The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRiNZ) describes Public Relations as this:
“PR should be defined as deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding and excellent communication between an organisation and its publics.“
In order to wholly understand the reasoning of this elaborate definition it is best refined into three sections. This essay hereby endeavours to critically examine the PRiNZ definition of Public Relations against various models of both Public Relations communication and the ethics employed when exhibiting them. Examples from contemporary New Zealand will clarify critical assessment.
The first part of the definition describes a “deliberate, planned and sustained effort”. This idea is best developed when looked at in terms of Systems Theory (Bertalanffy, 1968). This idea works around describing PR organisations as “open” or “closed” systems. These systems are theoretically made up of many smaller sections that work together simultaneously.
The first model that fits into Systems Theory is “Public Information” (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). This model aims to inform its publics with truthful information that satisfies the masses. If the organisation keeps its publics informed they will believe what the organisation tells them and therefore behave in a way that benefits the company’s objectives. This is a closed system because it does not offer any opportunity for publics to contribute to the campaign or aim to
PR observe is nothing however the ethics, believes, values and culture of a public relation agency supported that the publicists prefer to maintain an efficient communication with the stakeholders. 10 practices and its evaluations area unit as follows:
Harlow (1976) defines public relations (PR) practice as “the distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communications, understanding, acceptance and cooperation between an organisation and its publics”. PR plays an important role in organisations because they are representing a broader group of activities, even encompassing all communication activities of an organisation (Lee, 2011). To put in a laymen term, public relations practitioners (PR) work to build long-term relationships among individuals and institutions through planned promotions of goods, services, and images of a company to create a good will for a person, place, and event and also to helps management to be informed and responsive to public opinion to further improve the organisation.
Public relation is communication process placed strategically to build mutual and beneficial relationship between organization and public on products, leadership and organization policy. Since the two depend on each other, they have to interact and have amicable relationship (Hunt and Grunig 1992). Throughout human history public relation provide right information, persuading public to uptake the information and has public to integrate with the information given. (Edward 1971). In any society people who live, work and interact in all levels must have relationship which intricately joins them, (Richard W. Darrow 1996).
Public Relations in New Zealand is widely useful, practised and builds up an organisation’s relationships with its publics. PR in short, is essentially about communication and relationship building. PRINZ [Public Relations Institute of New Zealand] (2009) defines PR as “The deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” This essay will deconstruct and critically examine this definition of public relations in relation to PR theories. These theories being Systems Theory, Relationship Management and Excellence Theory will be examined and applied to campaign examples. This will give a comprehensive understanding of the theory’s meanings as well as relationships with aspects of the PRINZ definition of PR. To understand PR theories however, the term publics must first be addressed.
The most recent definition of public relations, according to the Public Relations Society of America (2012), states that “Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Through the rapid advancement of modern media and technology, there have never been more outlets and opportunities available for accomplishing the goals of public relations. Believing the development of social media has not created serious changes in the way public relations practitioners go about their duties would be foolish and a fast track to falling behind in this rapid world of communication. The main goals of public relations are “to
Some theorists such as Botan and Hazelton (1989) expressed in Yeomans (2009:5) argue against this and believe that PR present biased communications and reflect authentic practice that results in PR representative to “manipulate public opinion for the benefit of the organization.” This could be the case for many company’s, however when running an organisation like Virgo it is based around communication which results in reputation and profit, if the reputation is shattered like Virgo then PR consultants are needed to re-build trust to regain its publics.
However, one study conducted in 1989, has revealed the pathetic state of ethics in, and has called into question the credibility, professional integrity and public image of, public relations (229). In the broad field of mass communications, of which public relations practitioners are considered a part, the occupation is viewed with cynicism. For example, an investigation of journalists attitudes toward public relations, conducted in
"Public relations is the management of communication between an organization and its publics." (Grunig & Hunt's, 1984)
Public relations has changed a lot since the Declaration of Principles and the launch of the modern public relations industry 110 years ago, and it’s an industry that is constantly evolving. Modernization has played a huge role in shifting PR and journalism to another level where it’s highly exposed and under constant scrutiny of the public eye. However, as the mistrust in journalism has began to grow and expand, PR is getting its break from the negativity and society’s attitude towards it has improved greatly. As written in PR Week, “the world of PR has changed dramatically, mainly for the better” (Leaf, 2013). However, there are both positive and negative implications of these changes and one cannot turn a blind eye on either. PR has
There has been recent media interest in a grain spill that occurred in New Plymouth on the 25th August 2015. This story made the front page of the Taranaki Daily News and was titled: ‘NZ First declares New Plymouth maize kernel spill a major biosecurity breach’, (Leighton, 2015) it was then followed by a second newspaper article the following day titled: Grain spillage signals continued softening of biosecurity rules for imports’.(Lee, 2015)
Public relations-related activities exist in every society and in countless sub-sectors of those societies. For practitioners, real and important changes occur when a set of theoretical approaches and techniques and a coherent underlying logic gather these activities into a comprehensive professional field. Public relations in China, is at this stage today. In the process of creating itself, the
The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.
Thus we see that the basic principle of public relations is to act in the right way, seeking the integration of business objectives with the objectives of the public, including correcting distortions that arise in the pursuit of that rapport. This principle, as we show below, involves all aspects of business strategy, is completed by adding to it the communication techniques, helping to show the public the right actions undertaken by the company.
The PR team is required to fulfil all the needs of objectives as all the objectives and related activities acquire the potential of achievability and have realistic nature. In order to achieve objectives of PR Campaign, the team needs to consider all the policies of company carefully and clearly. Each and every member should document the weekly report to the management regarding the tasks performed so that a good control can be implemented from the beginning of PR Campaign.
Only recently being recognized as a discipline in itself, modern day professional public relations practices can trace its roots to the early 1900s where the first public relations firm, the Publicity Bureau, was founded in Boston. In 1923, Austrian-American public relations pioneer, Edward Bernays, identified three fundamental concepts of public relations. In 1984, American theorists, Grunig and Hunt, conceptualized the now-famous four models of public relations and the excellence theory that were generally adopted by public relation agencies across the globe. With so many significant milestones and theories of public relations established in the United States, it stands to reason that public relation practices would naturally adopt a western perspective.