement from Hallahan (2004) on the
integration of various forms of communication in and by the organization.
Thorson also states that the increasing complexity of a global, digital society has challenged the
capacity for organizations to engage in long-term strategic planning. She claims that this is why
organizations need strategic communication and strategic communication practitioners as a part of
strategy formulation. This would suggest that strategic communication is not only a matter of
presenting and promoting organizational strategy but also of building this. This idea has already
resonated within the field. Argenti, Howel, and Beck (2005) interviewed CEOs, SFOs, and CCOs and
showed that the respondents indeed see strategic communication as making a difference for a
business, and thus driving strategy development. The conclusion of Argenti et al. (2005) is that
even though the question of whether communication practitioners are part of strategy formulation
might remain open, it is obvious that strategic communication is part of strategy formulation.
In summary, we may conclude that strategic communication is seen as strategic when it integrates
all those communications that are associated with organizational goals and strategies. For some,
strategic communication is focused on presenting and promoting goals and strategies; for others, it is
also focused on driving its development. In other words, for some, strategy precedes strategic
communication; for others, strategic communication also constitutes strategy. Surprisingly, there is
not much debate over these differences. This might be because of the relative absence of a view of
communication as a pillar on which strategic communication rests.
Communication as a concept in strategic communication
Human communication is, of course, as old as humankind, but theorizing about strategic communication is rather new. Paul (2011), a professional and scholar in strategic communication in the
military field, reviewed all of the definitions of strategic communication he could find and argued
that strategic communication “should not be limited to formal messages, while actions also convey
meaning and should, therefore, also be part of strategic communication. What we do is often more
important than what we say” (Paul, 2011, p. 28). For Paul, strategic communication thus concerns
what you say and what you do. Although he claims that he is cautious about seeing the “public” only
as an audience, he retains the term “audience” but “means to include interaction with that audience
that goes beyond ‘great megaphone’ broadcasting” (Paul, 2011, p. 28). A closer look at his ideas on
interaction, however, reveals that he interprets interaction as equivalent to personal communication
from the organization to an audience, rather than broadcasting messages mediated by mass media.
This is a rather uncommon interpretation of interaction because it remains pure one-way
communication, namely what one says and does to present and promote the organizational goals
to audiences directly. He also elaborates on the question of whether strategic communication should
only inform people or might also be used to influence them. He concludes that communication is
always a matter of influence, and that it is permissible to influence your public as long as it is not
manipulation.
Although Paul does not define communication as such, he obviously sees it as a one-way process
of information-provision that flows from a sender to a receiver and influences the receiver automatically. In other words, communication is a matter of utterances, and when you make an
utterance it flows to your audience and has its effect. This is a rather prescientific “injection needle”
kind of approach to communication, and it justifies the conclusion of Nothhaft and Schölzel (2015)
that communication consultants often conceptualize communication “along the lines of a paradigm
of information flow, information transfer, information submission, or the like” (Nothhaft & Schölzel,
2015, p. 28).
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As Nothhaft argues (2016, p. 71), a major problem is that there is no solid theoretical discussion,
and very little convergence on the theoretical conceptions of strategic communication. Looking back
over the last 10 years of issues of the only scholarly journal that is purely focused on strategic
communication, the International Journal of Strategic Communication, communication theory seems
to not be a concept that needs much attention. It is obvious that communication should not be seen
as a simple flow from sender to receiver, as Paul (2011) conceives it, but there has been little debate
in the journal about how it should be seen. Only a few authors refer to communication theory,
especially when they prefer to see communication as an interactive or conversational process. After
the initial article by the founders of the journal in its first issue in 2007, which includes a review of
some theories on how communication works, the journal has not published a literature review on
the concept of communication, or any other article on how communication is or can be understood
in the context of strategic communication.
In the opening chapter of the Routledge Handbook of Strategic Communication, Holtzhausen and
Zerfass (2015, p. 4) state that: “The strategic communication process typically is a communication
process that follows from an organization’s strategic plan and focuses on the role of communication
in enabling the organization’s strategic goals and objectives.” Some years earlier, they specified this
in another way and proposed: “Strategic communication is the practice of deliberate and purposive
communication that a communication agent enacts in the public sphere on behalf of a communicative entity to reach set goals” (Holtzhausen & Zerfass, 2013, p. 284; italics added). Thus, for these
authors, organizational goals come first, and strategic communication is there to help realize these
goals, especially in the outside world. Strategic communication is thus one of the instruments to
successfully attain organizational goals, not to create or recreate them. In other words, strategic
communication follows strategy, and strategic communication is the aid with which to attain set
goals by influencing the public sphere to accept these set goals.
In their 2015 article, Holtzhausen and Zerfass posit that “the notion that communication can be
controlled and regulated is now largely redundant” (2015, p. 7). This is why they reject the concept
of linearity and argue that the question of “how do we get information from here to there?” remains
a valid question, “but more important is the question ‘What happens to communication in that
process and how is meaning shaped and co-created?’” They call upon a constitutive approach to
communication to answer this question: “Whereas the transmission model focuses on how to get
information from one point to another, constitutive communication focuses on the importance of
communication to bring about actual change and action” (2015, p. 7).
A constitutive approach is often seen as the lens “in which communication is seen as a process in
which meaning is created in interaction” (cf. Nicotera, 2009, p. 177). A closer look at Holtzhausen
and Zerfass (2015), however, shows that they maintain a rather specific approach to constitutive
communication: they are looking at the constitutive process among stakeholders, not among
organizations and stakeholders. They warn that this constitutive process among stakeholders can
last long after a message has been transmitted:
The role of the practitioner is to send information that can act as the point of departure for meaning creation
between a communicative entity and its stakeholders which can actually lead to social change and social action.
Instead of transmitting information, with the underlying assumptions that one can control communication so
transmitted, strategic communication increasingly focuses on the process of communication, which might take
place over long periods of time and stretch over time long after a message has been transmitted. (Holtzhausen
& Zerfass, 2015, p. 8)
Obviously, from their perspective, meaning construction is a constitutive process, but only among
people in the audience after the organization, as initiator, has spread its message.
Holtzhausen and Zerfass also stipulate the role of the media, which acts as interpreter in this
constituting meaning creation process. They alert their audience to the fact that media have a strong
role in shaping social and cultural realities. They warn them not to see the media as mere channels,
and audiences as mere receivers: “Strategic communicators need to consider how meaning is shaped
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in the interaction process involving stakeholders and the media practitioners and how stakeholders
interpret and recreate media content in the process” (Holtzhausen & Zerfass, 2015, p. 8)
Holtzhausen and Zerfass, who are the editors of the Handbook and leading scholars in the field of
strategic communication, do not give a definition of communication in their introduction to the
Handbook, but I would like to call their approach an enlightened “one-way orientation” to communication – enlightened because they are aware that meaning is constructed over time and that people
co-construct meaning. However, quite obviously, the organization does not play a role other than as
the initiator of this constitutive process by providing messages. Thus, for them, strategic communication entails presenting and promoting organizational goals, not constructing or reconstructing
them, yet strategic communication is seen as a kind of two-step flow process, in which media and
audiences negotiate meaning together.
Aggerholm and Thomsen (2015) have a different focus on strategic communication, more
precisely on the role of strategic communication in decision making in organizations. They argue
that the definition of strategic communication used by Hallahan et al. (2007) comprises “a somewhat
naive recipient and a rational and deliberate decision making process” (Aggerholm & Thomsen,
2015, p. 174). They question this definition and conclude that “all kinds of actors shape the
organization through his or her (strategic) communication role in the organization.” They also
criticize the communication theory of Hallahan et al. (2007) as being a “simplistic idea of strategic
communication as message exchange between sender and receiver” (Aggerholm & Thomsen, 2015,
p. 175), referring to Shannon and Weaver (1949)—who did not speak of exchange but of a flow from
sender to receiver—and thereby suggesting that Holtzhauzen and Zerfass maintain a simple
Shannon-like transmission view of communication. Aggerholm and Thomson prefer to understand
communication as a much more complex, multivocal process, whereby organizations are “constituted by complex webs of sense-making activities between groups and individuals whose understandings intersect, clash and interfere with each other” (Aggerholm & Thomsen, 2015, p. 175).
Whether we can see the lens of communication offered by Holtzhausen and Zerfass as an
enlightened one-way orientation, as I proposed before, or from a transmission perspective as
Aggerholm and Thomson do, the perspectives in these two articles on what strategic communication
is about and how communication works in strategic communication are completely different.
The CCO approach is becoming important in strategic communication theory. Marchiori and
Bilgarov (2015) argue that a strategy process itself is a communication practice. For them, communication is always “a process of active participants, not of neutral receivers and passive observers”
(Marchiori & Bilgarov, 2015, p. 191). Following the CCO approach of Taylor and Van Every (2000),
they conclude that a communicational practice, due to its procedural and interactive nature,
constitutes strategic practice” (Marchiori & Bilgarov, 2015, p. 193). Thus, according to Marchiori
and Bilgarov, strategic communication does not constitute the meanings of stakeholders, but of the
strategic practice of the organization itself.
Torp (2015) also refers to the Montreal School of CCO based on the theory of Taylor and Every,
in which organizations are considered to be constituted in and through human communication as a
continuous interactive process. “Communication then is the means by which organizations are
established, composed, designed and sustained,” Torp writes, citing Cooren, Kuhn, Cornelissen,
and Clark (2011, p. 1150). The focal point of the Montreal concept of communicative constitution of
organizations, Torp explains, is that “organization is an effect of communication, not its predecessor.” The organization, then, is not merely a container within which or from which one communicates; the organization comes into existence through communication:
The scope of organizational communication broadens to include virtually everything an organization says and
does, and everyone who is affected by the organization’s existence and activities. That is why nowadays not only
everything is viewed as communication, but also as strategic communication. (Torp, 2015, p. 43)
Torp thus argues that the CCO approach is basically about the daily use of language, by which the
organization is constituted, and on this basis finds this to imply that there is no difference between
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tactical and strategic communication – it is all strategic in nature. Using the concept of CCO to
discuss strategic communication, all communication in and around the organization can be seen as
part of strategic communication, Torp concludes. Moreover, not only messages or communicative
interactions belong to strategic communication, but also the actions of people, because they also
communicate, and consequently constitute organizational life as such and thus constitute strategy.
Torp extends the scope of strategic communication quite a long way with this definition.
Obviously, we may conclude that strategic communication scholars have very different ideas of
the role communication plays in the context of strategic communication and how it works. Some see
it as a controlled one-way process of a sender, who is attempting to gain approval from the audience;
for others, it is a constituting process in which decisions are made. This leads to a different approach
to strategic communication as well: for some, strategic communication is there to help the organization to gain approval for its strategic choices; for others, the focus is on the constituting process by
which strategy is built.
Are we looking at two completely different schools of thought; do we have to choose one of them?
Considering the context in which strategic communication works (organizational strategy), I do not believe
so. This makes it important to have a closer look at strategy theory and the role of communication within it.
Strategy theory
The term “strategy” comes from the Greek verb, strategein, which literally means building roads
(stratos agein) and since ancient times has also been used to mean “being the leader” as well as
“using a ploy to win” (Muller, 1920). As Mintzberg (1994) and Whittington (1993), and more
recently, Koch (2011) amongst others, describe, theoretical ideas about how to develop strategy have
changed over time. Classical strategy theory is about rational long-term planning, and recent strategy
theory is much more about continuous change and is much more emergent and incremental.
Although these strategy theorists do not speak about strategic communication as such, we may
assume that in rational long-term planning theory, strategic communication plays a role in presenting and promoting it, yet in emergent and incremental strategy development, strategic communication obviously plays a role in building strategy.
Unfortunately, in the professional strategic communication field, modern strategy theory has
made little progress, and this might limit scholars to theorizing about the possible reach of strategic
communication as only presenting and promoting the organizational strategy or reconstructing it.
Strategy is more often considered part of a longer term strategic planning model or as planning itself.
Torp (2015), for example, claims that “in present day, strategy is often defined as a plan or action
intended to accomplish specific goals.” In such a case, “strategy” is only another word for “plan.” A
search for strategic communication planning models showed, indeed, that most models resemble the
widely spread public relations planning model of Smith (2013), in which planning is seen as a
process that consist of some phases and a number of stages through which one must proceed.
The first phase is the analysis of the situation, the organization, and the publics involved. The second
phase is called an action plan, including objectives and strategy, and consists of establishing goals and
objectives, formulating action and response strategies and developing the message strategy. The third phase
concerns tactics, which means first selecting communication tactics, and then implementing them, whereas
the fourth phase involves the evaluation of the plan. All these models start with research, followed by the
development of the strategy, a list of tactics/actions to be performed, preferably as detailed as possible, and
conclude with an evaluation. Thus, in these planning models, strategy is the second phase and always
defined as the outcome of the first phase, which concerns the analysis of the situation. These models fit the
classic model of strategy development described by Whittington (1993) as “rational long term planning” and
by Mintzberg, Quinn, and Ghoshal (1995)–in their overview of schools of thought—as “deliberate strategy”
development.
In a popular article in the Harvard Business Review, “The Big Lie of Strategic Planning,”
Martin (2014) argues that strategy is completely different from a plan, and may even be the
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opposite. “True strategy is about placing bets and making hard choices,” he claims, and adds
that: “Planning typically isn’t explicit about what the organization chooses not to do and why.
It does not question assumptions. And its dominant logic is affordability; the plan consists of
whichever initiatives fit the company’s resources. Mistaking planning for strategy is a common
trap.” For Martin, it is the opposite: “strategy making is uncomfortable; it’s about taking risks
and facing the unknown.” Thus, here strategy implies movement from a present position to a
desirable but uncertain future position. The choices made concern a series of linked hypotheses, no less but also no more. To avoid the traps, Martin advises that the strategy statement
should be kept short and simple (far from a detailed plan) and that it should be recognized
that strategy is not about perfection (SMART objectives) but about choices about the unknown
(no more than just ambitions, a dot on the horizon). He also offers advice on how to make the
logic explicit by focusing on choices, advises professionals to develop strategies not just to
eliminate risk but to increase the odds of success, and suggests that—because choices have to
be made about the unknown—it might be better to talk about choosing certain hypotheses.
Koch (2011), Viki (2015), and many others echo this statement. This implies that today strategy
development is often seen as being based on assumptions to be tested, over and over again, and
adjusted accordingly. Today’s theories of strategy development are much more oriented toward
emergence than rational long-term planning.
Emergence versus planning
The public debate on how to develop strategy started in the 1980s. At that time, rational long-term
planning was mainstream. Many scholars opposed it and argued that strategy development is or should
be emergent (e.g., Johnson & Scholes, 1999; and the overview by Mintzberg, 1994). Deliberate strategy is
a top-down approach in which management specifies the strategy and the actions based on an analysis
of the situation (Viki, 2015). Deliberate strategy assumes that the manager has near to complete control
over how to allocate the internal and external resources and can thus manipulate the internal
organization of the firm to better suit these objectives, with the focus being on the prediction of the
future and control. Emergent strategy is the opposite; it is about learning what works in practice by
testing. Emergent strategy evolves in response to changes in the environment; the more turbulent the
environment is, the more adaptive the strategy should be, in order to respond to the evolving reality.
In the pure form of emergent strategy, there is no intention at all up front about what to achieve and how.
In an attempt to find a solution to the sharp dichotomy in the debate in the 1980s on strategy as an a priori
analytic and deliberate planning process or as an emergent process originating in environment, Mintzberg
and Waters (1985) proposed considering strategy development as both deliberate and emergent:
Since strategy has almost inevitably been conceived in terms of what the leaders of an organization ‘plan’ to do
in the future, strategy formation has, not surprisingly, tended to be treated as an analytic process for establishing long-range goals and action plans for an organization; that is, as one of formulation followed by
implementation. As important as this emphasis may be, we would argue that it is seriously limited, that the
process needs to be viewed from a wider perspective so that the variety of ways in which strategies actually take
shape can be considered. (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985, p. 257)
Mintzberg and Waters (1985) argued that the pure concepts of both deliberate strategy and emergent
strategy are very rarely applied in practice. Viki (2015) confirmed this and claimed that this is
because deliberate strategies mean no learning at all and emergent strategies mean no control at all,
and both are not very realistic.
However, today’s strategy scholars go further than this balanced approach. Moore (2011), a long-time
colleague of Mintzberg, claimed that “today’s more volatile world no longer lends itself to deliberate strategy,
especially when you’ve got to be faster and more agile than competitors. In such a world, and in these times,
emergent strategy seems to be a better fit.” Emergent strategy entails the view that strategy emerges over time
as intentions collide with, and accommodate, a changing reality. The term “emergent strategy” implies that
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an organization is learning what works in practice. Opposed to any idea of a rational long-term planning
approach, Moore (2011, p. 1) claims that “given today’s world, I think emergent strategy is on the upswing.”
In this case, strategy is seen as an ongoing process that needs to be reflected upon in order to adapt to
internal and external emergent changes, and to determine whether one is still doing the right things in the
right way. Continuous monitoring is essential as a means to gather data to gain insights required to make the
necessary changes in the choices made.
Such an approach to strategy implies that in today’s organizations, strategy is presented and
promoted by communication, but also rebuilt by it in a continuous and reflective way. It also
emphasizes the importance of a strategy model of continuous learning. The notion of a learning
organization (see, e.g., Argyris, 1994; Quinn, 1996; Senge, 1990) is a common interpretation of how
organizations can best cope with today’s environment, which favors emergent strategy over deliberate strategy, although it is not necessarily emergent strategy in its purest form. A learning
organization is a continuously self-correcting system steered by reflectivity and based in or carried
by communicative processes (Hatch, 1997, p. 371).
It is striking that in a subordinate clause to their definition Hallahan et al. proposed:
In addition to formulating their own communication strategies, communication practitioners are often asked to
communicate to employees the vision and mission of the organization as set out by management. Although this
remains the standard view of strategic communication, alternative perspectives on strategy formulation open up
new directions for studying the role of communication in strategy formulation and execution … From this
perspective, the notion of practice as part of the strategic process that influences society and in turn is
influenced by society allows scholars, rather than studying communication practice as an organizational
function, to study how communication practices transform both organizations and societies. (2007, p. 14)
Looking at the development of strategy theory we may conclude that the latter demarcation is now more
realistic than ever. It can, therefore, no longer be seen as merely a subordinate clause, but as a normal part
of strategic communication, and it must, consequently, also be included in the definition of the field.
As a result, we may conclude that modern strategy development theory sees strategy development as
a more or less emergent and continuing developmental process. Moreover, recent strategy theory
considers strategy as based in assumptions to be tested, continuously anew, and adjusted accordingly.
Although strategy theorists do not talk about communication, it is obvious that it plays an
important role in this emergent and continuing process. In modern strategy theory, it is communication that constitutes strategy on a daily basis and new assumptions constitute follow-up communication processes, which on their part create input into the strategy-building process. All this is
done in a continuous loop and is interactive and reflective in all its aspects and phases. Looking at
modern strategy theory from a communication perspective, we must see strategy as an amalgam of
continuous communication processes in order to build, define, present, realize, and rebuild strategy.
On this basis, we must admit that strategic communication is both: it presents strategy and it
builds and rebuilds it. For this reason, I prefer to see strategic communication as the management of
this amalgam of communication processes in the context of strategy making, presenting, realizing,
and remaking, as a continuous, reflective learning loop. If so, we need a lens through which to view
communication in which this continuous, reflective learning loop is emphasized.
Communication theory for strategic communication
Reading through the existing literature on strategic communication, it is possible to find references
to communication theory, especially when a CCO view is being used, but it is difficult to find a
profound explanation of communication theory—just as in the public relations literature (see van
Ruler, 2016). It is obviously not seen as a theoretical pillar on which the field of strategic communication rests. Exploring what the authors in The Routledge Handbook of Strategic Communication
and in the International Journal of Strategic Communication implicitly or explicitly say about
communication, as well as in other books and articles, different points of view are apparent, but
these differences are little questioned, let alone deeply debated.
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I consider communication as the constituting pillar of strategic communication, and strategy is
the context in which strategic communication takes place. Consequently, we need a lens through
which to view communication that aligns with modern approaches to strategy development, and
which can help scholars delineate their research and assist practitioners to actually “do” strategic
communication in a theoretically profound way.
If strategy can be seen as an amalgam of continuous communication processes, we need a
communication lens through which this continuous, reflective learning loop is emphasized. It is
obvious that one-way lenses on communication are insufficient for this. We need a more interactive
lens. We might view CCO as a typical and interesting exponent of this approach. However, the
problem with CCO is that it is focused on how organizational decisions are made in and through
communication in general, and strategic communication is only focused on decisions in the context
of organizational goals and strategy and is – moreover – also focused on how strategy is demonstrated, propagated, and realized. We could, of course, decide that CCO is the best communication
lens for strategic communication and focus only on the strategy-building process in the organization.
Strategic communication would then be merely a specific part of organizational communication.
I would prefer to see strategic communication as the management of the amalgam of communication processes in the context of continuous strategy development, and therefore include the
presentation, promotion, and realization aspects as well as the building and rebuilding aspects of
strategy and see this as a continuous loop. That is why I propose to build on the basic principles of
CCO and expand them with a notion of communication as an omnidirectional, diachronic societal
process of meaning development as such, as propagated by Carey, Dance, Berlo, and others. A
constitutive view of communication with a focus on the social construction of meanings itself would
then become the metatheory guiding our theorization and methodology.
This lens through which to view communication helps us to focus on the internal and external
arenas in which meanings are presented, propagated, and negotiated in a continuous, nonlinear, and
complex way. The ongoing and very complex processes of constantly moving presentations of and
negotiations about meanings in these external and internal arenas regarding strategy thus constitute
the playing field of strategic communication research.
In this reasoning, as a research field, strategic communication is still focused on how organizations use communication purposefully to fulfill their mission, but no longer as a one-way process to
present, promote, and realize their strategy, nor as a conversational process through which it is built.
Instead it focuses on the agile management of the amalgam of communication processes in the
context of strategy making, presentation, realization, and remaking.
Conclusion
Considering modern strategy theory, we should no longer focus on strategic communication as a
one-way process from the organization to audiences that presents, promotes and realizes organizational goals and strategy. I would prefer to focus on the amalgam of ongoing communication
processes in the context of strategy building, presenting, realizing, negotiating and rebuilding.
Consequently, we should not only leave the traditional definitions of strategic communication
behind, but also leave the one-way focus on communication behind. In addition, two-way models
that focus on conversations between participants in the communication process do not suffice. We
have to embrace the idea that communication is a process that is interactive by nature and
participatory at all levels. This does not necessarily make it a two-way conversational event, but
instead omnidirectional and diachronic, with an emphasis on the internal and external arenas of
meaning presentation, negotiation, construction, and reconstruction. As communication is the
theoretical pillar on which strategic communication rests, we need to include this perspective in
the definition of strategic communication. For this reason, I proposed here that strategic communication should be conceptualized as an agile management process in which the focus is on feeding
the arenas in which meanings are presented, negotiated, constructed, or reconstructed for strategy
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building and strategy implementation, and on testing strategic decisions by presenting and negotiating these in a continuous loop.
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