Abstract

Issues management may be an unfortunate misnomer. Certainly, no corporate staff function can manage a public issue to a corporation's desired conclusion with any regularity. An issues management process, however, can help a company to realize its business objectives by helping it anticipate and respond to changes in its external environment. Properly conceived and executed, issues management is a process to organize a company's expertise to enable it to participate effectively in the shaping and resolution of public issues that critically impinge upon its operations. issues management offers a business-oriented means of conceptualizing and acting upon public policy issues. An organized issues management process must link line and staff expertise. Its focus must be on actual business concerns; a company's effective participation in public policy making is simply never unrelated to bottom-line consequences. Issues management must embody the deliberate recognition by company decision makers of the need for a systematic approach to public issues and to constructive participation in their resolution.