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Public Relations

The practice of public relations revolves around creating mutually beneficial relationships between organizations, stakeholders, stakeseekers, and publics. Public relations professionals also maintain multiple relationships with individuals and organizations from an assortment of backgrounds, in order to accomplish organizational goals and initiatives and serve the needs of stakeholders and publics.

Stakeholders refer to individuals, organizations, or groups that have a stake in or relationship with an organization. Thus, employees, managers, shareholders, suppliers, and other business partners can be thought of as stakeholders. Stakeseekers are those individuals and organizations that are interested in creating or developing relationships with individuals and organizations. Publics refer to coherent groups of people with shared goals and interests, but not everyone in the same location, community, state, or nation. Often the media are key outlets for messages, but public relations professionals are not journalists trying to reach everyone. This entry presents definitions of public relations and discusses the nature of the public relations profession, the value of strong and weak public relations ties, the profession’s eclectic nature, and public relations’ guiding principles and theories.

Definitions of Public Relations

Every field is informed by multiple definitions, and this also holds true for public relations. The definitions of public relations that have been advanced, however, all tend to revolve around a number of related concepts: the importance of communication, managerial imperatives, two-way communication, relationship building, understanding stakeholders and publics, and serving stakeholders and publics. Many definitions of public relations, such as the managerial definitions, have fallen into disuse as scholars have begun to theorize more sophisticated and complex views of the field. Indeed, social media and new technology have had a more profound impact on the field than anything else, as public relations professionals have obtained the power to reach stakeholders and publics directly via web and Internet tools, and have had to adapt to communicating with a greater variety of stakeholders and publics. Thus, principles like engagement and dialogue are increasingly seen as more representative of the practice of public relations, but no universally agreed upon definition of public relations currently exists.

Of all the concepts that are closely related to public relations, perhaps the most important one might be “organizational counselor.” As managers, public relations professionals are more than just content creators. Public relations professionals work to obtain a voice in the “dominant coalition,” or group of major organizational decision makers. As communication counselors, public relations professionals provide advice on communication, ethical practices, crisis, risk, emerging issues and trends, and other areas. As communication counselors, public relations professionals also need strong interpersonal, small group, public communication, and persuasion skills so that they are able to make compelling arguments to organizational peers and leaders, influence the decision-making process within organizations, and help managers and organizational leaders make the best decisions.

The Nature of the Profession

Public relations professionals are not journalists, or advertising, customer service, marketing, or sales associates. Their primary responsibilities are to be strategic communicators and counselors, providing managers and organizational leaders with communication and relationship building advice. Thus, public relations professionals usually know more about stakeholders and publics than just demographic and psychographic features, because they have built relationships with publics, and work with them to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

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