How Organization Theory Can Influence Public Relations Theory

  • Larissa A. Grunig
Chapter

Summary

The increasing complexity in the environment of today’s organizations has challenged the organizational system significantly. Due in large part to the emergence of conglomerates and multinational corporations, the communication subsystem of the typical organization has had to evolve as well. This paper begins with an introduction to the problem of a turbulent, adversarial environment and the concomitant need to develop a theoreticalrather than descriptive-body of knowledge in public relations to help practitioners cope with that external context.

Combining the most relevant theoretical underpinnings from organization theoryalong with sociology, business management, feminism, psychology and economics-the paper addresses several key questions for scholars of public relations:

  • When and why are the efforts of communication practitioners effective?

  • How do organizations benefit from effective public relations?

  • Why do organizations practice public relations in different ways?

Answering these “bottom line” concerns is the priority of a six-year research project funded by the Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). The paper reports on preliminary findings of that IABC study, emphasizing the understanding that only excellent public relations departments would contribute to organizational effectiveness.

One hallmark of excellence in public relations is integrating the communicative subsystem into the stated or implied goals of the organization. At this point, the paper turns to systems theory to inform the relationship between the organizational system, its internal subsystems and its environment or suprasystem. However, my own dissertation research-abstracted in the paper-shows that systems theory and the structural-functionalist perspective it spawned offers limited utility in explaining public relations behavior in organizations.

At that point, then, the power-control perspective supplants the environmental imperative. This more political approach to understanding organizations introduces ambiguity into the traditional definition of organizational effectiveness (realizing goals) by questioning whose goals are being met. In addition to setting goals, members of the organization’s dominant coalition typically determine the organization’s critical publics and the strategy for dealing with those publics.

The paper argues that, for a number of reasons, it is critically important for the head of public relations to be represented within that power elite. Both education in the field of public relations and professionalism suggest routes by which practitioners can become highly valued by top management and thus part of the managerial decision-making process. However, becoming a public relations manager rather than merely a technician is even more difficult for women than for men. Given the growing number of female students and practitioners, this problem of subtle discrimination receives considerable attention.

Only by overcoming management’s reluctance to include any boundary spanners-women or men~in the dominant coalition can highly educated, experienced professionals in public relations provide input into their organization’s policy process. In particular, public relations should help manage social responsibility and dealings with special interest or activist groups in a two-way symmetrical fashion.

The paper concludes with the argument for a grand theory of public relations, similar to the powerful theories that have guided research on organizations for at least three-quarters of a century. Systems theory, in particular, might help to integrate what middle-range theories (exemplified in roles research and the models of public relations) we do have into an over-arching theoretical perspective.

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© Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH, Opladen 1992

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  • Larissa A. Grunig

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