Review

Excellence Theory in Public Relations:
Past, Present, and Future
James E. Grunig & Larissa A. Grunig

By : Sausan Putri Pratiwi (135120207121013)

The excellence theory is a product of research by J.Grunig in 1960s and funded by Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation. Few years ago Peters and Waterman (1982) have issued a journal "In Search of Excellence" which is discuss about characteristics and best practice management in corporate. Grunig used this journal as the literature to develop Excellence theory in communication science.

Suman and Evatt (2010) said that “excellent public relations encourages public relations managers to scan the environment carefully and bring the diverse voices (even hostile ones) from the publics to the table of managerial decision making”. They choose excellent to their theory because Grunig and grunig (2008) argue  “we chose the term “excellence” not to suggest the superiority of our theory or its universal acceptance. Rather, we chose the term because it was fashionable; and it placed our research in the mainstream of management research”. J Grunig also used Cutlip and Center’s book as his literature to develop their research and found situational theory of publics.

It is very difficult to understand the excellence theory and its evolution into the strategic management paradigm in this article, because here the writer provides explanations are very complex. What can i get from this section is the approaches in public relations, there are the symbolic interpretive paradigm and the strategic management which form a public relations role as managerial roles like partner of management to make a policy  and technical roles like writing a company magazine.

The writer hope that there is further research that can develop theories of management strategies in public relations. I also totally agree, Many public relations practitioner positions still overlap with other departments. I think the explanation in this article is very detailed and complete, but as a student who is still dealing with the new international journal I find some difficulties to understand in some chapters.

References :

Grunig, J.E. & Grunig.L.A.(2008).Excellence Theory in Public Relations:Past, Present, and Future.In A.Zerfass.,B.Van Ruler.,K.Sriramesh(Eds.),Public relation research:European and international perspective and innovations (pp.327-347).Wiesbaden,Germany :VS Verlag

Lee,S.,&Evatt,D.(2005).An Empirical Comparison of the Predictors of Excellence in Public Relations.Corporate Reputation Review,8(1),31-43