Your analysis is right.

I only make the point in case someone should interpret the your comment about ‘market conversations’ and conclude that this is the basic driver. Before the conversation begins, there is the relationship need. The fundamental in all wealth transactions (including market conversations which are the mechanism for creating wealth through interactions with consumers) is relationship creation, sustenance and development.

It is for this reason that I pour scorn on much of the intangible asset reporting and balanced scorecard accounting. In most of these models a value is ascribed to the brand and yet no value is ascribed to relationships (cart before the horse thinking by accountants and economists).

An excellent debate.

So (good) mangement teams try and nurture cultures that are productive.

I think internal blogs give the opportunity to delegate some responsibility for the development of company culture. Which I suspect is something that many managers would be happy to hand over!

Regina – 2 points
Firstly, we are not saying that pr should become responsible for employees rather than HRM or other disciplines. Both, as David Phillips writes it, are important elements of managing. But we are saying that PR is becoming organisation-wide due to the fact that employee blogs visibilize and amplify the various elaborations employees have in relation to the organisation. Recognizing this implies a need for management to engage with PR to a larger extent than previous.

Secondly, as we see it the internal/external view of organisations and messages does not make sense from a communicational viewpoint. We do not agree with the notion of the organisation as a coherent entity with one internal conversation supposedly at odds with the equally coherent external market conversation. Rather the organisation is better understood as consisting of multiple, and often conflicting, conversations. These are not merely “internal discourses�, but may as well be a combination of market and organisational discourses.

Multiple factors question the notion of corporations as entities with an internal and external discourse. The global outsourcing of manufacturing, numerous mergers and acquisitions, the use of strategic partnerships, interim management, various inter-firm projects and the temporary nature of employment these days all show how organisations are in flux and how corporate discourse is in a constant state of negotiation and elaboration within the various networks the corporation participate in. Moreover, employees participate in local communities in which they discuss corporate discourse, with friends, family and others. The discourse is constantly negotiated by employees based on their world view, background, relationships and current enactment of the world. A network view of organisations, the nexus of relationship view presented by David Phillips or organisations as social movements makes much more sense considering the nature of contemporary business. And these lines of thinking involve the presence of multiple discourses.

One implication of this could be that rather than to focus on alignment of messages, employees should be encouraged to express their personal narratives of organisational life, products and action. By doing so, employees will become and army of translators who can constantly contextualize corporate narratives into the local networks in which they participate. And in this dialectic process, they will be given new sense to the corporate narratives through negotiations within the networks. Rather than aligning, it is about recombining the various discussions into new messages that fit the perceptions and life worlds of the local networks. This is a way in which the corporation will communicate effectively, while mutually absorbing new inputs leading to innovation, a major imperative for most modern-day corporations

Employees will become intelligent agents for the organization, working as intermediaries between the various networks, and the corporate overall strategy/mission. As a result, managers will need to be able to direct and facilitate these relations to the public through employees.

It is that sense of theatre that I find so fascinating, personally. A low digital wall divides the private and the public. For example, today, an e-mail feels intimate. Yet a posting is experienced with an audience. It is a group activity; it feels public.

Perhaps then a blog appeals to some element of human vanity and that by tapping this very natural desire to be watched and quoted, it serves a unique purpose and offers an effective and influential reach from one human to others.

PR is a management practice. It is the only management practice that creates new values.

Aligning ‘messages’ between parts of a company is counter productive. Organisations are not monoliths. Organisations are not hard bounded. Departments (HR, Accounts, Sales etc.) are typical command and control stuff designed for narrow minded (and failed) empire builders.

Organisations are social groups (a nexus of relationships).
Every manager is a PR person and every manager is an HR person. Both need a dialogue with each other to help them to become better at what they do.

Dialogue is the means by which values are understood, traded and thereby create new (mutually accepted and understood) values. That is why public relations are a skill set that all ‘employees’ need.

To find out how, go to the professional PR manager whose big task is helping the organisation use networks and channels to exchange and understand values, use them creatively and create wealth.

The management practice of PR is not in building a ‘culture’ it is to help people (’employees’, ‘management’) create a culture that exploits the values inherent in relationships.

Rather like a Blog.

As soon as you make the claims you have done here, and follow the logic through, you undermine Webber, stakeholder theory, economic theory, accounting as we know it and much more.

Welcome to the Relationship Value Model.