Transforming Corporate Communication

by Dr. Dino Sossi

Introductory Thoughts

Multinational corporations rule the world.

They dictate supply chains.

Impact politics.

Some even generate greater revenues than some sovereign European countries like Spain and the Netherlands (Babic, Heemskerk, & Fichtner, 2018).

These remarkable developments lead to important educational questions for today’s classrooms:

• How do we foster critical examination of these powerful organizations that increasingly impact our world?
• How do we help students use their critical thinking skills to shape corporations for the good?
• And how do we use communication tools to advocate for the issues that are important to our students and their diverse home communities?

The course Corporate Communication is part of the Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Media at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) School of Professional Studies. The course “Introduces writing techniques for effective corporate communications. Outlines the history, function, and traditional practices of public relations. Analyzes case studies in corporate communications and public relations. Requires that students create a variety of individual and group writing assignments.” In short, Corporate Communication helps students develop fundamentally important skills that will help them become effective communicators within a variety of business organizations across sectors.

Working with CUNY and the Mellon Foundation’s Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) has inspired me to reconceptualize Corporate Communication. Their powerful partnership has helped me collaborate even more with my students and shift the course’s focus toward what Freire and Macedo would call “writing the world” (2015). As they write, “Reading the word and learning how to write the word so one can later read it are preceded by learning how to write the world, that is having the experience of changing the world and touching the world” (Freire & Macedo, 2005, p. 12).  

In the following chapter, please find one particularly relevant example of writing the world – advocacy letters written to the government. Here, students attempt to foster positive change on gun control, the Russia-Ukraine war, mental health in schools, the Mahsa Amini tragedy, and many other worthwhile ventures.

As it has in the past in so many countries, hopefully student advocacy can still make a difference across the world.  

References:

Babic, M., Heemskerk, E., & Fichtner, J. (2018, July 10). Who is more powerful – states or corporations? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-corporations-99616

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (2005). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Routledge.

Next chapter - “Advocacy Letters” ->