Fundamentals of Pr

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4. Scope and Functions

It is widely accepted among economists that since World War II, the world economy has been integrated into a single market by lowering trade and investment barriers. Under this global economy, individual nations’ economic gains are much greater than the losses through free flow of goods, services, and capital among nations.

This dramatic change of world economy has been accelerated by development of new communication technologies and active role of global business. The fact that public relations practitioners need to communicate with international or global publics has become reality for either small or large organizations.

It is not just something going on out there, but complicated interactions between foreign environment and domestic entities. Multinational, international, or global organizations are dealing with workforces, clients, and other environmental forces beyond their national boundaries. In addition, any domestic organization cannot be free from global influence on management decision making because globalization is shaping the environment to which organizations should adapt. As a result a global approach to the definition, dimensions, and domains of public relations is needed.

FUNCTIONS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

To extend the above point of view, the next subsection examines two important functions of public relations.

a) Brings Public and Private Policies in Harmony

Public relations helps our complex, pluralistic society to reach decisions and function more effectively by contributing to mutual understanding among groups and institutions. It serves to bring private and public policies into harmony.

Public relations serves a wide variety of institutions in society such as businesses, trade unions, government agencies, voluntary associations, foundations, hospitals, schools, colleges, and religious institutions. To achieve their goals, these institutions must develop effective relationships with many different audiences or publics such as employees, members, customers, local communities, shareholders, and other institutions, and with society at large.

The managements of institutions need to understand the attitudes and values of their publics in order to achieve institutional goals. The goals themselves are shaped by external environment. The public relations practitioner acts as a counselor to management and as a mediator, helping translate private aims into reasonable, publicly acceptable policy and action.

As a management function, public relations encompasses the following :

Anticipating, analyzing and interpreting public opinion, attitudes, and issues that might impact, for good or ill, the operations and plans of the organization.

Counseling management at all levels in the organization with regard to policy decisions, courses of action, and communications, taking into account their public ramifications and the organization’s social or citizenship responsibilities.

Researching, conducting, and evaluating, on a continuing basis, programs of action and communication to achieve the informed public understanding necessary to success of an organization’s aims. These may include marketing, financial, fund raising, employee, community or government relations, and other programs.

Planning and implementing the organization’s efforts to influence or change public policy.

Setting objectives, planning, budgeting, recruiting and training staff, developing facilities -- in short, managing the resources needed to perform all of the above.

In helping to define and implement policy, the public relations practitioner uses a variety of professional communications skills and plays an integrative role both within the organization and between the organization and the external environment.

b) Effective Relationship with Publics

While the term "the public" is often used, there are, in fact, many publics or specific audiences within the general public. These publics respond in different ways so they must be considered separately and, often, communicated to differently and through differing media.

The knowledge that public relations professionals possess has something to do with how to communicate with publics in order to maintain a relationship with those publics. Not all strategies for maintaining relationships are equally effective, however. Publics often overlap, and they can be identified and sub-divided in many different ways. Following are the ways in which relationships are maintained :

Access : members of publics or opinion leaders provide access to public relations people. Public relations representatives or senior managers provide representatives of publics similar access to organizational decision-making processes. Either party will answer telephone calls or read letters or e-mail messages from the other. Either party is willing to go to the other when they have complaints or queries, rather than taking negative reactions to third parties.

Positivity : anything the organization or public does to make the relationship more enjoyable for the parties involved.

For example if it says, "We want to be a resource to every one of our publics in some way, shape, or form. It’s in the way we’ve set up our web site, the way we’ve set up everything we do as far as our newsletter, as far as the service we provide, as far as the way we interact with all of these publics—whether they’re the media or a client or a not-for-profit organization or whatever—we want them to look at [name of agency] as a resource, as something that has value to their organization in some way, shape, or form. So, what we try to do is operate on the principle of providing something that is of self-interest to every one of our clients...so there is a reason why they should care about us."

Openness : of thoughts and feelings among parties involved.

Assurances : attempts by parties in the relationship to assure the other parties that they and their concerns are legitimate. This strategy also might involve attempts by the parties in the relationship to demonstrate they are committed to maintaining the relationship.

Networking : organizations’ building networks or coalitions with the same groups that their publics do, such as environmentalists, unions, or community groups.

Sharing of tasks : organizations’ and publics’ sharing in solving joint or separate problems.

Examples of such tasks are managing community issues, providing employment,