Societal level

At the societal level, organisations seek to obtain legitimacy for themselves by trying to gain and maintain overall support from society as a whole. An organisation’s place, perceived purpose, standing and reputation in society determines whether its licence to operate is granted by public opinion and hence by society. At this level, the organisation’s fundamental values, mission and ways of operating are tested and are either found true and worthy of support, or wanting. For example, an organisation whose purpose is to maximise profits without any regard to its operational practices, which may include using child labour, unsafe working practices and a total disregard of the environment, will be deemed to be unacceptable in Western society and will probably find its licence to operate withdrawn unless it changes those practices.

Public relations plays a role in assisting the organisation clarify its purpose and values by helping to frame and test these internally and externally. The public relations function also monitors the way society perceives the organisation’s performance against its declared purpose and values to determine whether they are seen to be acting in an acceptable manner. It does this by acting as the organisational antennae, undertaking the ‘boundary-spanning’ role (discussed in the next section of this chapter) and constantly monitoring the external environment and public opinion, to bring essential intelligence about potential issues or opportunities into the organisation so that it can act accordingly. It also promotes the organisation by the clear communication of its purpose and values by providing evidence that demonstrates consistent performance against them.

Corporate level

This level is one step down from seeking broad societal acceptance. Here senior managers operationalise the purpose and values of the organisation by making managerial decisions at corporate level. Often this is about marshalling organisational resources and the temptation is to allow financial considerations to dominate because of the perceived primacy of shareholders in private sector companies and value for money considerations in public sector and NGO organisations. The public relations function can make a critical contribution at this level by helping managers make enlightened decisions that have proper regard for the legitimate interests and concerns of all stakeholders, including non-human ones such as the environment. It is vital that the opinions and interests of all stakeholders are properly understood and balanced as decisions are made with the public relations function ensuring that those stakeholder views are fully represented and considered.

It is also the task of the public relations professional to provide intelligence on how the organisation’s potential decisions are likely to be perceived by stakeholders and, of course, to involve stakeholders in, and inform them of, management level decisions as appropriate. Thus, for example, it may be that it would make financial sense for a company to build a new facility in a particular neighbourhood, but the local community and protest groups may be so opposed and active that it would be impossible for the company to obtain permission to build the facility. The public relations function, being engaged with those communities, would be able to bring this intelligence into the company and advise on appropriate courses of action that might include abandoning the plans altogether or working with the community to ameliorate some of their greatest concerns.

Value chain

At the value-chain level, the focus will be on stakeholders directly involved with the organisation. Their closeness distinguishes them from societal level stakeholders, often called the ‘general public’, who may have no specific or strong link with it but who react to and constitute public opinion and will hold the organisation to account accordingly. Typical value chain stakeholders include customers, service users, delivery partners, suppliers, distributors, regulators and employees. The public relations function plays a part in engaging with these ‘close’ stakeholders, including those who may be regarded as troublesome, such as activist groups. This engagement could be to listen to them, involve them in decision making, keep them informed, persuade them to buy or to sell, identify potential issues and crises, to capitalise on opportunities they raise, to solve common problems and so on. Expert help in stakeholder identification, segmentation, insight, engagement and collaboration and/or management, can be offered by the public relations department as well as coaching and mentoring other colleagues who interact with these stakeholders. In addition, the public relations function can help in identifying, balancing and managing what could be conflicting demands of different stakeholder groups and navigating complex negotiations and relationships between them and the organisation.

A very specific and important skill is the insight that public relations professionals can provide on specific groups of stakeholders and individuals. Knowing stakeholders intimately, being able to judge how they are likely to react and how that reaction can be influenced is a critical skill of practitioners.

At this level, being alert to the differences between internal culture and behaviours and external expectations of that culture and behaviour is especially important. Employees are the primary representatives of the organisation and how they behave and communicate will affect the reputation of the whole organisation. This is precisely why so much attention is now being paid to employee communication.

Functional level

At the functional level, it is the role of public relations professionals to liaise with the other areas of the organisation to determine how the function as a whole can contribute to the organisation’s purpose and objectives. They will coach and mentor colleagues throughout the organisation to be ‘communicatively competent’, or at least communicatively aware, so that they can either undertake certain public relations tasks themselves to an adequate standard, or be alert to when they need to enlist the help of the specialists. For public relations this may mean planning specific programmes and campaigns that support organisational objectives, or offering specialist public relations advice and services to other functional areas of the organisation. For example, they may work with the legal department to explain legal decisions, or with the human resources department on change management programmes.

As a specialist function, public relations will make its own specific contribution too. Therefore, a great deal of time is spent on putting together public relations plans in a structured way, and of different types depending on the needs of the stakeholder groups involved. Hence, for example, public relations-led marketing campaigns will be aimed at potential customers to help product sales; internal communication programmes help to keep employees up to speed with changes in the organisation and to enlist their ideas and support: and lobbying may be targeted at individual MPs to try to change voting intentions.

Each plan will be different, depending on its purpose, who is involved, their communication channel-use habits, the timing of the campaign, the resources available and so on. However, the disciplines behind the planning process are the same and conform to recognised business planning norms.

The point of going through the strategic levels at which public relations can make a contribution is to:

• clarify the types of input that public relations can make to the organisation as a whole, including its input to organisational decision making;
• show that public relations has to be seen within a broader context and ensure all activities are aimed at maintaining societal and management legitimacy;
• enable the practitioner to articulate and move between the various levels that they must operate at within the organisation;
• demonstrate that public relations contributes more to an organisation than just tactical campaigns.

Public relations in strategy making

The main role of the leader of an organisation and its senior managers (or board) is to provide vision and direction. Effective organisations have a sense of purpose. They know where they are going and they know in general how they are going to get there. The vision may be set by a strong individual with a particular driving philosophy, such as Richard Branson who brings a fun-orientated and mould-breaking approach to serious businesses such as transport or financial services. Alternatively, the vision may be more broad-based and generic. Universities exist to provide higher education; their purpose is broadly the same – to undertake teaching, research and consultancy. However, even within this quite homogeneous sector there are differences; some universities are primarily research driven, some want to focus on serving a regional community, some specialise in certain subjects.

Whatever the type of organisation, successful ones usually have a strategy that determines longer-term direction and the scope of the operation. It is not appropriate in this chapter to examine the different schools of strategy formulation, but suffice to say that strategy making involves a great deal of information gathering, analysis and decision making. This decision making and strategy selection is undertaken by the ‘dominant coalition’, that group within an organisation that has the power to make and enforce decisions about the direction of the organisation, its objectives and its operations. This is the task of managers at the corporate level of strategy described earlier in the chapter. Strategy formulation is rarely purely rational and linear. It is essentially an iterative process where managers discuss and debate, make steps forward and then revise their thinking. They explore options and gradually narrow down to certain choices – and often there is a level of ‘instinct’ about their eventual decisions, although this instinct is informed by years of experience and tacit knowledge.

To make these decisions, managers need information and usually from a variety of sources and perspectives so that those decisions can be reviewed and tested robustly. As boundary-spanners (see Moss 2011 for an explanation of the writing on boundary-spanning), public relations professionals are ideally placed to gather and interpret intelligence from both the internal and the external environment. As described earlier, the contribution that public relations can make to the strategy-making process is twofold. First, helping to collect and interpret information from the internal and external environment so that strategic decisions can be informed. This will include gathering data from a range of sources, but will also involve them talking to stakeholders about their views and opinions, possibly exposing them to interim thinking to see what their reactions are. Second, once decisions have been made this needs to be communicated to important stakeholders with the purpose of gaining their support.

It is worth exploring the way the public relations function gathers intelligence in more detail. Practitioners must be well attuned to what is called the ‘macro’ environment, that context in which organisations operate over which they have no control. They must also be knowledgeable about the attitudes and behaviours of the various stakeholders of the organisation who populate this broader environment because they are in regular dialogue with those stakeholders. How do public relations professionals undertake this intelligence gathering work?

Environmental scanning

‘Environmental scanning’ is the term used for gaining information about the macro environment. PR professionals use the same techniques as those available to all strategic planners. They will undertake analysis of the environment using techniques such as PEST. This analytical tool provides a framework that allows analysis of the environment by categorising it under various headings; a short example is given in Figure 4.1 (the capitalised first letter of each section spells out the acronym above).

Figure 4.1 An example of PEST analysis

Some strategists now regard PEST as no longer adequately capturing the complexity of the environment in which modern organisations operate. They recommend an expansion of the framework to encompass Environment, that is, the physical or green environment, Information and the Legal or regulatory aspects. The acronym EPISTLE describes this expanded categorisation. The justification for including these additional elements is as follows. The physical environment is judged to be one of the major concerns of the twenty-first century. Climate change is a complex issue including a multiplicity of component and often interlinked parts such as pressures to move from car-based transport, sustainability, waste disposal and so on; thus, although a physical phenomenon rather than a group of people, many strategists now regard the environment as a stakeholder – certainly its impacts involve many people and it would be a brave or stupid management team who ignored the claims of the environment on their organisation these days.

Access to and the ability to manage and use information is critical to organisations because information is power. There are many sources of information for organisations including industry research organisations, trade bodies and their own market research. For the environmental scanner, the internet is a vital information source. By plugging into sites such as those maintained by the major social research organisations, such as Ipsos-MORI, the political think-tanks, NGOs and activist groups, as well as the many websites, blogs and social networks that relate to their industry and company, professional communicators can keep abreast of the main issues in the wider environment. It goes almost without saying that these issues will also be of concern to employees who will also want to know how the organisation is addressing them.

Organisations operate within an increasingly complex legal environment. In addition to growing amounts of national legislation, there are transnational regulations, such as EU directives, and international agreements, such as those made by the World Trade Organisation. There are also quasi-legal arrangements made by members of fora such as the G20 or the World Economic Forum that often have a moral dimension, such as agreements to reduce carbon emissions or to alleviate third world indebtedness, all of which may impact on organisations.

Some analysts also recommend that culture should have special consideration. As organisations become increasingly global they need to be aware of national, religious and social differences between and within the countries in which they operate. Organisational cultures differ too and values between suppliers, distributors and organisations or even different parts of the same organisation can be quite distinct. Companies within the same sector can have radically different cultures: EasyJet’s approach to airline travel is not that of Singapore Airlines.

The point of this kind of analysis is to identify the key issues that will impact on the organisation. There are no standard responses; the issues will be different depending on the country, sector and organisation. It is also vital to identify the interrelationships between the key issues. Economic trends may force political decisions and technology often affects lifestyles and social interactions. The crisis of 2007–2009 forced difficult political decisions to take some banks into full or part public ownership and the internet has transformed working, purchasing and leisure patterns.

Environmental scanning establishes the long-term drivers of change and their impact. These need localising to identify the effect that they will have on the organisation itself. Environmental analyses should not only be done in the here and now, but should also include forward projections so that organisations can plan a variety of futures that they may have to accommodate, try to change or adapt to.

As can be imagined, this kind of information is critical to management decision making. By being a source of this kind of intelligence, public relations can position itself firmly as a management capability of equal importance as financial, operational or HR capability.

Knowledge of stakeholders and publics

The second element of intelligence gathering by public relations professionals is a deep understanding of the organisation’s stakeholders or publics. The distinction between the terms stakeholders and publics as used in this chapter needs explaining since the terms are often used interchangeably. If the classic interpretation of stakeholder is used – ‘any individual or group who can affect or is affected by the actions, decisions, policies, practices or goals of the organisation’ (Freeman 1984: 25) – it can be seen that an organisation may have tens or even millions of stakeholders. However, not all stakeholders are active or even interested in some of the organisations in which they could be seen to have a stake. Those living in the developed world rarely even consider who supplies their domestic water despite its importance for everyday life. They may become active stakeholders if that water supply is disrupted, or if they discover their water could be supplied more cheaply by a new market entrant. When an individual or a group does become active and interested, then they may be regarded as a public. Critically, publics collect around issues that concern them and are, by definition involved in them. Potentially, any stakeholder can become a public when they move to being active around an issue. A key issue for publics relations practitioners now is that the internet facilitates the formation of publics quickly and without geographical or time boundaries and therefore their issues-management role is even more important (see section below on risk). There are other ways to think about publics that are referred to in the further reading. Public relations practitioners are in a privileged and strategic position in that they interact with organisational publics frequently: their job is to facilitate the relationship between the organisation and its publics, often in conjunction with colleagues from elsewhere in the organisation. They are also involved in scanning and categorising the wider stakeholder environment, always alert to the fact that stakeholders may become a public very rapidly. Chapter 6 covers stakeholder theory in some detail, but here it is important to stress that the public relations professional will be alert to the relative power, influence, needs and expectations of publics and stakeholder groups and the shifting dynamics both within and between them.

The public relations professional will also be aware of the attitude towards or behaviour of the various stakeholders and publics in relation to the wider issues identified in the environment and the impact that this might have on the organisation itself. The public relations professional working for a food retailer will be alert to the fact that the provenance of food is a major issue for many consumers. They will also be aware of the prevailing attitudes of the scientific community, suppliers, customers, shareholders and employees. They will be conscious that opinion is volatile and that arguments about price complicate the situation. They will need to be alert to shifts in public opinion and buying preferences and any implications this might have for their organisation.

The importance of stakeholder groups to organisations cannot be overestimated. Freeman (1984) first articulated this in a systematic way, arguing that organisations were defined by their relationships with stakeholders and that stakeholders include not just those groups that management believe to have a stake in the organisation, but those who decide for themselves that they will take a stake in the organisation. This latter group, because they are especially active, will be a public who must be taken seriously. The actions of activist groups have made this a painful reality for some organisations. Indeed, in some instances, these activist groups have caused organisations to rethink their business strategy, as was the case for Monsanto following activist protests over its development of genetically modified crops. Monsanto was forced to set back its production of such crops in a number of countries by several years as a result.

Given that organisations are dependent on stakeholders for their existence it is obvious that a strategic approach to those relationships is a critical function in its own right: reputation and ultimately the existence of organisations are determined by the opinion of these stakeholders.

A typical organisation interacts with a vast number of stakeholders and publics. A useful segmentation of stakeholders is that provided by de Wit and Meyer (2010) who have identified the complex web of relational actors who need to be taken into account at the corporate, value chain and functional levels. Although formulated for the private sector, it is clear how this can also apply to the public and not-forprofit sectors (see Figure 4.2).

Upstream vertical (supplier) relations include those who provide raw materials and business services, but also include labour and information that are outside the organisation and upon which it draws.

Downstream vertical (buyer) relations can be clients, customers or intermediaries who sell or promote the products and services of the organisation.

Direct horizontal (industry insider) relations involves relationships between the organisation and others in their industry or sector – their peer organisations.

Indirect horizontal (industry outsider relations) is where an organisation has relationships with those outside its industry, for example those who provide complementary services or products such as a chain of fitness gyms working with a shower manufacturing company.

Figure 4.2 De Wit and Meyer’s web of relational actors

Source: Adapted from de Wit and Meyer (2010), p.36.

Sociocultural actors are those organisations that impact on societal values, beliefs and behaviours such as the media, community groups and activist organisations.

Economic actors include central banks, stock exchanges, taxation authorities and trade organisations.

Political/legal actors include, for example, government, regulatory bodies, international institutions such as NATO and internationally binding agreements such as the International Court of Justice.

Technological actors influence the pace and direction of technological developments and create new knowledge – for instance, universities, research bodies, government agencies, inventors and major technological players such as Google.

This analysis makes the point that organisations are held in a complex network of stakeholder relationships and interests, not all of which will align, who ultimately gave the organisation ‘permission’ to exist by supporting its ‘licence to operate’.

The reality of management is that there is not only a need to identify stakeholders, there also has to be a way to prioritise them since it is not only impossible to give each an equal amount of time and attention, but it is also not necessary.

Engaging with stakeholders may be a defensive action, but it can also be regarded as a positive strategic activity that organisations can and should develop. By integrating the economic resources, political support and specialist knowledge that publics can offer, both organisations and stakeholders can gain mutual benefit. The role of managers is to facilitate a coalition that draws partners together (Steyn 2007). This collaborative working is especially important in the new media age where stakeholders can organise quickly and effectively if they feel their concerns are not being responded to or adequately addressed.

Public relations is a sophisticated management activity that at its highest articulation is the careful negotiation of relationships with and between dynamic, constantly forming, evolving and dissolving stakeholder groups and publics, many of whom see themselves as having a legitimate stake in the organisation either directly or indirectly. Organisations can no longer impose themselves on their environment; they have to constantly prove their legitimacy and renew their licence to operate at a time when literally the people of the world can hold them to public account for their actions. The navigation and negotiation of these complex interrelationships calls for skills of the highest order. Regular research and audits of the environment and the opinion of their publics in particular is a vital job for the public relations professional and an organisationally strategic activity.

Information interpretation

Gregory and Willis (2013) suggest that because they have such extensive contacts with sources and information, public relations staff are in an ideal position to provide a central collation and interpretation function. Managing and interpreting information requires both research and analytical capabilities that are an indication of the expanded skills set required of senior practitioners beyond their usual communication abilities.

Given the environment is turbulent and creates uncertainty, those individuals who are capable of interpreting what is happening are invaluable for decision making. Public relations practitioners are used to dealing with complex situations and to making sense of inter-linked issues involving a variety of publics, so are ideally placed to be the organisational ‘seer’.

Public relations practitioners are also ideally placed to be able to access sources of information early and can interpret that information to identify emerging issues and those that may have a profound effect on an organisation. For example, social network analysis can identify matters of emerging importance and help clarify the direction in which public opinion is moving on a particular issue. Public affairs departments are often plugged into government thinking on prospective legislation or have access to think-tanks who specialise in futures. Importantly, their boundary-spanning role and connection with the outside world helps public relations professionals maintain an independent perspective. This independence is valuable to other managers who are often too tied into the ‘organisational view’ to act objectively or to understand the ramifications of their decisions and the impact they will have on stakeholders.

Risk management

Knowledge of the environment and of stakeholders is vitally important in another respect too. Organisations find themselves increasingly at risk from a number of directions. In the wider context, we live in an increasingly interconnected, dependent, pluralistic world where no one and no organisation can isolate itself from any of the ‘big issues’ that are emerging. The increase in international terrorism by cause-related activists has led organisations to appraise all kinds of issues that affect their business; for example, how much should executives travel? Are their products or services culturally sensitive? Are their buildings secure? With whom do they make strategic alliances? The big-picture political and economic issues such as these can and should be tracked and monitored by public relations professionals as part of their environmental scanning duties. Indeed, issues tracking and management are part of the strategic communicator’s basic toolkit.

Furthermore, as far as stakeholders are concerned, it is possible for small groups to challenge and hold to account large organisations, as the protests against Nike for use of child labour in its supply chain has demonstrated. By knowing stakeholders well and understanding what motivates them, what their thinking is and how they are likely to act, the public relations professional can bring an early and invaluable perspective to management thinking and advise on the appropriate way to manage these relationships. Thus, helping to manage risk is a vital role for communicators. Issues management and agenda-setting are not only possible but necessary in an environment where publics themselves define and then seek to satisfy their information needs.

It is for this issues and risk management skill and judgement that many of the most senior communicators either sit at board tables in their own right or are direct advisers to CEOs and chairs of large organisations. It is a vital strategic information role and highly valued in boardrooms throughout the world (Gregory and Willis 2013).

Finally, another crucial area of risk-management, especially for the private sector is the way organisations are valued by market analysts has changed over the years. The latest research by intellectual capital specialists Ocean Tomo (Ocean Tomo 2015) indicates that intangible assets, which include reputation, relationships and intellectual capital, amount to 84 per cent of organisational value, with tangible assets, which are financial and physical assets, being valued at just 16 per cent. This reversal of the types of ‘capital’ that market analysts value (in 1975 tangible assets were worth 83 per cent of value) means that strategic decisions have to be taken with due respect to how the organisation will be valued. Intangible assets are public relations’ territory and hence the growing importance for knowledgeable public relations professionals to be able to advise senior managers and boards of the impact of decisions on these assets.

Moves towards new forms of corporate reporting for private, public and not-forprofit organisations such as Integrated Reporting (see Integrated Reporting guidelines at http://integratedreporting.org) recognise the need to acknowledge intangible assets formally in company reports and provide a major opportunity for public relations to reposition itself strategically within organisations.

For an in-depth examination of risk, issues and crisis management see Chapter 8.

Sector

Working in a well-established, relatively stable sector will be more conducive to planned and sustained long-term public relations programmes with public relations teams often having very senior representation in the organisation. The pharmaceutical and automobile sectors are typical examples. New, growing and turbulent sectors such as the IT environment will require fast-moving, reactive as well as proactive programmes where the speed of development and the in-built capability to change direction quickly will be more of a prerequisite. In some such organisations, for example Google, there is also a very clear understanding of the importance of public relations and communication generally.

A manufacturer or retailer of fast-moving consumer goods could well require a heavier marketing communication focus, whereas working for a trade or professional body may mean that membership communication or lobbying are the primary public relations activities. In both cases there is a solid argument for all these activities being strategic and integral to management thinking.

Public relations for the public or not-for-profit sector, where public accountability is critical, generates one way of working, whereas working in the private sector, where shareholder accountability and profits are key, generates a different set of priorities. Traditionally in the public sector public relations has not played a part in decision making at the most senior level, but that too is changing as the public services find they are having to become more ‘customer’ focused and are ever more accountable for the way they spend public money.

Size

Small organisations tend to have small multi-skilled public relations departments, indeed public relations may be just a part of a single individual’s job. It may even be outsourced to a freelance practitioner or consultancy. The range of activities may well be restricted and undertaken by a public relations generalist. This generalist typically has a heavy implementation role, with their ability to contribute at a strategic level being limited because of this. Alternatively, their input may have significant importance because the relationship-building role could be regarded as central to the operation of the whole organisation. Virtual organisations often put a significant resource into communications as a whole and public relations will play its part in developing both on- and off-line presence.

Large organisations usually have larger public relations departments. Within those departments the public relations remit may well be broken down into task or functional areas with individual specialists taking on specific roles. Trends here are changing too with many organisations having multi-skilled individuals working in public relations, able to turn their hand to a variety of tasks depending on requirements at any one time. As the communication disciplines move closer together (Smith 2012) the requirement for multidisciplinary individuals grows. The size of the organisation and its range of public relations activities could well mean that the most senior practitioner is required to enact the manager role outlined earlier rather than being focused on implementation.

Publics and stakeholders

The range of public relations activities undertaken and the seniority of the senior post-holder can clearly be influenced significantly by the types of publics and stakeholders involved. A number of factors need to be considered:

Range, that is, the breadth of publics involved. Some organisations, for example, niche manufacturers of space components, may have a limited range of publics, but these may have immense importance and require very senior public relations counsel and handling by perhaps a relatively small, but highly placed team. Others, for example the Department of Health, have an extended range of publics and will need a variety of practitioners at a number of levels to deal with stakeholders varying from ‘the general public’ to the most senior government Ministers.

Development stage

Public relations activities are usually shaped by the stage of development that the organisation has reached:

Start-up. Organisations start small. The owners know suppliers, customers and employees. The public relations effort will often be one-to-one even where the contact is online and the emphasis is often on growth, thus marketing communication will be a priority. Nonetheless, because of the importance of personal relationships and the need to build trust based on those relationships, public relations could be at the heart of senior management and indeed be the responsibility of a founding director.

Public relations and marketing departments

It is the relationship between public relations and marketing that usually takes up most space and generates most heat. There have been extended and at times unprofitable debates about whether public relations is a part of marketing or marketing is a part of public relations: just three themes are identified for discussion here.

Terminology

To public relations people, public relations means managing the total communication of an organisation with all its publics and stakeholders. To most marketers public relations means publicity, that is, obtaining (usually) media coverage in support of products and services, but increasingly, managing the social networking spaces.

On the other side, public relations professionals have tended to restrict the meaning of marketing to the notion of a profit-based exchange between an organisation and its customers. This is now an outmoded concept. Marketing has broadened its parameters to include relationships with internal customers (employees) and the broader external stakeholder community.

As organisations become more open and the silos between stakeholder groups become less apparent, the need to present a consistent identity across all platforms increases. Furthermore, the demand for organisations to listen and internalise what stakeholders are saying to them requires discipline and coordination. All this points to greater integration of the communication functions and the justification for distinct functions becomes less and less clear. Even so, different professional outlooks do contribute diverse perspectives that are of value to organisations.

The fact is that in modern organisations the communicative functions as a minimum need to be aligned and to work together to be effective. Someone making contact via Twitter is not at all concerned if it is the marketing or the public relations department who answers as long as information needs are satisfied. What is obvious is that internally there has to be a clear understanding of the roles of each discipline and where the responsibilities lie, along with a clear and consistent narrative that permeates all communication.

Encroachment

Public relations professionals fear ‘encroachment’ or the taking over of the discipline by non-specialists, especially marketers, but also management consultants. However, there is rejoicing when a public relations professional is made a chief executive or director of corporate communications (with marketing as a subservient partner). What is good for public relations is that as many people as possible from as many disciplines as possible are aware of the contribution that public relations can make in both strategic and tactical ways.

Status

For some public relations professionals it is important that public relations is seen to be a dominant and ascendant communication discipline. It is a sign that public relations has come of age that its unique contribution in stakeholder relations is recognised.

Some go further and say that the social media age requires the sophistication and knowledge of public relations professionals to handle the very complex world of internet communication, and the power plays between various groups and their interaction with the organisation. It is true that the dialogue skills that public relations staff acquire with a range of stakeholder groups will be invaluable, but organisations also need to sell or obtain support for their products and services to survive. A good general reputation, often maintained through sustained public relations activity, will attract customers and users of services. Good service and products enhance reputation. Organisations need both marketing and public relations.