Developing corporate communications: insights from the Italian scenario

Purpose - Based on business manager perceptions in large firms, this paper explores the emergence, growth and importance of corporate communications and how it is evolving and creating competitive advantage in Italian firms.
Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative approach is deployed, comprising depth interviews with senior managers from corporations from a broad spectrum of industries including: energy, telecommunications, automotive, transport, retail chain, appliances, technology and engineering, private shipping, government-owned holdings, marketing consultancy, and construction.
Findings - The paper provides insights of corporate communication (corpcom) practices in the sampled companies. The research shows that corpcoms involves a complex range of activities leading to performances managed and implemented under CEO direction.
Practical implications - Corpcoms is perceived as a strategic concept with effective application relative to managing corporate image and reputation. The findings offer insights for communication professionals who deal with corpcoms, branding, and marketing communications.
Originality/value - Corpcoms can be viewed via lens of social actors’ perspectives, i.e. via practitioners – including brand managers and senior executives as they possess practical knowledge of contextual business setting and the managerial capacity to design and implement integrated corporate communications.

This is the accepted version of the manuscript "Developing corporate communications: an exploratory study", published in the journal "Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal" available via the journal site at: https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-12-2017-0185
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