Studies
Research reports about the Communication profession and our outputs.
Research studies are conducted in cooperation with different universities or EACD partners. They aim to highlight aspects of the profession and examine questions that today’s communicators are facing in a European and wider international context.
The EACD supports the following research projects:
European Communication Monitor
The European Communications Monitor is an international research initiative conducted by the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA), in partnership with EACD.
The study is conducted with the aim to stimulate and promote the knowledge and practice of communication management in Europe. The study monitors trends in communication management and analyses impacts of global dynamics and media occurrences on communication departments and agencies. Moreover, it identifies major strategic issues, fields of practice and instruments. Specific topics, such as indicators of excellence and power, effects of social media, leadership styles, job satisfaction or salaries, are discussed in detail. Means of empirical social research methods and statistical computation are used to analyse the mass amount of data collected.
Ecopsi
European Communication Professionals Skills & Innovation Programme (Ecopsi)
The European Communication Professionals Skills and Innovation Programme (ECOPSI) findings reveal that there are numerous opportunities for deeper and on-going professional training and development to support the practice in moving away from an on-the-job learning approach towards knowledge acquisition and development. To address this shift, the ECOPSI research team used the findings on communication practitioner roles across Europe and developed the Portal for Advancing Communication Education (P4ACE) and a self-diagnostic tool called P4ACE.
The Portal (for) Advancing Communication Expertise is a new communication competencies diagnostic tool dedicated to supporting continuing professional development for communication practitioners in Europe. The portal allows you to:
- Learn about the essential competencies needed in the workplace
- Read case studies of real communication practitioners who talk about the competencies needed in today’s changing work place
- Evaluate your competencies through the unique P4ACE assessment tool
- Explore ways to develop your competencies within select regions in Europe
The Portal (for) Advancing Communication Expertise supports individual practitioners in benchmarking their current knowledge, skills and personal attributes.
Along with a research consortium of six leading universities, the EACD is a partner of the European Communication Professionals Skills and Innovation Programme (ECOPSI), a European funded project which aims to map and evaluate the current and future communication management skills of practitioners across Europe.
The context for this project is a communication sector in Europe which has grown and developed significantly over the last 20 years. This expansion has been influenced by political, economic and cultural shifts which have seen profit and non-profit organisations equally recognize the role and significance of communication in achieving organisational goals. These include managing reputation and image as key assets of organisations.
The ECOPSI project aims to map and understand the actions and activities of communicators specifically in this European landscape to build knowledge and understanding of what they do but also what skills and knowledge they need to develop to have a shared meaning and understanding of the practice. The programme maps and evaluates the current and future communication management skills of practitioners across Europe and fills a competency, skills and knowledge gap in the field of professional communication management by providing open source information resources for communication practitioner skills diagnosis and development.
Infographics and other information are freely available on the ECOPSI website.
C-Suite
The Chief Communication Officer & The C-Suite
The European Association of Communication Directors is supporting a research project examining the membership of communication professionals in executive committees.
Our role as Chief Communication Officers (CCO) is constantly evolving. We know that we have a vital role to play in strategic business decisions, particularly in recognising their impact on the corporate reputation, but the scope and outline of this role are the subjects of debate. What is our place in the overall organisational structure? What are the full range of responsibilities expected of us? Do we need a seat at the executive table to carry out these duties? These questions and more pressing concerns were addressed in our latest study “The Chief Communication Officer and the C-Suite”.
To explore these questions, the EACD collaborated with two expert partners: the leading communication research institution The Amsterdam School of Communication Research and Russell Reynolds Associates, who as an assessment and recruitment specialist is ideally placed to offer and collect insights into the evolving position requirements of CCOs.
Together, we looked at both quantitative and qualitative data and interviewed leading HR heads and CEOs to get their insights into the roles and responsibilities of today’s CCO.
This report is a summary of the initial results of this project: The Chief Communications Officer and the C-Suite
We will continue to explore this topic over the coming years, and we welcome this opportunity to embark on a fruitful debate with our members about the future of executive communicators and their changing role.
Leadership in the Age of Purpose
Leadership in the Age of Purpose
In our joint research project with Fourtold, we spoke to communications professionals from around the world to find out what their organisations understood about the importance of ESG issues and the need to engage with stakeholders about these issues.
We particularly wanted to understand how businesses, organisations, and their senior executives are using social media to show leadership on the critical ESG issues of the day; to find out about their experiences, the hurdles they’ve encountered along the way, and the extent to which employees are traveling with them on their ESG journey.