Piecing together the shifting components

In order to reposition itself within the organisation, the internal communication function must redefine and link together internal target groups

 
For several decades, internal communication played a minor role in most enterprises. However, in the recent past this entity has increasingly gained in importance and come to the fore – the reason being its ever-growing strategic significance for basic personnel management. Over the past decades, the fundamental conditions for the organisation and running of an enterprise have changed steadily and with an ever-increasing speed, which in turn has resulted in a greater complexity of the different organisational forms themselves. As a consequence, the need for effective communication within an organisation is, rapidly on the increase. In the meantime, internal communication has been positioned together with other management processes and is no longer seen only as a cost factor, as it was perceived over a long period of time, but also as a success factor that can make a substantial contribution towards reaching entrepreneurial targets. But internal communication is accepted by management on equal terms only if its contribution to the entire added value process of the enterprise is clearly recognisable.

Ulrike Buchholz

As of Summer 2001, Professor Ulrike Buchholz has been teaching corporate communications in the public relations bachelor’s study programme, and since 2008 in the communication management master’s study programme, at the University of Applied Sciences, Hanover, Germany. Previously, she was director PR, responsible for the worldwide internal communications at Infineon Technologies.