Internal Communication and Management: Essentials of Communication-Centered Management Theory

The fourth generation St. Gallen Management Model explicates communication-centered management, which replaces classic integrated management. In order to survive in an uncertain environment with ever closer, more interdependent relationships with ever more diverse, interconnected stakeholders, a new concept of action is required for corporate management. This connects the environment as a landscape of possibilities directly with the value creation processes and the management praxis in the company. It is developed from a communication-centered perspective that asks, on the one hand, how opportunities and risks in the environment can be dealt with in order to manage the company safely and perhaps successfully. On the other hand, however, it is about the importance of a collective understanding of strategic contexts, about shared constructions of meaning and their integrative, even constituent effects for the company, as well as about (self-)reflection by means of language, which is necessary in order to be able to provide ever new impulses for the necessary change. This communication-centered perspective logically results in a fundamentally new positioning of the management function of internal corporate communication in the context of corporate management.