Theory and Practice

 

│What is PR│Interpersonal│Building relationships│Principles│

│Relationships and Reputation│Back│

Public relations crisis management

What is PR

The management of communication between an organization and its publics. A profession with a scholarly body of knowledge. A management function rather than a technical communication function alone. Strategic counseling rather than publicity alone. Public relations is most effective when it has a role in strategic decision-making. Rather than waiting outside for others to make strategic decisions. Public Relations Contributes to Strategic Management by:

1. Participating in management decision-making to identify consequences on publics.
2. Segmenting stakeholders and publics.
3. Using communication to cultivate relationships with strategic publics.
4. Influencing management behavior.
5. Measuring the quality of relationships.

Important Contributions of Public Relations to Strategic Management:

• Environmental scanning.
• Issues management.
• Crisis management.
• Relationship management.
• Reputation management.

Value of Good Relationships with Strategic Publics

• An upward shift in the demand curve.
• A reduction in marketing costs and an increase in marketing costs for competitors.
• A decrease in turnover among employees.
• An increase in donations and other support.
• A buffer against fallout from crises.

Costs of Poor Relationships

• Increased risk.
• Litigation.
• Unfavorable legislation.
• Excessive regulation.
• Adverse publicity.
• Conflicts with determined, hostile activist groups.

Public relations makes an organization more effective, therefore, when it identifies the most strategic publics as part of strategic management processes and conducts communication programs to develop and maintain effective long-term relationships between management and those publics. Strategic public relations consists

1. Identifying the most strategic publics with which an organization needs to develop a relationship;
2. Planning, implementing, and evaluating communication programs to build relationships with these publics, and
3. Measuring and evaluating the long-term relationship between the organization and these strategic publics.

Good communication changes behavior of both management and publics and, therefore, results in good relationships. Public relations professionals need a way to measure relationships as they develop and are maintained rather than waiting to observe the behaviors that may or may not occur as a result of communication programs. The value of public relations can be determined by measuring the quality of relationships with strategic publics. Communication programs can be evaluated by measuring their effects and correlating them with the attributes of a good relations.

Interpersonal

communication and the psychology of interpersonal relationships shows that following four outcomes are good indicators of successful interpersonal relationships. Public relations research shows that they apply equally well to organization-public relationships:

• Control mutuality-- the degree to which parties agree on who has rightful power to influence one another.
• Trust--one party’s level of confidence in and willingness to open oneself to the other party.
• Satisfaction—the extent to which one party feels favorably toward the other because positive expectations about the relationship are reinforced.
• Commitment— the extent to which one party believes and feels that the relationship is worth spending energy to maintain and promote.
• A fifth pair of relationship indicators – exchange vs. communal relationships—defines the kinds of relationships that public relations programs attempt to achieve, in comparison with the nature of relationship outcomes produced by other field such as marketing.
• Organizations, benefit by building a reputation for being concerned about communal relationships and encounter less opposition and more support over the long term from their publics.
• Communal relationships are important if organizations are to be socially responsible and to add value to society as well as to client organizations.
• This finding suggests that publics feel they can do little affect the big organizations that affect them and that these organizations need to develop symmetrical strategies for empowering publics and maintaining relationship in which publics feel they have little control.

Building relationships

Public relations plays a critical role in the crisis response by helping to develop the messages that are sent to various publics. A great deal of research has examined the crisis response. That research has been divided into two sections: (1) the initial crisis response and (2) reputation repair and behavioral intentions. It is important to recognize that do not need relationships with all publics Not all public relations strategies, programs, or campaigns are equally effective in building relationships. Therefore, there are two stages of the public relations process that precede relationship outcomes：

1. Enviormental scanning to determine the publics with which an organization needs relationships
2. Public relations processes that are most effective in maintaining relationships with strategic publics.


• Identify key stakeholders and measure relationships with each separately.
• Ask qualitative questions about reputation and relationships.
• Measure relationships quantitatively.
• Explore cultivation strategies that improve the quality of a relationship.

Principles of Crisis Communication

• The relationship principle: Organizations can withstand both issues and crises better if they have established good, long-term relationships with publics who are at risk from decisions and behaviors of the organization.
• The accountability principle: Organizations should accept responsibility for a crisis even if it was not their fault.
• The disclosure principle: At the time of a crisis, an organization must disclose all that it knows about the crisis or problem involved.
• The symmetrical communication principle: At the time of a crisis, an organization must consider the public interest to be at least as important as its own interest.

Relationships and Reputation

This topic looks at Public Relations within an organisation, with special reference to communications and the complexities of communication with multiple audiences in the global information environment. Developing an understanding of the strategic role of PR set in the context of planning, in particular the significance of ethical issues. The concept of reputation has value when used in conjunction with relationships, Competencies in the development, justification and implementation of practical PR approaches and techniques, from crisis management to establishing formal monitoring processes.

• Public relations management – the distinctive nature of PR and its strategic significance.
• Analysis of publics, paying special attention to inter-relationships and the need to build and manage complex sets of communication channels.
• Media relations – choice of communication techniques.
• Public relations and integrated marketing communications – PR as a targeted communication tool and as a boundary spanning activity, linking stakeholders, interest groups and influencers, including politicians.
• Public relations techniques – press events, printed materials, video, exhibitions, minor sponsorships.
• Evaluation – problems of measurement; budgeting and control
• The future of e-PR.
• Ethics and crisis management; the legitimacy of Public Relations
• The significance of globalisation of brand and communication channels for PR practice

 

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