Blogging PR: An exploratory analysis of public relations weblogs

Although there are ever more weblogs on the Internet, this is an area that has been little researched in public relations, and where they have been analyzed it has been as a tool for communication rather than a primary information source in the public relations body of knowledge. This paper provides an exploratory study of the structure and content of 67 blogs on public relations to determine what issues they deal with and whether they are a tool for the theoretical development of the field. In addition to their content we have looked at the structure, usability and interactivity of the blogs.     

On left-truncating and mixing Poisson distributions

ABSTRACT

The distributions obtained by left-truncating at k a mixed Poisson distribution, denoted kT-MP, and those obtained by mixing previously left-truncated Poisson distributions, denoted M-kTP, are characterized by means of their probability generating function. The main consequence is that every kT-MP distribution is a M-kTP distribution, but not the other way around.     

Inside Nazi Germany and PR war films in America

This article analyses Jack Glenn and Louis de Rochemont's Inside Nazi Germany (1938), a screen magazine from The March of Time. The aim of this paper is to analyze Inside Nazi Germany as a public relations war effort of the 20th century. Arising from the informative and propagandistic strategy of late 1930s newsreels, this documentary was made using very appropriate narrative techniques to award it the dimension of objectivity and truthfulness characteristic of public relations messages, without losing sight of its educational and persuasive function. From this standpoint, Inside Nazi Germany constituted one of the clearest precedents of public relations war films in America.     

Resourcing the next stages in PR history research: The case for historiography

Since the start of the 21st century, significant work has been done in expanding not just the content, but the geographical, methodological, and social range of public relations scholarship. The expansion has parallels – a few of which we acknowledge below – in the body of historical work in the discipline. In this article, we contend that future research on PR pasts should seek to be relevant to three clusters of contemporary themes that feature strongly in mainstream history. Cluster one is the environmental context of globalization and associated geographical and social diversifications. Cluster two concerns the scale, methods, and ecological inclusiveness to engage with these changes; and, the third covers nation-centric mindsets, archival assumptions, and the impact of changing media. We also argue for PR historians resourcing the next stages of PR history from advances in historiography and history writing practices with particular attention to the point of view of the historian and awareness of the traditions and limitations, within which he, she, or they write. We suggest that this resourcing process will involve questioning assumptions of authority embedded in archive-centered PR research, decentering nation-bound narratives, re-evaluating notions of objectivity, and extending the field's temporal and spatial boundaries.     

Stability and voting by committees with exit

We study the problem of a society choosing a subset of new members from a finite set of candidates (as in Barberà et al. 1991). However, we explicitly consider the possibility that initial members of the society (founders) may want to leave it if they do not like the resulting new society. We show that, if founders have separable (or additive) preferences, the unique strategy-proof and stable social choice function satisfying founders sovereignty (on the set of candidates) is the one where candidates are chosen unanimously and no founder leaves the society.A previous version of this paper was entitled Voting by Committees with Exit. We are very grateful to the associate editor and two anonymous referees for their detailed suggestions and comments. We also thank Salvador Barberà, Carmen Beviá, Anna Bogomolnaia, Renan Goetz, Matthew Jackson, Howard Petith, Carmelo Rodríguez-Álvarez, James Schummer, and Tayfun Sönmez for their helpful comments and suggestions. The work of D. Berga, G. Bergantiños, and J. Massó is partially supported by Research Grants AGL2001-2333-C02-01, BEC2002–04102-C02-01, and BEC2002-02130 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, respectively. The work of A. Neme is partially supported by Research Grant 319502 from the Universidad Nacional de San Luis. The work of D. Berga is also partially supported by Research Grant 9101100 from the Universitat de Girona. The work of G. Bergantiños is also partially supported by Research Grant PGIDT00PXI30001PN from the Xunta de Galicia. The work of J. Massó is also partially supported by Research Grant 2001SGR-00162 and the Barcelona Economics Program of CREA from the Generalitat de Catalunya. The paper was partially written while A. Neme was visiting the UAB under a sabbatical fellowship from the Generalitat de Catalunya.     

Modeling the problem of locating collection areas for urban waste management. An application to the metropolitan area of Barcelona

Reverse logistics problems arising in municipal waste management are both wide-ranging and varied. The usual collection system in UE countries is composed of two phases. First, citizens leave their refuse at special collection areas where different types of waste (glass, paper, plastic, organic material) are stored in special refuse bins. Subsequently, each type of waste is collected separately and moved to its final destination (a recycling plant or refuse dump). The present study focuses on the problem of locating these collection areas. We establish the relationship between the problem, the set covering problem and the MAX-SAT problem and then go on to develop a genetic algorithm and a GRASP heuristic to, respectively, solve each formulation. Finally, the quality of the algorithms is tested in a computational experience with real instances from the metropolitan area of Barcelona, as well as a reduced set of set covering instances from the literature.     

Examining the Ability,Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) framework in HRM research: Conceptualization,measurement and interactions

Despite the increasing popularity of the Ability, Motivation, Opportunity (AMO) framework in the Human Resource Management (HRM) field, AMO research is at a crossroads in theoretical and empirical development. This is due to (a) a lack of clarity about the conceptualisation and measurement of AMO variables, (b) the construction of AMO articles that do not distinguish between AMO differences and AMO-enhancing HRM practices and fail to integrate them, (c) a lack of understanding about how AMO variables at the individual and organizational levels interact to generate individual and organizational performance, and (d) a lack of consideration of the process (mediators and moderators) through which AMO generates performance gains. Based on the analysis of 104 quantitative HRM articles published between 1997 and 2022, this study helps to draw clearer distinctions among AMO variables and levels of analysis. The review of the empirical literature shows that there is excessive heterogeneity with regard to the conceptualization and utilisation of AMO variables, which in turn leads to scale proliferation. We find that research on AMO-enhancing HRM practices and AMO differences is rarely combined and tends to be tested at a single level rather than more logical cross-level effects between AMO-enhancing HRM practices, AMO differences and performance. We also found that whereas Ability and Motivation differences mediate the relationship between AMO-enhancing HRM practices and performance, opportunity appears to be a boundary condition in the relationship between Ability and Motivation with performance outcomes. The paper concludes with relevant avenues for future AMO research suggested for the field of HRM.     

From realpolitik to noopolitik: The public relations of (stateless) nations in an information age

In this article, we explore ways to advance public relations approaches to nation building by drawing insights from stateless nations and by deploying two sets of theories uncommon in the field: the information society and noopolitik. The theoretical discussion is grounded in a study of Catalonia and we conclude by arguing for a shift of emphasis from nation-state governments to governance for both public and private actors.