The Recent Information Revolution (1998-2007) : How did it change the communications department in larger Swedish corporations?

Abstract: The increased information flow with the expansion of the Internet together with the increase in business media has forced corporations to change their communications department in order to keep up with these changes. Structural changes have been made emancipating the communication department as its own with its communication director reporting directly to the CEO.    To gather information regarding these issues interviews with the communications directors were conducted. The corporations chosen were larger Swedish publicly traded companies from the OMX Stockholm 30 Index. The information collected in the interviews together with the information from ICCO, SPRA and Internet World Stats gave a clear image on what the change in communication has been like over the past ten years and how this change has increased the influence and power of the communications department.   In conclusion, according to Wallström’s ten trends affecting corporate focus there were clear results indicating a change in corporations focus. This was then applied to Salancik and Pfeffer’s (1977) strategic contingency theory, which showed that the communications department in the corporations that we investigated, according to theory, have increased in power and influence the last ten years.