There is an existential discussion going on over at PRConversations. A post by the eminent Toni Muzi Falconi asks the question, “What comes next after Grunig?” — Jim Grunig being the legendary PR pro and educator whose landmark research in the 1980s led to the Excellence Theory of public relations.
PR has long had a love-hate relationship with theories. One hallmark of a true profession is that it has a strong theoretical basis in academic circles. So, the lack of a theory of its own (as near as I can figure) has led to gnashing of teeth and some amount of inferiority fantasy in the academic community.
Many of the most studied theories — Community Theory, Rhetorical Theory, Framing Theory, Systems Theory — borrow heavily from other disciplines, most notably from the general communication studies field. Coupled with PR practitioner resistance to theory in general and the academy in part, scholars for a time were very quick to dismiss PR as a separate profession. They preferred to see it, instead, as a part of communication, journalism, or marketing, and thus not as serious as their intellectual fore-bearers.
Grunig, along with co-researchers David Dozier, William Ehling, Larissa Grunig, Fred Repper and Jon White, conducted a massive study funded by the IABC Foundation to answer the question of why public relations has value to an organization.
In itself, this research wasn’t geared to establish a theoretical foundation for the profession. Instead, it answered two main questions: “Why and to what extent [does] PR make an organization more effective, and how much is that contribution worth economically?” and, “What are the characteristics of a public relations function that are most likely to make an organization effective?”
It was the process of identifying the structural and behavioral aspects of PR departments that led to the idea that Excellence was a theory. In a nutshell, Excellence says that the PR team should be led by a manager who is in senior management, and its work should primarily rely on two-way, symmetrical communication.
It’s this contention that an increasing number of scholars are taking issue with. The foundation of our profession is persuasion (Bernays, Ivy Lee) and the use of language and discourse in service of that effort (Rhetorical Theory) — either one-way or two-way, but definitely asymmetrical.
I don’t pretend to be as schooled in these matters as some of the commenters at PR Conversations, but as an experienced practitioner who is now dabbling in the academe (adjunct prof at Kent State this fall), I’m intrigued by the intellectual exercise. One person says that such navel-gazing (my words) isn’t important — likening the discussion to a college student trying to examine new majors. But our profession can no longer get by with “trust me” as its operating theory. There are solid reasons why we do what we do and recommend what we recommend. The theoretical foundation for these efforts gives us credibility even if we never mention them to our employers or clients.
What is PR, and why is it important? That’s a question worth discussing.
