Joachim Klewes is Senior Partner of Pleon and an associate professor at the Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf. His over 25 years of expertise include major assignments in the fields of organisational consulting, corporate change and crisis management, as well as corporate communications. He is a founding partner of the opinion research institute com.X and a frequent writer, publisher and speaker.

Ralf Langen is Managing Partner of Pleon Germany and European Head of Pleon s Change & Transformation Practice. He has been a communications management professional for more than 15 years both on the industry side and as a consultant. He specialises in change management, and crisis and issues management. He is also the founder and chairman of the European Centre for Reputation Studies (ECRS).

Pleon is Europe's leading communications consultancy, creating and implementing strategies for private and public sector organisations around the world. The agency has 33 branded offices with more than 1,000 employees in 16 European countries and associate agencies in ten countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Pleon was recently named "European Consultancy of the Year" by the Holmes Report.

"Change before you have to" - the advice by Jack Welch, former CEO of industry giant General Electric, still holds true today. Even more so: organisations permanently have to face change, if they want to succeed economically. No small feat, given the high expectations that employees have in times of transformation towards their management. Staff cannot be entirely left out of the process, anymore. This hard-learned lesson is fairly well understood by now. But how should engagement be designed and carried out? This collection explores the different approaches to employee participation - from a practitioners' perspective. Consultants from Pleon, Europe's leading communications agency, as well as managers and academics share their experience with change communication and offer valuable insights on what engagement - if tackled correctly - can do for organisations: it adds to the internal trust and external reputation. "

* ... release reputation bearers from the burden of being constantly mo- tored and reduce the likelihood of government or public supervision and control. * ... strengthen client trust, ease the recruitment and retention of capable employees and improve access to capital markets or attract investors. * ... legitimate positions of power and build up reserves of trust which - lowed companies and politicians - but also researchers and journalists - to put their issues on the public agenda, present them credibly and mould them in their own interests. But a fear of loss is not the only reason for the steadily increasing - portance of reputation in corporate management today (or more especially, in the minds of top management). Rather, the main reason is that corporate reputation has shifted from being an unquantifiable 'soft' factor to a me- urable indicator in the sense of management control. And it is a variable that is obviously relevant to a company's performance: recent studies by the European Centre for Reputation Studies and the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universitat of Munich compared the stock market performance of a port- lio of the top 25% of reputation leaders (based on regular reputation me- urements in the wider public) with that of the German DAX 30 stock m- ket index. The results show that a portfolio consisting of reputation leaders 1 outperformed the stock market index by up to 45% - and with less risk. Fig. 1. Performance of 'reputation portfolios' vs.

This book demonstrates the challenges for Corporate Communications in the era of the Industrial Internet and the Internet of things, and how companies can adapt their communication strategies to meet them. The Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things herald a transformation in our economy, industry and society. As such, it is high time that companies adjust both their communication strategies and the structure of their communications to reflect these changes. In this book, experts from the corporate world, academia, professional associations, government organizations and NGOs discuss various challenges - from Corporate and Leadership Communication and Employer Branding to Change/Personnel Management and changes in the supply chain - that can be confronted in everyday working environment. Revealing contributions from an interdisciplinary mix of perspectives help offer a more detailed picture of what future programs and standards might look like. The book also features best practice cases that offer practical insights into addressing the Corporate Communications challenges that are to come.

* ... release reputation bearers from the burden of being constantly mo- tored and reduce the likelihood of government or public supervision and control. * ... strengthen client trust, ease the recruitment and retention of capable employees and improve access to capital markets or attract investors. * ... legitimate positions of power and build up reserves of trust which - lowed companies and politicians - but also researchers and journalists - to put their issues on the public agenda, present them credibly and mould them in their own interests. But a fear of loss is not the only reason for the steadily increasing - portance of reputation in corporate management today (or more especially, in the minds of top management). Rather, the main reason is that corporate reputation has shifted from being an unquantifiable 'soft' factor to a me- urable indicator in the sense of management control. And it is a variable that is obviously relevant to a company's performance: recent studies by the European Centre for Reputation Studies and the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universitat of Munich compared the stock market performance of a port- lio of the top 25% of reputation leaders (based on regular reputation me- urements in the wider public) with that of the German DAX 30 stock m- ket index. The results show that a portfolio consisting of reputation leaders 1 outperformed the stock market index by up to 45% - and with less risk. Fig. 1. Performance of 'reputation portfolios' vs.

Consultants from Pleon, Europe's leading communications agency, as well as managers and academics, share their experience with change communication. They offer valuable insights on what engagement, if tackled correctly, can do for organizations, adding both to internal trust and external reputation. "Change before you have to" - the advice by Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, still holds true today. Organizations have to face change if they want to succeed economically.

Die empirischen Untersuchungen liefern Ergebnisse aus der Praxis, die belastbare Aussagen uber die Messbarkeit von Effekten der Kommunikation zulassen. Neben etablierten Praktikern und Wissenschaftlern kommt auch der PR- Nachwuchs zu Wort mit Beitragen, die u.a. im Rahmen des Forderprogramms "Initiative 100" der Kommunikationsagentur komm.passion ausgewahlt wurden.

Die gezielte Anwendung von Forschungsergebnissen auf Problemstellungen der Kommunikationspraxis, und gleichzeitig die daraus resultierende Forderung neuer wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse, ist das Anliegen des vorliegenden Bandes. Die Beitrage namhafter Autoren aus der deutschen und internationalen PR-Forschung und der Kommunikationspraxis bundeln die aktuelle Fachdiskussion und liefern Anregungen fur erfolgreiches Kommunikationsmanagement.