Promoting online media relations: Public relations departments’ use of Internet in the UAE

This paper discusses the use of Internet by public relations departments in the United Arab Emirates, to reach their key publics online and to gather information and monitor data to perform their tasks and to promote and develop their relations with the news media. Findings of the study show that all 24 organizations have a homepage, but only two thirds of them are posting their publications on the net, and only one third are using electronic newspapers to monitor their coverage in the media and to gather news, data and information of importance for the various tasks they perform. Only three organizations out of 24 have an online newsroom, and only two have a virtual tour about the organization. None of the surveyed organizations’ Web site has a film or videos. Organizations in the United Arab Emirates still have a lot to do to take advantage fully and rationally of what interactive communication, Internet and online publications are offering for a better performance and more effective public relations.     

Corporate diplomacy and political CSR: Similarities,differences and theoretical implications

The purpose of this study is to systematically review the body of knowledge on corporate diplomacy (CD) and political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) in journals from the fields of public relations, public diplomacy, general management and business ethics. By applying an interdisciplinary approach our study aims to (1) examine what definitions of CD and PCSR exist, (2) explore what theories have been applied to CD and PCSR and, (3) find differences and commonalities between the underlying concepts of CD and PCSR. Building on the results of our review, we redefine each construct and develop a theoretical framework of CD, which integrates PCSR, international public relations and public diplomacy. Our results serve as a foundation for an operationalization of the constructs in order to conduct empirical analyses and contribute to current research on the political role of multinational corporations.     

Public relations in the United Arab Emirates: The emergence of a profession

This paper discusses the development of public relations in a fast growing emerging country, United Arab Emirates. The making of the public relations profession in UAE has been affected tremendously by the socio-economic, educational and cultural development of the country. Ministries and government administrations established their in-house public relations departments and sections to respond to the growing demands of their various publics. Journalism and Mass Communication departments launched PR programs to meet the growing needs of the job market with qualified practitioners. International public relations agencies chose Dubai as a base for their activities in the UAE and the region. The future of public relations in the UAE is very promising. Although it is facing some problems, public relations is the job of the future.     

The role of corporate social responsibility in online identity construction: An analysis of Turkey's banking sector

This study focuses on Turkey's banking sector and investigates the role of public relations and corporate social responsibility practices in constructing organizational identities through a thematic content analysis of banks’ corporate websites. Based on social identity theory, the research reveals that regardless of its core business function, an organization must communicate non-economic social concerns to construct a public identity and gain legitimacy.     

Actional Legitimation: No Crisis Necessary

This article articulates the fundamental nature of "legitimacy" to public relations research and sets forth actional legitimation as a productive new area for public relations studies. After tracing the development of the idea of "corporate legitimacy," this research distinguishes between institutional and actional legitimacy. Although institutional legitimacy has formed a basis for studies of crisis communication, image, values advocacy, and issue management, actional legitimacy studies allow for the study of more day-to-day public relations activities in which publics have a more immediate impact on corporate policy. The article concludes that actively studying strategies of legitimation for specific corporate policies would produce useful scholarship that builds on extant legitimacy literature.     

Commentary: Challenges for Arab and American public relations and public diplomacy in a global age

This commentary is based on the keynote address given to the international conference on “Public Relations in the Arab World in the Age of Globalization” at the University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, May 4, 2004. It points out how proper public relations practices can help bring about improvements in the relationships between America and the Arab world. Hiebert is Professor and Dean Emeritus, University of Maryland, and Editor, Public Relations Review.     

Building communities: The postmodern CSR practitioner as a dialectical activist-agent in India

This study examined the conceptualization of the postmodern public relations practitioner as an organizational activist who contributes to democratic processes in the context of community relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in India. Elite, in-depth conversations with 19 senior executives at 16 companies in India well known for their CSR initiatives revealed that practitioners appeared to be both organizational activists and agents. As organizational activists, they acknowledged the existence of diverse voices in local communities, interjected these voices into management discourse, situated decision-making in local contexts, identified tensors in the relationship between the corporation and its publics, and negotiated new meanings through dissensus. Paradoxically, as organizational agents, they used these participatory, open processes of dialogic communication to shape public opinion in favour of the organization, feeding modern organizations’ proclivity for consensus. While the findings of the study support the postmodern conceptualization of the public relations practitioner as an organizational activist in the context of CSR and community relations, the agent aspect of the activist-agent dialectic problematizes and complicates this conceptualization thus enhancing understandings of the postmodern practitioner who enacts CSR within a modernist framework and navigates the intricacies of the activist-agent dialectic in their daily performance of building community relations and enabling democratic processes.     

Emergent stakeholders: Using multi-stakeholder issue networks to gain legitimacy in corporate networks

Multi-stakeholder issue networks (MSINs) are models of cross-sector cooperation dedicated to resolving a specific issue. Research to date has not demonstrated the reasons for collaboration (Sun et al., 2021). This paper merges public relations and organizational communication scholarship to theorize that MSINs are one way that marginalized groups achieve salience in corporate networks. Stakeholder salience theory (SST) states that corporations balance stakeholder claims using a manager-defined calculus of legitimacy, urgency, and power. Because these attributes are defined by managers in relation to corporate interests, corporations deny legitimacy to historically, socially, and geographically marginalized groups. MSINs that emerge to highlight the needs of these marginalized groups decenter corporations by constraining corporations’ ability to ignore the needs of groups previously dismissed as nonstakeholders. As MSINs become more active within the corporate ecology, they further limit corporate activity and encourage management to not only to see the legitimacy, urgency, and power of emergent stakeholder claims, but to act upon them. Examples in case-based studies illustrate the emergent stakeholder concept.     

The strategic use of Twitter to manage personal public relations

This study examined the effect of personal public relations developed through Twitter on cognitive and attitudinal aspects, particularly focusing on the use of Twitter by CEOs. According to the responses of young consumers who participated in this study, their attitudes toward the use of Twitter by CEOs positively influenced their perception of transformational leadership (H1). Further, perceived transformational leadership was positively associated with attitudes toward CEOs using Twitter; this in turn positively influenced attitudes toward corporations (H2). The positive evaluation of the use of Twitter by CEOs directly influenced attitudes toward such CEOs (H3), whereas attitudes toward such use did not influence attitudes toward corporations. The results indicated that microblogging is beneficial for the development of effective personal public relations by corporate leaders.     

Online strategic communication: A cross-cultural analysis of U.S. and Chinese corporate websites

This study applied a cultural divergence approach to examine online marketing interactivity and corporate public image on corporate websites. It analyzed different online strategic communication of corporate websites from two different nations—the United States and China. Results indicated that U.S. corporations were more likely to highlight online marketing interactivity and social responsibility, which integrated marketing and public relations as their online communication strategy. Chinese corporations provided more online spaces for the consumer–consumer interactions and emphasized corporation-oriented information.     

Public relations and health diplomacy

Authors have noted the convergence of public relations and public diplomacy, yet public relations scholars have ignored an important aspect of public diplomacy–health diplomacy. Health diplomacy involves activities that improve global health while strengthening relationships between the United States and peoples abroad. This article encourages greater public relations involvement in health diplomacy.     

Transforming into the new era: public relations industry in Hong Kong and China

The public relations industry as one of the key industries in Hong Kong has metamorphosed into a new phase after the resumption of sovereignty to China. Based on in-depth interviews with eight experienced corporate communication practitioners from multi-national and sizeable local corporations in Hong Kong and China, the study traces the recent development of public relations and/or corporate communication (hereafter PR/CC) highlighting issues of role and function, language and communication strategy, and ethics and professionalism.     

Institutionalizing public relations in China: A sociological analysis of the Chinese Premier's Press Conference

Unlike previous studies that focus on the problems of public relations management, this study tackles the institutionalization of PR in China from a sociological perspective. Through the process of social construction, public relations is institutionalized according to changes in the larger environment, making use of different sources of legitimation. Focusing on the evolution of the Chinese Premier's Press Conference (CPPC), this study finds that the institutionalization of PR in China, especially in the realm of governmental practices, has varied in its structure, settings and contents, which are mixed with informal features within the Chinese social–political context. The CPPC has become a venue for top-down publicity for the powers that be. Because the organizational structure of the CPPC is more centralized than that of other governmental institutions, the form and content of its PR communications are mostly predictable. However, it is the process of the institutionalization of the CPPC that is revealing of how the Chinese government rationalizes its authority and legitimacy.     

Virtual public relations in the United Arab Emirates: A case study of 20 UAE organizations’ use of the Internet

This paper analyzes the use of the Internet as a public relations tool by 20 government and private organizations in the United Arab Emirates. It concludes that, among other findings, UAE public relations staff members continue to play their traditional role in real world situations but when it comes to online communications, they do not seem to have a big say in controlling the flow of information to the public. This may suggest that what appears online about a certain organization may be in tune with what is carried out in real world communications.     

Social capital,guanxi and political influence in Chinese government relations

Social capital has emerged as a promising theoretical approach to understanding political influence in the public relations literature. However, the rationale of using social capital to influence corporate government relations in authoritarian societies is indistinct. To remedy this, we integrate Bourdieu’s (1986) and Lin’s (2001) social capital theories to explore how applying a variant form of social capital (e.g., guanxi) might shape corporate government relations in authoritarian China. A multi-method, qualitative approach was employed involving 44 interviews, participant observation and document review. The findings highlighted an underexamined “vertical” dimension of social capital (i.e., links with authority in a hierarchy), which enables corporations to exercise agency over the pre-existing and often vague regulatory environment. This study adds a new perspective to social capital with hierarchical guanxi that enriches our understanding of guanxi-based political influence in Chinese corporate government relations.     

Influence of responsiveness,accessibility, and professionalism on journalists’ perceptions of Southwest Airlines public relations

This longitudinal study presents the results of three biennial surveys of key national journalists who routinely report on Southwest Airlines, a company widely recognized for its extraordinary public relations efforts. Synthesizing data garnered through relationship, utility, and perception scales as well as robust open-ended responses, the results support and advance media relations best practices. Ultimately, data confirm that practitioner responsiveness and accessibility to reporters are the keys to ensuring that journalists maintain positive perceptions of Southwest Airlines’ public relations. The results provide an instructive case study and recommendations to corporate public relations practitioners for cultivating favorable media relationships through a commitment to dialogic communication principles.     

Communicating Engagement in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Meta-Level Construal of Engagement

Organizations are increasingly seeking stakeholder support through engagement to demonstrate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials. These credentials are, in turn, used to support claims of legitimacy for organizational operations. This article uses a process model of antecedents, implementation, and consequences to study the connection between engagement and CSR. CSR reports show organizations perceive engagement in CSR as both communication and activities between organizations and their stakeholders; and as a second, meta-level of communication about that engagement with stakeholders beyond those directly involved, thereby broadening the scope of organizational claims to legitimacy. Understanding what engagement is and how and why it is carried out in CSR provides a framework for understanding engagement in public relations.     

Relationship Cultivation in Public Diplomacy: A Qualitative Study of Relational Antecedents and Cultivation Strategies

Political public relations and public diplomacy both focus on managing communication to build and maintain relationships for a political purpose. Public diplomacy focuses on foreign publics and involves governments and organizations seeking to build relationships internationally. This study explored relationship cultivation, i.e., the process of initiating, nurturing positive, and recovering from negative relationships between various public diplomacy actors. Data included 32 in-depth interviews with communication officers in the United States. Results confirmed some of the previously developed relationship cultivation dimensions and suggested new ones. The study offers a nuanced discussion of relationship cultivation factors and an explanation of how they apply to public diplomacy engagement.     

Telling the American story to the world: The purpose of U.S. public diplomacy in historical perspective

This paper seeks to provide an historical reflection on the central purpose of U.S. public diplomacy through an examination of the manifest mandate of the three major institutional settings for such international communication programs, i.e., the Committee on Public Information, the Office of War Information, and the United States Information Agency, and to shed light on the current public diplomacy endeavor spearheaded by the Department of State. The review demonstrates that U.S. public diplomacy has been principally an ad hoc instrument of American foreign policy to meet wartime exigencies and has been underscored by the promotion of American values of democracy and freedom. Over the years, it has expanded to encompass multiple modes of engagement, while at the same time there has been constant tension concerning the role of public diplomacy as a strategic, policy function versus merely as a “mouthpiece” within the foreign affairs apparatus. All of these themes continue to reverberate in the contemporary practice of public diplomacy.     

Future of public relations in United Arab Emirates institutions

This study compares the functions that public relations embraced in the past and those entertained today. It also casts light on the future of this occupation in United Arab Emirates’ organizations. This study is primarily a survey of a group of influential current private and government organizations in the UAE. It encompassed 82 organizations based in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, and Ras al-Khaimah. It concludes that these organizations still have much to do to move into the 21st century.