The value of PR

        PR as a critical part of strategic management

Research has shown that PR practitioners are rarely included in the dominant coalition (Grunig & Repper, 1992). White and Dozier also indicated that very few communication managers are empowered as decision makers at the strategic level. Grunig (1992) proposed several explanations for public relations’ absence in strategic management, including the lack of comprehensive business expertise, passiveness, being foreign to organizational politics, and inadequate academia. Consequently, PR practitioners usually do not have an influential position and are relegated to a functional level within the organizational structure.

However, Sung (2007) proposed that PR is most effective when it is embedded in the strategic management framework. Specifically, PR professionals should be part of and cooperate with chief administrative officers and executive managers. Depicting from the Excellence Theory developed by Grunig, Sung suggested that PR can help executive managers identify uncertainties to contain risks and issues. Moreover, PR contributes to revenue generation by managing a good and healthy reputation as well as maintaining and building stable, quality and long-term relations with strategic constituencies (Huang, 2012). Ultimately, PR helps in cost reduction as those relationships would save the organization resources by preventing crises, litigation, bad publicity and other issues.

Furthermore, Kim, Ni and Sha (2008) stated that PR is more than just communication management tool between the organization and its publics. Instead, PR has a real and measurable impact on the success of achieving organizational goals by being a “communication discipline” that engages key audiences to bring back vital information for organizational analysis and decision making.

In addition, PR deals with not only external publics but also internal ones. For instance, it is critical that all employees to have a thorough understanding of organizational goals and strategy as well as their roles and responsibilities in executing them. Thus, PR as a strategic management function looks at all the stakeholders of the organization and uses a variety of tools and tactics to maintain and enhance relationships with them. Most importantly, PR provides strategic consultation to executives for effective decision making.

Grunig (2006) also argued that PR serves as “in-house activists” to manage the “corporate conscience” by advocating for two-way symmetrical communication and suggesting a mutually beneficial relationship with its publics. PR professionals should have an objective perspective to weigh conflicting needs of different publics and organizational goals to help executives make the best and most balanced decisions.

        How PR should be practiced in a strategic way to go beyond publicity and promotion efforts

Public relations and publicity are not synonymous. Publicity is only a function, a tool and a specialized discipline for PR practitioners to achieve further goals. Other important PR practices that go beyond publicity and promotion efforts include environmental scanning and identification of publics.

According to Sung (2007), PR practitioners monitor the environment to bring an outside perspective to the decision making process (pp. 175). This practice is a methodology to identify external competition as well as other social, economic and technical issues that might be overseen. Beside early issue identification, excellent PR also emphasizes monitoring the external environment and adjusting organizational mission to it.

On the other hand, by breaking up a mass public or population into smaller groups that have similarities, PR practitioners are able to evaluate the importance of different stakeholders to contribute to the most cost-effective organizational decisions (Grunig & Repper, 1992; Kim, Ni & Sha, 2008). Depending on the scope of resources available, PR practitioner can identify and prioritize strategic publics that would have the most impact and interaction with the organization to develop a more effective plan, instead of wasting time and resources on all publics. Additionally, by doing so, practitioners are also able to design the appropriate messages and strategies for each public, depending on the publics’ properties and expectations.

These two practices are much more than just publicity and promotion efforts as they set PR practitioners in a much more proactive role by preparing and anticipating for all possibilities, predicting new trends and opportunities, at the same time saving cost and resources by driving the organization in the right and strategic focus.

Furthermore, publicity and promotion are just two outcomes that practitioners aim for while building and maintaining a good organizational reputation. As “publicity” does not always mean good press coverage, for example, in times of crisis, publicity might be a massive dissemination of negative information across all media; the role of PR will go beyond establishing publicity to repairing reputation. If publicity is more about changing the knowledge (making publics aware of the organization and its service or product) and promotion is about changing behavior (attracting publics to purchase the product or consume the service), PR’s ultimate outcome is to change the attitude of the publics toward an organization or issue.

            Environmental scanning

            Public relations is often referred to as its functional level, which is nothing more than a simple set of communication strategies tactics. Many practitioners are usually portrayed as and mistaken as party planners and/or deceiving representatives who are willing to spin any story to get publicity for their organization. However, I believe PR is an integral part of overall strategy and should be practiced constantly. As communication campaigns are developed based on extensive research to address strategic organizational objectives with tactical outcomes, target audiences and key messages, environmental scanning would be a great contribution to recognizing the value of PR.

            One of the important roles of PR practitioners is to advocate for the balance of the organizational need and the needs of its stakeholders, including investors, customers, employees, and sometimes the community. For example, Toshiba is going through some financial difficulties due to the regression. The organization is faced with the possibility of closing a regional plant as that manufacturing location is no longer needed. PR practitioners would have to practice intense environmental scanning to evaluate the impact this decision would have with the employees, customers as well as the community there to help measure the aftermath and possibly suggest other alternatives.

            However, according to Sung (2007), this function is not widely practiced in public relations. One of the reasons for this is the lack of academia regarding how to conduct environmental scanning and how to use scenarios to explore possible outcomes. As a methodology for early issue identification and coping with external competition, social, economic and technical issues that may be difficult to see, practitioners can use this tool to help monitor, interpret and respond to issues that threaten organizational reputation, at the same time enhance organizational survival and growth. In addition, more than just media clipping, Grunig (1990) also pointed out that systematic analysis of media monitoring would help practitioners have a more accurate evaluation of the presentation of organizational reputation. Also, logically, by doing research based on the situational theory, environmental scanning also supports public identification to help save cost and resources. Thus, if more understanding of this powerful function is gained; environmental scanning would be a great contribution to the value of PR.

References

Grunig, J. E. (1990). Theory and practice of interactive media relations. Public Relations Quarterly, 35(3), 18-23.

Grunig, J. E. (2006). Furnishing the edifice: Ongoing research on public relations as a strategic management function. Journal of Public relations Research, 18, 151-176.

Grunig, J. E., & Repper, F. C. (1992). Strategic management, publics, and issues. In J. E. Grunig (Ed.), Excellence in public relations and communication management (pp. 31-64). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Grunig, L. A. (1992) "Power in the Public Relations Department". In: Excellence in Public Relations and Communications Management, Hillsdale, N. J.: L. Erlbaum.

Huang, Y-H. (2012). Gauging an integrated model of public relations value assessment (PRVA): Scale development and cross-cultural studies. Journal of Public Relations Research, 24, 243-265.

Steyn, B. (2007). Contribution of public relations to organizational strategy formulation. In E. L. Toth (Ed.), The future of excellence in public relations and communication management: Challenges for the next generation (pp. 137-172). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Sung, M-J. (2007). Toward a model of scenario building from a public relations perspective. In E. L. Toth (Ed.), The future of excellence in public relations and communication management: Challenges for the next generation (pp. 173-197). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

White, J., & Dozier, D. M. (1992), "Public Relations and Management Decision Making". In: Excellence in Public Relations and Communications Management, Grunig, J. E. (ed.), Hillsdale, N. J.: L. Erlbaum Assoc.