Abstract

The importance of the information professional in the communication management department of organizations is discussed. The need to integrate an information specialist within the communication team is essential; either hired from outside the organization or trained from within. Communication management is no longer limited to a press department handling press releases, but is instead a comprehensive communication management effort dealing with internal and external relations; and policies about intangible assets like reputation, image, and value creation through brand. In this article we review the tasks that are demanded by companies of their communication departments and compare them with the skills of information professionals. This job requires a cross-fertilization effort and a task map is used to illustrate how information professionals can perform in the communication area.

Abstract

The big data revolution is a challenge and opportunity for companies. In the ethics and social responsibility domain, big data, and the increasingly more accessible and versatile data processing technology, allow companies to open up new communication channels, and to collect accurate, detailed, and constantly updated information about: their economic, social, and environmental impacts; interests and legitimate expectations involved; trust, reputation, and affinity that they arouse in their stakeholders; and the effects that their actions and decisions cause, among many other things. The objective of this study is to present a system that monitors and fulfills ethics and social responsibility which, based on whistleblowing, communication, storage, and processing of big data, along with stakeholders’ committed participation, offers companies the chance to examine their moral and emotional responsibilities in order to be able to rise to what this historic time demands.