Public relations practitioners are often called upon to help chart their organization's strategic development, thus functioning as managerial decision makers linking the organization to its larger environment. This book is about understanding organizations, especially the role played by organizational decision making in the development and implementation of public relations programs and activities. It emphasizes the ways in which an organization's culture and decision making processes ultimately influence the success or failure of their public relations efforts. The research, case studies, and author's interpretations and suggestions explore the often confusing netherworld of organizational mindsets -- particularly as those world views affect the organization's relations with clients and other stakeholders. Understanding organizational politics is the way to understanding how and why decisions are made by the organization's dominant coalition. The primary goal of this text is to enhance our understanding of the ways in which organizations "work" -- the political process that accompanies organizational decision making. As an instrumental participant in the organizational political process, the public relations practitioner must posess knowledge and understanding of the organization's political process in order to succeed within that organization. Given the need for public relations practitioners to form coalitions, negotiate consensus, and advocate organizational interests, the political system metaphor is most approriate for understanding the relationship between organizational power and organizational public relations. This book, then, "steps back" from a focus solely on the design of public relations programs, and instead examines how the impetus for those programs emerges within the organization as a result of organizational politics in action. Its special features include: * practitioner responses at the end of each chapter providing commentary on the usefulness of the ideas presented; * sidebars from popular sources illustrating theories; * new case studies; * merging of management and organizational theory and research with communication theory and research; * a focus on external stakeholders from both an advocacy and a collaborative frame resulting in the creation of a "collaborative advocacy" framework for external communication; and * an extended examination of ethical considerations pertaining to organizational decision making and communication.

Taking a managerial perspective, this book explores public relations and its role in the wider organizational world. Contributors explore a variety of contexts in which the relevance of understanding these two interlinking domains is so paramount, such as corporate branding and reputation, government relations and community communications, as well as drawing on experise of legal considerations and ethical awareness. The effective management of public relations is crucial within any organization, but a wider managerial awareness and support of its role is equally critical. Public Relations: A Managerial Perspective offers an original and vital discussion of these challenges for second and third year undergraduate and postgraduate students of public relations, corporate communications and public affairs.

Go beyond PR spin! Master better ways to communicate honestly and regain the trust of your customers and stakeholders with this book.

This book is the final product of the "excellence project"--a comprehensive research effort commissioned by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation. Going well beyond any of the previously published reports on the Excellence study, this book contains many new statistical analyses of the survey data and more details from the case studies. Discussing theory and data related to several ongoing discussions in the communication profession, this book answers the following questions: *How can we show the value of public relations? *What is the value of relationships? *How do relationships affect reputation? *What does it mean to practice communication strategically? *How can we measure and evaluate the effects of public relations programs? *Should communication programs be integrated? *How does the new female majority in the profession affect communication Excellence? This book, as well as the research it reports, is the product of symmetrical communication and collaboration. As such, it is intended for scholars, applied researchers, students, and informed professionals who understand the value of research in developing a profession, such as public relations. Knowledge of quantitative and qualitative research methods will make it easier to understand the book; however, the results are interpreted in a way that makes the analyses understandable even to those with little or no knowledge of statistics and research methods.

The emergence of relationship management as a paradigm for public relations scholarship and practice necessitates an examination of precisely what public relations achieves -- its definition, function and value, and the benefits it generates. Promoting the view that public relations provides value to organizations, publics, and societies through relationships, Public Relations as Relationship Management takes a in-depth look at organization-public relationships and explores the strategies that can be employed to cultivate and maintain them. Expanding on the work published in the first edition, this thoroughly up-to-date volume covers such specialized areas of public relations as non-profit organizations, shareholder relations, lobbying, employee relations, and risk management. It expands the reader’s ability to understand, conceptualize, theorize, and measure public relations through the presentation of state-of-the-art research and examples of the use of the relationship paradigm. Developed for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in public relations, Public Relations as Relationship Management provides a contemporary perspective on the role of relationships in public relations, and encourages further research and study.

This is a comprehensive and detailed examination of the field, which reviews current scholarly literature. This contributed volume stresses the role PR plays in building relationships between organizations, markets, audiences and the public.

Public relations as described in this volume is, among other things, society’s solution to problems of maladjustment that plague an overcomplex world. All of us, individuals or organizations, depend for survival and growth on adjustment to our publics. Publicist Edward L. Bernays offers here the kind of advice individuals and a variety of organizations sought from him on a professional basis during more than four decades. With such knowledge, every intelligent person can carry on his or her activities more effectively. This book provides know-why as well know-how. Bernays explains the underlying philosophy of public relations and the PR methods and practices to be applied in specific cases. He presents broad approaches and solutions as they were successfully carried out in his long professional career. Public relations is not publicity, press agentry, promotion, advertising, or a bag of tricks, but a continuing process of social integration. It is a field of adjusting private and public interest. Everyone engaged in any public activity, and every student of human behavior and society, will find in this book a challenge and opportunity to further both the public interest and their own interest.