Strategic Issues Management - Organizations and Public Policy Challenges (Paperback, 2nd edition)

Strategic Issues Management is designed to position issues management in the strategic planning and management efforts by staff and executives. This book argues that issues management is not one of the many communication functions, but a management function that can entail use of public policy resources to achieve harmony with key publics. Issues management is vital to organizations' strategic management. It entails understanding and achieving high standards of corporate responsibility by listening to and acknowledging the soundness of key publics' opinions. The book explores the communication options that organizations can employ in their stewardship to address crucial public policy options and engage in collaborative decision making. Thus, issues management is featured as supporting strategic management, getting the organizations "house" in order, engaging in tough defense and smart offense, and monitoring opinion changes that affect public policy. In addition to these crucial topics, the book examines crisis response to advise managers on ways to lessen the chance that a crisis will become an issue. A chapter on risk communication challenges managers to engage in collaborative decision making with community leaders to reduce the chance that undue fear will translate into unnecessary regulation or legislation. Filling a void in the literature, Strategic Issues Management is a long awaited text that will be of invaluable to students and professionals in mass communication, journalism, management, and media studies.