Difference between King III and King II Reports on Governance

The King Report on Governance for South Africa 2009 and the King Code of Governance Principles (King III) plus the Practice Notes that support it, were released at the beginning of September. According to Toni Muzi Falconi, “it constitutes a dramatic acceleration of the growth of our profession. Can we now prove to be up [...]

King III Report on Governance for South Africa available for Comment

The long-awaited Draft King III Report and its Principles have been made public by the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IOD). Of particular interest to Public Relations/ Corporate Communication is Chapter 8: ‘Managing Stakeholder Relationships’.

King Report III on Corporate Governance institutionalises Stakeholder Relationship Management

In January 2009, King Report III will appear in South Africa, having been written by a committee of 90 members. One of them is Estelle de Beer from the University of Pretoria. If you are wondering what a PR academic is doing on this Committee, it might just be because Estelle is doing her doctoral [...]

‘Core’ versus ‘extended’ PR competencies–do you buy in?

In a manual written for his students in 2005, Emanuele Invernizzi (Professor of Corporate Communication at IULM University in Milan and co-organiser of the 2008 Euprera Conference to take place in Milan) distinguished between the concepts of ‘core’ and ‘extended’ public relations competencies. He regards ‘core’ competencies as media relations, public affairs, organisation of corporate [...]

PR professionals are from Venus, PR scholars are from Mars: How shall the ‘twain’ meet?

In 2004, the Dutch scholar Prof Betteke Van Ruler referred to PR professionals as being ‘from Venus’ while PR scholars are ‘from Mars.’ UK academics Fawkes and Tench found traces of anti-intellectualism amongst PR practitioners/employers in their recent research study. An editorial by Wood in a leading academic publication in the UK, ‘Journal of Communication [...]

Institutionalisation of the PR ‘Educationist’ role – a South African case

As suggested by Prof Emanuele Invernizzi, co-organizer of the Euprera Congress taking place in Milan 16-18 October, I listened to his interviews with a number of academics and practitioners on the Congress website on the topic of the ‘Institutionalisation of Public Relations’. Both Prof Betteke van Ruler from the Netherlands and Prof Anne Gregory from [...]

Start planning now for pr/communication conferences in 2008

Below are comments from various PRC contributors (that were hidden away elsewhere on this blog) on European conferences taking place next year. Should you want to recommend another PR/ communication conference anywhere in the world, please write and let us know.

Benita Steyn on Strategy and Public Relations

A previous post dwelt on the abuse of the term strategy by public relators and raised a number of interesting concepts. Benita Steyn is one of the commenters and here it is, as a post in itself

Benita Steyn tackles “what is the ultimate purpose of PR?”

I’m stealing Toni’s idea of extracting a worthy comment and turning it into a proper post. Benita Steyn, who previously commented on another post about this topic, provides the beginnings of what could be a great discussion on “what is the ultimate purpose of PR?”