Leadership agendas - stakeholders, corporatism and public diplomacy

Attended this week a very good session at the IoD to launch Dr Roger Hayes and Dr Reggie Watts' book on leadership.   The book provides an excellent insight into current and emerging stakeholder agendas and their influence and agendas for leadership.   Roger has been a great supporter to the PR programmes (postgraduate and undergraduate) at Greenwich and to the re-validation of the programmes which we are currently working on for commencement in 2016.

The event had some great input from the audience.  Has the focus on leadership at the "top" of the organisation become too powerful a discourse?   Input from the floor suggested that actually an emerging focus is on leadership in middle management which is now seen as crucial for successful organisations.

Another important topic raised, was that of "corporatism" and the sense that major brands and organisations have become so powerful that they  are beyond the power of governments (and stakeholders) and there is a need for some mechanism of international governance.   The implication behind this was that stakeholder agendas have perhaps lost their momentum to the power of the corporation.  Interesting to note that one politician who has been speaking on "corporatism" is Nigel Farage and that a recent piece in the Columbia Journalism Review criticises Hillary Clinton's campaign as being too "corporatist."  Is "corporatism" a discourse which is growing in power?  It is not a term I have been particularly conscious of for a number of years, but I will start to look out for it now.

Agendas around corporatism tie in well with the work which Greenwich and our European partners explored in terms of lobbying and governance in the EU.  Also with the new proposal which we have applied to the EU for funding this year which is exploring the role of PR as public diplomacy.

Governance of major organisations is an interesting agenda to be discussing in the same week which has seen one of the most powerful global non-governmental organisations, FIFA, brought low by an old fashioned form of governance, the law.

FIFA will discover that it will be very hard for them to be masters of their own destiny now that the "court of public opinion" has been supplemented by the actual courts.  The trouble with power leaders such as Sepp Blatter is they can travel so far without listening to their stakeholders; but there always comes a day of reckoning.   National governments will not allow FIFA to run rings around them in the future as they have done to date.

Public diplomacy is focus of new Erasmus ISP application

PR as public diplomacy.   This has become the focus of a pan-European application by a number of universities across Europe including Turkey to the EU for funding for an Erasmus ISP or integrated study programme.

There is increasing interest in the concept of public diplomacy by the PR and communications industry particularly its application in the business context where some have called it corporate diplomacy.  This draws on work in political communications and international relations and other disciplines and highlights developments where diplomacy rather like lobbying has come under pressure to move into the public arena from the metaphorical "smoke filled room" - a much loved phrase by journalists to describe a secret deal hidden away from public gaze.

The concept of public diplomacy and its application to business draws on these influences as well as from lobbying, inter-cultural communications, PR, growing transparency agendas and wider societal pressures for business to show its contribution to society not just to the bottom line.

The application for an Erasmus ISP in this field seeks to help develop definitions, curricula, and best practice in industry for an emerging area of strategic communications.  Greenwich was part of an earlier Erasmus IP on lobbying and government relations in the EU with a number of universities across Europe (Belgium, France, Portugal, Romania, Spain and  Sweden).  Nearly all the same team have come together for a new application but this time with the addition of Bilgi University in Istanbul.  A notable feature of ISP applications is they have to show strong links with industry, and that is something which very much plays to the strengths of Greenwich.    Part of the proposal will include a planned conference at Greenwich in 2018 bringing together all partners and industry stakeholders.  

The academic team making the application include the following universities: University of Lorraine, University of Bucharest, University of Bilgi, CEU, Cardinal Herrera, University of Greenwich.