Paper presentation of CRiFC at the 68th ICA conference in Prague

With its paper “Strategic Investor Relations Management: Insights on planning and evaluation practices among German Prime Standard Corporations” the team of the Center for Research in Financial Communication was contributing to the 68th annual conference of International Communication Association (ICA) which took place from May 24 – 28, 2018 in Prague. With more than 4,500 members from more than 80 countries, the ICA is the leading organization for communiation science. While a growing number of studies discuss the strategic importance of the investor relations (IR) function for listed corporation, few have tried to apply findings from strategic communication research to IR. Thereby, little is known about the planning and evaluation of IR programs, there is even less data available about the involvement of IR in top management decision-making. In this paper, we will present research on planning and evaluation practices of investor relations departments in German Prime Standard corporations. We also analyze how the investor relations function is strategically embedded within the organization. Our analysis is based on a survey of 51 heads of investor relations departments from the largest corporations listed at the Frankfurt stock exchange. We apply insights from strategic communication research to address the apparent research gap in terms of the strategic management of the investor relations function.