International Association of Business Communicators
| Not-for-profit | |
| Industry | Public Relations Marketing Internal Communications Human Resources |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
|
Number of employees
|
20 |
| Website | www.iabc.com |
The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) is a global network of communications professionals.
Each summer, IABC hosts World Conference, a three-day event with professional development seminars and activities, as well as talks by industry leaders.
Decisions within the organization are made by a two-thirds vote of the executive board, which is elected by members. IABC members agree to follow a professional code of ethics, which encourages members to do what is legal, ethical and in good taste.
IABC's predecessor was the American Association of Industrial Editors (AAIE), which was founded in 1938. AAIE became a member of the International Council of Industrial Editors (ICIE) in 1941. It withdrew from ICIE in 1946 over policy differences, but formed IABC when it merged again in 1970. In IABC's first year of operation, the association had 2,280 members and was focused on internal communications. IABC's research showed its members were moving into positions with broader public relations responsibilities and the association expanded its scope. In 1974 it merged with Corporate Communicators Canada.
In 1982 the association formed the IABC Research Foundation, which funded a study of 323 organizations in the 1980s to determine what made some public relations teams more effective than others. The study found that executive involvement in communications was the best predictor of effectiveness. The Research Foundation also looked into the status and pay of women in the public relations field, in a pioneering study called The Velvet Ghetto.
IABC had financial troubles in 2000 after losing $1 million in an e-business initiative called TalkingBusinessNow. In 2001 a grass-roots initiative was started within IABC's membership that eventually developed into the Gift of Communication program, whereby members donated their professional services to local charities. Membership grew 7–9 percent each year in the 2000s due to an increasing number of practitioners in the field of internal communications. IABC hosted its first annual world conference in 2005 and grew to more than 16,000 members by 2008. That same year, IABC accredited Chinese citizens for the first time in the Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) program.
In 2009 the IABC Research Foundation conducted a survey that found 79 percent of respondents frequently use social media to communicate with employees. It also co-authored a study the following year that found email and intranet were the most common internal communications tools among respondents.
For 40 years, the association offered an accreditation program called Accreditation for Business Communications (ABC). By the time the program ended in 2013, a total of 1,003 people had earned ABC status. Though the program stopped accepting new applicants in September 2012, ABCs will be recognized as long as they maintain their membership in IABC. A new professional certification program to replace accreditation with a more affordable, computer-based process was proposed in January 2013. The goal is to set an international standard for all communications professionals that will be recognized by an organization such as ISO17024. The autonomous international group to oversee the creation of the new certification program — the Global Communication Certification Council — was appointed in February 2014.
...
Wikipedia