Managing a Company's Reputation
Michael Sands wishes there had been a course on corporate reputation and communication strategy when he was a student at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management a decade ago. Instead, he says, he had to hone many of his communication skills on the job, "sort of like an apprenticeship."
Now, as president of Orbitz.com, he frequently faces communication, reputation and brand-image issues. Recently with the Indian Ocean tsunami, for example, Orbitz needed to communicate with customers traveling to the affected regions, and it also wanted to establish an online link to the Red Cross.
"Crisis communication is critical for business students," says Mr. Sands, "as is understanding how corporate communications gets integrated into the marketing plan. Too often in business school, the discussion focuses on paid advertising even though I would argue that public relations and word-of-mouth messages are more important than ever."
It is indeed the rare business school that provides master's-in-business-administration graduates with a thorough grounding in corporate communications. While some business schools offer classes in "management communication," the emphasis typically is on public speaking and written reports, not on managing a company's reputation.
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I lecture frequently at business schools about corporate reputation and always find a receptive audience. Some schools have responded to the rash of scandals and plunge in corporate America's reputation with more classes on ethics, social responsibility and corporate governance. Yet I see few teaching students about the critical role of strategic communications in managing corporate image.
At many business schools, corporate communications still suffers from perceptions that it's simply about writing press releases and flackery. "A lot of deans don't realize the level of sophistication communications has reached and how it is being managed at a very high level within the corporation," says James Rubin, an assistant professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia who teaches corporate communications. His courses include case studies of such companies as Dow Corning, Lego Group and Walt Disney, as well as readings on corporate identity, branding, reputation and crisis management.
Prof. Rubin's class isn't aimed just at future communications managers. It's part of Darden's general-management curriculum for CEOs-in-training who will likely devote a significant amount of time to communicating with employees, customers, investors, the media, analysts and other stakeholders. Nearly 70% of chief executive officers said they spent more time on external communications last year than in 2003, while 60% said they did more internal communications, according to a survey by PRWeek magazine and the public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller.
The Public Relations Society of America recently launched a campaign to address what it considers a serious shortcoming of M.B.A. programs. For starters, it sent letters to deans of leading schools, proposing that they incorporate communications into the curriculum through new courses, seminars and visiting lecturers. PRSA officials also are promoting more interaction between business schools and schools of communication and journalism.
Even so, many deans and professors simply don't view communications as a key functional area like marketing, operations and accounting. Part of the problem is the lack of hard data. "M.B.A. programs are very obsessed with numbers, and because you can't tie numbers easily to communications, it isn't seen as real and as something that can make a significant difference," says McCall Butler, a managing supervisor at the Fleishman-Hillard public-relations agency in New York and a graduate of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where she studied corporate communications.
What will likely change deans' attitudes most quickly is seeing more companies hire M.B.A.s for top communications jobs. Already, Paul Argenti, who teaches communication at Tuck, believes demand for M.B.A.s in such positions is growing. "More CEOs want to give their communication executives a seat at the table," he says, "but to have that seat, they need to speak the same language and have a deep understanding of all areas of the business. That means having an M.B.A."
Business schools that do offer corporate-communications classes find that student demand rises and falls based on what's in the headlines. Irv Schenkler began a crisis communications course at the Stern School of Business at New York University back in the 1980s when insider trading, the deadly Union Carbide gas leak in India, and the Tylenol poisonings dominated the news. With so many accounting fraud cases and Wall Street scandals the past three years and so many finance majors at Stern, Prof. Schenkler says, "crisis communication and reputation are definitely back on the front burner."
As for Mr. Sands at Orbitz, he will be pleased to know that his alma mater has added a one-half-credit course called Values and Crisis Decision Making that will be required for all M.B.A.s starting next fall. It doesn't cover the full scope of corporate reputation but does deal with communications, including a 24-hour crisis-management simulation. Kellogg is also considering creating a "communications camp" where PR practitioners would offer workshops to M.B.A.s.
MBA动向：沟通技巧至关重要
麦克?桑茨(MICHAEL SANDS)真希望10年前他在美国西北大学凯洛格管理学院上学时选修过一门企业声誉和沟通战略课程。但事实上，他不得不在工作中磨练自己的沟通技巧，边干边学。
如今身为Orbitz.com总裁的桑茨，常常需要处理各种沟通、声誉和品牌形象问题。比如，不久前印度洋海啸发生后，Orbitz就必须与前往受灾地区的客户进行沟通，同时也希望与红十字会(Red Cross)建立一个网上链接。
“危机沟通对于工商管理硕士(MBA)专业的学生来说至关重要，”桑茨表示，“同样重要的还有要熟知如何将企业沟通融入营销计划中。目前商学院的教学讨论过多地集中在了付费广告上，但我要说的是，公关以及口碑也已日益重要。”
的确，很少有商学院为MBA学生们提供扎实的企业沟通课程。虽然有些商学院有管理沟通课程，但其重点往往在于如何进行公开讲话以及撰写书面报告，而不是如何管理一家公司的声誉。
本文作者常常在一些商学院举行企业声誉讲座，并每每获得听众的热烈欢迎。虽然一些学校已针对企业丑闻以及美国公司声誉大跌的状况，增设了伦理、社会责任以及公司治理课程，但我看到很少有学校教导学生在管理企业形象方面战略沟通具有至关重要的地位。
在许多商学院中，企业沟通依然被错误地理解为写写新闻稿、搞搞宣传等简单工作。“许多商学院的院长都不了解实际沟通工作的复杂性，及其在企业的受重视程度，”在弗吉尼亚大学达顿商学院教授企业沟通的副教授詹姆斯?鲁宾(James Rubin)表示。鲁宾的课程包括研究道康宁(Dow Corning)、Lego Group和沃尔特-迪斯尼(Walt Disney)等公司的案例，以及阅读有关企业识别、品牌、声誉以及危机管理等方面的材料。
鲁宾教授的课程并不仅仅针对未来的沟通经理，它还是达顿商学院为未来首席执行长制定的公共管理教学计划的一部分，这些首席执行长们将来可能会有相当的时间用于和雇员、客户、投资者、媒体、分析师以及其他利益相关者进行沟通。《PRWeek》杂志和博雅公关(Burson-Marsteller)联合进行的一项调查显示，近70%的首席执行长们去年用于外部沟通的时间多于2003年，60%的人增加了内部沟通。
美国公关协会(The Public Relations Society of America)最近针对MBA项目存在的不足展开了一项活动。该协会向各大商学院的院长们发去了信函，建议他们通过设立新的课程、举行研讨会和访问教师等形式，将企业沟通纳入MBA教学计划。此外，该协会还力主商学院加强与传播新闻学院的互动。
但即便如此，许多商学院的院长和教授们对沟通课程的重视程度仍不及营销、经营和会计那类MBA项目的核心课程。这部分是因为缺乏实实在在的数据。“MBA项目需要用数字说明问题，但你很难将数字与沟通联系起来，沟通的成果似乎很难实实在在看到，能否成功沟通似乎也不是关乎企业成败的大事。”纽约公关公司福莱(Fleishman-Hillard)的常务主管麦克考?巴特勒(McCall Butler)表示。巴特勒是达特茅斯学院塔克商学院的毕业生，在那里她学习了企业沟通。
改变商学院院长们态度的捷径可能是有越来越多的公司雇佣MBA毕业生担任企业最高沟通管理人士。在塔克商学院教授沟通课程的保罗?阿金提(Paul Argenti)相信，这些职位对MBA毕业生的需求正在上升，“越来越多的首席执行长们想在最高管理层中给予沟通主管一席之地......但要获得这样的地位，沟通主管必须要与其他管理高层具有同样的学识背景，并对公司业务的各个领域有深入的了解。这意味著必须要有MBA学位。”
一些开设企业沟通课程的商学院发现，毕业生需求的高低取决于新闻热点。早在20世纪80年代，申克勒(Irv Schenkler)就在纽约大学斯特恩商学院开设了一门危机沟通课程，当时的媒体报导中满是各种内部人士交易、联合碳化公司(Union Carbide)在印度的毒气泄漏事件以及强生Tylenol胶囊有毒的风波。过去三年的新闻热点则是会计欺诈案和华尔街丑闻，而且特恩商学院入学学生中有很多都是金融专业的学生，因此申克勒教授称，“危机沟通和声誉课程无疑只能靠后了。”
对于Orbitz的桑茨来说，如果知道他的母校凯洛格管理学院从明年秋季起降为新入学的MBA学生增开一门0.5个学分的必修课──价值和危机决策(Values and Crisis Decision Making)，他一定会很高兴。这门课程虽然没有全面覆盖企业声誉领域，但的确涉及了沟通，课程内容包括24小时的模拟危机管理培训。同时，凯洛格商学院还考虑创建一个沟通训练营，由公关专业人士为MBA学生开设培训班。
