Sectoral considerations 537
Supporting resources
Guided tour
His current focus is on supporting and developing the research strategy for the subject of public relations and communications at Leeds Met. A member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), he has presented his research around the world and taught at many European universities specializing in public relations.
About the authors
Prior to this he was Director of the Center for Public Affairs Studies at Leeds Met. Rüdiger Theilmannis, senior lecturer in public relations at Leeds Metropolitan University and course leader for the MSc in Corporate Communications.
Preface
Here, for example, are chapters on democracy and on the international (or multicultural) context of public relations. Johanna Fawkes MA MCIPR; Figure 6.1 redrawn from Effective Corporate Relations: Applying Public Relations in Business and Industry, edited by N.
Publisher’s acknowledgements
Box 6.2 of 'Business in the Community', www.bitc.org.uk, copyright © Business in the Community;. 19 (January 2005), PR Week, reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner, Haymarket Business Publications Limited; Box 32.1 of PR Week, pp.
The context of public relations
This first part of the book provides you with the background knowledge you will need to understand the role and purpose of public relations (PR) set against the wider business and societal contexts within which it operates.
Public relations origins
Public relations (PR) is used in a wide variety of industries and in each, slightly different skills and competencies have emerged among practitioners. This certainly leaves much room for debate, as described in the next section, which sets out some of the most common views of PR among academics and practitioners (Cutlip et al. 2006).
Academic definitions of public relations
2000: 6) combines these aspects and suggests: 'Public relations is the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the public on whom its success or failure depends.' Influence must be exercised through dialogue – not monologue – with all the different corporate audiences, with public relations becoming a respected function in its own right, acting as a strategic resource and helping to implement corporate strategy.'
Key debates on definitions
Some academics emphasize this and argue that we should explicitly acknowledge the fact that PR is biased in favor of commercial interests. Moloney (2000: 6) agrees with L'Etang that PR is too multifaceted to be included in a single definition, but its effect on society nevertheless requires extensive research.
Practitioner definitions of public relations
But the emergence of the concept of public opinion eventually formed a scientific rationale for using PR and communication techniques in this way. The concept of public opinion became relevant in the middle of the 18th century, when it accompanied the emergence of newly formed democratic states.
The United States: private interests in public opinion
But the advent of the Depression in the 1930s, when millions of Americans lost their jobs and savings, again called into question the ethics of business and the degree of social good it provided. Harlow was also a key figure in the establishment of the Public Relations Society of America in 1947.
Britain: public interest in private opinions
This early institutionalization of the profession means that in many ways the presentation of PR in Britain was strongly influenced by the efforts of the IPR as an industry body. These programs were very successful: by the early 1990s and the end of the privatization programs, 12 million British members owned shares (Pitcher 2003).
Germany: industrialists, politics and critique
Freedom of the press was first established through the Reichspressegesetz (Reich Press Act) passed in 1874, the navy appointed its own press officers in 1894, and the first municipal press agency was established in Magdeburg in 1906 (Nessmann 2000). Consolidation of the professional field in the Federal Republic of Germany and establishment of socialist public relations in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Summary
From Literary Agencies to a Modern Profession: The Development and Current Structure of Public Relations in Germany' in The Global Public Relations Handbook. The origins and development of public relations in Germany and Austria' inPerspectives on Public Relations Research.
Management and organisation of public relations
Given the critical role public relations plays in establishing and maintaining goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its public. CIPR 2004), it is clear that careful consideration must be given to both the external and internal contexts in which it operates. The external environment can be divided into two main areas: the 'macro' and the 'task' environment.
Macro environment
Organizations need to be aware not only of national regulations, but also of cross-national legislation such as EU legislation. For example, it is suggested that in the financial field the relationship between financial PR specialists and journalists is too cozy, and so has the media.
Task environment
The role of the organization is to bring together the economic resources, political support and special knowledge of all interested groups (see Activity 2.1). Besides being deeply affected by external factors, the way in which communication is organized is shaped by the nature of the enterprise itself and the type of operation it undertakes.
Sector
By enabling linkages, the organization connects with those who have the power and resources to allow it to exist. Functional links either provide some kind of input to the organization or consume its outputs.
Size
Scattered links are intended for those who do not have a formal relationship with the organization but may be interested in it. Stakeholders are not only those groups that management believes have a legitimate interest in the organization, but those groups that themselves decide to take a stake in the organization.
Stage of organisational development
They may or may not work in independent PR departments and they may or may not be part of management.
Culture
No value judgments are made here – the culture is driven by the nature of the organization and the work to be done. They also negotiate between the demands of the environment (for example, the demand for a particular product) and the survival needs of the organization (the supply of that product).
Position of the senior practitioner
Maintenance subsystems work across the organization and encourage employees to work together, for example in human resources. They know the views of their audience and are well informed about all issues that could affect the organization.
Public relations roles
They will also know the business in depth and be good at both business and communication.
Think about 2.2
Acting as a communication broker, the communication facilitator maintains two-way communication between an organization and its public, connecting, interpreting and mediating. This role can be handled by specialist consultants as well as the in-house person.
Public relations tasks
This is part of the boundary-spanning role described earlier and fits in very well with the systems theoretical approach. What matters is that the interests of the organization and its public good are served.
Risk management and stakeholder interest
Technology
Regulatory issues
Joint report of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and Department of Trade and Industry. Defining the relationship between public relations and marketing: Public relations' most important challenge' in The Handbook of Public Relations.
Role of the public relations practitioner
Definitions of field
In the field of education, PR van Ruler and Verc˘ic˘ (2004) state that "the number of professional university courses is extremely large", as a result of which the private sector plays a smaller role in education. PR as an academic subject was attempted to be taught by the first private university in Bulgaria - the New Bulgarian University of Sofia.
Think about 3.1
Another insight into the skills needed by public relations professionals can be found in the results of a major survey-based study of public relations education in the United States, presented in the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Port of Entry Report (1999) and subsequent Progress Report, The Professional Bond (2006) (see Table 3.3, p. 52). She was one of the losing teams on the court we won on Friday (from a newer company) and she was almost too upset to talk about it.
The skills debate
The model PR intern is now someone who incorporates higher level skills and 'how to' skills, and is still (and always will be) learning. A school leaver who joins an agency on a probationary period will be at one end of the continuum.
Professional bodies
Think about 3.3
Media context of contemporary public relations and journalism
The UK has privately owned media in which corporations control large parts of the press, radio stations and television. The broad features of media ownership in the rapidly changing sector of each medium in the UK today are represented in the following section.
Communication media
Commercial radio in the UK started late, in 1973, when Independent Local Radio (ILR) was established. The expansion of radio stations in the 1990s led to a 184% increase in radio's share of the national advertising market (Barnard 2000) and a multiplication of opportunities to reach niche audiences for advertisers on commercial stations (see Box 4.1 and Activity 4.1).
Liberal pluralism
These changes in the press have given the spin culture a dynamism, as the law is not obligated to meet the demands of objectivity or impartiality. From the mid-1980s, satellite television emerged as a major television provider in the UK, with BSkyB as the leading company, although it did not become very profitable until 2001 (Doyle 2008).
Political economy of media
Actual ownership data is assumed to be irrelevant as long as very basic types of media with different views are available. From this point of view, media concentration rarely becomes so great as to close off sources of alternative ideas.
Institutional/contextual analysis of media
In this model, in contrast to the liberal pluralist focus on the autonomy of journalism, journalists and media editorial practices are seen as responsible for the lack of diversity in reporting, as they are the authors of media stories.
Think about 4.1
Broadcast media
The press
As a result, public interest as an idea has come under increasing criticism. The notion of public interest allows (and requires) a critical assessment of these preferences.
Public interest and the problem of paternalism
It is an emergent phenomenon that arises in relation to the needs (and not merely the desires) of the "public" as a collective entity. This perspective holds that discussion, debate, and collaboration of views are essential to articulating the public interest rather than simply pooling (aggregating) the views of individuals.
Think about 4.2
However, there are several reasons why the communicative creation and maintenance of the public interest poses difficulties for the BBC and the terrestrial broadcasters, which also have public service functions in Britain. This is consistent with Vasquez and Taylor's (2001) emphasis on the communicative creation of the public interest.
Globalisation of media ownership
The relatively low level and indirectness of the BBC's accountability to its audience meant that there was little scrutiny of how adequately it was actually doing this. Curran (2000) suggests complementing existing public services and private enterprise sectors to empower people by also 'enabling them to explore'.
New formats, frameworks and platforms
Since the 1960s, in addition to the rise of general transnational and global corporations (TNCs), we have witnessed the rise of global media companies. Media corporations are increasingly becoming part of global conglomerates with more closely organized relationships to profit generation in a context where serving the public interest becomes a fundamental and highly complex issue.
Technological developments
Changes in loyalty
While some welcome the World Wide Web as an aid to the dissemination of real news, others argue that it will lead to an extension and intensification of 'spin culture' (Pitcher 2003). Both journalists and PR practitioners have, perhaps rightly, often been seen as 'bad dogs of partisan interests, not guardians of the public interest'.
Public relations and democracy
Here there is a clear role for public relations in providing information about voting options to the electorate (see Think about 5.2). Indeed, it is often suggested that particular issues should be 'taken out of politics', meaning party politics.
Think about 5.2
Some of the other functions of parties are actually being weakened by a widespread decline in active party membership after a peak in the mid-twentieth century. How effective do you consider this in conveying the values of the party involved?
Websites
Community and society: corporate social responsibility (CSR)
This chapter will explore the role of organizations in society and how many, regardless of profit or not-for-profit imperatives, look critically at their roles and responsibilities. A further development is the more sophisticated business use of the community relationship as part of the enterprise.
Corporate social responsibility
To understand how this can be achieved, it is essential to understand in more detail the complexity of the relationships between a company and its community/society. It is also important to define some of the business terminology that is often used when analyzing companies in their societal contexts.
Philanthropy
Representative bodies for companies such as Business in the Community (BITC), CSR Europe, Institute of Business Ethics, Business for Social Responsibility and the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) have been established. This is supported by announcements from companies such as McDonald's and BT in the UK that they are.
Think about 6.1
During 1998, Shell had its first meeting with institutional shareholders (large company investors, eg on behalf of pension funds) to explain the company's new policy on environmental and social responsibilities. At the meeting with shareholders, Mark Moody Stuart of Shell Transport and Trading (the company's UK arm) stated that he disagreed with arguments that institutional shareholders are not interested in issues such as social responsibility: 'I don't think there is. is a fundamental conflict between financial performance and "soft" issues.
Think about 6.2
It allows these decisions to be made in the context of the value of the company or organization. Figure 6.3 Pyramid of corporate social responsibility (source: after Carroll 1991). By metaphorically placing Carroll's (1991) pyramid of corporate social responsibility in the sphere, it is recognized that levels of responsibility are inherent in the way CSR is conceived.
Ethical decision making: theory and practice
Think about 6.4
Think about 6.5
Philosophers have studied ethical decision-making for centuries and tend to focus on decision-making tools that describe what should be done in certain situations (see also Chapter 14). In general, utilitarian ethical decision-making is therefore focused on what we do and what the consequences of our actions are, i.e.
Changing the culture and changing organisational ethics
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: www.gatesfoundation.org British Society of Rheology: www.bsr.org.uk. Chartered Institute of Public Relations: www.cipr.co.uk Co-operative Bank: www.co-operativebank.co.uk CSR Europe: www.csreurope.org.
International context of public relations
IPR has become the new buzzword of the twenty-first century and a rapidly growing area of PR practice. Reputation is one of the most valuable currencies in international politics, and governments often compete for credibility.
Globalisation
Information revolution
In 2002 Oxfam International, a global non-profit organization, launched the Coffee Rescue Plan, an initiative that encouraged cooperation between governments, major coffee producers and other stakeholders to help solve the coffee price crisis. The Coffee Rescue Plan calls on major coffee producers and international governments to increase the market for fair trade coffee.
Agenda setting
In this sense, multinational organizations (MNOs) adapt to the culture of the host country through PR, and international PR becomes domestic PR. The organization can directly target the public of the host country (4) (governments usually use this option in the form of public diplomacy).
Theory, concepts and models
Structures of international public relations
Media relations are most likely to be completely decentralized and tailored to the specific circumstances in the host country from ways of 'getting publicity'. Thorough and systematic research is the foundation of any IPR campaign; its absence can easily result in the failure of the entire campaign.
Culture and environmental factors
Hall (1976) distinguished between high-context and low-context cultures depending on the degree to which meanings come from environments or from the words exchanged. In low-context cultures such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, or Canada, the language code has more meaning because the population is less homogeneous.
Country profile
Cultural profile
3 Masculinity is the degree to which dominant values are male-oriented, while cultures that value femininity favor caring and nurturing behaviors. It is important to note that research on national cultures has mainly been conducted with Western methodologies and biases.
Public relations culture
It is no wonder that one of the main themes of the 5th World Public Relations Conference and Festival in 2008 centered on how countries and cities compete over reputation, focusing on PR as a driver of economic growth. Depending on the subject of communication, Table 7.4 summarizes the various specializations of IPR for countries.
Reputations of countries
Branding US' was one response, which included unsuccessful advertising efforts in Arab countries. During and after the attacks on Iraq, PR was involved in promoting the war effort to the US and UK public, which was more successful than "selling" or "spinning" the war to the rest of the world.
Public diplomacy
Ironically, the Arab terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center were educated and trained in the US and were subject to the efforts of American public diplomacy. The latter approach involves 'perception management', with the war on terror and Iraq being recent examples where the US military and government created and managed battlefield images and minimized 'collateral damage' with the help of Britain's best-known spin doctor, Alistair. Campbell.
Cultural diplomacy
Public diplomacy is a term used in many different contexts and often as a positive "alter ego". Many other governments have hired US PR agencies to represent them and their countries' interests in the US.
Think about 7.4
The German case shows that each pillar of the Pantheon (shown in Figure 7.10) plays a crucial role. Germany's position on the war in Iraq (pillar of public diplomacy) improved the country's perception in Russia.
Public relations’ influence on society
Exploding the myth of the symmetric/asymmetric dichotomy: PR models in the new South Africa'. Global and specific principles of public relations: evidence from Slovenia' in International Public Relations: a comparative analysis.
Public relations theories and concepts
This section will demonstrate that PR is multifaceted and can be interpreted from a number of relevant theoretical perspectives. Drawing primarily on theories from social psychology, Chapter 13 aims to demonstrate that the concepts of persuasion and propaganda need to be defined and applied to help us recognize when PR is used responsibly and when it is not.
Public relations theories
Public relations contribute to organizational effectiveness when they help align the organization's goals with the expectations of its strategic constituencies. Public relations is most likely to contribute to effectiveness when the senior public relations manager is a member of a dominant coalition where he can shape the organization's goals and help determine which external publics are most strategic.
Critiques of ‘excellence’
Others, looking either at specific areas of PR activity, such as publics or approaches, have adapted the asymmetric and symmetric models in light of what they see as incomplete or insufficient theorizing (see, for example, Sriramesh et al. 2007). For example, two-way communication advocates openness, dialogue and inclusion – and yet it is assumed that PR practitioners are most effective when they are part of an elite, the dominant coalition.
Evolving ‘excellence’
At either extreme, asymmetric communications are practiced either only in the interest of the organization or only in the interest of the public. In the center of the continuum, called the profit zone, mixed-motive communications are practiced, where the organization and its public enter into an enlightened self-interest dialogue characterized by negotiation, persuasion and compromise (Figure 8.1).
Publics in public relations
Grunig and his colleagues extended this idea of non-zero-sum situations, where organizations pursue their own interests in light of the interests of other parties, to complete their new communication model (Figure 8.1). Opposing and avoiding strategies were used for asymmetric communications in the interests of the organization, while on the other side of the continuum, the strategies used were accommodating and compromising.
Open systems
Does their opinion affect how you feel about the company when you're talking to them? Do you expect to have a different relationship with him once you are 'in the door' compared to when you are not working.
Public relations as relationship management
They found that it was a significant factor in respondents' perceptions of trust, openness, involvement, investment and commitment to the relationship on the part of the organization and also the customer's propensity to stay in or leave the relationship. , influence.
Practitioner roles
Beyond North America: cultural contexts
Critical theory
In addition, critical theorists advance two fundamental arguments about the relationship between media and PR, which reinforce the power of PR. Such pressures, combined with the improving skills of PR practitioners and the increasing amount of resources invested in PR, are directly leading to journalists becoming more dependent on PR practitioners and more willing to use their stories (Stauber and Rampton, 1995; Moloney, 2000; Pitcher). 2003).
Think about 8.3
For example, in social contexts already defined by hierarchies between different groups of people, PR work determines which of those groups are defined as 'important' or valuable 'audiences' for a particular organization and which groups can be ignored or excluded. Critical modernism allows practitioners and researchers to examine these effects of PR work as they change depending on the campaign being conducted, the organizations or individuals using PR tactics and the audiences being targeted.
Rhetorical perspectives
Feminist analyzes of PR emerged in the late 1980s, as the number of women in the profession outnumbered men for the first time. Feminist analyzes of the profession have focused particularly on the reasons for this imbalance as well as on feminist interpretations of PR activity.
Think about 8.4
Hon (1995) provides a comprehensive feminist view of the field and a summary of the antecedents (background/history) and strategies for improving the position of women in the profession. These are important areas where the research so far is unanimous in assessing the relatively unfavorable position of women in PR.
Postmodernism
This approach to diversity has been criticized for prioritizing the organization's needs over those of the diverse groups and individuals (eg McKie and Munshi 2007; Munshi and McKie 2001). 1994) emphasized that their study was an initial investigation of the roles held by black practitioners and called for more research into the area.
Think about 8.5
As the range of ethnic groups entering the profession increases, a greater understanding of their experiences in the profession, as well as recognition of the new perspectives they can bring to communication, would enrich the body of knowledge in both the field and in that field. the field of PR as a whole. Holtzhausen (2000) also reformulates the role of PR to one of organizational activist: someone who brings about fundamental change within the organization.
The public sphere and public relations
They therefore leave out an important understanding of the functioning and impact of PR activities on such groups. Raupp (2004) argues that PR should recognize that the different publics that organizations deal with also form part of the public sphere and therefore participate in other, competing discourses – but also participate in the same discourse at different levels.
Complexity, ecology and public relations
This would prioritize understanding as the ultimate goal of PR, ensure that practitioners stand by their claims to intelligibility, truth, fairness and sincerity, and aim for equal participation in the discursive process to all interested parties, in accordance with Habermas' conception of the ideal speech situation (Leeper 1996). Elmer (2007) calls for a perspective on the study and practice of PR that is more culturally and socially embedded than is currently the case in mainstream work, while Toledano and McKie (2007) situate their analysis of Israeli PR practice in the cultural field. the context of social integration as a clear political and social goal.
Sociological approaches to public relations: Giddens, Bourdieu and
A complexity-based approach to crisis management has implications for all of an organization's practices, as it emphasizes the reality of unpredictable and unknown events that the organization must internalize and respond to in the manner of Weick's enacting organizations, which actively engage with an undefined world, rather than simply passively reacting to it (Gilpin and Murphy 2006: 386). From this perspective, PR practitioners develop and transform discourses and in the process change socio-cultural practices as they influence the normalization of 'truths' and the distribution of power in society.
Public relations as a cultural phenomenon
Her findings showed that symbolic power was dependent on social capital derived from practitioners' extensive networks within the organization. They have applied this thinking to PR work on personal and organizational identities (Motion 1999; Motion and Leitch 2002), to government consultation processes (Motion 2005), and – theoretically – to the idea and investigation of truth in PR practice (Motion and Leitch 2007).
