Officer’s responsibilities is believed to be a leading edge innovation... In times of non-stop change, it is essential to bridge the traditional ‘islands of corporate communication’ such as training and development, employee communications, public affairs, corporate media, documentation, library systems, policies and procedures, and advertising and marketing to create integrated, consistent, and coherent messages to stakeholders”. Coca-Cola has also created a similar position of “CLO” (Willis and May, 1996). BARRIERS TO ADOPTING INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONDespite the documented interest in and success of an integrated communication model, this approach is still not yet widely accepted. In our research and practice, we have found that there are significant barriers that organizational communication professionals face when they attempt to employ models of integrated communication and performance technology: Current jobs and departments related to organizational communication often pigeonhole professionals into narrow roles. Professionals in training often assume that their job is to “produce courses”, just as employee communication professionals believe that their job is to organize newsletters and meetings, and perhaps to somehow increase morale. In order to provide what they feel is “good service”, they produce what they are asked for: videotapes, meetings, courses, electronic bulletin boards, and so forth. Because these separate “islands of communication” (Gayeski, 1993b) actually are often engaged in internal competition for resources and credibility, there are few incentives to work together and more incentives to protect “turf”. External suppliers, such as ad agencies, also tend to specialize in advertising or PR or direct marketing or media production — generally not truly an integrated approach (Schultz, 1993c). Organizational communicators of...
