Paradox in Public Relations

A Contrarian Critique of Theory and Practice

Kevin L. Stoker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317205593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Relations publiques

Paradox in Public Relations: A Contrarian Critique of Theory and Practice is a thought-provoking exploration of public relations, aiming to promote changes in meaning and perception by creating new meta-realities for public relations.

The term "Public Relations" was embraced by early practitioners primarily because it sounded more professional than the often-pejorative alternatives. This book argues for a reframing of some of the popular realities associated with modern-day public relations and uses psychological and organizational change theory to critique paradoxes in public relations theory and practice. By examining public relations through the lens of paradox, we can begin to identify the logical fallacies that have inhibited progress and innovation in public relations practice and theory. The book explores the paradoxical nature of key concepts, including public interest, relationship management, accountability, stewardship, loyalty, community, and ethics. It also recommends new conceptualizations for understanding the field.

This book will be of interest to media, communication, public relations, and advertising faculty and graduate students, particularly those interested in public relations theory and ethics. Scholars from other disciplines can also use this exploration of paradox in PR as a learning tool for identifying logical fallacies and inconsistencies.

1Paradox in public relations

In the last 20 years, Apple has revolutionized the consumer electronics industry with innovative products, such as the iPad and iPhone. The company’s public relations staff aggressively promotes new products by creating buzz around the impending release of new technology and then producing dramatic media events for product launches. Outside these bursts of promotion and publicity, the company’s public relations activities tend to be more reactive and reserved. When faced with a crisis, Apple clams up and relies on loyalists to speak for the company (Oakley, 2014). In identifying Apple’s paradoxical approach to public relations, Oakley suggested Apple should deal more directly and forthrightly to criticism. As a technology company, however, Apple owes much of its success to its organizational culture of secrecy. “Secrecy is part of the company’s strategy to minimize theft of proprietary information or intellectual property” (Meyer, 2019, para. 7). This strategic management approach may conflict with expectations for corporate transparency but it is embedded in the company’s mission and values. Apple’s philosophy of public relations is paradoxical—it violates some norms while adhering to others (Oakley, 2014).

And yet this against-the-grain approach has contributed to Apple’s successes in innovation, marketing, and public relations (Craig, 2016). Although the corporate culture depends on secrecy, Apple has a knack for making complex technology that communicates to its users that the company has their best interests in mind. Its technology is known for being simple and easy to use. It might be simplistic to say but, through its technology, Apple lets its engineers and designers do the talking to consumers. Apple uses the same strategy in media relations, creating press releases that a fourth grader could understand. It also avoids overwhelming reporters with information about every new product, software update, or personnel change, and instead only contacts reporters on major stories. Any time the company releases a new innovation, it takes the time to show a limited number of reporters and analysts how to use the products and gives them access to 24/7 tech support. In the meantime, Apple’s public relations refuse to comment on issues unrelated to the company’s core mission. By focusing on a small group of influential reporters, giving them exclusive access to its people and new products, Apple has paradoxically increased excitement for its new products and magnified the amount of media interest in its innovations (Craig, 2016).

Sometimes Apple’s behavior has raised ethical concerns, such as when it limited access to reporters it did not like. Pundits and scholars have demanded more corporate transparency, but Apple remains secretive and goes to great lengths to restrict the flow of information out of the company. Instead, the company relies on a select group of reporters and media outlets and strategically leaks information and some disinformation to its media contacts (Sherman, 2014). Apple’s example shows that, at some level of communication, a company can violate public relations norms of dialog and transparency and still maintain a positive reputation among key publics and stakeholders. It also reveals the complexity of public relations as a discipline and the difficult task facing practitioners and scholars who want to establish some basic rules and guidelines for professional practice.

Public relations is inherently paradoxical. At one level of analysis, Apple defies the common logic of public relations practice. At another level of abstraction, however, Apple does respond directly to criticism. Apple’s engineers have long communicated with consumers, listening to customer criticism and complaints, and they react by going to great lengths to resolve problems. Instead of responding to the media, as recommended by Oakley (2014), the company responds to its customers, who have come to trust the company to fix the inevitable glitches in new technology. Thus, a company known for its secrecy is also known for its responsiveness. Indeed, the technology itself—the customer friendly iPhone and iPads—communicates a message of sincerity and authenticity that bypasses traditional media channels and speaks directly to the consumer.

The Apple example provides an entrée into an examination of paradox in public relations. Apple may not do a good job of communicating about its technology but has proven very effective at communicating through its technology. Telling Apple’s story through the media exists at a higher level of abstraction than telling Apple’s story through its technology. Each level of abstraction changes meanings, turning a positive at one level into a negative at the next level: Thus, the paradoxical nature of Apple’s public relations. The messages that come across as secretive and unresponsive at a higher level of abstraction can come across as insider knowledge or a personal message at a lower level of abstraction. A wink and a nod to the knowing listener may send one message and go completely unnoticed by an outsider receiving another message. Paradoxes occur when we confuse levels of abstraction. Paradoxes are oppositional, contradictory, or contrary phenomena that, when examined individually, seem logical, but, when occurring simultaneously, appear illogical, false, and inconsistent. They are cognitive creations that befuddle understanding but, through meta-analysis and ordinality or levels of abstraction in communication, they can be better understood, accepted, and, in some cases, resolved. The ability of paradox to expose flaws in logic and language serves to facilitate learning and provide a catalyst for change. “The study of paradox is useful as a way of overcoming the inherent tendency for researchers within a field to develop myopia in ways of thinking” (Gyrd-Jones, Merrilees, & Miller, 2013, p. 576). The tendency to build on existing knowledge causes scholars to rely too much on the consistency of results rather than inconsistent outliers and anomalies. “It is the outlier data in the form of tensions and paradoxes in theory development that challenge our way of conceptualizing phenomena under study” (p. 576). Instead of avoiding the tension, paradoxes inspire us to embrace it and view tensions as opportunities to re-evaluate and reassess existing theories. Paradoxical tensions can enable innovation and creativity and ultimately produce new frames and theories.

Some organizational researchers, such as Smith and Lewis (2011), have tried to develop a unique paradox theory, and their dynamic equilibrium model proved helpful in evaluating the paradox of loyalty in public relations. For the most part, however, this study pulls from multiple disciplines to illuminate paradoxes in public relations and uncover alternative approaches to resolving them. Of particular interest are the paradoxes resulting from confusing levels of abstraction in language and communication. The logical fallacies that plague public relations theory and practice arise from levels confusion, and resolving them depends on having an understanding of the ordinal nature of language.

Levels of abstraction are based on two theories—Group Theory and the Theory of Logical Types—developed by mathematicians Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (1992) in their monumental three-volume work, Principia Mathematica, first published in 1927. The world and our perceptions are organized in levels of abstraction. An object exists at a higher level of abstraction than its molecular structure. A word exists at a higher level of abstraction than what it represents. These semantic levels were explained by Alfred Korzybski (2000) in his 1933 book Science and Sanity. At the lowest level was identification, the concrete identity of an object. Description about what was identified existed at a higher level and inference about that description existed at an even higher level. Evaluation of or about the inferences was at an even higher level. Note the importance of about in moving from one level of abstraction to another. Awareness of levels of abstraction serves as the first step to solving the inevitable confusion between and among levels. Advertising’s power to seduce us comes from its appeal to our inferences and emotions, which reside at higher levels of abstraction (Elson, 2010).

Bertrand Russell is often credited with the development of Group Theory, which is considered “one of the most imaginative branches of mathematics” and has played “a powerful role in quantum and relativity theory” (Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 2011, p. 5). Group Theory and the Theory of Logical Types were applied to psychotherapy and communication by anthropologist, psychologist, and social scientist Gregory Bateson. Indeed, Bateson (2000) referred to the Theory of Logical Types as basically a communication theory. Further examination will show that it also helps to expose the paradoxes in public relations.

Group Theory

Public in public relations is generally defined as a group of people who share something in common. The field generally looks at publics as targets for their messages. Indeed, the index of a public relations theory book recommends that readers looking for a definition of public should “see audience; target public” (Botan & Hazelton, 1989, p. 350). Public relations treats publics as key groups of people critical to an organization’s success. The field has long wrestled with the question as to whether publics serve as a means to achieving organizational ends or as ends in and of themselves. Indeed, Botan and Hazelton’s main reference to audiences occurs in a chapter on theoretical models for strategic public relations campaigns. Other public relations theories dealing with publics tend to identify publics by their willingness to act or not to act. In other words, they are categorized based on their likelihood to take action or susceptibility to be persuaded to act (Grunig, 2005).

A different approach to thinking about groups and publics comes from communication research in psychotherapy. Watzlawick, et al. (2011, pp. 5–7) introduced the following basic properties of Group Theory: 1) Members share one common characteristic and changes occur among members within the group, but they cannot place themselves outside the group; 2) members can be combined in various sequences but still produce the same outcome; 3) the combination of an identity member with any other member maintains the other member’s identity; 4) every member has an opposite and combining a member with its opposite produces the identity member (p. 7). Group Theory helps explain the interdependence between stability and change, control and flexibility, independence and dependence, and expansion and contraction. It is important to note, however, that Group Theory cannot explain changes that occur in the system or frame itself. In organizations, the paradox of stability and change means that the forces for change will be met with an equal resistance to change. For every action taken to bring about change, there will be an opposite reaction to produce the identity member. Indeed, one study contended that public relations practitioners, as boundary spanners, help organizations to manage the complexity and tensions surrounding persistence and change (Harter & Krone, 2001).

Based on Group Theory, groups consist of collections of things that share common characteristics, including actions, rules, events, or numbers. Those things united by a specific characteristic are known as members, and the group within which they reside is designated as a class. Anything describing all of a class or collection is not a member of the collection or class. For example, a community represents a group of individuals but a community is not an individual. In the traditional sense, it is a designation representing a class of individuals living within a common geographic boundary. An ethics code may consist of a list of values but the code is not a value. “The grouping of ‘things’ (in the widest sense) is the most basic and necessary element of our perception and conception of reality” (Watzlawick et al., 2011, p. 6).

Watzlawick and his colleagues applied Group Theory to expand our understanding of human communication and behavior. For example, the group of activities required for most people to fall asleep are a comfortable bed, cool temperatures, and a relaxed state of mind. However, the insomniac may create the perfect conditions and still not fall asleep. Falling asleep is a spontaneous act. Insomniacs may recognize this fact but the more they try to act spontaneously, the more likely they increase their anxiety and fail to fall asleep. To resolve the paradox, therapists may counsel insomniacs to focus on the opposite side of the paradox and try to not fall asleep. In other words, the solution to the paradox is not in simply trying to employ typical sleep strategies but to change one’s whole approach to sleep. The solution to the paradox lies in reframing the insomniac’s activities to include the act of not falling asleep.

In an organization, employees qualify as a group whose members share a common denominator, namely employment at a particular organization. The organization may shift its people from department to department, organizing them into different work teams, but these internal changes produce no change in the group itself. No matter how many ways the organization rearranges its members, the outcome is still the same. If an employee moves from one department to another, the previous department loses one member while the other gains a member. The loss in one department is offset by the gain in another. The net gain for the group is zero or the member’s identity member. In simple addition, the identity member is zero, meaning no matter how many times you add zero to the number, you get the same number. In multiplication, the identity member is one, meaning the multiplication of the number by one always equals the same number. Every member of the organization also has an opposite, and the combination with that opposite is the identity member. As examples, Watzlawick et al. (2011) suggested that in a group of sounds the identity member is silence. In a group of moving parts, the identity member is stationary or immobile.

Group Theory has profound implications for public relations. The field often organizes its stakeholders into publics and then applies interpersonal constructs to describe relationships between groups. The public, however, is an abstract designation, a name for a class of individuals with a common characteristic. The public cannot be a member of itself. Therefore, cultivating relationships with a public constitutes the cultivation of a relationship with an abstraction that cannot, by any logical means possible, enjoy an interpersonal relationship with organizational members. Totalitarian governments apply this kind of thinking in making The State the focus of relationships, thus rendering the individual as a meaningless cog in State machinations. Everything revolves around the state or class, rather than around individual members.

Public relations has long relied on Systems Theory to explain the relationship between organizations and their environments. Though not incompatible with Systems Theory, Group Theory provides a different perspective for understanding what occurs when organizations adjust and adapt to their environment. According to Systems Theory, the system’s goal is to maintain its steady state or homeostasis. The logical action when faced with economic downturns is for a company to retract and restructure. Most often organizations cut costs and become more conservative. However, if applying paradoxical thinking, both options are on the table (Schroeder-Saulnier, 2014). Logical one-sided solutions often fail because they ignore the fact that every member of a group has its opposite. Too much emphasis on retraction over its opposite exaggerates the effects of the very problem one may be trying to solve (Schneider, 1990). Handy (1994) argued that the best time for organizations to contract or re-engineer is at the height of an economic boom rather than during a decline. At the very apex of success, organizations sow the seeds for their demise. Thus, at the top of the S curve, as Handy describes it, organizations should retract and change while at the bottom of the curve, the economic downturns, they should expand and press forward.

A parallel in public relations is corporate social responsibility (CSR). If serving the community is not part of the organization’s DNA, the public will accurately interpret its CSR initiatives as insincere and self-serving, thus defeating the very purpose of its CSR strategy. Group Theory helps explain the paradox that the more things change, the more they stay the same. “What Group Theory apparently cannot give us is a model for those types of change which transcend a given system or frame of reference” (Watzlawick et al., 2011, p. 8). Group Theory explains first-order change or change in the group or system, but to understand systems-level changes or second-order, we need another theory that “begins with a collection of ‘things’ which are united by a specific characteristic common to all of them” (p. 8). That theory is known as the Theory of Logical Types, which goes a step further and incorporates changes in the system itself (Watzlawick et al., 2011).

Theory of Logical Type...