Public relations is a complex field, not only because it demands the mastery of a diversity of skills, but also because it requires a considerable amount of brainpower for problem solving, counseling, planning and creativity in approaching situations. Adding to the mental stimulation is the high competition in public relations, which is usually matched by corresponding high paybacks. The profession takes a specific type of person who can campaign, plan or appeal effectively to an organisation’s publics. This is because there is nothing more indivisible in an organisation than its reputation and the cordial climate in which it operates. Therefore, it is imperative that an institution’s public relations is unified as the antenna, the conscience and voice of the whole establishment.
Additionally, public relations helps to develop an outward-looking managerial philosophy which should be translated into actions that prove the organisation’s concern to the public interest. This can be accomplished by listening and responding to the public needs effectively. It entails working to interpret the needs of the public to the organisation and plan responsive actions by the institution in relation to those needs. Listening and responding effectively go together, and when they do, the conscience of management takes a new perspective as inconsistent institutional policies cannot be made effective by any public relations effort.
Based on the above arguments, the core thesis of this essay is to compare and contrast public relations in business, non-profit organisations and in government, bearing in mind the principles and theories of the profession’s practice. Furthermore, the question on which one adheres more to the principles and ethics of the profession will be expounded on. The essay will be logically divided into three parts, the first consisting of definitions of key terms. The second part will be the main body, while the last will be the conclusion. Only few similarities and differences in business, government and non-profit organisations public relations will be expounded on in this essay as they are too numerous to exhaust.
Public relations is a multidimensional concept without a universally agreed definition to it. William (1963: 987) for example, defines it as activities and policies devoted to build public interest in an idea, person, product, institution or business establishment, with the ultimate goal of creating an advantageous “image” for any kind of an establishment in order to enhance good public will in the most favourable light. The focal point of the profession is to help entities develop a mutually satisfactory two-way communication system which helps them win the cooperation of the groups of people they are dealing with at different levels by taking their interests on board. This can be accomplished by listening and responding to those interests effectively.
Principally, public relations is a public service oriented profession, with public interest (not personal remunerations), as the primary consideration in its practice. This principal is supposed to be universal to the profession, in whatever atmosphere it is being practiced, be it in business, government or non-profit institution. This also can be a truism under democratic governments, where those who govern are chosen by the people as their representatives in decision making and formulation of laws that protect electorates’ interests and needs. According to www.wadsworth.com, “governments today, (unlike dictatorships and monarchs) are generally expected to provide various welfare services to the public, which give the public relations personnel very challenging duties of explaining new policies, conducting campaigns for set goals, attend to gen
der issues, human rights, youth empowerment, sensitisation of the public on safety, interpretation of national public opinion to assist in domestic policy formulation, defending controversial expenditures of tax payers’ money, among others.” This means governments take on board interests of different publics they deal with, like the ordinary people, tax payers’ who contribute to governance financially, opposition political parties, and even interest of the governors, among others.
This is because government touches every aspect of society and virtually every part of government is closely tied to and reliant upon public relations. The purpose of democracy itself closely matches the purpose of public relations as the philosophy promotes public service or rule of the people, by the people or representative leadership. Therefore, government public relations personnel commonly known as public information officers must help government officials undertake programmes that address public needs with the urgency they require in order to gain public good will and confidence. All institutions strive to attain this. They employ different public relations techniques that they aim to get credit for. They all communicate their policies and acts to people’s needs so that people understand and appreciate what an institution is doing for their welfare.
Businesses have collapsed, governments have fallen and non-profit organisations have folded, because of poor or lack of public support. Thus, all institutions have realised the role of public relations for their survival. They therefore explain and justify their actions in the best way possible to the public so that the public knows what the entities are doing to satisfy their (people) interest.
Image building is another aspect that public relations has struggled to accomplish either in business, government or non-profit organisations. This involves presenting and building good will for the establishment by demonstrating to the public that the firm is an effective provider of goods or services, an equitable employer and or\ responsible community neighbour. The responsibility of the public relations people here is to tell the entity’s story well when controversy arises. According to Day (2000: 231), “public relations personnel have the duty to design policies and help management in administering various responsive programmes to public needs in relation to those needs’ scope and complexity in all spheres of their operations.” In short, they must initiate programmes that explain their establishment’s goals and objectives towards the welfare of all the publics the establishment is dealing with at different levels.
The most prominent ways in which public relations people accomplish image building or enhancement are through research, communication, publicity, planning and counseling. Research is used to increase understanding of the audience attitudes towards an organisation so that it can structure appropriate messages to address pertinent issues that can enhance relationships between the institution and its publics. It provides feedback since two-way communication is inevitable for the institution to make necessary adjustments to its policies and practices. For example, the government of Zambia wanted to put in place legislation that would regulate non-governmental organisations due to some observations from certain quarters of society on the organisations’ active participation in national matters, which was seen as one way of trying to control government. But after a strong resistance and criticisms from various publics, the decision was rescinded. Government tried to fine tune messages to the public to sugar coat the reasons for such a move, but the public never bent down.
Research generally helps in determining attitudes and behaviours of the public for ease planning of public relations strategies for persuading publics and influences them in order to generate mutual understanding. Non-profit organisations often use research to ascertain acceptability of their programmes or services by the public. Different methods are used in ascertaining people’s attitude towards an establishment’s policies or practices. They can be formal or informal. Many of them use suggestion boxes or open letters to the organisation by the public.
According to Young (1996: 124), “there can be no public relations without communication because surveillance of the ‘market’ and what it offers through feedback will not be accomplished as ascertaining public attitude will be impossible.” Every public relations person looks at the best way of reaching their organisation’s publics with information well tailored to meet their concerns. These professions seek to gain public acceptance of their institutions. As information managers, public relations people use communication to inform, persuade, and building mutual relations between an establishment and is publics. The messages are thus designed in a way that they appeal to people’s tastes and needs in the best way possible.
It is further argued that in government-as in any other organisation-public relations is a management function that helps to define objectives and philosophies while also helps the organisation adapt to the demand of its constituencies and environment. Public relations practitioners whether referred to as public information officers, press secretaries or just plain administrative aides, still communicate with all relevant internal and external publics to make organisational goals and societal expectations consistent. Public relations people in all sectors develop, execute and evaluate programmes that promote the exchange of influential ideas and understanding an organisation’s constituent parts and publics.
In addition, planning in any kind of public relations is said to be essential not only to know where the message or campaign is headed, but also to win top management support. For example, as governments become more complex and everywhere, the challenge of maintaining citizen involvement in national matters and ensuring that governments are responsive to societal needs become more difficult. In such instances, there is need to employ public relations techniques in convincing citizens to have confident in their leaders and understand that government is committed to meet their concerns. In the process of planning, the organisation’s objectives and goals, among other aspects are considered. The broad environment in which an establishment operates dictates its overall objectives, which in turn dictate specific public relations objectives and strategies. This requires quick thinking and creativity to achieve recognition by the public that the institution is doing something concerning their welfare.
Planning is cardinal for the success of any programme. Therefore, public relations people in any setting should specify a series of things to be done and how they will be done. Planning starts with acquiring background information to the problem or issue, and then make an outline of strategies to tackle it. For instance, in ascertaining economic activities in Zambia, especially the level of local people’s participation in these activities, the problems they face among other concerns, the country embarked on an economic census. It is expected that a plan of action will thus be taken to empower local people in one way or the other after identifying how they are fairing. This gives people the view that their government cares about their well being, and they are likely to support it in different ways when need arises.
The plan is implemented after doing all the house work. Public relations tactics are often used here to convince the public that the plan of action is meant to benefit them. Organisations often claim credit for their public welfare concern and for their ability to keep a finger on the pulse of what they promise to do for their community neighbour, (ibid: 126). Success of the plan is known by evaluation.
Counseling is the other pertinent aspect of public relations in any institution. It is argued that public relations is the ear and conscious of any institution, with one foot in the institution and the other outside. Its practitioners therefore dart ahead of other professionals, survey the public attitudes, tastes, needs and the like, and then provide advice to management concerning an entity’s policies, relationships with the publics and effective communication (op.city: 127-8). Through counseling, public relations people advise management and other key publics on the importance of maintaining a good relationship for mutual benefits of co-existing.
The other aspect of public relations in all organisations or establishments is achieving visibility through publicity. Although it is argued that performance should precede publicity, many institutions use a lot of marketing strategies to present a positive image of their entity before the public in order to gain good will. Good publicity can be earned by doing right things to the community the institution serves. It also involves using appropriate medium and having positive media relations to gain it. Planned messages should therefore be disseminated through the right selected media in order to further an entity’s interests. Good public relations is vital in the achievement of good publicity.
However, regardless of many similarities which exist in public relations in business, non-profit organisations and government, the way the profession is practiced differs in one or the other. According to Cutlip at el (2000: 457), “the main objective of employing public relations in profit making organisations is to gain public acceptance which might reciprocate in increased profitability of the organisation’s activities as people tend to buy more of a company’s product when they accept its policies and practices.” This is slightly different from the core objective of engaging public relations strategies in government and non-profit organisations. Under the auspices of government and non-profit organisations, the main motive of employing public relations in whatever form is to gain public acceptance of their public service missions and objectives. A variety of challenges face these institutions in public service, such as high demand for the services (like medical or education services), high costs and even access to these services by the least advantaged members of society; some of which providers face surmounting criticism and pressure. Therefore, public relations is often called upon to provide positioning statements and respond to critics. In short, government and non-profit organisations are mainly in public service, while the businesses are after increasing their profitability.
The other difference between businesses and government and non-profit organisations is on what happens to monies that are not spent on overhead and operating expenses. In a business, this money is called ‘profit,’ and it is distributed on a proportional basis to those who own the company. Thus, someone who owns more shares of the company gets more from that profit than those with less. However, when it comes to a non-profit organisation or government, the excess monies are called ‘surplus’ and they are often re-invested in the organisation or government sectors to strengthen and expand the scope of their objectives and goals. Governments strive to attain equity on the provision of services to the public regardless of how much they contributed to the country’s tax base. Non-profit organisations equally aim at supplementing governments in the provision of the much needed services by the public on an equitable basis. But this is not the case when it comes to businesses. Therefore, the kind of public relations employed by these institutions should reciprocate into the achievement of the mission of the entity’s establishment.
Additionally, businesses employ public relations strategies for the ultimate benefit of increasing returns for the owners of the money that have been injected in the running of such businesses. According to Lucas (2001: 89), “business organisations use public relations to create a favourable image that would in return result in increased buying of their products or services in order to make more money for the owners of the businesses, as a way of financially rewarding them for their investment in the company or organisation.” On the other hand, a non-profit organisation focuses on fulfilling an educational or charitable mission, with recognition that all organisations must maintain positive bottom lines to exist. The same philosophy applies in governments as they aim at meeting their ordained functions vested on them by the public. Governments that have failed to live to the public’s expectations have fallen, as the people rose against them. The best example is the assignation of President Mobutu Tsetseko of Zaire (by then) due to the failure of his administration to provide basic needs to the public. It lost public trust.
Furthermore, non-profit organisations especially social welfare agencies and governments often rely on inexperienced public relations practitioners or even unprofessional volunteers or appointees to conduct their public relations programmes. They often argue that they do not have resources to engage the depth of public relations expertise necessary to mount sophisticated public relations or marketing efforts. But when it comes to business, public relations practitioners are employed and maintained in the organisation on the basis on their performance. The practitioners are research based strategic planners with considerably higher funding and support from management.
Government public relations is said to be coupled with propaganda in different faces as a way of winning public support especially during crises rather than performance. The public is sometimes given misleading information as a way of cushion hostility. For example, church leaders are sometimes used as a device to achieve credibility on policies or decisions that society does not promote. Other strategies which present the decision or idea as having “overwhelming support” are used to gain public support. The public often does not get the concealed truth in whichever way because governments use laws like State Security laws as a way of shutting the media and the public up on issues that may need urgent attention. For example, President Mwanawasa once warned those who were daring the National Constitution Conference (NCC) that they risked committing a treasonable case whose penalty was either death or life imprisonment. Many people thus conceded with the NCC idea as a mode of enacting the new constitution in fear of the ‘law.’ Bribery of opinion leaders is also used sometimes to win public support.
But when it comes to businesses and non-profit organisations, state inquiries through state agencies are in most cases used to get the truth, and when organisations are found faulting, they are penalized in one way or the other. In turn, customers may shun such institutions’ products or services. That means those who entrusted their capital in such ventures lose their money. As a result, open communication to a large extent characterises the business fraternity and non-profit organisations.
Government public relations professionals also face more hostility and suspicion than do other practitioners, which stem from the continuing struggle between the press fighting for the ‘right of the people to know’ and officials of government who insist upon discretion of certain sensitive areas of the public sphere. In addition, the hostility also stems from protests by industries, institutions and other vested interests when threatened by proposed legislation or government regulation. According to Bjornland (1993: 234), “government public relations is the most frustrating profession as practitioners are often dealing with an apathetic and poorly educated citizenry who do not understand the issue, the problem or the reasons behinds unpopular decision.” Worse still, this is often coupled with the popular perception of government as a gridlock, a maze of red tape, full of special interests, corruption, ineptitude and partisan politics. This is not the case to practitioners in non-profit organisations and business fraternity where the administration is considerably small and less bureaucratic.
Taking the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) code of conduct as a measure of levels of adherence to the public relations principles and ethics by business, government and non-profit organisation public relations, the business fraternity to a large extent adheres more to the public relations principles and ethics than the rest. According to the PRSA code of conduct, public relations practitioners should base their professional principles and ethics on the fundamental value and dignity of an individual and serving the interests of the clients, employers and other publics. They must be dedicated to the goals of better communication, understanding and cooperation among the diverse individual groups and institutions of society and conduct themselves professionally with the truth, accuracy, fairness and responsibility to their publics.
In line with the guidelines above among others, the efforts of public relations in business are often designed to improve public attitude towards the business. According to Hayden (1975: 14-18), “to operate effectively in business, public relations professionals must be aware of the principles and practices in the profession thoroughly, understand the communication process, importance of research, instincts of planning and implementation of the plan, and even the profession’s publics.” To accomplish this, public relations in business has been characterised by a high professional management level in an organisation which follows a research based strategic planning system with considerable funding and management support and outside consultancy when need arises. Such result oriented public relations does not take root in most non-profit organisations and governments for various reasons among them lack of funds.
Public relations practitioners in business are compelled to follow prescribed professional codes of conduct as businesses often operate under the surveillance of government agencies and other organisations concerned with consumer interests. These regulations are somehow relaxed when it comes to non-profit organisations as they are considered ‘good guys of society’ because they are perceived to be more concerned with the welfare of the people. For example, there are those non-profit organisations that supplement government efforts in areas of education or health, which many governments are striving to address due to the high demand by the public for those services. People exalt such organisations, for example, community schools run by churches and other organisations in Zambia, which target low income populations.
Contrary, business public relations practitioners must aim at enhancing their organisation’s credibility by building a firm foundation of honest performance, open communication, remove inconsistencies between performance and communication, commitment to problem solving and avoidance of creating expectations that cannot be met. According to www.wadsworth.com, “many non-profit organisations have taken advantage of relaxed government regulations on their operations in essence of ‘supplementing’ government efforts in improving standards of living of the people; and have ventured into buying debts on the secondary global market at a discount in line with Debt Swaps arrangements and later demand high pay from debtors without repercussions.” A recent example could be the case of Zambia over the voucher fund, where Donegal International bought Zambia’s US$2.3 million debt in the 1970s at US$200 thousand in pretence that the organisation had citizen empowerment programmes to carry out in the country using the price differential, but later demanded for US$15 million from the Zambian government. The organisation was not scrunitised or monitored to ensure that its claims were met. But when it comes to businesses, they are always under the ‘camera’ thus the public relations practiced under them is more sensitive to the environments the entities operate under.
Although there are no universally agreed upon principles or ethical codes of conduct in public relations being that what could be ethically right to someone may not be with the other, there is need to strike a considerable balance of interests of an organisation’s publics. This is because every profession must operate under some professional codes of conduct which separate it from other occupations. To this effect, the PRSA have clauses that oblige public relations practitioners to conduct their professional life in accordance to public interest and should exercise high standards of honesty and integrity and to deal fairly with the public. (But the practice differs due to certain advantages other entities enjoy.) To businesses, all publics counts as money for their sustenance comes from people, whom without they cannot survive. This is slightly different in case of non-profit organisations or governments whose funding is often from abroad or from tax payers’ who are obliged to pay tax by law.
Equally, when it comes to government, there are a lot of laws that are used to protect the leadership from being ousted for failure to meet public demands. For example, in Zambia, no one can sue the state for failure to meet their social and economic rights like education. The state is protected by law. It is on this basis that some scholars have argued that government public relations is more of propaganda and waste of public funds. For instances, in the United States, there is a law which allows certain things to remain secrets for twenty years even when what has happened is worthy the removal of the government in power. Governments are in such cases painted in the favourable light they do not deserve merely to hold on to power.
In conclusion, public relations’ major responsibility in all institutions is to present those institutions in the most favourable light that ‘meets’ diverse publics’ interests. But due to variations in environments of operation, there have been differences in carrying out these responsibilities. This has been worsened by the fact that there are no universally agreed upon principles or ethics under which all public relations practitioners should operate under. What could be ethically right to one practitioner may be wrong to the other based on the differences in ideological alignments, beliefs, attitudes and or\ commitment to professional code of conduct and personal values among other elicits of human or professional preferences. This indicates that the complex aspects of institutions public relations practitioners work for and intellectual honesty and integrity in all features of public relations requires proper understanding of the professional principles and ethics and how an individual practitioner is expected to conduct oneself by the public they serve in order to improve on the professional efficacy. It is therefore the duty of public relations practitioners to safeguard diligently their profession, the image of their institutions and interests of their publics on a balanced scale.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bjornland L. (1993), PR Case Studies Book: 100 PR Case Studies. Gale Research Centre. New York.
Cutlip at el (2000), Effective PR (8th Ed). Delhi: Pearson Education Inc.
Day A. (2000), Ethics in Media Communication: Cases and Controversies (3rd Ed). Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.
Hayden R. (1975), The Reality of PR. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Inc.
Lucas S.E. (2001), The Art of Public Speaking (7th Ed). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Young D. (1996), Building your Company’s Good Will. New York: AMA Press.
William B. (1963), The Columbia Encyclopedia (3rd Ed). New York: Columbia University Press.
www.wadswrth.com
Additionally, public relations helps to develop an outward-looking managerial philosophy which should be translated into actions that prove the organisation’s concern to the public interest. This can be accomplished by listening and responding to the public needs effectively. It entails working to interpret the needs of the public to the organisation and plan responsive actions by the institution in relation to those needs. Listening and responding effectively go together, and when they do, the conscience of management takes a new perspective as inconsistent institutional policies cannot be made effective by any public relations effort.
Based on the above arguments, the core thesis of this essay is to compare and contrast public relations in business, non-profit organisations and in government, bearing in mind the principles and theories of the profession’s practice. Furthermore, the question on which one adheres more to the principles and ethics of the profession will be expounded on. The essay will be logically divided into three parts, the first consisting of definitions of key terms. The second part will be the main body, while the last will be the conclusion. Only few similarities and differences in business, government and non-profit organisations public relations will be expounded on in this essay as they are too numerous to exhaust.
Public relations is a multidimensional concept without a universally agreed definition to it. William (1963: 987) for example, defines it as activities and policies devoted to build public interest in an idea, person, product, institution or business establishment, with the ultimate goal of creating an advantageous “image” for any kind of an establishment in order to enhance good public will in the most favourable light. The focal point of the profession is to help entities develop a mutually satisfactory two-way communication system which helps them win the cooperation of the groups of people they are dealing with at different levels by taking their interests on board. This can be accomplished by listening and responding to those interests effectively.
Principally, public relations is a public service oriented profession, with public interest (not personal remunerations), as the primary consideration in its practice. This principal is supposed to be universal to the profession, in whatever atmosphere it is being practiced, be it in business, government or non-profit institution. This also can be a truism under democratic governments, where those who govern are chosen by the people as their representatives in decision making and formulation of laws that protect electorates’ interests and needs. According to www.wadsworth.com, “governments today, (unlike dictatorships and monarchs) are generally expected to provide various welfare services to the public, which give the public relations personnel very challenging duties of explaining new policies, conducting campaigns for set goals, attend to gen
der issues, human rights, youth empowerment, sensitisation of the public on safety, interpretation of national public opinion to assist in domestic policy formulation, defending controversial expenditures of tax payers’ money, among others.” This means governments take on board interests of different publics they deal with, like the ordinary people, tax payers’ who contribute to governance financially, opposition political parties, and even interest of the governors, among others.
This is because government touches every aspect of society and virtually every part of government is closely tied to and reliant upon public relations. The purpose of democracy itself closely matches the purpose of public relations as the philosophy promotes public service or rule of the people, by the people or representative leadership. Therefore, government public relations personnel commonly known as public information officers must help government officials undertake programmes that address public needs with the urgency they require in order to gain public good will and confidence. All institutions strive to attain this. They employ different public relations techniques that they aim to get credit for. They all communicate their policies and acts to people’s needs so that people understand and appreciate what an institution is doing for their welfare.
Businesses have collapsed, governments have fallen and non-profit organisations have folded, because of poor or lack of public support. Thus, all institutions have realised the role of public relations for their survival. They therefore explain and justify their actions in the best way possible to the public so that the public knows what the entities are doing to satisfy their (people) interest.
Image building is another aspect that public relations has struggled to accomplish either in business, government or non-profit organisations. This involves presenting and building good will for the establishment by demonstrating to the public that the firm is an effective provider of goods or services, an equitable employer and or\ responsible community neighbour. The responsibility of the public relations people here is to tell the entity’s story well when controversy arises. According to Day (2000: 231), “public relations personnel have the duty to design policies and help management in administering various responsive programmes to public needs in relation to those needs’ scope and complexity in all spheres of their operations.” In short, they must initiate programmes that explain their establishment’s goals and objectives towards the welfare of all the publics the establishment is dealing with at different levels.
The most prominent ways in which public relations people accomplish image building or enhancement are through research, communication, publicity, planning and counseling. Research is used to increase understanding of the audience attitudes towards an organisation so that it can structure appropriate messages to address pertinent issues that can enhance relationships between the institution and its publics. It provides feedback since two-way communication is inevitable for the institution to make necessary adjustments to its policies and practices. For example, the government of Zambia wanted to put in place legislation that would regulate non-governmental organisations due to some observations from certain quarters of society on the organisations’ active participation in national matters, which was seen as one way of trying to control government. But after a strong resistance and criticisms from various publics, the decision was rescinded. Government tried to fine tune messages to the public to sugar coat the reasons for such a move, but the public never bent down.
Research generally helps in determining attitudes and behaviours of the public for ease planning of public relations strategies for persuading publics and influences them in order to generate mutual understanding. Non-profit organisations often use research to ascertain acceptability of their programmes or services by the public. Different methods are used in ascertaining people’s attitude towards an establishment’s policies or practices. They can be formal or informal. Many of them use suggestion boxes or open letters to the organisation by the public.
According to Young (1996: 124), “there can be no public relations without communication because surveillance of the ‘market’ and what it offers through feedback will not be accomplished as ascertaining public attitude will be impossible.” Every public relations person looks at the best way of reaching their organisation’s publics with information well tailored to meet their concerns. These professions seek to gain public acceptance of their institutions. As information managers, public relations people use communication to inform, persuade, and building mutual relations between an establishment and is publics. The messages are thus designed in a way that they appeal to people’s tastes and needs in the best way possible.
It is further argued that in government-as in any other organisation-public relations is a management function that helps to define objectives and philosophies while also helps the organisation adapt to the demand of its constituencies and environment. Public relations practitioners whether referred to as public information officers, press secretaries or just plain administrative aides, still communicate with all relevant internal and external publics to make organisational goals and societal expectations consistent. Public relations people in all sectors develop, execute and evaluate programmes that promote the exchange of influential ideas and understanding an organisation’s constituent parts and publics.
In addition, planning in any kind of public relations is said to be essential not only to know where the message or campaign is headed, but also to win top management support. For example, as governments become more complex and everywhere, the challenge of maintaining citizen involvement in national matters and ensuring that governments are responsive to societal needs become more difficult. In such instances, there is need to employ public relations techniques in convincing citizens to have confident in their leaders and understand that government is committed to meet their concerns. In the process of planning, the organisation’s objectives and goals, among other aspects are considered. The broad environment in which an establishment operates dictates its overall objectives, which in turn dictate specific public relations objectives and strategies. This requires quick thinking and creativity to achieve recognition by the public that the institution is doing something concerning their welfare.
Planning is cardinal for the success of any programme. Therefore, public relations people in any setting should specify a series of things to be done and how they will be done. Planning starts with acquiring background information to the problem or issue, and then make an outline of strategies to tackle it. For instance, in ascertaining economic activities in Zambia, especially the level of local people’s participation in these activities, the problems they face among other concerns, the country embarked on an economic census. It is expected that a plan of action will thus be taken to empower local people in one way or the other after identifying how they are fairing. This gives people the view that their government cares about their well being, and they are likely to support it in different ways when need arises.
The plan is implemented after doing all the house work. Public relations tactics are often used here to convince the public that the plan of action is meant to benefit them. Organisations often claim credit for their public welfare concern and for their ability to keep a finger on the pulse of what they promise to do for their community neighbour, (ibid: 126). Success of the plan is known by evaluation.
Counseling is the other pertinent aspect of public relations in any institution. It is argued that public relations is the ear and conscious of any institution, with one foot in the institution and the other outside. Its practitioners therefore dart ahead of other professionals, survey the public attitudes, tastes, needs and the like, and then provide advice to management concerning an entity’s policies, relationships with the publics and effective communication (op.city: 127-8). Through counseling, public relations people advise management and other key publics on the importance of maintaining a good relationship for mutual benefits of co-existing.
The other aspect of public relations in all organisations or establishments is achieving visibility through publicity. Although it is argued that performance should precede publicity, many institutions use a lot of marketing strategies to present a positive image of their entity before the public in order to gain good will. Good publicity can be earned by doing right things to the community the institution serves. It also involves using appropriate medium and having positive media relations to gain it. Planned messages should therefore be disseminated through the right selected media in order to further an entity’s interests. Good public relations is vital in the achievement of good publicity.
However, regardless of many similarities which exist in public relations in business, non-profit organisations and government, the way the profession is practiced differs in one or the other. According to Cutlip at el (2000: 457), “the main objective of employing public relations in profit making organisations is to gain public acceptance which might reciprocate in increased profitability of the organisation’s activities as people tend to buy more of a company’s product when they accept its policies and practices.” This is slightly different from the core objective of engaging public relations strategies in government and non-profit organisations. Under the auspices of government and non-profit organisations, the main motive of employing public relations in whatever form is to gain public acceptance of their public service missions and objectives. A variety of challenges face these institutions in public service, such as high demand for the services (like medical or education services), high costs and even access to these services by the least advantaged members of society; some of which providers face surmounting criticism and pressure. Therefore, public relations is often called upon to provide positioning statements and respond to critics. In short, government and non-profit organisations are mainly in public service, while the businesses are after increasing their profitability.
The other difference between businesses and government and non-profit organisations is on what happens to monies that are not spent on overhead and operating expenses. In a business, this money is called ‘profit,’ and it is distributed on a proportional basis to those who own the company. Thus, someone who owns more shares of the company gets more from that profit than those with less. However, when it comes to a non-profit organisation or government, the excess monies are called ‘surplus’ and they are often re-invested in the organisation or government sectors to strengthen and expand the scope of their objectives and goals. Governments strive to attain equity on the provision of services to the public regardless of how much they contributed to the country’s tax base. Non-profit organisations equally aim at supplementing governments in the provision of the much needed services by the public on an equitable basis. But this is not the case when it comes to businesses. Therefore, the kind of public relations employed by these institutions should reciprocate into the achievement of the mission of the entity’s establishment.
Additionally, businesses employ public relations strategies for the ultimate benefit of increasing returns for the owners of the money that have been injected in the running of such businesses. According to Lucas (2001: 89), “business organisations use public relations to create a favourable image that would in return result in increased buying of their products or services in order to make more money for the owners of the businesses, as a way of financially rewarding them for their investment in the company or organisation.” On the other hand, a non-profit organisation focuses on fulfilling an educational or charitable mission, with recognition that all organisations must maintain positive bottom lines to exist. The same philosophy applies in governments as they aim at meeting their ordained functions vested on them by the public. Governments that have failed to live to the public’s expectations have fallen, as the people rose against them. The best example is the assignation of President Mobutu Tsetseko of Zaire (by then) due to the failure of his administration to provide basic needs to the public. It lost public trust.
Furthermore, non-profit organisations especially social welfare agencies and governments often rely on inexperienced public relations practitioners or even unprofessional volunteers or appointees to conduct their public relations programmes. They often argue that they do not have resources to engage the depth of public relations expertise necessary to mount sophisticated public relations or marketing efforts. But when it comes to business, public relations practitioners are employed and maintained in the organisation on the basis on their performance. The practitioners are research based strategic planners with considerably higher funding and support from management.
Government public relations is said to be coupled with propaganda in different faces as a way of winning public support especially during crises rather than performance. The public is sometimes given misleading information as a way of cushion hostility. For example, church leaders are sometimes used as a device to achieve credibility on policies or decisions that society does not promote. Other strategies which present the decision or idea as having “overwhelming support” are used to gain public support. The public often does not get the concealed truth in whichever way because governments use laws like State Security laws as a way of shutting the media and the public up on issues that may need urgent attention. For example, President Mwanawasa once warned those who were daring the National Constitution Conference (NCC) that they risked committing a treasonable case whose penalty was either death or life imprisonment. Many people thus conceded with the NCC idea as a mode of enacting the new constitution in fear of the ‘law.’ Bribery of opinion leaders is also used sometimes to win public support.
But when it comes to businesses and non-profit organisations, state inquiries through state agencies are in most cases used to get the truth, and when organisations are found faulting, they are penalized in one way or the other. In turn, customers may shun such institutions’ products or services. That means those who entrusted their capital in such ventures lose their money. As a result, open communication to a large extent characterises the business fraternity and non-profit organisations.
Government public relations professionals also face more hostility and suspicion than do other practitioners, which stem from the continuing struggle between the press fighting for the ‘right of the people to know’ and officials of government who insist upon discretion of certain sensitive areas of the public sphere. In addition, the hostility also stems from protests by industries, institutions and other vested interests when threatened by proposed legislation or government regulation. According to Bjornland (1993: 234), “government public relations is the most frustrating profession as practitioners are often dealing with an apathetic and poorly educated citizenry who do not understand the issue, the problem or the reasons behinds unpopular decision.” Worse still, this is often coupled with the popular perception of government as a gridlock, a maze of red tape, full of special interests, corruption, ineptitude and partisan politics. This is not the case to practitioners in non-profit organisations and business fraternity where the administration is considerably small and less bureaucratic.
Taking the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) code of conduct as a measure of levels of adherence to the public relations principles and ethics by business, government and non-profit organisation public relations, the business fraternity to a large extent adheres more to the public relations principles and ethics than the rest. According to the PRSA code of conduct, public relations practitioners should base their professional principles and ethics on the fundamental value and dignity of an individual and serving the interests of the clients, employers and other publics. They must be dedicated to the goals of better communication, understanding and cooperation among the diverse individual groups and institutions of society and conduct themselves professionally with the truth, accuracy, fairness and responsibility to their publics.
In line with the guidelines above among others, the efforts of public relations in business are often designed to improve public attitude towards the business. According to Hayden (1975: 14-18), “to operate effectively in business, public relations professionals must be aware of the principles and practices in the profession thoroughly, understand the communication process, importance of research, instincts of planning and implementation of the plan, and even the profession’s publics.” To accomplish this, public relations in business has been characterised by a high professional management level in an organisation which follows a research based strategic planning system with considerable funding and management support and outside consultancy when need arises. Such result oriented public relations does not take root in most non-profit organisations and governments for various reasons among them lack of funds.
Public relations practitioners in business are compelled to follow prescribed professional codes of conduct as businesses often operate under the surveillance of government agencies and other organisations concerned with consumer interests. These regulations are somehow relaxed when it comes to non-profit organisations as they are considered ‘good guys of society’ because they are perceived to be more concerned with the welfare of the people. For example, there are those non-profit organisations that supplement government efforts in areas of education or health, which many governments are striving to address due to the high demand by the public for those services. People exalt such organisations, for example, community schools run by churches and other organisations in Zambia, which target low income populations.
Contrary, business public relations practitioners must aim at enhancing their organisation’s credibility by building a firm foundation of honest performance, open communication, remove inconsistencies between performance and communication, commitment to problem solving and avoidance of creating expectations that cannot be met. According to www.wadsworth.com, “many non-profit organisations have taken advantage of relaxed government regulations on their operations in essence of ‘supplementing’ government efforts in improving standards of living of the people; and have ventured into buying debts on the secondary global market at a discount in line with Debt Swaps arrangements and later demand high pay from debtors without repercussions.” A recent example could be the case of Zambia over the voucher fund, where Donegal International bought Zambia’s US$2.3 million debt in the 1970s at US$200 thousand in pretence that the organisation had citizen empowerment programmes to carry out in the country using the price differential, but later demanded for US$15 million from the Zambian government. The organisation was not scrunitised or monitored to ensure that its claims were met. But when it comes to businesses, they are always under the ‘camera’ thus the public relations practiced under them is more sensitive to the environments the entities operate under.
Although there are no universally agreed upon principles or ethical codes of conduct in public relations being that what could be ethically right to someone may not be with the other, there is need to strike a considerable balance of interests of an organisation’s publics. This is because every profession must operate under some professional codes of conduct which separate it from other occupations. To this effect, the PRSA have clauses that oblige public relations practitioners to conduct their professional life in accordance to public interest and should exercise high standards of honesty and integrity and to deal fairly with the public. (But the practice differs due to certain advantages other entities enjoy.) To businesses, all publics counts as money for their sustenance comes from people, whom without they cannot survive. This is slightly different in case of non-profit organisations or governments whose funding is often from abroad or from tax payers’ who are obliged to pay tax by law.
Equally, when it comes to government, there are a lot of laws that are used to protect the leadership from being ousted for failure to meet public demands. For example, in Zambia, no one can sue the state for failure to meet their social and economic rights like education. The state is protected by law. It is on this basis that some scholars have argued that government public relations is more of propaganda and waste of public funds. For instances, in the United States, there is a law which allows certain things to remain secrets for twenty years even when what has happened is worthy the removal of the government in power. Governments are in such cases painted in the favourable light they do not deserve merely to hold on to power.
In conclusion, public relations’ major responsibility in all institutions is to present those institutions in the most favourable light that ‘meets’ diverse publics’ interests. But due to variations in environments of operation, there have been differences in carrying out these responsibilities. This has been worsened by the fact that there are no universally agreed upon principles or ethics under which all public relations practitioners should operate under. What could be ethically right to one practitioner may be wrong to the other based on the differences in ideological alignments, beliefs, attitudes and or\ commitment to professional code of conduct and personal values among other elicits of human or professional preferences. This indicates that the complex aspects of institutions public relations practitioners work for and intellectual honesty and integrity in all features of public relations requires proper understanding of the professional principles and ethics and how an individual practitioner is expected to conduct oneself by the public they serve in order to improve on the professional efficacy. It is therefore the duty of public relations practitioners to safeguard diligently their profession, the image of their institutions and interests of their publics on a balanced scale.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bjornland L. (1993), PR Case Studies Book: 100 PR Case Studies. Gale Research Centre. New York.
Cutlip at el (2000), Effective PR (8th Ed). Delhi: Pearson Education Inc.
Day A. (2000), Ethics in Media Communication: Cases and Controversies (3rd Ed). Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.
Hayden R. (1975), The Reality of PR. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Inc.
Lucas S.E. (2001), The Art of Public Speaking (7th Ed). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Young D. (1996), Building your Company’s Good Will. New York: AMA Press.
William B. (1963), The Columbia Encyclopedia (3rd Ed). New York: Columbia University Press.
www.wadswrth.com
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