BI Norwegian Business School initiates a Nordic research group to stimulate work at the intersection of communication and management with close ties to leading Nordic CCOs .

All organizations face increasing demands for contributing to solving societal and environmental problems. As a result, the way organizations communicate and engage with their stakeholders is rapidly changing. Sustainable organizational performance and success is dependent not only on managers’ ability to understand how they relate to their organizations but also on their understanding of the impact of their personal communication along with that of their organization, both internally and externally.  In this sense, management and communication are natural allies.

Building on the legacy of BI’s Centre for Corporate Communication, communication researchers at BI Norwegian Business School are launching a new regional and cross-disciplinary research group: The Nordic Alliance for Communication & Management #NORA (www.bi.edu/nora) brings together the academic disciplines of communication and management. The Alliance’s focus will be less on public relations and corporate communication and more broadly on communication as a strategic driver of sustainable organizational performance and success to combine perspectives from a wider range of fields.

Nordic expertise

NORA will harness the brainpower of leading Nordic communication researchers working specifically at the intersection to management research, e.g. on leadership, finance and accounting, intercultural management or governance. To date the alliance includes scholars from Jyväskylä University in Finland, Mid-Sweden University and Lund University in Sweden, and Copenhagen Business School and University of Århus in Denmark. An interdisciplinary approach is key and other researchers and scholars interested in joining are welcome to get in touch.

Connecting academia and management practice

The alliance aims specifically to link academia and practice by developing research through continuous dialogue with industry partners. The group brings together leading communication executives in the Nordic region with researchers from communication and management to jointly identify emerging trends and topics and develop new research-based knowledge. Industry feedback will serve as inspiration for the researchers, and industry partners have access to latest research and its practical implications.

Key activities of the Alliance are joint workshops and seminars with researchers and CCOs. All events are developed around a joint agenda to work towards common topics. Research topics are identified together in meetings and workshops to ensure that the projects will be both useful for organizations and conducive to advancing academic research.

Expanding from a strong position

The BI Centre for Corporate Communication, established by Professor Peggy Simcic Brønn, has been a primary contributor to the research-based development of the public relations and corporate communication fields in Norway for over 13 years. The Centre has been supported throughout the years by leading Norwegian organizations and interests. The new Alliance’s ambition is to build on this foundation to work towards the management field more broadly and do so in a wider Nordic context. #NORA is currently funded by: DNGV GL, Orkla, The Research Council of Norway and BI Norwegian Business School.