Books in Brief: Communicate: Parkinson’s Formula for Business Survival

Communicate: Parkinson’s Formula for Business Survival, by C. Northcote Parkinson and Nigel Rowe (Prentice Hall, 205 pp., $9.95). Between Nadersquawk and Fedregs, business has been taking it in the ear. Gone are the low-profile days, those happy days before profits became “unconscionable.” The visible anti-business hand now aims for the groin. Spirited defense or forceful rejoinder fast becomes a sharp necessity as business foes escalate the movement to dismantle capitalism and scuttle what remains of a free market. To survive, this casebook counsels, businessmen around the world must pull together; they must responsibly and forthrightly defend the practices and explain the processes by which so many have been delivered so much for so little. The focus is largely European (Rowe is a PR man working in Europe), and it should interest anyone doing business there, especially multinationals. The authors’ analysis of European enterprise, its critics and “communications” problems (and state encroachment), could be a foretaste of what America can expect. Parkinson and Rowe are quick to nail the U.S. problem that consists in government regulation and consumer protest which erode public confidence in business generally. This in turn breeds more regulation and lack of confidence. How to break this vicious circle is illustrated in excellent case studies—Gulf Oil’s simulated “crisis” seminars, Mobil’s keen advocacy campaigns in print and electronic media, ITT’s campaign to combat its critics. The authors are far from advocating PR-omania. “Most people want to talk but few of them have anything to say,” they write, saying that many of management’s pronouncements are “merely the bureaucratic equivalent of breaking wind.” A welcome addition to the survival kit.

SO

About the Author

S. K. Oberbeck

Featured Tags

Communicate: Parkinson’s Formula for Business Survival, by C. Northcote Parkinson and Nigel Rowe (Prentice Hall, 205 pp., $9.95). Between Nadersquawk and Fedregs, business has been taking it in the ear. Gone are the low-profile days, those happy days before profits became “unconscionable.” The visible anti-business hand now aims for the groin. Spirited defense or forceful rejoinder fast becomes a sharp necessity as business foes escalate the movement to dismantle capitalism and scuttle what remains of a free market. To survive, this casebook counsels, businessmen around the world must pull together; they must responsibly and forthrightly defend the practices and explain the processes by which so many have been delivered so much for so little. The focus is largely European (Rowe is a PR man working in Europe), and it should interest anyone doing business there, especially multinationals. The authors’ analysis of European enterprise, its critics and “communications” problems (and state encroachment), could be a foretaste of what America can expect. Parkinson and Rowe are quick to nail the U.S. problem that consists in government regulation and consumer protest which erode public confidence in business generally. This in turn breeds more regulation and lack of confidence. How to break this vicious circle is illustrated in excellent case studies—Gulf Oil’s simulated “crisis” seminars, Mobil’s keen advocacy campaigns in print and electronic media, ITT’s campaign to combat its critics. The authors are far from advocating PR-omania. “Most people want to talk but few of them have anything to say,” they write, saying that many of management’s pronouncements are “merely the bureaucratic equivalent of breaking wind.” A welcome addition to the survival kit.