اطلاعات استراتژیک روابط عمومی: تجزیه و تحلیل اطلاعات، ارتباطات و نفوذ  Public relations strategic intelligence: Intelligence analysis, communication and influence

1. Introduction This article suggests that strategy formation, and specifically the communication component of business strategies, requires analytic inputs about the company environment and its stakeholders. It goes on to argue that adaptation of the organization’s explicit plans to a dynamic and evolving context requires an intelligence function that anticipates and interprets developments, identifies drivers of change affecting the initial conditions, and informs management decisions and actions strategically. It positions intelligence and analytic insights as prerequisites of strategy formulation, and strategic communication efforts. Although using the terms formation and formulation indistinguishably, the article acknowledges Mintzberg (1978) identificationofthe conceptualdifference betweenbothterms.Accordingly, strategies canbe formulatedthrougha conscious process “in advance of the making specific decisions” (Mintzberg, 1978p. 934). This process can result in a deliberate plan or set of guidelines to underlie the posterior actions, or they can be “patterns in a stream of decisions”, i.e., realized strategies that emerge and form “when a sequence of decisions in some area exhibits a consistency over time” (Mintzberg, 1978pp. 934- 935). The article claims that deliberate strategic plans, rather than being a mere collection of intuitions, require intelligence on the organization’s environment. This intelligence is necessary to capture a thoughtful organizational response to changing conditions and to address challenges from the environment or from stakeholders. In addition, the adaptation of the organization’s plans to a dynamic and evolving context requires an intelligence function to interpret developments, identify drivers of change, and inform management decisions and actions that will lead to new strategies.