Intercultural Public Relations

Realities and Reflections in Practical Contexts

Lan Ni, Qi Wang Schlupp, Bey-Ling Sha, Lan Ni, Qi Wang Schlupp, Bey-Ling Sha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781317280866
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Public Relations
• Index: Business

This book continues the groundbreaking work begun in Intercultural Public Relations: Theories for Managing Relationships and Conflicts with Strategic Publics (Routledge, 2018), by applying the theoretical framework of intercultural public relations to actual practice.

Practical public relations contexts examined by the contributing chapter authors—both scholars and practitioners—include corporations, government, military, healthcare, education, and activism. The book covers real-world situations, including the training of practitioners to become more interculturally competent, identifying and understanding publics or stakeholders with different cultural backgrounds and identities, building and maintaining relationships with these publics/stakeholders, and managing conflicts with them.

Offering practical guidance while examining both best practices and difficult challenges, this book is useful for public relations researchers, practitioners, and students as they explore how intercultural public relations contributes to organizational effectiveness and social change.

PART I Overview

1 INTRODUCTION

Lan Ni

DOI: 10.4324/9781315641720-2

As organizations face more culturally diverse publics both domestically and globally, whether in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, or political affiliation, these organizations face more challenges as well as opportunities in navigating through cultural boundaries. Therefore, the consideration of culture and diversity in a broad sense is increasingly becoming a necessity, rather than an option, in the overall public relations practice at both the organizational and societal levels. At the same time, the publics are embracing their cultural identities and values at a level they have never done before, not only affecting organizational operations, but also leading to the public’s own empowerment and societal change.

With this background, we present this book, in hopes that it can provide practical insights to public relations researchers, practitioners, and students. Different from some case study books in public relations, this current book is guided by theory and research developed in the area of intercultural public relations. It is a continuation from a previous book, Intercultural Public Relations: Theories for Managing Relationships and Conflicts with Strategic Publics (hereinafter referred to as theory book). Published in 2018, the theory book aimed at providing a theory-driven, empirically tested framework that would advance our understanding of an intercultural approach to public relations (i.e., “how individuals and entities with dissimilar cultural identities interact and negotiate to solve problems and reach mutually satisfying outcomes,” Ni et al., 2018, p. 7). Going beyond the cross-cultural or cross-national comparisons of public relations practices, that book provided systematic examinations of intercultural interactions among publics and organizations, and developed coherent analytical frameworks for research at the interpersonal, intra-organizational, and organizational levels.

Following that framework, this current book examines issues in various public relations contexts and identifies practical solutions or best practices for effective intercultural public relations practice. Contributed by both public relations researchers and practitioners, the chapters in this book shed light on how practitioners could better develop their intercultural competency and navigate through different cultural boundaries in different contexts.

Scope of Culture

Following the conceptualization of the broad scope of culture in the theory book, this practice book features the multi-faceted manifestations of culture. They include identity in different domains: country of origin and socioeconomic status (Chapter 4), nationality (Chapters 5, 7, and 8), race (Chapters 6 and 10), and geographic location, socioeconomic status, and disability (Chapter 3).

In addition, culture is reflected at multiple levels as detailed in Chapter 2, from the more explicit and surface level such as language and symbols (Chapters 5 and 8) to more implicit and deep level such as cultural values (Chapters 3, 7, and 9). In many cases, different levels of culture are considered simultaneously, rather than separately.

Scope of Intercultural PR

Our theory book discussed components of intercultural public relations at different levels, ranging from interpersonal-level competencies, intra-organizational levels of identifying publics, relationship management, and conflict management, to organizational level of identity and identification. In this practice book, one key theme that runs through almost all chapters is the importance and implementation of relationship management. Regardless of the context, building and maintaining relationships with culturally diverse publics requires overarching corporate purpose (Chapter 3), strategic and culturally relevant use of social media (Chapter 5), and culturally sensitive messaging strategies (Chapter 8).

Another main theme is conflict management in different settings and with different angles: corporations (Chapter 4), government (Chapter 6), and education (Chapter 9). Chapter 4 focuses on analyzing the source of the conflict between the meat packing industry and its marginalized employee publics (usually immigrants and of lower socioeconomic status). Chapter 6 situates the conflict in a particular crisis scenario where the identities of two parties are in sharp contrast. Chapter 9 provides a more complete discussion of the procedure of conflict resolution and negotiation, taking into consideration the need for intercultural competency in various stages of this process.

Another practice area, identifying publics in intercultural settings and connecting it with culture and identity, is also inherently needed in various contexts and examined either implicitly or explicitly in the chapters. In particular, Chapter 10 focuses on this area and discusses the way how identity at both personal and organizational levels is embraced and negotiated as an activist organization communicates with various internal and external publics to achieve its purpose.

Finally, the concept of intercultural competency, while not always directly analyzed or assessed in each chapter, is considered as a critical personal attribute for public relations practitioners (Chapter 11). Regardless of the cultural groups involved, or the cultural factors that need to be considered, practitioners need to be constantly mindful of their capabilities to be open and genuinely appreciative of cultural differences at multiple levels.

The Structure of the Book

This book consists of three main parts: (1) overview of theoretical foundations in intercultural public relations and the guide for application; (2) contexts of practices which include corporations and business, government and military public affairs, healthcare, education, and activism; and (3) guide from theory to practice, focusing on intercultural competency.

The theory overview chapter aims to present a holistic framework for intercultural public relations, developed on the main assumptions from the behavioral, strategic management approach to public relations and multi-faceted conceptualization of culture. Based on the original structure in the theory book, this chapter in the practice book also presents newly developed frameworks to help practitioners conceptualize the various domains of intercultural public relations practices.

The chapters in the practical contexts mainly aim to provide readers with specific ways of analyzing and applying theories to practice. Therefore, each chapter starts with an overview of the specific sector or function, followed by the major trends and challenges in that practice context in terms of identifying and understanding publics with diverse cultural backgrounds and values, building relationships, or resolving conflicts. Each chapter then discusses the application of relevant and useful theoretical frameworks as well as best practices, using a case or cases to demonstrate such application. Each chapter concludes with suggested areas of improvement including how practitioners in this area can be more culturally competent.

Finally, the chapter on intercultural competency provides coherent structures for helping practitioners and organizations navigate intercultural public relations contexts. Guidelines are provided on developing and training for intercultural competency in practice.

The Content of the Book

Part I: Overview

Chapter 1 Introduction. This chapter introduces the purpose of the book and its connection with the previous theory book. It then presents the general structure as well as the content of the book.

Chapter 2 A Theoretical Framework. This chapter expands a theoretical framework of intercultural public relations, initially proposed in Ni et al. (2018), and suggests the practical use of this framework. The chapter starts by providing an overview of the foundational theories in the strategic management approach to public relations, followed by a goal-driven model of public relations programming. It then analyzes the role of culture, broadly defined and manifested at multiple levels and in multiple domains, and provides important theoretical assumptions. Next are the theoretically derived frameworks in different areas of intercultural public relations and newly developed practical guides for these areas: identifying and understanding intercultural publics, managing relationships with intercultural publics, managing conflicts with intercultural publics, intercultural competency training for both public relations practitioners and the public, as well as how intercultural publics, especially marginalized groups, can empower themselves.

Part II: Contexts of Practices

This part discusses how the theoretical foundations established in the theory book can be applied in various contexts in intercultural public relations practices. This part mainly focuses on the three major players in intercultural settings: organizations in different contexts, culturally diverse publics, and practitioners who act as liaisons between organizations and publics.

Intercultural Public Relations in Corporations and Business. Corporations and business are facing increasing challenges given the more culturally diverse publics, both internal and external, ranging from customers, employees, to communities. These organizations need to be mindful of cultural nuances not only when using different communication strategies for general promotion and publicity, but also when faced with clashes and conflicts. The three chapters in this section delve into these areas, starting from the overarching corporate purpose (Chapter 3), followed by a critical analysis of the meat industry’s exploitation of minoritized groups historically and during the COVID-19 crisis (Chapter 4), and the culturally sensitive use of communication strategies in social media (Chapter 5).

It is important to start this section from the overarching corporate purpose because purpose can provide the highest level of guidance in every aspect of operations. Chapter 3 by Alexis Bajalia Fitzsimmons, Eve Heffron, Yufan Sunny Qin, and Marcia W. DiStaso highlights the importance of intercultural public relations in planning and implementing corporate purpose, particularly in terms of identifying and harmonizing the divergent interests of all stakeholders. The chapter provides multiple case studies to showcase and demonstrate the need for competency in reconciling expectations from different cultural groups while upholding corporate purposes....