Tag: stakeholder management

  • The New CCAO and CCO Mandate by United Minds

    The New CCAO and CCO Mandate by United Minds

    About the paper

    The paper examines how Chief Corporate Affairs Officers and Chief Communications Officers are adapting to political volatility, cultural complexity, economic uncertainty, and AI-enabled communications work.

    It is an original qualitative research report based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with CCOs and CCAOs from Fortune 1000 companies, conducted over two months in early 2025; the exact number of participants is not clearly specified in the report.

    The geographic scope includes both U.S.-based and European corporate affairs leaders.

    Length: 8 pages

    More information / download:
    https://webershandwick.com/news/new-ccao-and-cco-mandate-navigating-a-new-era-of-corporate-leadership

    Core Insights

    1. What is the central argument of the report?

    The report argues that the corporate affairs and communications function has not retreated in importance as companies have pulled back from the more visible social-issue positioning of the early 2020s. Instead, CCAOs and CCOs have become less publicly visible but more strategically central inside the enterprise.

    The core claim is that corporate affairs leaders are now expected to help companies navigate a volatile intersection of business, politics, culture, stakeholder expectations, employee sentiment, and reputation risk. Their mandate is no longer simply to explain corporate decisions after the fact. They are increasingly expected to help shape those decisions before they are made.

    The report frames this as a shift from communications as a reactive function to corporate affairs as a source of enterprise foresight. The ideal corporate affairs function, according to the report, helps leaders anticipate risk, understand stakeholder dynamics, interpret political and cultural signals, and protect the company’s licence to operate.

    2. How is the CCAO/CCO role changing in relation to business strategy?

    The report’s first major theme is that corporate affairs leaders are becoming proactive business partners. Their value increasingly lies in their ability to translate political, regulatory, cultural, and stakeholder signals into business implications.

    This means they are not only advising on messages, positioning, or crisis response. They are helping business leaders understand where external pressures may require changes to products, operations, stakeholder engagement, or risk management. One example in the report describes a policy-related issue around a consumer product where corporate affairs brought data to the business, prompting an eight-week sprint that helped resolve product issues and changed the relationship between corporate affairs and the product leader.

    The report presents corporate affairs leaders as “orchestrators” across functions. Because they sit close to the CEO agenda and have an enterprise-wide view, they can connect information from legal, policy, HR, product, finance, operations, communications, and external stakeholders. Their strategic value comes from synthesising those signals into business intelligence.

    The practical recommendation is to build formal cross-functional intelligence networks and develop ways to quantify external risk in financial terms. In other words, corporate affairs must be able to speak the language of business impact, not only the language of reputation.

    3. Why does political complexity matter so much in the report?

    Political volatility is one of the report’s defining conditions. The authors locate the research in the early 2025 U.S. context, following Donald Trump’s second inauguration and first 100 days in office. The report says companies are operating in a climate shaped by executive orders, economic volatility, hyper-partisanship, and sudden political attention.

    The report argues that this has forced corporate affairs leaders to rethink public engagement. Companies are moving away from broad social activism and towards brand protection, business-aligned issue engagement, and risk management. The task is no longer simply “Should we speak out?” but “Where does engagement serve the business, where does silence reduce risk, and where is private dialogue more effective than public positioning?”

    One especially important idea is the “audience of one” problem: the risk that a single powerful political figure can draw attention to a company and create operational, reputational, or regulatory consequences. Corporate affairs leaders are therefore developing scenario plans, rapid-response frameworks, and more cautious approaches to political communication.

    This also changes the advisory role of corporate affairs. The report suggests that CCAOs and CCOs are becoming voices of restraint and judgement within executive teams, helping leaders distinguish between noise, bargaining tactics, genuine risk, and issues that require action.

    4. How does the report redefine crisis and reputation management?

    The report argues that crisis management is no longer an exceptional capability. It has become a baseline expectation. In a “permacrisis” environment, corporate affairs teams must apply crisis tools continuously, not only when a discrete crisis breaks out.

    This changes the role in two ways. First, crisis work now extends beyond media response. Corporate affairs teams are expected to help solve the underlying problem, coordinate across business functions, and prevent issues from escalating. Secondly, the report says corporate affairs leaders must make the financial case for proactive reputation management.

    One quoted example describes a corporate affairs leader asking for $2.5 million for a campaign during a contentious situation and using analysis to show that the potential return was 12 times the investment. The point is that reputation work becomes more credible in the C-suite when it is connected to profit protection, revenue risk, regulatory exposure, or operational continuity.

    The implication is that corporate affairs must move from “the team that handles crises” to “the function that helps prevent avoidable business risk”. The report recommends crisis prevention scoring, financial modelling of reputational risk, and closer collaboration with finance and analytics partners.

    5. What does the report say about employees and AI as part of the new mandate?

    The report treats employee communication as a continuing priority, but one that has become more delicate. Employees are described as one of the most important stakeholder groups, especially during uncertainty. At the same time, internal communication now has to navigate political polarisation, regulatory sensitivity, DEI-related scrutiny, and the risk that different employee groups may interpret corporate messages very differently.

    The report therefore points to a more cautious, “sanitised” form of transparency. Companies may still communicate openly, but in ways designed to avoid partisan signalling or unnecessary exposure. The authors recommend mapping internal stakeholder intersections and using tools such as message testing to understand differences within the employee base.

    AI is presented as a practical accelerator for the corporate affairs function. The report says AI is being used for tasks such as preparing Q&As, analysing large volumes of stakeholder content, vetting influencers, monitoring media and misinformation, supporting strategic planning, and improving data analysis. Rather than presenting AI mainly as a replacement threat, the report frames it as a way to free communications professionals from routine work and move them towards more strategic advisory roles.

    However, the report also makes clear that AI adoption is a change-management issue. Teams need clarity on what should remain human-led, what can be AI-assisted, and what ethical guardrails are needed around bias, accuracy, and appropriate use.

    Overall conclusion

    The report’s main message is that the CCAO/CCO mandate is expanding from communications execution to enterprise-level judgement. Corporate affairs leaders are being asked to help companies interpret volatility, anticipate risk, advise CEOs, manage political exposure, support employees, use AI responsibly, and convert stakeholder intelligence into business decisions.

    Its most important contribution is the framing of corporate affairs as a foresight function. Its main limitation is methodological: while the qualitative design is described in some detail, the report does not clearly specify the number of interviewees, which makes it harder to judge the breadth of the evidence base.

  • The Ipsos AI Monitor 2025 by Ipsos

    The Ipsos AI Monitor 2025 by Ipsos

    About the paper

    The paper is a 30-country survey about public understanding of AI, trust, perceived risks, and expectations for AI’s impact on work, content, brands, economies and everyday life.

    It is original survey research conducted by Ipsos via its Global Advisor online platform and, in India, its IndiaBus platform, between 21 March and 4 April 2025, with 23,216 adults across 30 countries; India used a mixed face-to-face and online approach.

    The methodology is clear, but Ipsos notes that some country samples are more “connected” than nationally representative, and that the 30-country average is an unweighted average across markets rather than a population-adjusted global figure.

    Length: 57 pages

    More information / download:
    https://www.ipsos.com/en-dk/ipsos-ai-monitor-2025

    Core Insights

    1. What is the central tension in public attitudes towards AI?

    The report’s central argument is that public opinion on AI is defined by a tension Ipsos calls the “Wonder and the Worry of AI”. People recognise AI’s potential and expect it to become embedded in many areas of life, but they also feel nervous about its consequences.

    At the 30-country average level, 52% say AI products and services make them excited, while 53% say they make them nervous. That means excitement and anxiety are not opposing camps so much as overlapping reactions: many people appear to hold both views at once.

    This tension is also geographically uneven. The Anglosphere — the US, Great Britain, Canada, Ireland and Australia — is described as more nervous than excited. European markets sit in a middle zone, with moderate excitement and less intense nervousness. Several South-East Asian markets are much more positive, while Japan is presented as an outlier: neither especially excited nor especially nervous.

    The broader meaning is that AI is not being received as a simple “innovation story”. People expect progress, but they are not automatically confident that the benefits will be fairly distributed, responsibly governed, or socially benign.

    2. How much do people understand AI, and how does knowledge vary by country?

    A majority say they understand AI at a general level, but fewer say they understand where AI is actually being used.

    Across the 30 countries, 67% agree that they have a good understanding of what artificial intelligence is. However, only 52% say they know which types of products and services use AI. That gap matters: people may feel familiar with AI as a concept while still being unsure where it is embedded in everyday services.

    There are large country differences. Indonesia, Thailand and South Africa are among the highest on claimed understanding of AI, while Japan is lowest. For knowing which products and services use AI, Indonesia and Thailand again rank high, while Belgium, Japan and Canada are at the lower end.

    This suggests that “AI literacy” is not just a question of awareness. The public may know the term, recognise the general idea, and still lack practical understanding of where AI is operating in search, marketing, recruitment, news, advertising, disinformation, customer service or workplace tools.

    3. What does the report reveal about trust in AI, companies and governments?

    Trust is one of the report’s most important fault lines. People are not simply asking whether AI is useful; they are asking who controls it, who regulates it, and whether organisations using it can be trusted.

    Only 48% across the 30-country average say they trust companies using AI to protect their personal data. Trust is much higher in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and India, while Sweden, Canada, Japan, France and the United States sit much lower. The net trust measure is only slightly positive at the global country average level, which signals a fragile trust environment for brands and platforms.

    Governments are trusted somewhat more than companies in this context: 54% say they trust their government to regulate AI responsibly. But this also varies dramatically. Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are high-trust markets, while the United States, Japan, Hungary, Great Britain and Canada are much lower. Ipsos suggests that low trust in government regulation may help explain higher nervousness in some markets, especially the US.

    One striking finding is that people say they trust AI more than people not to discriminate or show bias. At the 30-country average, 54% trust AI not to discriminate or show bias, compared with 45% who trust people not to discriminate or show bias. That does not mean people think AI is neutral; rather, it suggests that public trust in human fairness is also weak.

    The strongest trust-related consensus is disclosure. Seventy-nine per cent agree that products and services using AI should have to disclose that use. This is one of the clearest implications for organisations: transparency is not a niche concern but a mainstream expectation.

    4. How do people feel about AI-generated content, advertising and brand use?

    The report shows a clear public distinction between expecting AI-generated content and preferring it. People believe AI will be widely used, but they still prefer human-created content in most cases.

    For example, 79% think AI is likely to be used for online search results, and only 28% say they are uncomfortable with that use. That suggests search may be one of the more socially acceptable AI applications. By contrast, people are much more uncomfortable with AI-generated political ads, AI-written news stories, AI screening job applicants, and AI used to create or target disinformation.

    When asked about content preferences, the public consistently favours human-driven content. Seventy per cent prefer human-driven online news articles or websites; 71% prefer human-driven photojournalism; 67% prefer human-driven movies; 62% prefer human-driven advertising; and 60% prefer human-driven customer marketing websites.

    For brands, the picture is mixed and potentially risky. People are split on whether AI use would make them trust companies more or less. At the 30-country average, AI-enhanced product images produce 34% more trust and 38% distrust; AI-written product descriptions produce 33% more trust and 42% distrust; AI-created advertising images or video produce 30% more trust and 38% distrust; and AI-written product reviews produce 29% more trust and 36% distrust.

    The implication is that AI use in marketing is not automatically reputationally damaging, but it is not automatically efficiency-positive either. Brands may gain from AI where it improves usefulness, speed or relevance, but they risk distrust when AI is perceived as deceptive, synthetic, manipulative or insufficiently disclosed.

    5. What future impact do people expect AI to have on jobs, economies and everyday life?

    People expect AI to become more important in daily life, but their expectations are uneven across domains.

    A majority already feel AI has affected them: 52% say AI products and services have profoundly changed their daily life in the past three to five years. Looking ahead, 67% say AI will profoundly change their daily life in the next three to five years. So AI is not viewed as speculative; it is already part of people’s lived experience and expected to intensify.

    On work, the findings are ambivalent. Globally, 59% think AI is likely to change how they do their current job in the next five years, but only 36% think it is likely to replace their current job. Even more importantly, people are more optimistic about their own job than about the wider labour market. Among those with a job, 38% think AI will make their own job better, while 16% think it will make it worse. But for the job market overall, only 31% think AI will make it better, while 35% think it will make it worse.

    This “my job versus the job market” distinction is one of the report’s most useful insights. People may believe they personally can adapt, benefit or remain protected, while still worrying about broader labour disruption.

    The same pattern appears in other future-facing areas. People are optimistic that AI will improve efficiency: 55% say it will make the amount of time it takes to get things done better, compared with only 10% who say worse. They are also more positive than negative about entertainment options and health. But they are much more concerned about disinformation: only 29% think AI will make the amount of disinformation on the internet better, while 40% think it will make it worse.

    Economically, the global country average is cautiously positive: 34% think AI will improve their country’s economy, while 23% think it will worsen it. Ipsos argues that countries most excited about AI tend to be countries where people are also more likely to believe AI will benefit the economy. In other words, enthusiasm appears tied not only to technology itself, but to whether people believe AI will produce visible, shared economic benefits.

  • C-suite Outlook 2025 – Delivering Value in a Volatile World by the Weber Shandwick Collective

    C-suite Outlook 2025 – Delivering Value in a Volatile World by the Weber Shandwick Collective

    About the paper

    The report examines how global C-suite leaders are thinking about value creation, stakeholder priorities and volatility in 2025.

    It is based on original survey research: a short survey of 200 private-sector global business leaders from multinational companies operating across North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC, with fieldwork conducted from 14 November to 4 December 2024.

    The sample includes companies headquartered in the United States and 22 other countries across five sectors, so the geographic scope is global, although the report presents only limited methodological detail beyond the sample profile.

    Length: 9 pages

    More information / download:
    https://webershandwick.com/news/delivering-value-in-volatile-world

    Core Insights

    1. What is the report’s central argument about leadership in 2025?

    The core argument is that CEOs and senior executives are entering 2025 with underlying optimism, but that optimism is tempered by a strong sense that the external environment remains unstable and difficult to control. On page 2, the report frames this tension directly: business leaders see relative macroeconomic stability compared with recent years, yet they remain highly alert to geopolitical disruption, market shocks, activism, policy change and other forces that can quickly alter the operating environment.

    From that starting point, the report argues that corporate leadership now has to move beyond older, more polarised debates about shareholder primacy versus stakeholder capitalism. Its preferred framing is practical rather than ideological: the job of leadership is to define and deliver the specific mix of value that matters most to the stakeholders who shape the company’s success. In other words, the corporation’s role is presented not as serving one constituency at the expense of others, but as earning legitimacy and performance by managing a company-specific “value equation” across multiple stakeholder groups. This is the report’s main conceptual move, and it underpins everything that follows.

    2. How do executives define “value”, and which forms of value matter most to them?

    A major contribution of the report is that it treats value as multi-dimensional rather than purely financial. On page 4, executives rank five forms of value: economic value is highest at 98% importance, followed by functional value at 96%, ethical value at 88%, and both emotional and societal value at 78%. When respondents were asked to allocate relative weight across these categories, economic value received the largest share by far at 41%, compared with 24% for functional value, 14% for ethical value, 11% for societal value and 10% for emotional value.

    That ranking shows two things at once. First, the report does not pretend that executives have become post-financial or post-commercial. Economic performance remains dominant. Secondly, it suggests that modern business leadership increasingly sees non-financial forms of value as part of business success rather than as optional extras. Ethical, societal and emotional value are not leading priorities, but they are still recognised by substantial majorities as important. The report therefore presents a broadened model of business value: financial performance sits at the centre, but it is strengthened or undermined by how companies function, behave and relate to stakeholders.

    There is, however, an interesting gap between aspiration and performance. The page 4 chart on how well companies are delivering value across stakeholders shows strong perceived delivery on economic and functional value, but weaker performance on societal and especially emotional value. Fewer than a quarter say they are delivering societal or emotional value “very well”. So the report implies that executives recognise a wider value agenda more readily than they currently execute it.

    3. Which stakeholders matter most in executive decision-making, and what does that reveal about the report’s perspective?

    The report makes clear that stakeholder thinking is now mainstream among the leaders surveyed. On page 3, 99% say that considering the interests of multiple stakeholders is important. But the stakeholder model being described is not flat or equal. On page 5, customers rank first, with 99% saying they are important and 86% calling them very important. Investors and shareholders follow at 96%, and employees at 93%. Policymakers and government officials come next at 81%, with partners and suppliers and local communities both at 79%. Advocacy groups and non-profits rank much lower.

    This hierarchy matters because it reveals the report’s practical worldview. It is not arguing that all stakeholders should be treated identically, nor that external advocacy pressure should dominate corporate decisions. Instead, it suggests a prioritised stakeholder model centred on those groups most directly tied to performance, legitimacy and licence to operate: customers, capital providers, employees, regulators and key operational partners. That is a more managerial and strategic version of stakeholder capitalism than a purely normative one.

    The report also subtly signals that stakeholder management is becoming more political. The relatively high ranking of policymakers and government officials, combined with repeated references later in the report to regulation, geopolitics and public affairs, suggests that public policy is no longer a peripheral concern. It is becoming structurally central to the executive agenda, especially in a world where policy decisions can affect supply chains, investment flows, reputation and growth.

    4. What does the research say about volatility, preparedness and growth prospects for 2025?

    The report’s most important empirical message is that leaders feel materially less prepared for the kinds of disruptions they cannot control directly. On page 5, executives report greater confidence in handling internal or more familiar reputational threats, such as a major data breach, a company security threat, a health epidemic or a product recall. But preparedness drops sharply for external shocks such as global armed conflicts, terrorist attacks, political division after US elections, misinformation campaigns, natural disasters and actions by elected officials. This distinction is central: leaders are more comfortable with operational crises than with systemic volatility.

    That matters because the report links growth prospects to the ability to deliver value under pressure. On page 6, only 17% of companies are described as in “high growth”, while 63% report moderate growth and 21% expect moderate or high contraction. Eight in ten companies therefore expect at least moderate growth, but the standout point is not exuberance. It is restraint. The report presents 2025 as a year of cautious forward movement rather than broad-based acceleration.

    The priority data reinforces that interpretation. Revenue growth and profitability top the list of business priorities, but leaders also rank managing market volatility, investor expectations, business transformation, culture and workforce capability very highly. On page 7, the actions executives say they are taking include growing the business, launching products, adjusting governance structures, navigating AI, diversifying supply chains and responding more actively to policy and regulatory issues. So the report portrays growth not as a return to normal expansion, but as something that must be actively defended and engineered amid instability.

    5. What are the report’s implications for communication and public affairs teams?

    The clearest implication is that corporate communications and public affairs functions are becoming more strategically important, but many organisations are not yet confident that those teams are equipped for the task. On page 7, only 17% of executives say their communications and public affairs functions are “well equipped” to keep pace with rapid change, while 13% say their confidence in those functions has decreased. The report therefore identifies a capability gap at exactly the point where volatility makes communication, public affairs and reputation management more consequential.

    The practical implications are spelled out most fully on page 8 in the “new rules” section. The report argues that value creation must start at the top, that CEOs need to prepare now for future volatility, that organisations must actively manage controllable volatility such as mis- and disinformation, that AI should support decision-making, and that the policy environment will become more demanding in 2025. In effect, communications is being repositioned from a downstream messaging function to an upstream strategic capability that helps leadership sense, interpret and respond to threats and expectations.

    For a communications reader, the most significant underlying message is this: communicators are not merely being asked to explain value after the fact. They are increasingly expected to help organisations define value, map stakeholder expectations, detect volatility early, prepare response systems, and support CEO judgement in real time. At the same time, the report suggests that many firms have not yet invested enough in these capabilities. So its conclusion is both elevating and cautionary: communications teams are needed more than ever, but they must upskill and become more operationally strategic if they are to meet the expectations being placed on them.

    One caution is worth noting. Because the report is based on a relatively short survey of 200 leaders and is presented in a highly synthesised, infographic-style format, it is better read as a directional executive sentiment study than as a deeply elaborated academic analysis. Even so, it offers a clear and useful picture of how senior leaders are framing the challenge of 2025: deliver growth and stakeholder value, but do so in a world where volatility is persistent, political and increasingly external to managerial control.