CEO Perceptions of Investor Relations As a Public Relations Function: An Exploratory Study

An exploratory study of chief executive officers (CEOs) in Florida nonbanking public companies found that top executives do not perceive investor relations to be part of the public relations function. A mail survey (31% response rate) revealed these CEOs favor financial affairs executives and departments to supervise and conduct investor relations, and they perceive both the investor relations and public relations functions to be more technically than managerially oriented. These findings corroborate concerns of encroachment in public relations by those without public relations training or experience. The study also raises the larger question of whether public relations practitioners could be trained in such a way to garner CEO support for a role in the investor relations function.     

How Investor Relations Contributes to the Corporate Bottom Line

Investor relations officers say that one of the biggest challenges of their work is proving to the senior management that investor relations contributes value to the organization. This study provides an initial step in evaluating investor relations' contribution to an organization's bottom line. The study first offers a theoretical overview of academic and professional literature dealing with the contribution of investor relations to the organizational bottom line. Second this theoretical overview serves as a starting point for an empirical investigation organized as a Delphi panel. Investor relations officers from corporations and investor relations agencies were recruited to participate in the panel and share their practical insights in response to the theoretically identified indicators of investor relations value. As a result, the study found 4 key areas of investor relations contribution: fair share price, improved liquidity of stock, enhanced analyst coverage, and building and maintaining investor relationships.     

Investor Relations: Two-Way Symmetrical Practice

Although public relations claims investor relations as one of its specializations, scholars have paid little attention to it and practitioners historically have been divided between finance and public relations. A national survey of 145 members of the National Investor Relations Institute and the Public Relations Society of America's Financial Communications Section tested models and dimensions of practice to build theory. Results show that such investor relations officers predominantly practice the two-way symmetrical model and their work is characterized by the dimensions of symmetrical effects and—to some degree—two-way communication. Practitioners do not differ by their orientation to either finance or corporate communication/public relations. This study is the first to find the predominant practice of the normative model across its sample, thereby refuting long-standing criticism that the symmetrical model is a utopian ideal. The two-way symmetrical model does exist in the real world, and it can be found in the bastion of capitalism—publicly owned corporations in the United States.     

Power Over,Power With,and Power to Relations: Critical Reflections on Public Relations,the Dominant Coalition,and Activism

Symmetrical public relations theory acknowledges primacy of the dominant coalition in making organizational decisions and influencing public relations practices but reveals little about this powerful inner circle. Drawing from interviews with 21 public relations executives, this article opens up the dominant coalition and reveals its complex power relationships and a matrix of constraints that undermine and limit the function, rendering it difficult for practitioners to do the "right" thing, even if they want to. If public relations is to better serve society, professionals and academics may need to embrace an activist role and combine advocacy of shared power with activism in the interest of shared power.     

Characteristics and Dimensions of Ethical Leadership in Public Relations

This study explores the characteristics of leadership in developing and managing ethics in public relations, based on in-depth interviews with 20 public relations executives in the United States. Systematic analysis of the interview data identified multiple dimensions of ethical leadership and ethical knowledge, and suggested that ethical leadership is grounded in personal rather than professional characteristics. Personal ethics, interpersonal behaviors, and articulation of ethical standards emerged as 3 salient characteristics of an ideal leader in facilitating knowledge transfer of ethics in public relations organizations. Ethical knowledge is implicit, intangible, personal, and often difficult to identify or articulate, posing a challenge for the transfer of knowledge through structured and formalized approaches. Theoretical implications and practical recommendations are discussed.     

How public relations executives perceive and measure the impact of social media in their organizations

Decisions about social media in organizations are not made lightly. Corporate executives are faced with an ever changing and in many cases, uncontrollable opportunity with social media. This study provides insights obtained from 25 interviews with communication and public relations executives to identify their opinions about what drives social media in organizations, what challenges they face, and what questions they have about social media and its measurement.     

Diversity Issues and Public Relations

Perceptions of diversity issues and implications for public relations were explored within the theoretical framework of organizational culture and requisite variety. Qualitative interviews with 28 practitioners and 5 executives revealed a continuum that ranged from organizations with no commitment to those with a fully integrated diversity strategy. Examples of effective diversity management illustrated the connection between diversity and the strategic management of public relations. We discuss the findings in relation to diversity integration and propose that a final stage not mentioned by participants--diversity as social responsibility--may represent the juncture where public relations and diversity are linked most meaningfully.     

Discrepancy Between Korean Government and Corporate Practitioners Regarding Professional Standards in Public Relations: A Co-Orientation Approach

This study examines the perceptional accuracy and the extent of the discrepancy between the professional standards of government and corporate public relations practitioners. Using a co-orientation approach in a national survey of randomly selected public relations professionals in Korea, it also measured practitioners' own attitudes as well as responses to questions about the attitudes of their peers concerning professional standards.

The results of this study suggest the influence of cultural perspectives. First, gender inequality in the relationship hierarchy has been largely eliminated but there is still no social and occupational consensus in the Korean public relations field. Second, the personal influence model and the behavior of gao guanxi (personal relations) still operate in the public relations of government systems, which have paternal authoritarian cultures. Government practitioners, nevertheless, feel strongly about the importance of social scientific research in their field and desire closer relationships with their communities and publics.     

Applicability of the Generic Principles of Excellent Public Relations in a Different Cultural Context: The Case Study of Singapore

This study used 4 generic principles of public relations based on the Excellence Theory to analyze the extent to which strategic public relations management was practiced in Singapore and whether public relations is part of senior management in 4 types of organizations: public relations consulting firms, corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Data were collected from 127 public relations professionals using a survey questionnaire based on the Excellence study. In addition, 22 in-depth interviews were conducted and organizational publications analyzed. The data revealed that the 4 generic principles studied are applicable in another culture. In Singapore, public relations has a lower status compared with advertising or marketing. Public relations is also not used as a strategic business tool and professionals do not practice strategic public relations in the city–state because of lack of proper training, among other things. Thus, although Singapore has emerged as an "Asian Tiger" the public relations profession has not developed as much as one would have expected.     

Comparing the Decision Structures of Public Relations Agencies and Clients

In this study, I use K. R. Hammond's version of social judgment theory (Hammond, Stewart, Brehmer, & Steinmann, 1975) to examine the conscious and covert judgment patterns of a group of public relations agency consultants and their clients. Respondents assessed 30 hypothetical public relations proposals that combined different mixtures of five decision factors: cost effectiveness, measurability, image support, marketing support, and feasibility. Analysis based on the lens model equation revealed that both groups emphasized bottom-line considerations over less quantifiable ones; that clients, more than agency professionals, understood how they valued the decision factors and acted on that knowledge; that the two groups' subjectively specified judgment weights showed closer agreement than their actual decisions about public relations plans; and that flawed self-understanding and inconsistent decision making, particularly among agency professionals, accounted for most disagreement in practice.     

Public Relations and Technology: Practitioner Perspectives

The purpose of this research was to gather detailed information about public relations practitioners' new technology use. Seventeen semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted. This study describes how use of communication technologies can affect public relations roles. It discusses practitioner challenges associated with diffusing new technologies; practitioner perceptions of technology, organizational status, and power; and how public relations professionals are employing new technologies to improve research, increase productivity, and advance two-way symmetric communication in their organizations.     

A Test of Excellent Leadership in Public Relations: Key Qualities,Valuable Sources,and Distinctive Leadership Perceptions

To better understand leadership in public relations and explore its value in successful communication management, this article captured the perceptions of mid- and senior-level public relations executives (N = 222) regarding the important qualities and dimensions of excellent leadership in the practice. According to study participants, strategic decision-making capability, problem-solving ability, and communication knowledge and expertise are the three most important qualities of excellent leadership. In addition, respondents said that on-the-job experiences, individual initiative and desire, and role models are the most valuable sources of leadership skills and development. About half of the respondents indicated that excellent leaders in public relations are different from leaders in other fields in three ways: They must hold a compelling vision for communication, possess comprehensive understanding of media and information systems, and effectively develop and implement strategic communication plans. Professional women and men in the study viewed excellent leadership in more or less similar ways. The study advances understanding of leadership in the field, which has been little explored in the public relations literature.     

The Moral Development of Public Relations Practitioners: A Comparison With Other Professions and Influences on Higher Quality Ethical Reasoning

This study gathered baseline data on the moral development of 118 public relations professionals. The respondents scored 7th highest among all professionals tested. They performed significantly better when the ethical dilemmas were about public relations issues than when they were not, indicating domain expertise on ethical issues. No significant differences were found between men and women, or managers and nonmanagers. There were significant correlations between moral reasoning and several variables including political ideology and fundamental/liberal religious views.     

Memory for Investor Relations Messages: An Information-Processing Study of Grunig's Situational Theory

Marketing managers have used segmentation techniques to divide mass markets into specialized markets for some time, and many public relations practitioners have adopted the same techniques for their practices. Most marketing techniques segment markets more effectively than publics, however, and thus have limited value in public relations. Few public relations scholars have developed segmentation techniques for publics that are comparable to those used to segment markets in marketing. Grunig and Childers (1988) developed a situational theory of publics that has been tested and used widely by academic researchers. The theory segments publics by the activeness and passiveness of their communication behaviors and the extent to which their behavior affects organizations. Grunig maintained that active publics are more likely to process information actively and to remember it than are passive publics. This study uses the context of investor relations to test the cognitive effects of Grunig's theory. In doing so, it applies cognitive psychological methods of experimentation rarely used in public relations research and tests the effects of involvement, problem recognition, and constraint recognition on two types of memory performance. Differences were found in cued recall and recognition memory; the implications of these differences are discussed.     

Demonstrating Effectiveness in Public Relations: Goals,Objectives, and Evaluation

Public relations planning and evaluation were explored among 32 practitioners and 10 top executives. Practitioners said their goals reflect the priorities of their institution. The CEOs believed public relations' ultimate aim is communicating the image of the organization. Responses showed many practitioners conduct informal evaluation, whereas only a few conduct formal evaluation. This research suggests public relations planning and evaluation are becoming more systematic but are still constrained by lack of resources and difficulty.     

Public Relations Roles,Intraorganizational Power,and Encroachment

Encroachment occurs in public relations when professionals with expertise in such fields as marketing, law, human resources, or engineering occupy the senior public relations position in an organization. When encroachment occurs, public relations frequently becomes little more than a technical support function servicing other units of the organization—rather than a central management function in itself. I explored the idea that encroachment does not result so much from outsiders grabbing the turf of public relations as from weaknesses of public relations practitioners themselves. I used a systematic sample of 166 public relations practitioners in the United States to test the idea that public relations manager role aspirations and competencies and the schema held regarding the public relations function explains the extent to which encroachment takes place. Results suggest that managerial aspirations and competencies and the belief that public relations is a powerful organizational function decrease the likelihood of encroachment.     

Public Relations Practitioner Role Enactment at the Senior Management Level Within U.K. Companies

This article presents the findings of an initial investigation into the role that the public relations function plays in some of the leading companies in the United Kingdom. The study sought to uncover the pattern of practitioner role enactment within these companies and, in particular, the extent to which practitioners are involved directly in the formulation and implementation of corporate and business strategies. The study revealed considerable differences in the level of practitioner involvement in strategic decision making, with some practitioners fulfilling primarily technical roles and others enacting a more significant managerial role, advising senior executives on policy issues and assisting in the implementation of strategies. Factors such as the industry and organizational context, management expectations of public relations, and the perceived professional competence of practitioners emerged as important determinants of the level of practitioner involvement in strategic decision making. Drawing on the study's findings, a number of propositions have been advanced that may help to guide future inquiries into practitioner role enactment, particularly at the senior management level within organizations.     

The Effects of Public Ownership on Newspaper Companies: A Preliminary Inquiry

The trend toward ownership of major newspaper groups by companieswhose stock is publicly traded raises questions about the impactof investor influence on the management of the affected newspapers.A hypothesis is developed and tested: that the managers of publiclyheld newspaper companies will hold attitudes more like thoseof financial analysts than will their counterparts in privatecompanies. Although the hypothesis is not sustained, the circumstancesjustify a watch for further opportunities to test it in thefuture.