* * *
Public relations is the systematic study and strategic design
of organizational identity and behavior in relation to all else,
human or otherwise.
* * *
So, what is public relations?
It’s a question I’d vowed to answer in a post made many months ago. There, I offered the definition for PR I had developed while in graduate school. It wasn’t to be found, strictly verbatim, in any textbook or journal, but it upheld fundamental principles of the public relations profession commonly shared by many scholars and practitioners alike.
To aid present readers, my now-discarded definition went like so:
Public relations is the strategic management of relationships with stakeholders essential to an organization’s success.
The key element that ties this definition to what’s taught in post-secondary institutions is that of PR’s management function within an organization. It emphasizes the role of relationships with defined “publics,” and the goal of improved outcomes by consciously shaping that interplay.
But I’ve found this definition wanting somewhat, over the years. Most notably, it fails to adequately represent the mission of public relations practitioners in particular.
Granted, public relations manifests itself in the doings of everyone within an organization. But by that measure, PR is something in which everyone is engaged, and so my old definition neglects the preparation unique to the field as a scholarly discipline, and essentially implies that anyone with a company ID and access to clientele is a PR practitioner. To a certain extent, that’s indeed true. But in the same way that anyone with a head cold and access to an aspirin bottle isn’t necessarily a physician, neither is the trained public relations professional simply another cog in the PR machinery.
Sadly, however, the reality of commerce might be found resistant to claims for PR any greater than just that very thing, though, if one were to judge by management’s traditional relationship with PR directors, agencies, and consultants. For, in fact, pretty much all PR pros — even in those rare instances when they’re given a seat in the board room — function as little more than toadies and mouthpieces inexplicably eager to take a bullet for the company or get thrown under the bus of public opinion, all for the sake of a steady paycheck.
One of my chief complaints against those trained in the PR field is that they’re content to take public relations just as it’s handed to them in the world of commerce. Rather than behaving like professionals trained and educated in a classroom, who might seize an opening to define public relations in its fullest expression of potential and the manifestation of what they professionally believe it ought to be, they accept it as expressed in the ignorant expectations of managers, who have no formal training in PR whatsoever, and are unlikely to have devoted even a second’s critical thought to what it is, let alone what it should or could be.
In other words, Ms. or Mr. PR Pro’s definition of public relations amounts to an empirical one, and the Empire’s definition is hopelessly steeped in stupidity and ignorance and random chance. Therefore, PR practitioners are usually consigned to nothing greater than honing their writing and public speaking skills, and of course, to love and court the news media — a dreadfully misguided romance if ever there were one.
So, without further delay, I offer my new and improved definition of public relations here for public scrutiny, so that, in the same way open-source software can be tested and refined by the critical fire of many programmers and users, my definition can foment the seeds of professional discontent and provoke a quest for PR’s future betterment.
Public relations is the systematic study and strategic design of organizational identity and behavior in relation to all else, human or otherwise.
My new definition remains broadly inclusive, so as to acknowledge the relations-building function of everyone in the organization. Yet it makes room for the PR professional’s unique contribution as one intentionally tasked to open the eyes of the organization’s members to the character of those impressions and relationships, and to suggest their intentional deconstruction and refashioning within the framework of organizational values.
On the other hand, this definition makes no presuppositions about the responsibilities any specific organization delegates to its PR staff or consultants. Instead, it projects the scope of public relations as an academic enterprise which can offer meaningful insights with or without the consent of those examined. As a profession, it needn’t be limited by management’s or labor’s narrow mythology of public relations. At the same time, its insights remain pragmatically applicable and imminently useful.
By my definition, as a scholarly enterprise, public relations is introspective, it’s unflinchingly critical. It is a discovery of organizational self through the eyes of others, and portends a truer understanding of who is doing the looking. But it cannot be undertaken by the layperson, and so it is a discipline in the truest academic sense. It requires study and structure, as well as natural gifts predisposed to social sciences, but with the philosophical humanities at their core.
