3. EXPRESSIVE ALIGNER. Principles, Methods, and Insights for Communicators

Within the strategic communication field, the concept of alignment has played a crucial role in increasing the effectiveness of communication ac- tivities and enhancing the contribution of communication function to the development of corporate value. The different definitions of strategic com- munication provided by scholars have emphasized the high relevance at- tributed to the alignment between communication strategy and corporate strategy as well as to the coherence between the single communication ini- tiatives. As pointed out by Argenti et al. (2005), strategic communication can be defined as a communication that is “aligned with a company’s overall strategy to improve its strategic positioning” (p. 83). Additionally, Hallahan et al. (2007) have underlined that strategic communication is to be consid- ered the “purposeful use of communication by an organization to fulfill its mission” (p. 3). By using the term purposeful, we can assume that strategic communication needs to be characterized by consistency between corpo- rate purpose, guiding values, mission, vision, business strategy and com- munication aims, and activities (Christensen et al., 2008). Communication practitioners should aim to include and align all the diverse communication activities “in the service of the organization as a whole” (Christensen and Christensen, 2018, p. 438).