Intercultural Public Relations

Theories for Managing Relationships and Conflicts with Strategic Publics

Lan Ni, Qi Wang, Bey-Ling Sha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317280897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

Intercultural Public Relations: Theories for Managing Relationships and Conflicts with Strategic Publics develops a coherent framework to unify the theories of public relations and intercultural communication, and, within the framework, examines empirical studies of intercultural interactions.

This book follows an intercultural approach, which considers how individuals and entities with dissimilar cultural identities interact and negotiate to solve problems and reach mutually satisfying outcomes. This work provides a theory-driven, empirically supported framework that will inform and guide the research and practices of intercultural public relations. Furthermore, it provides numerous levels of analysis and incorporates the use and challenges of social media.

The book examines theories and issues in three integrated processes:

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• Identification of publics

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• Relationship management

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• Conflict resolution

These areas represent the most critical functions that public relations contributes to organizational effectiveness: scanning the environment, identifying strategic publics, and building long-term, quality relationships with these publics to reduce costs, gain support, and empower the publics themselves. In doing so, the book adopts simultaneously public-centered and organization-centered perspectives. This unique work will serve as an essential reference for students, practitioners, and scholars in today's global public relations environment.

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INTRODUCTION

Background and Context of the Book

The journey of writing a book on intercultural public relations began back in 2001, when the first author of this book had just started her graduate program in public relations at the University of Maryland. Coming as an international student, she had great interest in and passion for public relations in intercultural settings. To get a general sense of public relations practices among organizations and publics across different cultural backgrounds, she searched for resources on this topic, starting with the library database. Although many articles and readings existed, the only books she could find at the time were the following two: International Public Relations: A Comparative Analysis (Culbertson & Chen, 1996) and Multicultural Public Relations: A Social-Interpretive Approach (2nd ed., Banks, 2000). While she was excited to find these two, she was also surprised that there were not more systematic explorations on this important topic.

Things changed tremendously over the past decades. As the trend in globalization continues, organizations face the challenge of how to identify, interact with, and manage relationships with publics from diverse cultural backgrounds. Such challenges exist both within a country and across borders. In response to these challenges, many more books on public relations across national boundaries have been published since then, including influential books by Sriramesh and colleagues (e.g., Sriramesh & Vercic, 2009).

In the following years, both in graduate school and beyond, the first author has been fortunate enough to have met and worked extensively with the second and third authors on this topic of common interest. The second author has in-depth knowledge and background in intercultural communication, which has been instrumental in their collaborative work on intercultural public relations. The third author first proposed the concept of intercultural public relations (Sha, 1995, 2006) with a series of studies in the areas of cultural identity of both publics and organizations, consistently inspiring and contributing to this area of research.

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Together, the three authors believe that systematic theorizing is still lacking with regard to the specific aspect of intercultural public relations practices, which is defined as “a special case of public relations in which the salient cultural identity avowed by the organization differs from the salient cultural identity avowed by the public” (Sha, 2006, p. 54).

The next section provides a brief review of the current books on researching public relations through the lens of culture, comparing and contrasting different approaches to culture in the context of public relations (i.e., cross-cultural, multicultural, and intercultural approaches), highlighting the lack of an existing theoretical framework for systematic examinations of intercultural interactions among publics and organizations, thereby introducing the need for the current book.

Current Status and Need for a New Book

Globalization

Much research in public relations has been inspired by the trend of globalization, which involves the increasing global interconnectedness that results from constant interchange of important factors across national borders such as economy, culture, technology, finance, and people. Globalization has immense and widespread consequences because any issue or activity in one part of the world could potentially influence that of another part, either instantly or eventually (Ni, 2013). It is noted that even though the term globalization was not widely recognized until it was coined by Theodore Levitt in 1983, globalization itself is not a new phenomenon, nor is it precisely defined by Western countries, according to Krishnamurthy Sriramesh and Dejan Vercic (2009). For more discussion on the connection between globalization and global village, see Chapter 3 of the current book.

Vercic, Zerfass, and Wiesenberg (2015) reviewed studies on public relations in the global environment and argued that both systematic empirical research and theory specific to public relations in global organizations are still lacking. In particular, they identified a major problem, where many studies done in countries other than the United States are placed under the “international public relations” umbrella even though those studies examined purely domestic public relations practices in a particular country. Very few studies were actually concerned with cross-cultural analyses, intercultural communication and relationships, or global issues or organizations (Jain, De Moya, & Molleda, 2014). This problem points to a fundamental need to understand and distinguish the different approaches to culture in the research of public relations, which is discussed below.

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Distinction Among Terms

Many related but different terms are typically used to describe phenomena related to globalization. Examples include international, multinational, global, cross-cultural, multicultural, and intercultural. They are sometimes used interchangeably, which can lead to confusion. In this section, we define and differentiate several key terms commonly used from two broad categories. The first category refers to different countries or nation states, and the terminology used includes international, multinational, and global public relations, whereas the second category refers to different cultures that are more pertaining to group-oriented, social-interactive behavior. The latter terminology includes cross-cultural, multicultural, and intercultural public relations.

Although country or nation state undoubtedly constitutes an important aspect of cultural differences, the concept of culture entails much more than national boundaries alone. Culture is defined as “the collective of programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others” (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005, p. 4). The mental programming consists of “attitudes, values, belief systems, disbelief systems, and behaviors” (Singer, 1998, p. 6). Any group that shares similar perceptions could be considered a culture, such as gender, sexual orientation, religion, and social economic status. Please refer to Chapter 3 for a more thorough discussion on the definitions and scope of culture.

Among the three terms in the first category (international, multinational, and global) that involves more than one country or nation, multinational is typically reserved to refer to a business or corporate setting. In the context of public relations literature, a distinction has been made between international and global. In examining different public relations practices and how such practices are or will be influenced by different factors, two main schools of thoughts emerged: international public relations and global public relations, also called and roughly equated with polycentric and ethnocentric, emic and etic, and culture-specific and culture-free approaches, respectively. The international approach to public relations emphasizes differences in practices in different parts of the world due to different cultural influences. The key assumption is that no universal rules or principles, mostly developed in the Western countries and thus likely to be ethnocentric, apply or should apply to such different practices. The global approach to public relations, however, suggests that universal principles of best public relations practices do exist and should be applied in different parts of the world, but with modifications based on and careful considerations of the local culture (Sriramesh & Vercic, 2009).

However, in the context of public relations, many issues that are of interest to diverse groups of people can either go beyond national borders or remain in the same country. Culture in its most comprehensive form consists of various levels, and country or nation is only one of the many levels. Therefore, it is important to consider the second set of terms on culture.

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Following and adapting the distinction among terms in intercultural communication (see more in Chapter 3), we argue that the following three main approaches to public relations in the global environment are needed. Briefly, the cross-cultural approach focuses on cross-cultural or cross-national comparisons following established criteria and examines how different environmental factors influence public relations practices in different parts of the world. The multicultural approach focuses on the co-existence and representation of diverse cultures in the society, highlighting the importance of diversity in publics. Finally, the intercultural approach focuses on the actual process of interaction and communication among people from different cultural backgrounds both within a country and across borders. Again these three approaches in this second category are used to classify the approaches to the study of public relations in the global environment. Some variations among these approaches exist (see Chapter 3 for more discussion).

In general however, most of the existing theory books in this area take one of the following approaches: (a) a cross-cultural or cross-national approach with limited discussion on actual interaction processes, (b) a critical approach with a focus on power, and/or (c) a multicultural approach. Below is a more detailed review of the different books with the need for this current book proposed at the end.

Review of Current Books

First of all, both of the early pioneering books in this area mentioned in the beginning of this chapter provide tremendous help for students, scholars, and practitioners alike who want to learn and apply theories and practices of public relations on a global scale. They helped explore the landscape of intercultural public relations. Culbertson and Chen’s (1996) is the first book that has provided not only theoretical foundation, but also cross-national or cross-cultural comparisons of public relations practices in different parts of the world. Banks’ (2000) book also addresses using theories to communicate with diverse publics. However, it only contains one chapter on substantial theorizing, which focuses on diversity issues. The other chapters are focused primarily on different practices and contexts. Both books were published more than a decade ago and have not been updated since. Other research and books are reviewed below according to the different approaches taken.

Cross-Cultural Comparisons

In existing public relations research, cross-cultural comparisons share many commonalities with the international and global approaches discussed earlier. Most studies in this category examine the similarities and differences of public relations practices in different countries. In fact, Curtin and Gaither (2007) identified four main categories of such studies in international public relations:

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1. Analyses of how national cultures influence public relations practice.

2. Analyses of the relevance of U.S.-centric public relations models in other countries.

3. Comparisons of public relations practices across regions or countries through case studies.

4. Studies of international public relations practiced by governments.

In terms of the global approach, James Grunig and his colleagues developed a global public relations theory of generic principles derived from the Excellence theory (e.g., L. Grunig, J. Grunig, & Dozier, 2002) and specific applications of these principles. Reflecting the idea of globalization, this global theory has been expanded and refined through studies in different parts of the world and has been heavily reflected in Sriramesh and Vercic (2009).

Principles of excellence feature five themes: management processes, two-way symmetrical processes, diversity, ethics, and social responsibility. Six specific variables that can influence public relations practices include infrastructure, which contains political system, level of economic development, level of activism, and legal system; culture, which includes both societal and corporate cultures; and media environment, which includes media control, media outreach, and media access. Of particular note is the role of culture, with numerous studies examining cultural values or dimensions, especially those by Geert Hofstede (2001). Scholars such as Sriramesh and Vercic (2009) examined these specific variables through contextualized regional and country descriptions of public relations practices.

Sriramesh and Vercic (2009) is by far one of the most influential books on global public relations. It uses a coherent framework in global theory of public relations that incorporates generic principles and specific applications. It examines the application of principles of public relations in over 30 countries or regions with different environmental variables. This book articulates a strong and consistent theoretical framework and applications of the framework. It also provides a solid knowledge base for practitioners who need to be aware of the global influences on public relations. Other major books focusing on contextualized regional/country descriptions using a cross-national approach are from the following authors: Culberts...