Corporate communications within a BPR context

Abstract

Communication aspects within organisational changes have received greater attention since the advent of business process re‐engineering. This fact has been attributed mainly to the necessity of eliminating a higher degree of human resistance on the implementation of such a project. Our argument within this paper is that appropriate corporate communication would promote better chances to dissolve the aforementioned resistance. The research focused on large manufacturing enterprises and it brings to light the industrialists’ practices and expectances related to the communication issue and to the investment in IT to assist in the improvement of the information flow within and outside of the organisation. Based on the experience of the practitioners interviewed, a communication model was implemented aiming to guide companies in building their own communication process framework. Despite some important initiatives, the findings suggest that the improvement in the strategies of communication is not sufficient on its own but there are other key relational aspects to be considered in order to achieve the envisaged outcome.