he role of internal communication as change agents who promote increased organizational reflexivity and who are involved in organizational development. Although few practitioners would reject a more strategic and integrated role , there are not yet many real-life examples of “Renaissance Communicators”. Many forward-looking professionals in public relations, training and development, marketing, employee communications, and information systems are attempting to break out of their narrow specialties, but find it to be a long and difficult process to work outside of institutional “silos”, to learn new cross-functional skills, and to gain credibility with management. For example, Smalley, et. al. (1995) report that it took three years for Amway’s training department to become involved in their first real project employing the more holistic approach of “performance technology” . However, given the current business climate, it may not be feasible for communicators to wait for three years to redirect their efforts; case studies and models for practice need to be shared and adopted rapidly so that professional communicators retain positions of value in their organizations. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONSA new model for organizational communication management is needed to encompass emerging theories of management, learning, and communication — as well as new realities of an increasingly competitive marketplace and rapidly merging and emerging technologies. One such model is “integrated communications”. Although this term has been used to describe combined advertising / marketing / public relations campaigns (Schultz, 1993b), we define integrated communications more broadly as the application of analysis, communication, and evaluation techniques to create and manage integrated, multi-faceted interventions combining information, instruction, collaboration, business process design, feedback, and in...
