What comes after Grunig? Take a look at these two documents before you reply…
Most visitors of this blog are well aware of Jim Grunig, if not for other reasons, because they remember an extensive interview he gave us almost a year ago.
Since then, while visiting colleagues, speaking with students or professional associations around the world, I often am asked a question which seems to be looming about out professional body of knowledge.
What comes after Grunig?
Now, for the exclusive curiosity of cherished visitors, take a look at these two links which give, I believe, a forceful and convincing answer to that query.
The first pr under digitalization is a power point presentation Jim gave in Hong Kong last Saturday at this conference, and concerns pr under digitalization.
The second brazilian chapter grunig is instead the english (original) version of the first chapter of a recent book published in Portuguese, together with Brazilian scholar Maria Aparecida Ferrari.
Both documents, highly diverse, are an excellent demonstration that -in the company of an impressive array of quality contributions coming from many other scholars and researchers around the world- the answer to that looming question is that after Grunig…comes Grunig.
We are all post-Grunig?
Oh, I get it: it’s like Post-Modernism, or Deconstruction.
I would sure hate to be post-myself, though.
This is a very interesting and lively discussion. Thanks, Toni, for starting us off.
My comments are as a practitioner rather than an adjunct professor:
1. The theory that underpins strategy depends on specific objectives, and may explain our choice of tactics.
2. Excellence assumes that two-way, symmetrical is the best strategy.
Objectives are all — I won’t even touch the concept that our communications objectives AREN’T explicitly tied to business objectives; they simply have to be or we’re useless. This means that our strategy has to serve our objectives, and the theory we choose (Excellence, Rhetorical, etc.) has to support that strategy.
Symmetrical implies a mutuality of change — both sender and receiver make some kind of accommodation to each other’s position. This is a rarity, in my experience. More often than not, our objectives answer the question, “what do we want people to think, feel or do as a result of our communication.” This implies persuasion as the operating philosophy, whether through information subsidy, direct appeal or other messages.
The idea that excellence would sweep the Bernaysians from the field indeed has been proven wrong, though the social media mavens can argue that “the conversation” drives the reverse conclusion. The jury is still out, as far as I am concerned. Authenticity and transparency weren’t invented in excellence, but those concepts, while appreciated, aren’t always in evidence even after all this time. Arthur Page must still be shaking his head.
There still are people who will lie (in degrees) to achieve their objectives, and social media (owing to its lack of objective authority and possibly to its tolerance of anonymity) addresses that prevarication only over time.
For now, I will admit that Excellence, with its structural and leadership requirement components, is useful to a certain extent. But the paradise it so idealistically offers is fairly remote from our current reality.
Sean makes a critical point. We can debate theoretical constructs ad infinitum and fail professionally in the absence of client or employer honesty and trustworthiness (see “The Great Trust Offensive” in the Sept. 17 edition of Business Week.
Years ago, I was admonished to ensure that performance precedes promotion. The substance of the message: the attributes of organizations and their products or services always will overpower any countervailing communication efforts.
That’s even more the case in today’s “wired world.” Stakeholders who consider themselves to have been misled by organizations can “let the world know about it” in a matter of minutes.
Messages too easily can appear to be contradicted by quality or performance. Even advertising copy can inadvertently contradict manufacturer claims. What do you think of the following paragraph, which appeared in a full page Wall Street Journal advertisement for Lexus automobiles:
“The HS hybrid features four driving modes: Normal mode. Electric mode. ECO mode and Power mode. So the driver gets to decide how efficient or powerful they want their car to be.”
I wonder how many readers noticed the singular/plural problem and wondered whether sloppiness in grammar might be reflected in the product. Lexus’ claim to the “pursuit of excellence” came immediately to my mind.
Contradicting reality, in essence, is an exercise in futility. Sooner or later, reality will overpower messages. In other words, putting more lipstick on a pig (with apologies to pig fanciers) doesn’t make it any less a pig.
This conversation took an interesting turn…now the profession is “post-Grunig?!”
Certainly, if one examines the documents Toni links to above, Grunig is not “post-Grunig” or “post Excellence.” If anything, I see his post-retirement work as attempting to solidify the commitment to Excellence.
And, if we’re all “post-Grunig” now, where were all you post-Grunigites last year when we engaged in a lengthy discussion of the merits and demerits of the so-called Excellence Theory: http://www.prconversations.com/?p=471
I think it’s great that we emphasize the practical aspects of the field, which many of you have done above. But, the scholarly community has not embraced an environment that disputes Grunig.
Sure, there are pockets of scholars who have moved beyond or are looking for a more effective paradigm, but Grunig and Excellence still dominates research agendas. My contention is that this is at the detriment of the development of the field.
For an example of how passionately Excellence is still argued, take a look at the post and comments I linked to earlier in this comment. Certainly the professional world never accepted Excellence as fervently as academics, but Grunig is still at the heart of what most are teaching. We seemed to move pretty easily and quickly past this.
Bob:
Sorry I missed that early debate you linked to in your last post. I was trained at Purdue University at a time when the program had a rhetorical focus. In my PhD work in issue management and public affairs we did not read Grunig. Excellence has its place in the grand discussion of public relations but I agree with your point that it should not dominate the conversation. While small, the number of scholars pursuing other views of PR is growing with the likes of David McKie being very vocal and Bob Heath proving a counter with focus on meaning (coming from rhetoric) to name but a few. We are seeing textbooks that use Excellence as an historical point and not the framework for the practice. In our recent book PR Strategy and Application, the focus is on PR as managing influence infusing a critical element into discussion of the profession. Course are starting to reflect this change as well because they can use these alternative books. While still in the minority, those who embrace and use alternative views are slowly emerging from the fog. I strongly believe this trend will continue and will greatly improve the field with an infuse of desperately needed new ideas.
But at the end of it all, we are still left with this question: What does PR want to be when it grows up?
In the 30+ years I have been involved with PR, practitioners have been urged to adopt or become the following:
·Futurists like John Naisbitt (anyone remember John Naisbitt?)
·Corporate Consciences
·Storytellers and Historians
·Issues Managers
·Relationship Managers
·MBAs in Funny Clothes
·Internal Consultants and Counselors to Management
·Strategists
·IMC Experts
·Corporate Cultural Anthropologists (my favorite)
·Communication Social Scientists
·Social Media Mavens
·Conversation Architects
You can probably think of several more. PR is like an undergraduate trying on majors, or a 22-year-old kid trying on careers and identities.
Public relations as a discipline has been attempting to better define itself for decades without perceptible progress. These conditions arise in large part out of the fact that most practitioners define their roles individually in response to client or organizational needs.
I spent more than 20 years in consulting without ever using the words “public relations” in dealing with clients or prospective clients. I presented my firm as a developer and manager of communication systems designed to solve clients’ business problems and enjoyed considerable success.
Debating the boundaries of “public relations,” in my view, is an exercise in futility. Newcomers to the discipline may want to use precise phraseology to circumscribe their practices, but each of us ultimately will be judged professionally by what we do and how well we do it.
Bill Brody wrote: “the fact that most practitioners define their roles individually in response to client or organizational needs.”
This is more profound than you realize!
I certainly hope that this is the case. If we are not helping our clients fulfill their needs than the best description of our role is “unemployed.”
This, I believe, is at the root of the resistance to Excellence Theory: Excellence wants us to believe that it’s the singular path to enlightenment, the true faith and the golden chalice of wisdom. But there are too many needs for which Excellence just doesn’t fit.
We had better contribute mightily to business effectiveness if we want to be more than an historical footnote. Finding out how to quantify (as in objective, repeatable models) is a task for the academy, to be sure. Whether any of us on the practitioner side can muster the energy to assist in that effort is an open question.
Hi Toni,
I’ve been trying to find the publication date of James Grunig’s book Public Relations: Theory, Context and Relationships and Relationships to which you have embedded a link. Would you happen to know when it was published? I would be very grateful for any information on retailers.
Sabiha Kadri
Sabiha,
Toni asked me to provide the reference for this book. It was published in Portuguese in Brazil. Toni posted my three chapters in the pre-translation English. The book has not been published in English.
Grunig, J. E., Ferrari, M. A., & França, F. (2009). Relações públicas: Teoria, contexto e relacionamentos (Public relations: Theory, context, and relationships) São Paulo, Brazil: Difusao Editora.
I think we first ask what comes with Gtrunig before asking what caomes after Grunig
Grunig’s works should be considered simply as public relations of the public relations industry; Grunig’s ideas on communication in organisations and role of public relations are mostly baseless justifications for the promotion of public relations business. How can a person think of a two-way of communication (a symmetrical communication) within a business environment and between an organisation and potential buyers? Two-way of communication requires all of the followings: Rights and means to be able to (a) initiate a communication, (b) fill the content of communication, (c) change the subject of communication during the interaction, (d) stop an ongoing communication, (e) decide on (or significantly influence on) where to produce, how to produce, where and how to distribute and how to share the outcomes. There can be no two-way democratical or symmetrical relationship if any of the above requirements is missing. Stuart Ewen’s book Pr: A Social history of Spin is an excellent source if you really want to know the real nature of the public realtions beyond the prevailing mystifications and factoids.
I suggest that (a) we should critically read Grunig’s Model and (b) develop theories that is not geared toward the justifications, marketing and promotion of public relations business, but geared toward to understand and explain the nature of public relations in a society.
I have often written highly of Stuart Ewen’s book as it is one of the landmarks of our body of knowledge.
I defintely agree with and endorse your suggestion that, before expressing opinions or interpretations, one should read critically Grunig’s books.
I wish you had also…
In any case, teo minor points:
1.
I do not see a direct relationship between the concepts of two way and that of symmetrical communicationM and certainly is no relationship between the concepts of democratical and symmetrical communication;
2.
your points a,c,d and e -with the sole exception of b- all point to the development of an effective relationship between any social, public or private organization and its stakeholders. This has been going on for centuries and what Jim says, after having dome extensive descriptive research in hundreds of organizations way back in the late eighties (long before social media….), is simply that the more the relationship is balanced between the subjects the more effective is the communication process.