The prevalence of the strategist role in senior communication manager roles at South African universities

Abstract

South Africa’s higher education sector is a highly unpredictable environment in various respects, which, in recent years, has faced severe adversity. Many of these adversities are a result of the country’s volatile economy, amongst others, and several related issues in the country had elicited several student demonstrations that also relate directly to the country’s economic challenges, such as income disparities and the high level of unemployment. Communication at universities has and continues to serve a critical purpose, especially when considering these recent challenges. To deal with this unpredictable environment in which practitioners operate, the communication management function at universities needs to fulfil a strategic role, in particular when it comes to the tasks executed by senior communication practitioners, communicating with stakeholders, and identifying current and emerging issues timeously. If senior practitioners are to fulfil a strategic communication management role, they need to be trained and experienced in performing these strategic tasks. Steyn and Puth (2000:20-21) identify three dominant roles in South Africa, namely the strategist, manager, and technician. With reference to these communication practitioner roles, the practitioner, exemplifying the role of the strategist, will execute strategic duties such as environmental scanning or research. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which the communication strategist is prevalent in senior communication management roles at South African universities, since little research has been conducted in this regard. Against this background, the following general research question was asked: To what extent is the communication strategist prevalent in senior communication practitioner roles at universities in South Africa? In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior communication practitioners to explore the current views they hold regarding their roles. Furthermore, a literature study was conducted to determine the importance of the strategic role of communication management in attaining organisational goals. This study found that the majority of senior communication practitioners at participating universities do perform a number of strategic duties related to the role of the strategist – despite the fact that they occupy contrasting positions and function at different levels, which affects the type of decision-making they participate in. Hence, only a few of these practitioners function at the top management level of their universities and form part of the dominant coalition based on their membership and advisory functions within these university decision-making governance structures. Furthermore, very few practitioners operate according to varying degrees of a symmetrical worldview, which is also evident in the task of two-way communication and achieving social responsibility and good governance within their university. The execution of the organisational communication strategy is evident according to other terms mentioned and not the term enterprise strategy. Nevertheless, it is evident that certain universities in South Africa are outsourcing their research needs as in the case of environmental scanning, or at least certain stages of this process.