Timely, authoritative and provocative, this major volume meets the emerging need for an introduction to critical public relations, to look at the diverse perspectives in the field, and to construct a tentative mapping of possible ways forward. While critical theory has a long and fluctuating history, critical public relations is much more recent. This book takes stock of how, and where, critical public relations has emerged via three main foci: theoretical traditions; critique and action; along with methodological and future implications.

As mainstream public relations has become established and critical public relations is reaching a critical mass in the discipline, this book seeks to capture both the coherence and the plural nature of this fast-growing area. Compiled by a high-profile and widely respected team of academics and bringing together the key scholars in the field, this comprehensive international collection will be a major contribution to forming and directing how critical theory increasingly informs public relations and communication.

It is an essential reference for educators teaching advanced undergraduate and post-graduate courses, scholars and students around the world in the field of public relations and critical theory. Also of interest to scholars in advertising, communication, consumer studies, cultural studies, marketing, media studies, and sociology.

Without a doubt, sponsorship is one of the most powerful promotional tools we have in the business of brand creation, brand recognition, and ultimately increasing sales. Moreover, brokering sponsors is a significant business in and of itself, something we often overlook. Considering sponsorship is a $50 billion a year market--and growing--marketers and students of business ignore its potential at the risk of missing hugely lucrative opportunities. To fail to understand sponsorship is to fail to understand marketing. If you're looking for an introduction to this topic, most books available only address sports sponsorship: the largest section of the market perhaps, but by no means the only one. Kolah's Improving the Performance of Sponsorship is a guide that examines all types of sponsorship, clearly explaining and defining its mechanics, advising on how to select the right properties, how to sell sponsorship, ethical issues, measurement and key legal principles. This book is all keen marketers will need for a thorough understanding of how sponsorship works.

An accessible, unintimidating introduction to the focus group research project. For students in research methods or market research courses within mass media, communication studies, marketing, advertising, and public relations programs.

Winner of the 2014 NCA PRIDE Book Award Why are some voices louder in public debates than others? And why can't all voices be equally heard? This book draws significant new meaning to the inter-relationships of public relations and social change through a number of activist case studies, and rebuilds knowledge around alternative communicative practices that are ethical, sustainable, and effective. Demetrious offers a powerful critical description of the dominant model of public relations used in the twentieth century, showing that 'PR' was arrogant, unethical and politically offensive in ways that have severely weakened democratic process and its public standing and professional credibility. The book argues that change within the field of public relations is imminent and urgent-for us all. As the effects of climate change intensify, and are magnified by high carbon dioxide emitting industries, vigorous public debate is vital in the exploration of new ideas and action and if alternative futures are to be imagined. In these conditions, articulate and persistent publics will appear in the form of grassroots activists, asking contentious questions about risks and tabling them for public discussion in bold, inventive, and effective ways. Yet the entrenched power relations in and through public relations in contemporary industrialized society provide no certainty these voices will be heard. Following this path, Demetrious theorises an alternative set of social relations to those used in the twentieth century: public communication. Constructed from communicative practices of grassroots activists and synthesis of diverse theoretical positions, public communication is a principled approach that avoids the deep contradictions and flawed coherences of essentialist public relations and instead represents an important ethical reorientation in the communicative fields. Lastly, she brings original new perspectives to understand current and emergent developments in activism and public relations brought about through the proliferation of Internet and digital cultures.

The emergence of relationship management as a paradigm for public relations scholarship and practice necessitates an examination of precisely what public relations achieves -- its definition, function and value, and the benefits it generates. Promoting the view that public relations provides value to organizations, publics, and societies through relationships, Public Relations as Relationship Management takes a in-depth look at organization-public relationships and explores the strategies that can be employed to cultivate and maintain them. Expanding on the work published in the first edition, this thoroughly up-to-date volume covers such specialized areas of public relations as non-profit organizations, shareholder relations, lobbying, employee relations, and risk management. It expands the reader's ability to understand, conceptualize, theorize, and measure public relations through the presentation of state-of-the-art research and examples of the use of the relationship paradigm. Developed for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in public relations, Public Relations as Relationship Management provides a contemporary perspective on the role of relationships in public relations, and encourages further research and study.

Female Business Owners in Public Relations: Constructing Identity at Home and at Work presents an important perspective on how female business owners construct their work-life integration and addresses key identity questions. Weidhaas examines business ownership in public relations, an industry dominated by women, and incorporates the voices of practitioners through narrative interviews that explain the challenges and opportunities of work-life integration. This book explores the intersection of public relations practice, gender, and business ownership.

The emergence of relationship management as a paradigm for public relations scholarship and practice necessitates an examination of precisely what public relations achieves -- its definition, function and value, and the benefits it generates. Promoting the view that public relations provides value to organizations, publics, and societies through relationships, Public Relations as Relationship Management takes a in-depth look at organization-public relationships and explores the strategies that can be employed to cultivate and maintain them.

Expanding on the work published in the first edition, this thoroughly up-to-date volume covers such specialized areas of public relations as non-profit organizations, shareholder relations, lobbying, employee relations, and risk management. It expands the reader’s ability to understand, conceptualize, theorize, and measure public relations through the presentation of state-of-the-art research and examples of the use of the relationship paradigm. Developed for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in public relations, Public Relations as Relationship Management provides a contemporary perspective on the role of relationships in public relations, and encourages further research and study.

Table of Contents

Foreword (By James Grunig)

Introduction (By Eyun-Jung Ki, Jeong-Nam Kim, & John Ledingham)

Section I. Relationship Theory Evolvement since Vol. 1

Ch-1. Revisiting Organization–Public Relationship Research for the Past Decade: Theoretical Concepts, Measures, Methodologies and Challenges (Yi-Hui Christine Huang & Yin Zhang)

Ch-2. The Status of Organization-Public Relationship Research Through an Analysis of Published Articles between 1985 and 2013: An Appeal for Further Research (Eyun-Jung Ki & Jae-Hwa Shin)

Ch-3. The Role of the Holistic Public Relations Manager (John Ledingham)

Section II. Expansion of Organization-Public Relationships

Ch-4. The Effect of Relationships on Reputation and Reputation on Relationships: A Cognitive, Behavioral Study (James E. Grunig & Chun-ju Flora Hung-Baesecke)

Ch-5. Framework linking organization-public relationships and organizational reputations in public relations management (Sung-Un Yang & Heewon Cha)

Ch-6. Examining the Influence of Organization-Public Relationships and Organizational Identification with a Psychological Group on Institutional Affiliation, Behavioral Intent, and Evaluations of Satisfaction (Stephen D. Bruning & John A. Ledingham)

Ch-7. Motivations of publics: The power of antecedents in the volunteer-nonprofit organization relationship (Denise Bortree)

Ch-8. When Shareholders Move From Passive to Active: Managing Relationships with Activist Investors (Marcia W. DiStaso)

Ch-9. Lobbying as relationship management: Avenues for public relations research and practice (Kurt Wise & Kati Tusinski Berg)

Ch-10. Risk Management through Employees: Testing Employees’ Voluntary Scouting and

Corporate Readiness for Cyber Risks (Jeong-Nam Kim, Soo Park, Arunima Krishna,

& Valentina Martino)

Section III. Emergent Perspective: Culture, Globalization, and New Technologies

Culture and Globalization

Ch-11. Factoring Culture into Relationship Management Theory: Cultivation Strategies and Traditional Chinese Value Orientations (Chun-ju Flora Hung-Baesecke & Yi-Ru Regina Chen)

Ch-12. Chemyon, Relationship Building and Conflicts (Yungwook Kim & Jungeun Yang)

Ch-13. Culture-Centered Approach to Public Relations: Resistance in Relational Contexts (Mohan J. Dutta & Rati Kumar)

New Technologies

Ch-14. Everybody’s job? Managing Public Relations in the Age of Social Media (Tom Kelleher)

Ch-15. University-Student Relations: A Dynamic Framework in Offline and Digital Environments (Alessandro Lovari, Alessandra Mazzei, & Kelly Vibber)

Ch-16. Conceptualization, Examination, and Recommendations for a Normative Model Of Community-Building for Organizations Managing Change Using New Media (Marina Vujnovic & Dean Kruckeberg)

This unique book written by four world leaders in reputation research, presents the latest cutting-edge thinking on organizational improvement. It covers media management, crisis management, the use of logos and other aspects of corporate identity, and argues the case for reputation management as a way of overseeing long-term organizational strategy. It presents a new approach to managing reputation, one that relies on surveying customers and employees on their view of the corporate character and in harmonizing the values of both. This approach has been trialled in a number of organizations and here the authors demonstrate how improving reputation, merely by learning more about what a company is already doing, is worth some five per cent sales growth. The book is a vital, up to date resource for specialists in corporate communication, public relations, marketing, HRM, and business strategy as well as for all senior management. Highly illustrated with over eighty diagrams and tables, it includes up to the minute illustrative case studies and interviews with leading authorities in the field.

This innovative book explores ten great works, by well-known thinkers and orators, whose impact has been intellectual, practical and global. Most of the works significantly precede public relations as a phrase or profession, but all are in no doubt about the force of planned public communication, and the power that lies with those managing the process. The works are stimulating and diverse and were written to address some of society's biggest challenges. Although not traditionally the focus of public relations research, they have all had a global impact as communicators and as the foundation for fundamental ideas, from spirituality to war and economics to social justice. Each addresses the implications of structured communication between organizations and societies, and scrutinizes or advocates activities that are now central to PR and its morality. They could not ignore PR, and PR cannot ignore them. This book will be essential reading for researchers and scholars in public relations and communication and will also be of inter-disciplinary interest to study in sociology, literature, philosophy, politics and history.

If sustainability is central to your business strategy, then 21st century trends in corporate communications apply to you, doubly. From addressing the growing skepticism of traditional corporate messages to finding ways to engage an increasingly participatory and digital-savvy workforce and consumer base, there are new ways to effectively connect with your stakeholders. Use this book to: 1. Understand how transparency in corporate responsibility and the increasing importance of digital media have updated the way effective organizations communicate. 2. Develop a communications plan for your organization that reaches -- and engages -- the right stakeholders, using the most appropriate tools and channels. 3. Get practical advice on how to 'sell' the use of digital media to skeptical internal stakeholders, including in the c-suite, as part of your mission-advancing communications plan. An effective engagement plan will require the powerful combination of living your values and telling an authentic story -- while leveraging the true value of social and digital media. This book will help you make the most of the irrevocable changes in the way people create, share, receive, judge and interact with information.

Nonprofit organizations are managing to carry out sophisticated public relations programming that cultivates relationships with their key audiences. Their public relations challenges, however, have routinely been understudied. Budgetary and staffing restraints often limit how these organizations carry out their fundraising, public awareness and activism efforts, and client outreach. This volume explores a range of public relations theories and topics important to the management of nonprofit organizations, including crisis management, communicating to strengthen engagement online and offline, and recruiting and retaining volunteer and donor support.

The public relations of "everything" takes the radical position that public relations is a profoundly different creature than a generation of its scholars and teachers have portrayed it. Today, it is clearly no longer limited, if it ever has been, to the management of communication in and between organizations. Rather, it has become an activity engaged in by everyone, and for the most basic human reasons: as an act of self-creation, self-expression, and self-protection. The book challenges both popular dismissals and ill-informed repudiations of public relations, as well as academic and classroom misconceptions.

In the age of digitization and social media, everyone with a smart phone, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the will and skill to use them, is in the media. The PR of everything the ubiquitousness of public relations takes a perspective that is less concerned with ideas of communication and information than with experience and drama, a way of looking at public relations inside out, upside down and from a micro rather than a macro level.

Based on a combination of the research of PR practice and critical-thinking analysis of theory, and founded in the author s extensive corporate experience, this book will be invaluable reading for scholars and practitioners alike in Public Relations, Communications and Social Media."

It is widely assumed that a competitive political environment of public distrust and critical media forces political parties to manage communications and reputations strategically, but is this really true? Comprehensive control of communications in a fast-moving political and media setting isoften upset by events outside the communicator's control, taking over the news agenda andchanging the political narrative. Based on interviews with leading communicators and journalists, this book explores the tensions between a planned, strategic communications approach and a reactive, tactical one. The interviewees, who over the past 15 years have been instrumental in presenting and shaping the public persona of party leaders and Prime Ministers, include, amongst others, William Hague, Ian Duncan-Smith, Michael Howard, David Cameron, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.It draws a unique picture of how political reputations are managed and, ultimately, confirms the discrepancy between what political communications management is thought to be, and how communications practitioners actually operate. This book empirically reviews political communications practice in order to analyse to what degree reality matches the concepts of strategic communications management. This will be essential reading for researchers, educators and advanced students in public relations, communications studies and marketing.

Phone calls and emails from customers are not just events; they are significant milestones in customer relationships. This book presents a roadmap to significantly improving customer relationships, whether by phone, mail, fax, email, or Website, by getting the most out of call centre technology. The book bridges the business, technical and financial issues in building and managing a customer contact centre. It evaluates call centre technology and its practical implementation to foster enhanced customer satisfaction, while delivering results at a reasonable cost. The author explains how to transform a call centre into an effective cross media contact point staffed by people equipped with the appropriate tools, knowledge and skills to provide responsive answers to emails, faxes and calls requesting service and information. Further, the author explores how to make the call centre an engine of business growth by minimizing costs, enhancing customer satisfaction, and using technology to upsell and generate new revenues from existing customers.

This book will show you how to build a sustainable reputation risk management framework and how to handle your next reputation risk crisis. It will help you identify ways in which reputation risk can impact bottom line, and then show you how to set up a framework for turning that risk into an opportunity for good, sustainable business. Reputation risk is a strategic risk and a potentially material risk, all the more so in the 'age of hyper-transparency'. This needs to be clearly understood by both management and boards of directors so that the people tasked with reputation risk have the support they need to align their reputation risk management with business strategy and planning. The Reputation Risk Handbook provides a clear framework to identify, manage and resolve reputation risk, including: A clear description of what reputation risk is and how it fits within the pantheon of corporate and institutional risk and strategic management A practical process for creating early warning systems and on-going management and monitoring of reputation risks Techniques for aligning reputation risk management with business strategy and business planning Several case studies, including examples of when reputation risk management has gone wrong Examples of how to manage specific reputation risks successfully or deal with a reputation risk crisis. The Reputation Risk Handbook is not just for practitioners - those who manage risk and reputation directly - but for those who have oversight of risk management - namely boards, their committees and the c-suite. In addition to a framework for practitioners, the book provides specific suggestions for boards, including questions to ask management and what to look for within their organizations.

Strategic Planning for Public Relations: Beginning the Journey is written for the next generation of public relations professionals. It takes account of the changing needs of the PR industry, where strategic thinking is needed in abundance but tends to be in short supply among many people who are just launching their careers. This book is designed to address this shortfall by providing a multi-level understanding of strategy to show how it directly correlates to successful public relations. The book's conversational tone and real world chapter exercises move the reader from insight to strategic vision and application. Exercises at the end of each chapter are designed to help students further explore, reflect on and apply what they have learned. The book's unique approach to strategy and strategic planning provides the tools for students becoming strategists first and tacticians second - essential criteria for successful public relations professionals.

This work establishes a contemporary profile of virtue in professional media practice. Author Patrick Lee Plaisance examines the experiences, perspectives, moral stances, and demographic data of two dozen professional exemplars in journalism and public relations. Plaisance conducted extensive personal "life story" interviews and collected survey data to assess the exemplars personality traits, ethical ideologies, moral reasoning skills and perceived workplace climate.

The chosen professionals span the geographic United States, and include Pulitzer Prize winners and trendsetting PR corporate executives, ranging from rising stars to established veterans. Their thoughts, opinions, and experiences provide readers with an insider s perspective on the thought process of decision makers in media.

The unique observations in this volume will be stimulating reading for practitioners, researchers, and students in journalism and public relations. "Virtue in Media "establishes a key benchmark, and sets an agenda for future research into the moral psychology of media professionals."

Do professions really place duty to society above clients' or their own interests? If not, how can they be trusted? While some public relations (PR) scholars claim that PR serves society and enhances the democratic process, others suggest that it is little more than propaganda, serving the interests of global corporations. This is not an argument about definitions, but about ethics - yet this topic is barely explored in texts and theories that seek to explain PR and its function in society.

This book places PR ethics in the wider context of professional ethics and the sociology of professions. By bringing together literature from fields beyond public relations - sociology, professional and philosophical ethics, and Jungian psychology - it integrates a new body of ideas into the debate. The unprecedented introduction of Jungian psychology to public relations scholarship shifts the debate beyond a traditional Western 'Good/Bad' ethical dichotomy towards a new holistic approach, with dynamic implications for theory and practice.

This thought-provoking book will be essential reading for students, academics and professionals with an interest in public relations, ethics and professionalism.

Public Relations Leaders as Sensemakers presents foundational research on the public relations profession, providing a current and compelling picture of expanding global practice. Utilizing data from one of the largest studies ever conducted in the field, and representing the perspectives of 4,500 practitioners, private and state-run companies, communication agencies, government agencies, and nonprofits, this work advances a theory of integrated leadership in public relations and highlights future research needs and educational implications. This volume is appropriate for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in international public relations and communication management, as well as scholars in global public relations, communication management, and business. It is also intended to supplement courses in public relations theory, strategic communication, business management, and leadership development.

The National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices series is the first to offer an authentic world-wide view of the history of public relations. It features six books, five of which cover continental and regional groups. This second book in the series focuses on Eastern Europe.

In public relations, people talk about positioning an idea, a persona, a political ideal, an ideology – but what are they talking about? Why do some positions taken by organizations crystallize in the minds of audiences, while others fail?　

Whilst positioning is not something new in public relations, this book is the first to explicate what it involves, how it works and how to do it. This is the first in-depth exploration of the possibilities of Positioning Theory for the public relations field　and it adds a new perspective to the growing body of multidisciplinary work in this rich theoretical area, moving the discussion away from the traditional communication plans of previous decades, which fail to accommodate the changing media and opinion landscapes. The author pulls together various strands of socio-cultural theory into an analytical framework, providing readers with a tool to analyse the organizational implications of public relations decisions, guiding strategic decision making through realistic scenario planning.

This thought-provoking book provides an alternative path to studying communication in increasingly complex environments and as such, will be vital reading for researchers and educators, advanced communication and public relations students, and for senior public relations practitioners.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Public Relations and Positioning Theory 1. Positioning in Public Relations 2. Rights, Duties and Power in Positioning 3. A Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations Part 2: The Positioning Triangle and Public Relations 4. Determining the Position in Public Relations: The first vertex of the positioning triangle 5. Enacting the Position in Public Relations: The second vertex of the positioning triangle 6. Supporting the Positioning in Public Relations: Storyline, the third vertex of the positioning triangle Part 3: Applying Positioning Theory to Public Relations Research and Practice 7. Analyzing Positioning Strategies in Public Relations 8. A Detailed Study of a Positioning Strategy: Indonesia, ‘good friend’ of Australia 9. Utilizing the Framework for Intentional Positioning in Designing Public Relations Strategies: Positioning extreme poverty 10. Future Directions for Positioning Theory in Public Relations

In today's aggressive marketplace, listed companies can no longer rely on their numbers to do the talking. If companies can't communicate their achievements and strategy, mounting research evidence suggests, they will be overlooked, their cost of capital will increase and stock price will suffer. In Strategic Financial and Investor Communication: the stock price story Ian Westbrook, principal of Australia's leading independent financial communications firm, argues just this: stock price is more a story than a number. Moreover, the book will teach you how to tell your own story by guiding you through the fast-paced world of financial corporate communication with a professional's pragmatism as well as academic rigour. Whether you're a student or a professional of PR, investor relations or corporate communications, this much-needed guide will teach you how to tell a compelling story about your company that the stockbroker, fund manager and corporate media cannot ignore.

Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observations about American public relations history icon P. T. Barnum, whose life and work touched on many of the themes presented here, also are included as thematic bookends. As such, this study cuts a narrow channel through a wide swath of literature and a broad sweep of historical time, from the mid-eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, to examine the deeper and deliberate strategies for effecting change, for persuading a community of adherents or opponents, or even a single soul to embrace that which an advocate intentionally presented in a particular way for a specific outcome-prescriptions, as it turned out, not only for religious conversion but also for public relations initiatives.

Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence, resulting in an overemphasis on practice, frequently couched within an American historical context. This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for understanding public relations history, investigating broad, conceptual questions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field within different cultures and countries at different times in history. With its unique cultural and contextual emphasis, Pathways to Public Relations shifts the paradigm of public relations history away from traditional methodologies and assumptions, and provides a new and unique entry point into this complicated arena.

This textbook provides an overview of the core concepts, theories and methods in strategic communication, using examples from research and experiences from practice.

Strategic Communication begins by explaining the fundamental concepts related to communication, organizations and strategy, and then explores the communication processes within leadership, reputation, crisis and change. The authors work to present a framework for the future, underpinned by the concept of Communicative Organizations. The content of this 2nd edition has been fully updated to incorporate the latest research and practice examples, including a new chapter on ‘The Future of Strategic Communication’. The new edition also features enhanced pedagogical features to aid learning, such as key takeaways, and new international case studies and examples throughout.

After reading the book the student or reader will be able to define and reflect upon strategic communication as an academic field and professional practice, describe relevant theories and apply these to communication problems. It is primarily aimed towards Undergraduate students studying Strategic Communication, Corporate Communications, Public Relations and Marketing, as well as reflective practitioners looking to gain a more thorough and applied introduction to the field.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I. Fundamentals

Chapter 1. What is communication?

Chapter 2. What is strategy?

Chapter 3. What is strategic communication?

Part II. Communication Processes and Organizations

Chapter 4. Strategic communication in Society and Market Places

Chapter 5. Organizational identity and culture

Chapter 6. Change and crisis communication

Chapter 7. Mediatization

Part III. Future Developments

Chapter 8. The Future of Strategic Communication – Communication Value and the Communicative Organization