Introduction
The focus of this chapter is professionalization, drawing on recent scholarship on public relations historiography and sociological writing on the professions. It argues there is a significant gap in the public relations literature in terms of how public relations associations attempt to develop professional legitimacy, despite the field’s preoccupation with its professional status. This preoccupation has led to normative histories, which frame public relations history as an evolutionary and linear development towards an ethical profession. More critical histories reveal the links with broader societal shifts and allow the “development” of public relations to be understood in terms of increasing occupational closure. This chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the methods used in this research.
Professionalization, Institutionalization, and Education
Understanding Professionalization
Until the early 1970s, professions were understood as a moral force and a stabilizing influence on society, or were described primarily in terms of their socially functional traits, such as altruism, or through the characteristics which distinguished them from occupations (Davis, 2005; Macdonald, 1995). However, sociologists began to focus on “the unusually effective, monopolistic institutions of professions and their high status as the critical factor and treated knowledge, skill, and ethical orientations not as objective characteristics but rather as ideology” (Freidson, 1986, p. 29). For example, Everett C. Hughes reframed the investigation of the professions in 1963, but the significance was not recognized until much later: “what are the circumstances in which people in an occupation attempt to turn it into a profession and themselves into professional people?” (Hughes, 1963, as cited in Macdonald, 1995, p. 6). This book investigates professionalization, that is, “the process by which producers of special services sought to constitute and control a market for their expertise” and recognizes that such expertise is “founded on a system of education and credentialing” (Larson, 1977, p. xvi, xvii). Viewing the profession as a historical construct, rather than a static entity whose characteristics could be catalogued and described, allowed sociologists to focus on the development of an occupation to a profession (Pieczka & L’Etang, 2006).
Contemporary research into the sociology of professions therefore focuses on issues of occupational closure, social stratification, social exclusion, state formation, and the development of a capitalist economic order (Muzio & Kirkpatrick, 2011). In addition, Muzio and Kirkpatrick (2011) call for a greater focus on organizations, noting professional activity takes place largely in organizational settings and in academic institutions. Professional projects are institutionalization projects that advance by claiming intellectual and economic space in competition with other professions (Abbott, 1988; Suddaby & Viale, 2011). However, liberal organizational professions, of which public relations is one example, struggle “to realize the degree of indetermination, monopolization, and control of their knowledge base … their professional project is closely related to attempts to harness, colonize and monopolize organizational spaces, processes, and policies” (Reed, 1996, p. 584, 585). This brief review of ideas about the profession confirms that it is a construct of a particular social and historical context.
The Role of Professional Associations
Professions are processes of occupational closure that marshal exclusionary and demarcatory strategies to control access, regulate professional practice, and institutionalize those practices (Davies, 1996; Noordegraaf, 2011; Witz, 1992). Professional associations play a pivotal role in organizing, creating, and defining professional behaviour and practices, and in doing so, asserting occupational closure (Noordegraaf, 2011), and are therefore are an important “springboard…that enabled PR to develop into a distinct field” (Watson, 2015, p. 6). The first public relations professional associations emerged after the World War II. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) was founded in 1947, and emerged out of two established councils. The UK-Based Institute of Public Relations (IPR) was founded in 1948 (it became the CIPR when it gained chartered status in 2005). The following decades saw professional associations established throughout the world, including Public Relations Institute of South Africa in 1957; Argentinian Public Relations Association in 1958; Institute of Public Relations Malaysia in 1965; Institute of Public Relations Singapore (IPRS) in 1970; Public Relations Association of Trinidad and Tobago in 1972; Public Relations Association of Uganda in 1975; and China Public Relations Association in 1987. The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) was established in 1955, following earlier discussions by two Dutch and four British practitioners dating back to 1949 (International P.R. Association, 1955; L’Etang, 2004; Watson & Macnamara, 2013).
In Australia, various public relations institutes were established from 1950 but were primarily state based.1 The Australian Institute of Public Relations (AIPR) was established in Sydney in 1950; Public Relations Institute of Australia (Victoria) (PRIA [Vic]) was founded in 1952; and the South Australian chapter in 1956 (Gleeson, 2014; Sheehan, 2014a); the Tasmanian institute was incorporated and officially affiliated with the national council in 1967 (Tasmania at Last, 1967); and a Western Australian institute was not established until late 1970 (New W.A. Chapter, 1971). A loose association of state institutes was only formed in 1960, and a national organization was not established until 1994; until then, state institutes tended to operate independently (Gleeson, 2014). Newsletters produced by “the public relations institutes of Australia” sometimes represented only the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. However, these PRIA forerunners were not the only professional associations interested in public relations; for example, Australian Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), established in 1946, saw public relations as their domain (Sinclair, 2014, p. 6), and the Victorian Institute of Public Affairs promoted public relations as valuable in promoting employee relations and developing organizational narratives and that “the only worthwhile public relations activities, however, are those based on ‘good performance—publicly appreciated’” (Wide Scope, 1951). Even in the 1960s, some practitioners argued that public relations people should be members of the Australian Journalists Association (AJA) (To The Editor, 1966). Individual practitioners maintained membership of international organizations; for example, AIPR councillors E Colin Davis and Asher Joel were PRSA members and PRIA (Vic) members sought affiliation with IPR and became overseas members of the British institute (What We’re Doing, 1955).
The Australian public relations institutes were often not the only institute to which members belonged. In addition to being a Fellow and the foundation president of both PRIA (Vic) and PRIA, the professional memberships of Noel Griffiths, who worked in the banking sector from the 1930s until his retirement in 1965, included: Fellow of the Advertising Institute of Australia, Chartered Institute of Secretaries, and Bankers’ Institute of Australia; Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management; and Associate of the Australian Society of Accountants (Profile: Noel Griffiths, 1965; Stanger, 1966). Griffiths was also the President of the Advertising Institute of Australia 1962–1963, and served two terms on the IPRA Council between 1960 and 1962 (Watson & Macnamara, 2013). Asher Joel, a founding member of AIPR and its third president, belonged to so many organizations, boards, and committees that his friends “would refer to him as a great ‘Joiner’” (Thomson, 1956, p. 4). In addition to being an AIPR Fellow, his professional affiliations included Fellow of Royal Commonwealth Society; Fellow of Royal Society of Arts; Fellow of the Advertising Institute of Australia; Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management; and membership of the AJA and PRSA (Parliament of NSW, n.d.; Thomson, 1956).
Noordegraaf identifies three mechanisms used by professional associations seeking professional status:
- Cognitive mechanisms: schooling, education, training, knowledge, skills, conferences, books, journals, and magazines;
- Normative mechanisms: membership criteria, selection criteria, entry barriers, certificates, codes of conducts, sanctions, and discipline;
- Symbolic mechanisms: rites of passage, stories, heroes, codes of ethics, service ideals, and missions. (2011, p. 470)
These mechanisms jointly “define work practices, demarcate occupational fields, regulate behaviours, symbolize professionalism and provide external cues” (Noordegraaf, 2011, p. 470). For example, a journal produced by a professional association and read by the practitioner body is significant for “the disciplining effect of its coverage is to contribute to the construction of a relatively coordinated and consistent understanding across the field of wha...