Public Relations: An Evolving Key to Organizational Effectiveness

When you hear the term public relations, what comes to mind? Perhaps you envision graphs of social media metrics or manuscripts of carefully calculated speeches. Maybe you picture a man who spends the day walking around with a camera, ignorant to the business strategies shared within the board meeting of the company he works for. Since the official introduction of the occupation only 100 years ago, common misconceptions of the role PR professionals play within their organizations have existed with little progression of public understanding, appreciation, or accreditation.

Although the profession may have once have been limited to traditionally recognized roles and communicative techniques with little guidelines, Public Relations Professor James E. Grunig of the University of Maryland explores the ways in which the practice has evolved into a field of organizational effectiveness."There were no recognized standards for effective practice nor ethical principles for the moral practice of public relations," Grunig states.

Public Relations as a profession now requires careful research, preparation, and education. It is grounded by theories and a wide array of constructed knowledge rather than a series of trial and error. While PR has also widely been interpreted as an attempt to create a brand's image within the media, modern practitioners know that images can't be created as publics have the capability to think and interpret for themselves. Instead, practitioners work to counsel organizations to behave in ways that the public outside the organization have proven to respond positively towards.

The profession as a whole is fueled by audience desire, reaction, and general attitude. Therefore, organizations have began recognizing PR efforts as vital management functions. Due to the unique techniques and knowledge developed and practiced through the profession, comprehensive theory and research of public relations has begun to be developed in the past 25 years, rather than PR being an extension of other practices with credible research. This has allowed the profession to be recognized among other credible occupations such as law, medicine, or education.

Public relations is essential to the management of an organization because builds and maintains positive relationships and attitudes within their stakeholders or publics. When the general image of an organization is poor or untrustworthy in eyes of its stakeholders, these stakeholders are less likely to remain loyal, committed, and engaged to the organization as a whole.

Commonly confused, public relations and marketing differ in their targeting functions. Marketing works with the economic environment, while public relations works with the social environment of organizations. The economic environment consists of groups including competitors, suppliers, consumers, and creditors. They supply organizations with resources and purchase the organization's products. The social environment of organizations want to determine the mission of the organization. These typically include communities, governments, activist groups, stockholders, and employees.

Markets and publics differ as well. Markets are made up of people who buy services or goods. Publics, on the other hand are made up of social groups that respond to consequences that organizations have on them.

Public relation professionals are more invested in engaging in environmental scanning and issues management. Therefore, the most effective organizations now use PR managers to make strategic decisions for the managements of the company overall.

As the role of public relations continues to evolve and become recognized as an essential managerial role within companies, the emergence of passionate and well-versed public relation professionals are more essential than ever. Now is the time for up and coming public relation professionals to embrace the appreciation and opportunity that the profession has so long deserved.

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