A portrait of the Corporate Communication Officer (CCO) in the firm: a romantic character with multiple identities

With increasing concern for developing short- and long-term communication plans to cope with global business challenges and the current period of economic downturn, the role of the Corporate Communication Officer (CCO) has become critical in managing total communication systems where all firm’s activities are considered in their communicational impact on both internal and external stakeholders. Prior studies offered significant contributions regarding the analysis of the organizational models and relevant roles that the corporate communication function plays in the firm. However, studies are lacking that investigate in-depth the features of corporate communication from the perspective of the CCO, focusing in particular on how the CCO’s own culture, personality and professional heritage of competences and interpersonal skills affect the firm’s communication culture. Hence, the objectives of our study are to: 1) detect current prototypical professional identities of the CCO and how they affect his role inside the firm; 2) understand how the CCO’s own character, view of the world, experience background, and life encounters affect the corporate communication culture and practice within the organization. From a methodological standpoint, we chose a dynamic, interpretive research approach eliciting the spontaneous reconstruction of the most significant educational and professional stories of the CCOs. More specifically, our study is based on autobiographical narrative interviews with the CCOs of a multi-sector purposive sample of 15 among the largest-sized Italian firms operating in global markets quoted on the Stock Exchange. Our narrative interviews are aimed at soliciting the account of the most significant moments in the CCOs’ educational and professional careers that marked their life stories, focusing on fundamental encounters and turning points that affected major decisions. Our study highlights the story as a fundamental “sense incubator”, useful to understand the drivers and the effects of organizational behaviour, allowing a better understanding of how the culture and the leadership of the CCO affects the corporate communication culture. Findings reveal that the current CCO has a view of the world that is somehow suspended between past (e.g. nostalgia for past values and leaders, personal characteristics stemming from past traditions) and present (e.g. awareness of current fast change and dynamism, lack of lifetime bonding with a single company, availability and connectedness at any time), also marked by a strong future orientation (e.g. strategic and visionary view of the business trends to come). Furthermore, the CCO appears as a “romantic leader” assuming heterogeneous multiple identities to cope with environmental complexity. In particular, he appears as a loyal “butler”, serving respectfully the CEO and the property of the firm, being their non-intrusive spokesperson and consultant. He acts then as an “equilibrist”, mediating and balancing the often conflicting interests of the various business functions and units inside the firm. He also appears as a glamorous “storyteller” of the company, spreading its culture and stories inside and outside its boundaries, either supporting the CEO, or acting himself as a corporate brand ambassador. Moreover, he acts as an “artist-craftsman”, playing the role of the value carrier inside the firm, and serving as a coach for younger collaborators, being guided by both his talent and the lessons he received from his past masters. Finally, he appears as a “visionary-strategist” capable of interpreting the environment and govern its entropy, helping the firm anticipate and drive change in turbulent times, orienting it to corporate success. Furthermore, our study reveals that the optimal educational background of the CCO harmoniously combines a humanistic culture supporting personal characteristics as flexibility, curiosity, sensitivity, open-mindedness, and problem-solving, with an economic and managerial knowledge. Such knowledge facilitates corporate decision-making, offering methods to understand process workflows, and supporting efficient and effective management of resources. Currently, owing only a personal capital of useful relationships with influentials, like most journalist CCOs, proves inadequate to deliver the potential value of communication in the firm. And it often prevents communication from being considered as a true strategic function by the top management. Finally, the CCO’s own culture affects the communication culture of his firm. In particular, the prototypical identities pointed out in our study translate into two main roles that are currently enacted by the CCO in the company. A “General” role (emphasized by the “equilibrist”, the “visionary-strategist” and the “artist-craftsman” CCO’s identities), showing him as a participative, charismatic manager and leader with his collaborators. This highlights both a cross-functional supporting role of communication inside the firm, and a bridging function outside it. A “Chamberlain” role (emphasized by the “butler” and the “storyteller” CCO’s identities), revealing him as either an obliging follower of the property that acts as a simple executor, or a temporary soloist detached from “the body and the soul” of the firm, that touches with his actions only the company’s surface for a limited period of time. This points out a mere image-building function of communication in the firm. A basic managerial consequence of our study is that the CCO is currently required to act as an integrative leader, that is a manager with high competence in team building and coordinating, inspired by service and collaboration values, highly capable of building social relationships and manage them with diplomacy, and with a solid administrative competence to support corporate governance. In conclusion, our collected CCOs’ stories provide interesting managerial insights into pitfalls and opportunities of being a corporate communication executive in turbulent times. Thus, we believe our study offers a valuable and original contribution to understanding, on one side, what kind of man, manager and leader the present CCO is, and, on the other side, how he should behave to face successfully current and future business challenges, enacting an outstanding leadership.