An entity’s narrative is the story for the reason it exists, how it was established and evolved, what it has done and what it does, why it does it, how it does it, and about the people and other partners that enable it doing it what it does; and about the entity’s progress, and impact on the communities in which it operates (Burns, Centre for Corporate Public Affairs, 2018).

A corporate narrative is a story.

It’s a story that is well documented, at its best is honest, is authentic and believable, and in the hands of good storytellers, is engaging and compelling.

Corporations in Australia, the US, the UK and Brazil are trusted less by their citizens than corporations in other nations.

This has meant corporations and industry associations have had to develop capabilities and approaches to better craft their narratives, and engage stakeholders with those narratives – shareholders, customers/clients, employees, communities, supply chain partners, legislators, regulators, civil society partners.

The corporate narrative is not a proxy for the advertising and marketing of an entity.

The narrative - the story of the corporation/industry and why it exists, and why it does what it does - is similar to a ‘well’ from which messages are drawn (Burns, Centre for Corporate Public Affairs, 2018).

The manner in which those messages and stories to deliver them are conveyed by the corporation are multi-dimensional.

The corporate public affairs function brings the narrative ‘to life’ in its strategy and execution to engage governments and regulators, industry groups, the news media, social media users, civil society entities, employees, and shareholders.

The marketing management function of the corporation harnesses marketing and advertising and its stewardship of the brand image to bring the corporate image to life; the human resources management function (often with the internal communications discipline) seeks to use the corporate narrative as part of building and delivering the organisation’s employee value proposition to existing and potential employees.

Since about 2017 the Centre has observed that a growing and large cohort of corporations globally have invested heavily in management time to develop and congeal narratives that resonate with their employees, investors, and the communities in which they operate.

Best practice globally is that the corporate public affairs management function stewards (keeping and evolving) the corporate narrative with the organisation’s leaders and employees.

The Centre’s best practice elements for evolving and stewarding the corporate narrative is illustrated in the Exhibit on this page.