| Abstract [eng] |
Sophistication of communication process, society’s attitude towards corporations (as exploiters of people), complexity and massiveness of organizations in the end of 20th century caused the rise of one of organizations functions, i.e. corporate communication. It is a strategic management which involves the disciplines of relations with different publics and helps gaining competitive advantage. The main goal of this work is to analyze the specifics of corporate communication programmes and their implementation in Lithuania. The tasks are to analyze the theory aspects and principles of corporate communication, its models, strategy, plan and activities; to discuss the specifics of implementation of corporate communication programmes; to research the realization of corporate communication programmes in Lithuania (corporate websites research). Corporate communication strategy provides a direction to organization’s corporate communication activities. It sets a system based on which organization’s communication plans may be implemented. Corporate communication programme is a method which shows how to reach the goals of corporate communication in the best way; it involves specific guidelines for each corporate communication activity and works in the frames and context of corporate communication strategy and corporate communication plan. Corporate image, identity and reputation are considered to be strategically the most important activities of corporate communication. Good image and reputation are strongly influenced by the other activities of corporate communication. Corporate advertising helps to create new image or to renew the old one, to present organization’s position towards current issues, to improve organization’s social status and to strengthen the organization financially. Good relations with media help to minimize the amount of negative messages in the press, good investor relations attract new investors and with the help of employee relations workers may be motivated, their attitude towards work may be changed and new employees may be attracted. Recently organizations started to use internet for implementation and realization of corporate communication programmes, and it is considered that corporate websites are the best objects for corporate communication research from the outside. The research of the biggest Lithuanian companies websites unfolded that the expression of two (out of three) corporate communication categories are prevailing: organizational communication and marketing communication. While management communication is not so dominant in Lithuanian websites, it also plays an important role implementing corporate communication in Lithuania. In conclusion, corporate communication in Lithuanian companies’ websites is realized properly according to the analyzed theories. Research revealed that the biggest Lithuanian companies usually realize corporate identity and media relations programmes online giving the least priority to community relations programmes. It was observed that organizations tend to present investor relations, employee relations and community relation programmes implementing corporate identity programmes. This indicates that Lithuanian companies realize the essence of corporate communication – integration of communication activities. Although the main goal of corporate communication is to contract and maintain relations with publics, only the small part of the biggest Lithuanian organizations list the contact information of people who are responsible for corporate communication programmes. Research disclosed that the majority of Lithuanian organizations still do not present a lot of recommended information about corporate communication programmes in their websites. Lithuanian companies will still have to learn how to take all the advantages of relation contract and maintain online while realizing the programmes of corporate communication. |
