Organisational Narrative

Controversy over the specific role and responsibilities of the Public Relations Industry has been argued by many, due to the significant overlaps with the Marketing, Advertisement, Journalism and Publicity trades. But in essence, one of a PR practitioner’s biggest tasks is successful communication of the corporate image in order to maintain a strong reputation, build a positive stigma, and gain loyalty to the company. Communication can be focused internally (within the company e.g. employees, management, investors etc.) or externally (to the public, consumers, stakeholders etc.). In addition, the benefits of this allow the company to keep their customers and their workforce consistently informed, as well as providing the opportunity to receive feedback which allows them to improve their business.

One of the best tools of communication is Organisational Narrative, which tactfully portrays a “story” of an organisation's ideal image to the public, and in doing so helps to evolve the business and strategy of the company until it can reach a higher potential. “The organizational narrative comprises areas such as the history of the organization, research and development, unique selling proposition, business goals, company values, successes (including failures overcome), key players, and relationships within the company, sector and larger community.” – CIPR.

In order to apply organisational narrative in communicating a message, PR practitioners can consider several concepts. One of these looks at what the company wants people to know about them, for example positive attributes like market share or business ethics that could encourage publics to potential customers. Another concept may be looking at what the company wants people to feel and think about them, ensuring that they portray a positive image such as that it produces quality products or services of competitive price and with reliable customer service. Public Relations personnel may reflect on what the company wants people to do upon receiving this information, involving creating a level of loyalty to the company, continuing reliable customers and providing a satisfactory service. Finally it is crucial that any organisational narrative conveyed must conform to any legal obligations regarding honest and considerate public information. Ideally, organisational narrative is a thoroughly planned-out and continually maintained message that receives input from many different sectors of the company, and is pulled together to paint a perfect picture of a successful brand. 

Using organisational narrative offers several advantages when communicating to publics. For example, it offers a desirable balance between being informative and being creative or entertaining. This means that the message not only manages to express a formal purpose and intention, it does so in an appealing manner that ideally draws the interest of the audience. Another strength is that the message is often more memorable than basic informational communication, as it engages the public in a more innovative and active manner which is easier to listen to and more likely to stick in the brain. Additionally, organisational narrative is often easier to express from several different angles, for example it allows the company to combine a portrayal of facts, objectives, values and feelings.

However, the process also has disadvantages. Often organisational narrative is a time consuming process which requires the involvement of many different sectors within the business. This not only makes it a longer term communicational device, it also means becoming reliant upon many different sources to provide their input to the ideal company image. If one link breaks, it could reduce the level of effectiveness for the whole narrative. Following from this, another negative is that it could be argued that organisational narrative offers little effectiveness on internal communication as employees within the company should already be aware of its image etc.

And I guess that's all I have to say about that!

Hope that this helped to aid your understanding of some of the finer elements of PR.

(PS: I know the picture has no relevance to the topic of this post. However, finding a photo to represent organisational narrative proved harder than expected. And, to be frank, this topic is probably pretty boring, it needed a panda picture to liven things up!)

Thanks for reading, over and out.