Blogging and Twitter brings new perspectives on HP and Autonomy

An astonishing amount of information is coming to the surface in the light of HP's remarkable write-off of $8bn of the $11bn purchase price of the British software company Autonomy.  Just following the story today via Twitter and I can see that Twitter combined with blogging has become a major new additional information source for these complex business events where you are trying to understand what is going on and wanting more information than provided by traditional media sources.

This would not have happened five years ago in the corporate sector, I would suggest, and is an important development for the corporate PR sector to consider particularly with personal and organisational reputations at stake.

Some of the detailed insights on Autonomy which I have found include:

* Oracle's remarkably aggressive and disparaging press release at the time of HP's purchase of Autonomy.  You have to admire the slides!
* View of Bronte Capital on Autonomy's accounts.
* FT Alphaville news feed last year on Autonomy.
* Jeff Matthews blog on HP's analyst session yesterday.

All of these and other media coverage, of course, feed into the Twitter conversation.

Communications and soft power

An interesting example of the growing influence of communications in soft power agendas and roles. A new job advertised at the Home Office which I spotted today in The Times.  Some of the wording is fascinating and the new communications role requires the person to "respond to the ideological challenges of terrorism."  PR as discourse.   A cynic might say that the job's requirement also includes keeping public support for funding for anti-terrorism in the public eye.  

Culture goes mainstream in PR

The Melbourne Mandate, the follow-on vision agenda for PR from the Stockholm Accords places "culture" at the heart of what it calls the "communicative organisation".  This is an important
development for PR as it acknowledges the very real influence that organisational culture has on the communications process alongside the wider cultural context in which the organisation is sited.

The communicative organisation
as envisaged by Melbourne Mandate, 2012.

The Mandate comes at a time when cultural factors are very much to the fore in recent major reports. For example, a report on the Bank of England published today focuses on cultural factors notably a very powerful Governor as a significant factor in its organisational response to financial crisis in 2008. While the culture at the major investment bank, Barclays has also been heavily criticised.

The growing prominence given to culture by the Melbourne Mandate highlights that internal communications is an increasingly influential aspect of corporate communications as the recent European Communications Monitor highlights.

Finally, the adoption of "culture" as a term at the heart of PR practice, also draws on the work of the http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03638111academic community over the last 15 years with academics such as Sriramesh and Jacquie L'Etang notable in this respect. The latest issue of Public Relations Review looks to be an important primer in this respect.