Strategic Issues Management Vol. 1 : Organizations and Public Policy Challenges

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.

Robert L. Heath, professor emeritus of communication at the University of Houston, is an internationally recognized authority on public relations, crisis communication, issues management, risk communication, and business-to-business communication. He has published many award-winning books, including The SAGE Handbook of Public Relations (2010), Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication (2009), Strategic Issues Management (2nd ed., 2009), Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II (2009), and Terrorism: Communication and Rhetorical Perspectives (2008).

Heath has 3 decades′ experience in corporate communication and positioning research. He has conducted research on risks related to various hazards, including those associated with chemical manufacturing and community right-to-know―key themes in community relations. In addition, he has published more than 100 chapters and articles and serves on the editorial and reviewer panels of several premier academic journals. He has received many honors from public relations professionals and academic associations and has lectured nationally and internationally on a wide array of topics.