Who has responsibility for educating public relations professionals so that we maximise as much as possible the discipline’s strategic and/or functional potential? I think quite a few of the relevant players are not trying as hard as they/we should be to ensure this happens.

This thought was partially prompted by an extremely interesting interview with James Grunig I read, where he discusses the heavy subject of (thunder rumble please…) the future of PR. He breaks public relations down into two modes of practice:

• The symbolic, interpretive paradigm
• The behavioural, strategic management paradigm.

The former, according to Grunig, emphasises, “messages, publicity, media relations, and media effects to put up a smoke screen around the organization so publics cannot see the organization’s behavior as it truly is.” He points the finger at advertising/integrated marketing communication, business schools and some communication departments for taking us down this path.

“In contrast”, Grunig says, “The behavioral, strategic management, paradigm focuses on the participation of public relations executives in strategic decision-making so that they can help manage the behavior of organizations. The strategic management paradigm emphasizes two-way communication of many kinds to provide publics a voice in management decisions and to facilitate dialogue between management and publics both before and after decisions are made.”

As readers of this blog will know, it is the latter approach to public relations I subscribe to as best practice for a bunch of reasons. Not least because it is analogous with an organisation being socially responsible and that it will lead to more positive, meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and its stakeholders.

Grunig makes some depressing observations about the distance the profession has to travel before it can say it practices strategic public relations more often than the band-aid, smoke screen, interpretive paradigm. But he also says, “I believe the strategic management paradigm now is practiced in most major corporations.”

Well, personally, though I am taking through the filter of my Australian experience, I think he is being very optimistic on that one!

So who should be the leaders in taking us down the strategic management, behavioural paradigm path? Well, there are a variety of players relevant here:

• Universities, through teaching and academic research
• Industry associations
• Leaders of public relations within organisations
• PR consultancies; especially their leaders.

At the end of the day, however, the responsibility is on us: practicing public relations professionals. The blame game is all too easy to play. There is no upside to it. More of us need to get up off our butts and put the grunt into:

• understanding the full strategic power of public relations
• advocating it to our peers, business associates and clients
• practicing it.

Doing a masters in communication management/public relations is probably the best way to get up to speed on best practice public relations. But there are a plethora of worthy academic journals and more cut-to-the-chase blogs to help those who don’t want to go down the masters path (big mistake, in my opinion) and/or help with ongoing education of those who have done a masters. There are also occasional seminars (very occasional, actually…) on the area.

Going back a step or two, however, I don’t think public relations agencies work hard enough at pushing the strategic management, behavioural paradigm. Whilst I am fully aware that the majority of agencies’ work is in the media relations space, as Grunig says, “The strategic management paradigm does not exclude traditional public relations activities such as media relations and the dissemination of information.”

Media relations, however, is frequently used as an asymmetrically-based mode of communication, pushing the organisation’s barrow and paying little need to the perspectives or needs of its stakeholders. Agencies also (though they are not alone in this) have a horrible habit of using PR as a synonym for media relations, thereby stymieing the recognition of the behavioural, strategic management paradigm of public relations.

I have also found agencies tend to focus their education/capability enhancement of employees in the discipline’s technical skills (i.e. writing, media relations, social media), as well as in how to better develop new business. Their investment in educating employees of the strategic potential and implications of the two-way symmetrical model of public relations tends to lag behind.

I find it interesting (and a bit depressing, too) that Australia’s largest PR professional body, the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), has tried in the past to include more ‘behavioural, strategic management paradigm’ type of courses in its professional education programs. But they have been poorly subscribed to and lost the institute money, so aren’t a great focus these days. Technical skills courses, however, are well subscribed to.

Perhaps it is time for the PRIA to try again, but it could be argued its national conference goes down the strategic communication path sufficiently to cover that base for them. I’m not convinced on that score, but you can’t say it hasn’t tried.

Ultimately, it is the universities that are the masters (pun intended) of teaching the two-way symmetrical and/or strategic management, behavioural paradigm of public relations. There you get to deep-dive into the theory and put it into practice. You get the broader context and if you are like me, you will have a passion for this model instilled in you.

Why practice the garden variety, smoke screen, low-rent version of such a powerful, high-potential business discipline?

But while universities give us the knowledge, each of us who plays a management role within public relations has a responsibility to set the scene for less experienced practitioners:

• Share the knowledge
• Drive us towards process and outcomes that benefit both organisations and its stakeholders (not one at the overriding expense of the other[s])
• Putting the theory into real-life, socially beneficial practice.

As Grunig himself says, talking about the behavioural, strategic management paradigm, and its successful application in many organisations, “I believe a major challenge for the profession is to reinstitutionalize public relations in the same way in the minds and practice of others.”

So what do you think? Is public relations achieving its strategic potential? Whose responsibility is it to help it achieve this potential? Is PR forever doomed to be thought of as media relations and left, primarily, in Grunig’s symbolic, interpretive paradigm ‘bin’…? Is it a ‘bin’? Am I being way too harsh and short-sighted?

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