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All the indications are that public relations is being taken more and more seriously by senior managers in large and small organizations. The number of public relations’ professionals occupying board level positions is increasing, every FTSE company now has a public relations department and central government, post the Phillis Review of 2004, has invested heavily in training and development for civil servants who work in communication roles. Salaries for senior professionals are increasing and there are plenty of jobs for those who are able to operate comfortably and competently at C suite level. This book provides an overview of the strategic role that public relations can play.
It points to the main reasons why it should be regarded as a core function in the organization’s strategic armoury and how it fulfils that function. Dr Sandra Oliver explains how public relations can contribute to the fundamental systems in organizations and to support her arguments, provides an impressive raft of management theories that public relations draws on or relates to.
She goes on to demonstrate the central role of public relations in governance, reputation management, employee relations, sales and marketing and media relations. These are all aspects of organizational life that build the intangible asset base and make a critical contribution to overall prosperity and value – and that can be translated into hard cash. In a knowledge based economy, the intangible asset worth of a company is often of a much higher value than its tangible assets and the province of public relations is to nurture and promote these intangible assets logically, therefore. Dr Oliver also makes a valued contribution in explaining how public relations can be evaluated at a strategic level and its ethical dimensions. The book is not intended to provide a detailed account of how these contributions are operationalized, that is done in other books in this series, but the case studies included illustrate how public relations has made a significant difference in areas of strategic importance to companies. This book gives the ‘helicopter view’ of public relations and as such will help practitioners set their own work in the wider organizational context and provide a glimpse of what public relations can contribute at the strategic level.
Anne Gregory