Entrepreneurial communication and the strategic role of Internal Communication EMANUELE INVERNIZZI SILVIA BIRAGHI 1 STEFANIA ROMENTI

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Authors’ Note: Emanuele Invernizzi, Professor of Public Relations, Department of Economics & Marketing, Università IULM, [email protected]; Silvia Biraghi, PhD candidate in Corporate Communication, Department of Economics & Marketing, Università IULM, [email protected]; Stefania Romenti, Assistant Professor in Public Relations, Department of Economics & Marketing, Università IULM, [email protected]

ENTREPRENEURIAL COMMUNICATION AND INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Entrepreneurial communication and the strategic role of Internal Communication Abstract Obiettivo del paper – Il dibattito nella letteratura di Coportare Communication, Organizational Communication e Relazioni Pubbliche sostiene che la comunicazione interna è di vitale importanza per il management e il successo delle organizzazioni. Benché gli studiosi di comunicazione affermino il ruolo strategico della comunicazione interna, ad ora non è stato sviluppato un modello capace di ricomprendere le componenti di tale contributo strategico. L’obiettivo del paper è quello di discutere il contributo strategico della comunicazione interna a supporto dei processi decisionali e del successo organizzativo facendo riferimento ai più recenti studi di Entrepreneurial Organization. Metodologia – A questo scopo verrà condotta un’analisi estensiva della letteratura di comunicazione interna volta a sistematizzare tale letteratura sulla base dell’Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm, un framework che interpreta il ruolo strategico della comunicazione alla luce delle Entrepreneurial Organization Theories. Risultati – Adottando una prospettiva imprenditoriale, proponiamo che le attività di comunicazione interna giochino un ruolo pivotale e arricchiscano il ruolo strategico della comunicazione a diversi livelli, supportando lo sviluppo dell’organizzazione e attivando lo slancio imprenditoriale dei soggetti organizzativi. Limiti della ricerca – Lo studio rappresenta un’analisi della letteratura che in futuro sarà opportuno consolidare attraverso studi di caso. Implicazioni pratiche – Lo studio contribuisce a sistematizzare la conoscenza sul ruolo strategico della comunicazione interna e restituisce uno sguardo più completo sugli obiettivi che posso essere affidati a questa per contribuire al successo dell’organizzazione. Originalità del lavoro – Il paper propone come chiave di lettura del contributo strategico della comunicazione interna gli studi imprenditoriali, ancorando così il tema della comunicazione interna nelle teorie sull’impresa. Parole chiave: comunicazione interna, comunicazione strategica, Entrepreneurial Organization Theories

Purpose of the paper – Current debate in Corporate Communication, Organizational Communication, and Public Relations literature states that internal communication is vital for organizational management and success. While advocating its strategic role, communication scholars fail to provide a unifying frame of the strategic contribution of internal communication to the organization. The aim of the paper is to discuss the strategic role of internal communication in sustaining decision making processes and organizational success with reference to recent studies of Entrepreneurial Organization. Methodology – On this purpose an extensive review of internal communication literature will be carried out with the aim of systematizing it according to the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm. That is a framework which interprets the strategic role of communication in light of the Entrepreneurial Organization Theories. Findings – Adopting the entrepreneurial perspective, we posit that internal communication activities play a pivotal role and enrich the strategic role of communication at various levels, supporting the organizational development and activating the entrepreneurial élan of the organizational members. Research limitations – The paper is based on a literature review which needs to be consolidated through case studies in future developments of the research. Practical implications – The study offers a systematization of the knowledge on the strategic role of internal communication. It also provides a more complete outlook on the objectives which might be assigned to internal communication in supporting organizational success.

Originality – The paper advances entrepreneurial studies as an interpretative framework of the strategic role of internal communication. Hence it grounds the debate on internal communication in the theories of the firm. Key words: internal communication, strategic communication, Entrepreneurial Organization Theories 1. Introduction Current debate in corporate communication, organizational communication, and public relations literature states that internal communication is vital for organizational management and success (Argenti, 2009; Dolphin, 2005; Kalla, 200; Rapert, Velliquette & Garretson, 2002; Robson & Tourish, 2005; Welch & Jackson, 2007; Yates, 2006). While advocating its strategic role (Argenti, 1998; Argenti, Howell & Beck, 2005; Dolphin, 2005; Forman & Argenti, 2005; Tucker, Meyer & Westerman, 1996), communication scholars fail to provide a unifying frame of the strategic contribution of internal communication to the organization. In this paper we argue that the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm, a framework to interpret the strategic role of communication in light of the Entrepreneurial Organization Theories (XXXX), could be used to evaluate the strategic contribution of internal communication to support organizational decision making processes and to drive organizational success. This conceptual paper aims at describing and evaluating the pivotal role of internal communication and, in doing so, at further developing the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm. In this paper, firstly, we briefly recall the major features of the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm; secondly, we present the main contribution of internal communication and we evaluate it in relation to each dimension of the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm. Finally, we discuss to what extent internal communication is strategic and plays a pivotal role within the entrepreneurial communication activities in supporting organizational governance and contributing to organizational success. 2. The Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm A growing number of communication and management scholars have been theorizing on the institutionalisation of the strategic role of communication within organizations (Gregory, 2008; Hallahan, Holtzhausen, van Ruler, Verčič & Sriramesh, 2007; Invernizzi, Muzi Falconi & Romenti, 2009; Lurati & Eppler, 2006; Zerfass & Huck, 2007). Today the field of inquiry of strategic communication appears rich, broad, multidisciplinary albeit highly fragmented due to the multiplicity of management and organizational perspectives to which authors refers. The Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm (ECP) attempts at integrating these fragmented perspectives in a unifying framework. The model underpins four components of strategic communication which have been singled out on the basis of the Entrepreneurial Organization Theories (EOT) (Alvarez & Barney, 2004; Burns, 2005; Busenitz et al., 2003; Bygrave, 1989; Dew, Ramakrishna & Venkataraman, 2004; Foss & Klein, 2005; Ireland, Hitt & Sirmon, 2003), which offers a unique conceptual framework to combine the endogenous and exogenous perspectives of the theories of the firm applied to communication (Gregory, Invernizzi & Romenti, 2010). According to the ECP, the strategic contribution of communication to the organization consists in four roles/dimensions that can be defined as its aligning, energizing, visioning, and constituting activities. The Aligning dimension of strategic communication includes environmental scanning and boundary spanning activities, as well as the bridging and engaging ones. Entrepreneurial studies say that strategic decisions are modelled by continuous gate-keeping activity (McFadzean, O’Loughlin & Shaw, 2005). Thanks to its boundary spanning function, corporate communication holds a privileged position for observing and interpreting the context in which an organization operates (White

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& Verčič, 2001). The monitoring and interpretation of the on-going dynamics in environmental scanning stimulates management to formulate strategies and processes aligned with the on-going dynamics in the company social context and with the most relevant expectations of stakeholders. This facilitates the progressive legitimisation of the company in its environment, which is a necessary condition in maintaining its long-term licence to operate (Steyn, 2007) and developing supportive networks of stakeholders, which are one of the major drivers of entrepreneurial activity (Butler, Brown & Chamornmarn, 2003). Entrepreneurship needs social interaction in order to generate support from others and to shape and develop new ideas (Sadler-Smith, Hampson, Chaston, & Badger, 2003). Assuming an approach of this type means building bridges between the organization and its most vital stakeholders, as well as activating and facilitating their participation and involvement. So beyond boundary spanning and environmental scanning, the Aligning dimension includes bridging with and engaging the most important stakeholders, developing solid symmetric relations and long-lasting partnerships with them (Grunig, 2001; Ledingham, & Bruning, 2000; Ni, 2006). The Energising component deals with the role of communication in stimulating organizational partners’ orientation to innovation and in the creation of collaborative networks to drive innovation through the combination of existing resources, the development of capabilities and the spread of knowledge. Strategic communication supports management in reassuring stakeholders regarding changes due to innovation, supplying adequate information, and listening to what happens in the organisational context (Zerfass & Huck, 2007). Successful organizations should be innovation-driven and entrepreneurial studies stress how orientation to innovation is important in using resources, competences and capabilities in innovative ways and in promoting individual entrepreneurial behaviours (Echols & Neck, 1998). The Energizing dimension of communication transmits an innovative spirit to all organizational partners, stimulating them and giving them room for expression. As the efficacy of decision making increases proportionately to the number of participating members (Knights,1997) strategic decisions should be rooted in the interchange between the organization and its most important interlocutors, rather than being defined only autonomously by the dominant coalition (Stroh, 2007) . Successful implementation of strategies is a product of involving people all throughout the organization (Morris & Kuratko, 2002; Morris, Kuratko, & Schindehutte, 2001). Communication therefore has the aim of rendering organizational partners responsible by virtue of their being of key importance in implementing innovative processes (Dougherty, 1996) and communication professional activists should concentrate more on facilitating rather than on managing communication. The Visioning dimension of communication concerns the definition and diffusion of corporate mission, strategies and guiding values in order to envision and to share a common vision of the future, as well as to deliver coherent messages. Entrepreneurial organization studies highlight the transformative and visionary role performed by management in modelling corporate strategies and in creating a meaningful vision around organizational projects (Gupta, MacMillan & Surie, 2004). In this regard the communication activity focuses on what to communicate in order to obtain the desired effect (Stroh, 2007). So Visioning means communicating the decisions regarding strategic company choices in order to channel collective energy towards common goals consistent with company mission and guiding values. Strategic communication activities are essential in shaping a single, clear company position in the minds of its stakeholders as well as in developing a solid long-term reputation (Cornelissen, 2008). The Visioning dimension corresponds to the enabling role of communication (Zerfass, 2008), which means that communication facilitates the implementation of company decisions. In order to do so the CCO follows the actual decisional momentum and exercises influence on the ways in which decisions are communicated and carried out. This means knowing how to unfold innovative potential in an organisation, to overcome critical obstacles, and to resolve any opposition through constant search for commitment on the part of key stakeholders (Howell, & Higgins, 1990). The Constituting dimension of strategic communication refers to the enactment of competitive environment and organizational settings through communicative activities and the sense-making processes of organizational stakeholders. As

opportunities become real in the creative mind of the entrepreneur (Zander, 2007), the entrepreneurial attitude of the organization is closely tied to the ability to activate, build, and re-invent the organizational competitive scenario (Gupta et al., 2004) on the basis of the individual interpretations of the reality (Daft, & Weick, 1984; Weick 1995). The role of communication in sense-making processes consists of pin-pointing in advance the communicative aspects of decisions taken, of the strategic options the organization has at its disposal, and of the specific strategic objectives. So thanks to the inclusion of communication in the dominant coalition, the process of sense-making gains a more complete and articulated outlook. Communication becomes something more than an infrastructural component of the business. It feeds the decisional process, influencing its contents through the reflective activity of the analysis and interpretation of the competitive and organizational context. The constitutive component plays a crucial role in the definition of the communicative aspects of decisions, completing the different ways in which communication contributes significantly to the corporate decision making process. In figure 1 the Strategic Communication Paradigm is represented. The model synthesizes the roles of the strategic communication activities in supporting the organizational decision making processes. Each dimension of strategic communication is related to its corresponding dimension of the Entrepreneurial Organization Theory. The comparison between the communication and the EOT dimensions allow us to show the role that each component of strategic communication exercises in creating competitive advantage and in contributing to the success of the firm. The four dimensions are not related to each other because each dimension must be evaluated by itself and because there is no starting point where the support of strategic communication to organizational decision making begins. Instead, as entrepreneurial organization theory and practice suggest, an entrepreneurial idea and activity can start from any phase or dimension of strategic communication and continue, following different paths. Fig. 1: The Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm and its underlying dimensions from the Entrepreneurial Organization Theory

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3. The Strategic Role of Internal Communication in Entrepreneurial Perspective On the basis of the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm previously described, in the following sections we analyze and discuss the strategic role of internal communication comparing its most important contents with the four dimensions of strategic communication. Adopting the entrepreneurial perspective we argue that internal communication enriches and strengthens the strategic role of communication at several levels. In the Aligning dimension, internal communication concerns the internal scanning of individual decisions and actions, and the engagement of the employees as codecisional partners. Within the Energizing dimension, internal communication holds a crucial role in stimulating innovation, in mobilizing intrapreneurialism and in empowering employees. Next, the Visioning dimension of internal communication deals with the fine-tuning of employees with the organizational mission, especially through leadership communication, and the coordination of the discretionary initiatives of the organizational members. Finally, the Constituting dimension relates to the role of internal communication in the co-construction of the organizational reality and in the cast enactment of supportive employee work teams. In figure 2 the strategic contribution of internal communication to each dimension of the ECP is presented.

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Fig. 2: Internal communication activities in the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm

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3.1 Aligning through scanning and engagement The creation of adequate internal communication flows enables middle and top managers to take more informed decisions thanks to the internal scanning of individual decisions and actions and the reflective role of communication. Internal symmetrical information flows and feedback allow the exchange of more accurate information genuinely linked to local situations between managers and employees (Shockley-Zalaback, 2009). While the diffusion of internal messages ensures that everybody in the organization knows company goals, the establishment of symmetrical internal communication networks allows everybody to speak out and to be listened to (Cornelissen, 2008; van Riel et al., 2009). Internal communication is not just the broadcaster of top management strategic directions, rather it gives voice to the micro-decisions and actions actually undertaken by organizational members. In this way internal scanning allows top managers to get in touch with the actual dynamics in the organizational context at the three levels. Inside the organization, internal scanning activity, for instance through climate analysis and organizational audits, draws an accurate picture of the evolution of the internal social reality. It also informs managers about the proper functioning of the productive processes by asking and listening to people actually involved. This allows managers to prevent and eventually correct inefficiencies and avoid bottle necks which may impair organizational activities. Finally, with regard to the external environment, internal scanning allows us to observe and interpret the context outside the organization on the basis of the perceptions held by organizational members, which means strengthening and enriching the organizational glance on its competitive environment with the perspectives of people who are actually in touch with organizational key stakeholders, such as clients and suppliers. The communication activity that we called Aligning, therefore, involves a two-way process: it is not just a matter of shaping employee behavior according to management prescriptions and rationale, but it urges management to take employee opinions seriously (van Riel et al., 2009) and to include them in their intended strategy through continuous listening activity. Decision making processes do not happen in isolation far from individuals. Strategy can be effectively carried out only with the engagement of organizational members at large, integrating human capital considerations into strategic management processes (Boswell, Bingham & Colvin, 2006), which means engaging and involving people in strategic dialogue from the beginning, before strategic decisions are taken. In this way, people feel they are actually participating in decision making. As the outcomes of strategic decisions arise from collective actions, internal communication guarantees the consistency of those actions over time, supporting the mutual adjustment among actors through continuous conjoint evaluation of the strategic options and of the outcome of actual decisions and actions. Alignment does not happen in retrospect, it is rather an iterative process as engaged employees tend to spontaneously perform convergent behaviours. Due to the critical role of the human agency, employees become co-decisional partners of paramount importance for the organization to engage and motivate (Argenti, 1998). Internal communication supports the establishment and maintenance of internal networks of mutual trust in which people are spontaneously willing to cooperate, to express their opinion, and to negotiate priorities. In Aligning, the key role of internal communication is, therefore, the creation of symmetrical frequent interactions (Dolphin, 2005; Welch & Jackson, 2007) and of positive exchange relationships (Boswell, 2006) upon which a trustworthy partnership between the organization and its members can be built. Strong interpersonal relationships among managers and

employees (Jo & Shim, 2005; Röttger, & Voss, 2008) are the key to transforming employees into ambassadors of commitment to organizational goals (Argenti & Forman, 2004) and, in turn, to themselves being a source of sustained competitive advantage (Colvin & Boswell, 2007). Within the Aligning dimension of the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm, internal communication participates mainly in bridging and engaging activities, addressing, in particular, the relationship with the internal stakeholders (employee engagement). Although environmental scanning and boundary spanning typically address the analysis of the environment outside the organization, internal communication helps corporate communication to include specialized and localized information and knowledge held by organizational members in its monitoring and interpretation of the environment (internal scanning). In this way internal communication helps the organization to act successfully as a cohesive whole. 3.2 Energizing internal stakeholders As competitive advantage should stem from “the hearts and minds of employees” (Quirke, 1996, p. 71), the creative and intellectual potential held by people in the organization is the core asset to build competitive differentiation and success. Unlocking the knowledge capital and the innovation potential encapsulated in employees has thus become a critical factor of success in today’s competitive environment. Communication scholars ascribe this task to internal communication, namely to the specialized services of knowledge, learning and innovation communication (Dolphin, 2005; Kalla, 2005; Lurati & Eppler, 2006; Zerfass, 2005; Zerfass & Huck, 2007). Internal communication can no longer be a mere information carrier since the transfer of objective information is just a taken for granted premise to the strategic processes of learning and knowledge creation. Rather knowledge communication is a “deliberate activity of interactively conveying and co-constructing insights, assessments, experiences, or skills” (Lurati & Eppler, 2006, p. 85), which aims at creating new insights, at embedding this advancement into actions, and, therefore, at developing new capabilities to compete successfully (van Riel et al., 2009). Orientation to learning is more than a trial and error activity which happens by chance; it is rather a precise attitude which is distinctive of “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together” (Senge 1990, p. 3). Internal communication takes on a crucial role as an incentive to renewal mechanisms, promoting learning activities and high performances. Organizational learning is about interacting with others, both cooperating and competing with them “to get one’s own learning heard” (Weick & Ashford, 2001, p. 727). Internal communication plays a strategic role in mobilizing intrapreneurialism and empowering people to share their tacit knowledge, to work in teams, and to change the way in which they get things done according to environmental shifts. New knowledge crops up from interactions among individuals and the dialectic between tacit and explicit knowledge. So the spider web of internal communication flows should continuously redesign and enhance new connections among crossfunctional and self-organizing creative teams, fostering the social processes which are the locus of learning and knowledge combination. As individuals differ in their ability to create and sense opportunities for innovation, internal communication should support innovative team leaders in developing and strengthening their charismatic authority to coordinate people’s efforts in breaking through crystallized routines, in recognizing the value of innovation, and in assimilating it into day-today activities. In order to do so internal communication should support the creation of an organizational climate and environment which actually enables people to interact, to enrich their expertise, and to embrace open innovation (Zerfass, 2005; Zerfass & Huck, 2007). As people are central in innovating and transferring knowledge, the challenge for internal communication is to find a balance between transmitting previously codified knowledge, and empowering people to become the process owner of their jobs, stimulating them to accomplish their tasks in the best

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possible way and to learn how to face changing conditions without remaining stuck in inefficient routines. In the Energizing dimension of the ECP, internal communication is the pivotal element around which the strategic role of entrepreneurial communication revolves. In this case internal communication does not just feed some specific ECP activities; rather it covers all the functions of strategic communication within the Energizing dimension. Energizing thus means using internal communication to mobilize people to initiate change rather than to adapt to it; to encourage employees to drive innovation processes rather than to simply accept innovation; to channel people’s efforts to create and combine new knowledge rather than to merely transfer what has been already codified. Internal communication is the key process by which employees are empowered to expand their role in that way (Campbell, 2000; Zerfass & Huck, 2007) and to become “proactive individuals, highly involved and committed as independent contributors with initiative and a well developed sense of responsibility” (Campbell, 2000, p. 52). 3.3 Visioning and leadership Inside the organization, effective internal communication feeds the fine tuning among employees and the organization, connecting them to a company’s strategy and vision (Argenti & Forman, 2004: 46), diffusing the organizational mission statement (Cheney & Christensen, 2001), and supplying employees with information about the company’s evolving aims (Welch & Jackson, 2007). Internal communication is the carrier of corporate mission, history, culture and values, which are embodied in the ongoing narration of corporate stories (van Riel, 2000; van Riel & Fombrun, 2007). These stories incorporate the fundamental values, beliefs and competences originated in the organization and provide a reliable framework to guide organizational actions and behaviours (Larsen, 2000). Internal narratives shape employees’ mindset, providing them with a common line of sight on organization objectives (Boswell, 2006) and creating a positive sense of belonging (Welch & Jackson, 2007) and identification in the organization (Smidts, Pruyn & van Riel, 2001) as a unified body. In this regard internal communication forges the mental programming of the mind (Hofstede, 1991) of organizational members, thus helping them reconcile the potential conflict among personal and corporate goals. The frequent and constant broadcast of the content of strategy to everybody in the organization supports managers in getting employees on their side (Dolphin, 2005) and in disseminating the seeds of consensus and cooperation required to implement strategy (Rapert, et al., 2002). Managers retain a crucial role in motivating employees through leadership communication, which creates a voice for management decisions (Huebner, Varey & Wood, 2008) and explains the rationale behind strategy (van Riel et al., 2009) to organizational members at large. The kind and style of leadership communication carried out by managers and employee supervisors is a core determinant of the nature of the relationships developed between management and its staff and a key driver of employee willingness to contribute to organizational objectives and to get involved in decision making processes (Robson & Tourish, 2005). CEOs and senior leaders are the primary visionaries of corporate strategy, so the communication of corporate mission and vision should necessarily start from them (Argenti & Forman, 2004). Being a transformational leader requires the commitment of managers to engage in a communication process which raises the aspirations of their followers according to the leader’s own visions (Zerfass & Huck, 2007: 114) and thus influences people shaping their mind (Hamrefors, 2010). Leadership communication serves as orientation mechanism (Mast & Huck, 2008); more specifically, internal messages from leaders communicate a special perspective on the future of the organization which instils higher ideals, trust, admiration, loyalty, and the willingness to make exceptional efforts into organizational members (Campbell, 2000: 54). In this way, internal communication not only disseminates the corporate vision, but also promotes a process of internal transformation committing individuals to act in a way that fulfils leaders’ visionary aspirations. This reminds us that Visioning is more than shaping employee mindset according to the company mission; it is also about taking advantage of employees’

initiatives coordinating individual discretionary behaviours in a way that fosters strategic decision attainment. Nowadays, the added value of employee contributions to the organization resides in their capacity to spontaneously take initiatives that contribute to the implementation of strategy (van Riel, Berens & Dijkstra, 2009). Organizations which impose strict and narrow prescriptions of tasks (Colvin & Boswell 2007) on their employees dismiss the potential value encapsulated in their actions. In order to take advantage of employee autonomous behaviours as one of the most valuable assets (Argenti, 1998; Argenti & Forman, 2004), from which competitive advantage stems, the organization needs on the one hand to coordinate and drive its members toward its goals; on the other hand to allow them to freely express their potential (Cornelissen, 2008), finding the proper balance between the organizational coordination-control stance and the individual call for autonomy and creativity (Cornelissen, 2008). In the Visioning dimension, internal communication starts from leadership communication to shape the collective frame of mind and the attitude of organizational members, trying both to make them know the content of the mission statement and to instil in them the visionary mood to carry it out successfully. In relation to the ECP, internal communication makes a crucial contribution tuning in the minds of internal stakeholders with company objectives and coordinating their initiatives in order to guarantee consistency with organizational mission. This represents a critical prerequisite for entrepreneurial communication to play its strategic role in shaping company position and reputation, and in enabling the implementation of company decisions. 3.4 Constituting internal context The Constituting dimension reminds us that organizations are not an objective a priori structure where communication simply occurs (Rapert et al., 2002); rather they are intersubjectively co-constructed through communication exchanges. Communication scholars (Fairhurst & Putnam, 2004; Kuhn, 2008; Putnam & Nicotera, 2010; Taylor, 2009) posit that communication is a synonym of organizing. In this way, they recognize the constitutive power of communication. In other words, organizations are complex symbolic interpretive systems (Hatch & Schultz, 2000), basically made up of interpersonal networks of sensemaking (Jo & Shim, 2005) and of sequences of communication acts linked to actions (Putnam & Nicotera, 2010). Inside the organization a multitude of communication flows participates in the enactment of the internal environment through the construction of the internal reality, the negotiation of membership rights, the structuring and the coordination of actors’ roles inside the organization (McPhee & Zaug, 2009; Taylor, 2009). The organization does not exist until its members intersubjectively coconstruct a shared framework of meaning about the organization itself and their roles (Putnam & Pacanowsky, 1983). The management of meaning, therefore, becomes a critical activity for organization leaders (Zerfass & Huck, 2007). The Constituting dimension highlights that internal communication exchanges are the locus and the means by which impression management efforts are carried out to influence and guide actions inside the organization (Ginzel, Kramer & Sutton, 1993). Internal communication networks assist managers in the cast enactment of supportive work teams, which means gathering and mobilizing “a supporting cast of participants who become committed by the vision to the discovery and exploitation of strategic value creation’’ (Gupta et al., 2004, p. 242). Since the creation of a cast of supporters is vital for the enactment of the managers’ vision, building a supportive workforce has become critical for the organization to attain success (Colvin & Boswell 2007; De Ridder, 2004) and to reach the future position envisioned by its leaders. Internal communication flows support the co-orientation of meanings generated in the interactions among individuals (Taylor, 2009). In this way, communication exchanges produce a collective identity for the employee cast and a common organizational plot in which people perform their activities on the basis of a shared interpretation of organizational vision. As organizational actors rely on their interpretation of reality to coordinate and control their own and others’ activities (Kuhn, 2008), these interpretations have the performative capacity to turn communication statements

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into real actions (Huebner et al., 2008) and therefore to mobilize supporters’ commitment. According to the ECP, communication plays an important role in highlighting the communicative implications of decisions taken, giving voice to communication at the table of decisions and leading the enactment process of competitive context. Internal communication feeds these activities, sustaining the enactment processes at lower levels in the organizations and driving organizational members’ interpretive efforts towards a shared understanding of the organization, its objectives, and its decisions. 4. Final Remarks In this paper we have discussed and shown how pivotal the role of internal communication within organizational strategic communication is. To do so, we have analyzed the most important initiatives of internal communication related to each dimension (Aligning, Energizing, Visioning and Constituting) of the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm. In the Aligning dimension, internal communication activities help the organization to keep in touch with actual ongoing dynamics in the organizational context and, therefore, to take better informed decisions. On the one hand, internal scanning allows managers to collect specialized and localized information and opinions; on the other hand, internal stakeholder engagement sustains the inclusion of organizational members’ perspectives in strategic decisions. In this way, managers pave the way to decision acceptance in advance and thus facilitate their attainment. In the Energizing dimension, the internal communication activities are carried out so as to channel people energy towards innovation, instilling intrapreneurial élan to initiate change and embrace innovation. Employee empowerment, knowledge creations, learning processes and innovation dynamics, therefore, become crucial in transforming organizational members into proactive entrepreneurs. In the Visioning dimension, internal communication not only disseminates the contents of company mission, but, most of all, takes on the responsibility of tuning in employees to organizational mission, vision and strategy. The development of a strong awareness of the leaders’ communicative role is required to lead this visioning process. While managers communicate their special vision of the future to employees, internal communication helps coordinate organizational member initiatives. In the Constituting dimension, internal communication operates at a twofold level. Communicative acts of organizational members co-construct the reality inside the organization and, in turn, the organization itself. Sensemaking and meaning making activities allow managers to guide the interpretive processes of people inside the organization, thus facilitating the cast enactment of teams of supportive employees. Examining the evolution of internal communication, we can state that in the last years it has progressed from a simple informative function to being a complex meaning creator and proactive behaviour activator. We argue that, on the basis of what we have seen in each dimension of the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm, internal communication supports the growth of two main organizational driving forces within organizations: all the internal communication activities are actually focused to develop a common vision of the company and of its strategy and, at the same time, to increase innovation and micro-entrepreneurship among employees, which means that internal communication plays a central role within the Entrepreneurial Communication Paradigm, both developing and activating the autoentrepreneurship of employees and managers. References ALVAREZ S., BARNEY J. (2004), “Organizing rent generation and appropriation: toward a theory of the entrepreneurial firm”, Journal of Business Venturing, vol. 19, pp. 621635.

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