Public Relations Theory II

Carl H. Botan, Vincent Hazleton, Carl H. Botan, Vincent Hazleton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135216870
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Public Relations
• Index: Business

The public relations landscape has changed dramatically from what it was in 1989, when the original Public Relations Theory volume was published. Reflecting the substantial shifts in the intervening years, Public Relations Theory II, while related to the first volume, is more a new work than a revision. Editors Carl H. Botan and Vincent Hazleton have brought together key theorists and scholars in public relations to articulate the current state of public relations theory, chronicling the ongoing evolution of public relations as a field of study. The contributors to this volume represent the key figures in the discipline, and their chapters articulate the significant advances in public relations theory and research.Working from the position that public relations is a theoretically grounded and research based discipline with the potential to bring numerous areas of applied communication together, Botan and Hazleton have developed this volume to open up the public relations field to a broad variety of theories. Organized into two major sections--Foundations, and Tools for Tomorrow--the volume presents four types of chapters: discussions addressing how public relations should be understood and practiced; examinations of theories from other areas applied to public relations; explorations of theories about a specific area of public relations practice; and considerations of public relations theories and research that have not been given sufficient attention in the past or that hold particular promise for the future of public relations. It serves as a thorough overview of the current state of theory in public relations scholarship.Like its predecessor, Public Relations Theory II will be influential in the future development of public relations theory. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this book will help readers develop their own sense of direction for public relations theory. Public Relations Theory II is an essential addition to the library of every public relations scholar, and is appropriate for use in advanced public relations theory coursework as well as for study and reference.

CHAPTER 1
Public Relations in a New Age

Carl Botan
George Mason University

Vincent Hazleton
Radford University

INTRODUCTION

When we sat down to write and edit Public Relations Theory more than a decade and a half ago, the public relations landscape was very much different than it is today. There are a few important similarities with the earlier book, but rather our current task is different enough that we do not consider this book a second edition of Public Relations Theory (1989, hereafter PRT) but rather a completely new project (hereafter, PRT II).

This book has an entirely different mission than PRT and it is about a field that has experienced huge changes since the late 1980s. For example, who would have thought back then that in 2003 the mean annual wage for public relations managers would be $74,750 while the mean for purchasing managers would be $73,479 and for food service managers $41,980 (U.S. Dept. of Labor, 2005)? On an hourly basis, the Bureau of Labor, Statistics reported that in May of 2003 public relations managers mean pay was $35.94 while that of judges was $37.94, physicists and astronomers $36.66, aerospace engineers $33.24, and psychologists $27.03 (U.S. Dept. of Labor, 2005). Even among nonmanagement jobs, Buckley (2002) reported that in 2000, of the 427 occupations listed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, public relations specialists ranked 98th in income. We are ahead of architects, ranked 103, and computer programmers, ranked 104, and well ahead of social scientists, ranked 127, and construction supervisors, ranked 143. In 1989, the authors advocated a social scientific approach to public relations. Today, applying that recommendation too literally might result in a large pay cut for many public relations specialists.

In 1989, we all knew that public relations was practiced in other countries. But, who would have guessed then that several large firms would each have client lists with a dozen or more national governments on them? We simply had no idea that our field would move into a leadership role in as many ways as it has.

In the academic arena, public relations enrollments have continued to grow. In PRT, Neff (1989) reported graduate public relations programs in 48 departments. By 1999, the Commission on Public Relations Education reported 70 schools offering master's programs in the field. In 2005, GradSchools.com lists 64 graduate programs in public relations in the United States and 31 more internationally, although known programs in Germany, Brazil, and elsewhere had been left off that list.

Of the 64 U.S. graduate programs, 11 offer information on PhD programs. We have not seen consistent PhD graduations from the bulk of these, however, as discussed later. Public relations instructors almost unanimously agree that undergraduate enrollments have skyrocketed in the same period but reliable data on enrollments are not available.

GROWTH AND CHALLENGES

The demand for qualified faculty to teach in all these public relations programs continues to grow. Indeed, PR-education.org (2005) lists on its Web site alone 112 teaching jobs in public relations for the 2005-2006 school year, 72 for the 2004-2005 school year, and 113 for the 2003-2004 school year. Many of these go unfilled, and many of those that are filled are the result of recruiting existing faculty from other schools.

There is also a growing sense that public relations is an enrollment cash cow in more speech communication, mass communication, and journalism departments/schools than ever before. The field recognizes that this is a problem because when public relations generated tuition is used to support other areas, public relations students do not get as good a return on their tuition dollar as students in those other areas. This problem has gotten bad enough in some places that an ad hoc national committee of public relation educators is currently studying the feasibility and desirability of creating independent departments of public relations. Such an effort would, of course, have to find a way to address the shortage of qualified PhDs.

Although growth is generally a good thing, problems often accompany it. One such problem emerges from the fact that research universities that offer doctoral degrees have not been as quick to embrace public relations as for example, health communication, intercultural communication, international communication, or new information technology. This partially explains the discrepancy between the number of advertised faculty positions and the number of new public relations faculty that graduate annually with PhDs. In the late 1980s, we could identify two or three doctoral universities that regularly produced a small number of public relations graduates. Today, we can identify possibly two more universities that have developed public relations doctoral programs that regularly graduate new PhDs.

As a result of this shortage of PhD programs, many—perhaps most—new public relations faculty have never had a dedicated doctoral-level public relations theory course. Almost all have had one or more theory courses in mass communication, interpersonal communication, or freedom of the press, however. One consequence has been spotty development in public relations teaching, theory, and research. For example, public relations faculty that lack a PhD-level public relations theory course cannot be expected to explain or defend their area as well as faculty in subject areas where theories have been addressed directly as part of a graduate program. Of course, public relation faculty that lack theoretic training in public relations may read the published literature or attend conferences to partally compensate for this lack of education. This approach has an inherent bias built into it, however, and many do not avail themselves of such opportunities, resulting in some “professors” of public relations with zero academic training in the subject area. In addition, bias results from the tendency for theory learned later to be interpreted through the theoretic lens of one’s first-learned theories. As a result, some public relation faculty understand and, therefore, teach their subject only from a mass communication, journalism, or organizational communication perspective rather than as a field with its own increasingly rich body of theory.

This book is not about economic status, enrollment, and teacher shortages, however. It is about a part of the field that may have changed even more than economics or enrollment; it is about public relations theory.

Different Times—Different Task

As we explain in more detail later, in the late 1980s we sought merely to give voice to the already widely recognized need for theory in public relations and to provide some conceptual tools for making that possible. Public Relations Theory (1989) was, to the best of our knowledge, the first theory book in the field. We did not set out to argue for or against any one theory. Rather, we set out to argue the need for more theory in PR. We explained why we thought that was true and how we thought such theory might be developed.We used the work of several outstanding colleagues to illustrate what we thought were significant contributions toward developing theory in public relations.

We divided that book into three sections and called them meta-theory, theory, and application. In the meta-theory section were chapters by us, J. Grunig, Miller (now deceased), Prior-Miller, Smilowitz, and Pearson (now deceased). In the theory section were chapters by Cheney and Dionisopoulos, Neff, Murphy, VanLeuven, Scott and O’Hair, and Cline, McBride, and Miller. In the application section were chapters by Johnson, Kreps, Terry, Anderson, Hamilton, and Gaudino, Fritch, and Haynes. Many of these chapter authors joined us in arguing that public relations is best understood as an applied social science.

A decade and a half later, that fight has largely been won. Now, we are engaged in the new task of giving voice to the need for diversity and competition between theories in public relations. We believe this task to be as critical in its time as the call for theory was in the late 1980s. In fact, we believe that our field cannot develop further without such a contest of ideas—without a real paradigm struggle.

Although we both still feel that it is useful to understand public relations as a social science, neither of us would argue today that a social, scientific perspective is necessarily the best way to understand public relations. In fact, we argue instead that what are needed today are actual theories of public relations, rather than just a social science approach. Hazleton’s chapter in this book is an example of that. Although the chapter makes use of a social scientific theory for mapping and uses social science methodologies to test some of its contentions, it does not call for a social science approach but for a theory of public relations per se.

TRENDS 1988–2005

A number of changes and trends in public relations have set new tasks before us. These trends have not only helped emphasized the importance of theory in public relations but have helped to guide public relations education in directions that increasingly are integrating theory. Three such scholarly/academic trends are: (1) growth in scholarship and publishing, (2) development of scholarly organizations and conferences, and (3) development of a theoretic foundation, particularly through Symmetrical/Excellence theory.

Scholarship and Publishing

In the area of research, Botan and Taylor (2004) reported:

With about 250 [research and theory] papers submitted to the public relations divisions in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the International Communication Association (ICA), the National Communication Association (NCA), and the International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC) in 2003, public relations may be poised to become one of the most researched areas of communication, (p. 1)

Also, three academic journals in the United States are now solely or primarily dedicated to public relations: Public Relations Review, Public Relations Research, and International Journal of Strategic Communication (starting in 2006), as well as two journals in England, Corporate Communication: An International Journal and The Journal of Communication Management. In 1989, there was only one such journal, Public Relations Review, and two academic divisions (AEJMC and ICA).

The growth in public relations journals and in the number of leading communication and mass communication journals that happily accept public relations scholarship have dramatically changed both the opportunities public relations scholars have to publish their work and the probability that it will be indexed by major sources like Commlndex and CommAbstracts. Indeed, in 1989, we thought that there was a shortage of acceptable outlets for public relations research and theorizing. Today, we are concerned that there may not be enough good research to fill all the available outlets on a regular basis. For example, although its founding editors and associate editors are all public relations scholars, the International Journal of Strategic Communication still casts a wide net in soliciting submissions, saying: “Submissions can address problems grounded in any organizational or communication discipline, but should have clear theoretical implications for how the organization functions or responds to the environment in which it operates” (Hallahan, Holtzhauzen, & van Ruler, 2005).

It is particularly gratifying is that several of the major national journals in communication and mass communication, in addition to Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, have begun to accept and even solicit public relations articles. Journal of Applied Communication Research and Journal of Communication, in particular, come to mind. This trend is by no means universal, however, and public relations scholars are wise to check the policy of individual editors and the composition of editorial boards before submitting to non-PR journals. It is now realistic to expect that top-flight public relations research may appear in any of up to about a dozen journals—a far cry from 1989, when most public relations research had to find its way into Public Relations Review or, very occasionally, into what was then called Journalism Quarterly.

Scholarly Organizations and Conferences

The growth in demand for public relations education has led to a concomitant growth in organizations where scholars can meet and present public relations research. Increases in membership and programming in both the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association has transferred what were public relations interest groups into public relations divisions. With these added to the existing divisions in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and in the Public Relations Society of America, total divisional membership in public relations now exceeds 1,000 (although a few individuals hold dual, or even multiple, memberships). Public relations interest groups are also growing in regional communication associations in the United States.

Conferences in England, Slovenia, Australia, and Brazil, among others, have provided scholarly opportunities outside of the United States. The International Interdisciplinary Public Relations Research Conference, held in recent years in Miami, is in its eighth year and has emerged as the most important dedicated public relations research conference.

Such scholarly opportunities are important to the development of theory and research because a disciplinary community can develop around such venues. They are also important because most journal publications originate as conference papers. So, the number of conference papers is a good measure of the potential for future publications. Ideas and arguments are tested and refined through the give-and-take of scholarly discussion in formal programs as well as informally. Our own experiences at these conferences convince us that there are a generation of new scholars, with new ideas and interests, that assure the future development of public relations theory.

Theoretic Foundation

Botan and Taylor (2004) recently provided a summary of the state of public relations theory, so we will not repeat it here. They concluded the following:

Over the last 20 years public relations has evolved into a major area of applied communication based in research of significant quantity and quality. Public relations has become much more than just a corporate communication practice. Rather, it is a theoretically grounded and research based area that has the potential to unify a variety of applied communication areas, (p. 659)

Over those 20 years, a leadin...