Barriers to communication management in the executive suite

For many years now, courses in public relations, advertising, and communication management, at universities throughout Europe have been attracting more students than ever. In many cases, the numbers of these students exceed those in economics, marketing, and law programs. This coincides with an explosion in practical and theoretical literature describing a new field that focuses on coordination and steering of parts of all organizational communications at a strategic level. A survey among 25% of all Dutch organizations with more than 50 staff shows that in the majority of these organizations, communications activities are indeed coordinated in a single department that generally has a high position in the organization’s hierarchical structure. In few organizations, however, is it such a specific task that it can justifiably be called “Communication Management” and regarded as a specialization at the managerial and strategic levels. The literature suggests there are two factors behind this: glass ceiling and encroachment. Although the profession is increasingly becoming dominated by women, even in The Netherlands, we found no evidence of a glass ceiling. We did, however, find evidence of encroachment, which does not seem to be caused by a glass ceiling.