How PR can be helpful in Corporate Governance.

 

Friends thank you very much for taking out time from your busy schedule to read my blog(s). Sharing knowledge with you has become my passion now. I feel encouraged after reading your feedback in the comment’s column. Friends’ Everything, I do or say is PR. I’m delighted to share my first blog of year 2024 as 130^th Blog titled ‘How PR can be helpful in Corporate Governance’. 

Corporate governance is an understanding based on the values of responsibility, openness, participatory approach, and accountability and it involves balancing of the interests of a corporates’ various stakeholders such as top management, employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, community, and the government. The core of corporate governance lies at the heart of directing the corporates’ workforce in a way which takes both the corporate and its stakeholders’ interest into consideration. Therefore, the corporate that have embraced the concept is expected to be an open, transparent, democratic, responsible, and accountable. Corporate governance is crucial for both private and public corporate groups in terms of their competitive competency. Good corporate governance can benefit the investors and other stakeholders of a corporate, while bad governance can lead to its disgrace and damage its image. 

Effective communication of a corporate with all its stakeholders is very important in order to obtain quality corporate governance. It is quite possible to transmit a corporates’ transparency, clarity, suitability for law and social responsibility to its stakeholders through PR activities. On the other hand, the feedback of stakeholders is also considered an important input for the quality of corporate governance. In this blog the concept of corporate governance and how PR helps in gaining quality corporate governance would be discussed.

Maintaining mutual lines of communication is quite important for a corporate. This communication includes both communications within and outside of the corporate. PR acts as a link between a corporate and its stakeholders and makes PR an important function of the management for quality governance. To enhance quality in corporate governance, it is obligatory on the part of management to know what the stakeholders think about the corporate and what they expect from the corporate because gaining the support and participation of stakeholders is an important objective of corporate governance.

PR, as a management function, helps in establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its publics; involves in crisis management; better employees relations, community - investors relations, helps the management to keep informed on and responsive to customer’s - public opinion; defines and emphasizes the responsibility of management to serve the public interest; helps management keep abreast of and effectively utilize change, and uses research and ethical communication techniques as its prime tools. PR comes in especially when a corporate has to interact with the rest of the society. In fact, PR is the face of the corporate to the society.

To know the environment better and let the environment know you better are PR distinctive contribution in realization of corporate governance principles such as openness, transparency, clarity, responsibility and accountability. Therefore, corporate PR should effectively use the channels of communication which are a prerequisite for quality corporate governance.

Corporates’ have realized that effective corporate governance programs must include a broad, proactive communication program that maximizes the effectiveness of traditional forms of communication. The basis of quality corporate governance is interactivity. If a corporate is not in an interactive communication process with its stakeholders, then it is impossible to talk about the quality of corporate governance. Quality Corporate Governance can be obtained through an effective communication process with the stakeholders – internal as well as external. Both, internal and external stakeholders play an important role in contributing to the long-term success and performance of a corporate.

Good corporate governance is dependent on stakeholder relations, and all the decisions and operations are formed according to these relations. PR is aimed at creating and maintaining positive stakeholders’ relations, and a constructive dialogue between a corporate and its stakeholders through deliberate and planned flow of information. Numerous stakeholders such as managers, employees, suppliers, consumers all influence the quality of corporate governance. Within that context, communication and PR efforts devoted at internal and external stakeholders assume a vital role in order to improve and sustain the quality of corporate governance. Functioning as a link between a corporate and its stakeholders, PR undertake vital responsibilities for a sustainable constructive interaction through a two-way symmetrical information flow which is in the long run improve and sustain quality corporate governance through consistent and continuous PR activities’.

To conclude; survival of a corporate depends on a continuous interaction with its environment and the ability to meet the expectations and demands of its stakeholders.  Effective communication of a corporate with its stakeholders is the key in providing quality corporate governance. PR plays a significant role both, in understanding the corporate governance within a corporate and also in channeling successful communication with all its stakeholders. Two-way symmetrical communication plays a critical role in obtaining the dialogue and constructive interaction that are considered as the fundamentals of corporate governance. Therefore, to communicate the transparency, clarity, suitability for law, social responsibility of a corporate to all of its stakeholders and obtaining their feedback to remove the deficiencies and weaknesses of corporate governance process and strengthen the positive sides PR will remain an important management function. Strategic planning and managing the relations with various stakeholders, Corporate PR can immensely helpful in contributing to the quality of corporate governance.

Thank you for reading the blog.

 

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