Journal Review: 135120207121014

 International Public Relations: Critique and Reformulation

by Carl Botan

and

A Postmodern Critique of Public Relations Theory and Practice

by Derina Holtzhausen

Reviewed by I Made Alit Diatmika Putra

135120207121014

This paper is contained by the review of two journals in Public Relations. The first journal is titled “International Public Relations: Critique and Reformulation” written by Carl Botan. The second one is “A Postmodern Critique of Public Relations Theory and Practice” by Derina Holtzhausen. These journals both talk about their critique toward Public Relations phenomenon to give another perspectives to the Public Relations practitioners and academic.

The first journal talks about the comparison of approaches to public relations from around the world. On the first part of this journal Botan explain that there are two common models used for Public Relations in multinational corporations (MNC’s), ethnocentric and polycentric. In ethnocentric view believed that people functionally the same in everywhere so they naturally will respond the same stimuli in the same way. The second approach is Polycentric model which the Public Relations practioners of the host country exercise the high degree of autonomy. This models believed that what people do is based on experiences and contacts. This journal is using one of Grunig’s assumptions. The key assumption that can differ between cultures is whose interests public relations ought to serve.

There are several national and cultural differences between developed countries makes the study and practice of PR is somewhat different between them. However, these differences are small. Failure to recognize the fundamental differences in assumptions about public relations led to at least two dangers, in addition to the one that obviously reduces the opportunity to meet the ultimate objective of PR. First, it reduces the potential for using PR as a lens to better understand how organizations in other cultures use communication to adapt their relations with the relevant public. Secondly, it also reduces the potential for use of knowledge and practical experience of other cultures to inform our practice and understanding of public relations. It is to understand the role of assumptions are often not aware of both clients and practitioners are key to effective international public relations and ethical. To avoid the danger of narrow national or cultural assumptions about public relations first requires adopting practical definition is not tied to a set of assumptions, particularly the assumption that public relations is a management function. In this journal the writer uses the assumptions that the Public Relations’ function is ancient. This point of view gives at least two advantages. First, it is consistent with the proposition that Public Relations develop as an applied social science, Second, this definition is broad enough to allow make a meaningful comparison of the relationship between cultural communities who may use very different.

The level of national development means not only the level of economic development and competitiveness of the market, but the development of information infrastructure and the level of national unity as well. Differences in the level of national development are important because they affect the Public Relations who are called to serve and how. National development level also determines the amount and type of media resources are available for public relations, literacy rate, and whether there is a competitive economy that uses Public Relations.

In conclusion, the authors state that the international public relations also always intercultural public relations because the process is characterized in different countries with different mix of national development, major clients, legal / political, and historical context. Overcoming the ethnocentric assumptions built into many of our current scholarship and practice is the first step, and will require a conscious effort to see public relations in a different way than many of us in the developed countries in the past.

The second journal talks about the critique of PR theory and practice through postmodern perspective. At the beginning she starts with the difference between critic and postmodern approach. Critical approach is focused on the practice of Public Relations in the context of a modernist approach to the theory and practice of public relations. From the perspective of public relations Marxists found to dominate the policy debate through its ability to mobilize resources on behalf of a strong policy actor. Critical theory, in contrast to postmodernism, wants to maintain some boundaries between disciplines and refused to separate between modernity and post-modernity, which postmodernists is called as a rupture. Postmodernism focuses on the role play of language in social construction, so that the existence of various forms of domination, particularly through knowledge and power. As a result, postmodernists reject rationalism supporting diversity, fragmentation and plurality. The approach used in this article is a combination of the two approaches, postmodern epistemology and critical postmodernism.

On the next part the writer explains about Public Relations as a strategic management function. he mentions that while the Public Relations scholars focused on building community relations as a legitimate discipline in the business, with the end of the 1980's a school of thought within the organization and organizational communication theory have begun to emerge that challenges the dominant concept, which is called as a functionalist. Postmodern philosophers do not believe in a rational subject (critical approach) who can objectively observe himself or his environment and strategically directed to the desired results. From a postmodern perspective, all strategies are futile exercise and nothing but personal plans on how to proceed in a certain organizational function. They are not rational and do not represent the viewpoint of the organization. However, postmodernism does not provide an alternative perspective to planning rather than pursuing a rational strategy by manager.

Postmodernism is not opposed to the concept of management but managerialism, which is not only an abstract shift control, but more importantly the development of new logic and the daily practice of the company, which interprets the manager as a kind of subject, from an empirical individuals who hold management positions. Public Relations postmodern thus becomes a process that legitimizes various forms and heterogeneous meaning and understanding, not a modernist approach based on consensus determined by the most powerful. If Public Relations practitioners do not see their role as an active process that encourages the view that different and opposite, Public Relations agencies will be used to facilitate control of the organization and to drive innovation and change for the benefit of management.

Public Relations experiencing a crisis of representation. Postmodernism generally highlights the role of signs and symbols in society, and interpret signs and symbols such as cultural artifacts with the tone of politics, ideology and social different. Public Relations practitioners actively forming new ideologies and create hyperrealities people they represent.

Bibliography

Botan, C. (1992). Critique and Reformulation. International Public Relations(18(2)), 149-159.

Holtzhausen, D. (2002). A postmodern critique of public relations theory and practice”. 28:1, 29-38.