3rd Journal Review

by Inge Ade Zinnia

13512020712011

Excellence Theory in Public Relations: Past, Present, and Future

James E. Grunig & Larissa A. Grunig

This journal explains about the author’s journey to identify the definition of “excellence” due to the use of the term excellence often has been misunderstood or misinterpreted. In planning meeting between the author and the board members of the IABC Research Foundation in 1984 result that they had a similar purpose therefore they try to search for excellence in public relations and communication management. The author followed Peters and Waterman’s example of the best practice in their excellence study even though they had different definition of excellence. The author defined excellence as a set of characteristics of a public relations function that were correlated with organizational effectiveness by the organizational effectiveness means as occurring when an organization achieve goals chosen in consultation with stakeholders and by goals they mean goals that served the interests of both organization and strategic constituencies. Lastly, they defined excellence in public relations as a set of attributes and practices that helped to build quality, long-term relationships with strategic constituencies.

They chose the term excellence not because to suggest the superiority of their theory or its universal acceptance but rather because it was fashionable and it placed their research in the mainstream of management research.  In order to understand the excellence theory, it helps to place it into the research context that preceded it. In fact before the 1970s, few theories of public relations were found and went beyond the descriptions but nevertheless, those textbook descriptions provided a framework for their understanding of public relations that guided the research that preceded the excellence study as well as the excellence study itself.

In the 1960’s, the earlier researcher was guided by the descriptions of public relations practice and the normative prescriptions for improving. At that time, the public relations research were existed based on mass communication theories of media effects, attitude theories or highly practical research such as the characteristics of press releases that mostly used by the editors. In fact, most researcher did not try to explain or criticize the behavior of public relations practitioners. They just accept it as given and looked for ways to identify the effects of public relations work and to find ways to improve the effectiveness of public relations techniques.

People start asking what a public was or how the characteristics of an organization influenced how public relations practitioners behaved thus J. Grunig in 1966 began to construct the conceptualization that now he calls as the situational theory of publics. And mean time, they call the excellence theory as a theory of public relations as strategic management function because the excellence study established participation of public relations in strategic management as the critical component. Since then researcher continue to develop that theory of public relations as a strategic management function.

As  they believe the major ways of thinking about public relations both in practice and academic, they use two approaches to public relations which are symbolic interpretative paradigm and the strategic management or behavioral paradigm. the symbolic interpretative paradigm, it sees reality as subjective and views concepts such as organizations themselves, their environments and the behavior of managers as subjective enactments of reality rather than observable and measurable reality. In particular, they described strategic management in post modern terms. Thus they believe the excellence theory contains elements of both modernism and postmodernism but it is not possible to characterize the excellence theory in strategic management term as either a modernist or postmodernist approach to understanding public relations as a strategic management function.

Scholars and practitioners followed the symbolic paradigm generally assume that public relations strives to influence how publics interpret the organization. The interpretative can be found in the concepts of reputation management, integrated marketing communication but in contrast the behavioral paradigm focus on the participation of public relations executives in strategic decision-making to help manage the behavior of organizations.  

Here, Grunig & Grunig explain the characteristics of an excellent public relations function from the IABC excellence study which are (1) empowerment of the public relations function, (2)communicator roles, (3)organization of the communication function and its relationship to other management functions and (4) model of public relations. Uncertainty of the final excellence theory of public relations are however understood as a symbolic, interpretative, function rather than as a strategic management function. It is an understanding of the profession that we believe will reduce its effectiveness both for organizations and publics, and limits its acceptance by society. Future research should be developed to help public relations evolve and to make it clear for both side, as a strategic management function and continually re-institutionalize itself to adjust to change in organizations and other area. So, future of the excellence theory should be evolutionary change.