Full-stack public relations: Future-proofing communication management within the experience management operating system

Abstract

Communication management has long claimed responsibility for stakeholder relationships and enshrined the function as part of the identity for practitioners and academics. During unprecedented digital transformation and shrinking stakeholder proximity, the author conducted interviews at twenty companies operating in Canada, thirteen of which are publicly traded, to explore the role for strategic communication/public relations amid organizational change and the adoption of experience management as a business strategy. Interviews included ten C-suite executives and ten experience management (XM) experts and practitioners – those who measure and improve customer, employee, product and brand expectations, attitudes and behaviors using operational and experience data – delivering empathy-motivated interactions and net benefits to the organizational bottom line. The applicability of communication management is examined through communication, organization-public relationships (OPR) and brand/image reputation activities. Experience Management (XM) is an operating framework enabled by digital interconnectivity, skills competencies and an agile, cross-functional workplace culture. The robust business intelligence tool focuses on the human-experience cycle and is underpinned by stakeholder attitudes and behaviors to meet expectations and continuously improve for positive experiences. Findings show that meaning creation – communication as message delivery, message reception, and message clarity – is the dominant activity valued by the experience delivery ecosystem, not organization-public relationships management giving pause to public relations long-held theories about its role as relationship managers. The implications offer insights to future-proof members of the profession as full-stack strategists and co-collaborators of organizational change and transformation amid the digital era.