The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management: Challenges for the Next Generation

Citation

Timothy Coombs, W. (2009), "The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management: Challenges for the Next Generation", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 381-383. https://doi.org/10.1108/13632540911004641

This review is complicated by the fact that the volume is both a tribute to the Excellence Study and the two researchers behind it, James and Larissa Grunig, and a collection of research essays designed to address the future of research in public relations. Any reader must be sensitive to both goals when considering the value of this work. The key is whether or not the tribute precludes a meaningful attempt address the future.

 The main concern, as I see it, is whether excellence becomes a box or a stepping stone. Is excellence a box within which public relations research must transpire and be interpreted? Or is excellence a stepping stone to integrate new ideas and perspectives into public relations research? Boxes constrain thought and retard a field's development. Stepping stones provide an opportunity to reach for new ideas and insights. These two options were inspired by McKie's (2001) eloquent argument, in the Handbook of Public Relations, against theoretical isolationism and the danger of failing to reach outside of public relations for new insights and theories. This review will consider the efforts to use stepping stones and problems with boxes.

On the whole, the 27 chapters serve more as stepping stones than as boxes. Most of the chapters use Excellence as a starting point and build upon it. Other theories or concepts are added to the intellectual mix and often form the true focal point of a chapter. Excellence starts the discussions but they end in very different yet related literatures. Examples of extensions to other literatures include stakeholder theory (chapter 2), advocacy (chapter 3), social network analysis (chapter 4), mediation and organisation communication (chapter 5), complexity theories (chapter 7), scenario building (chapter 9), critical and postmodern theories (chapters 10, 17 and 19), integrated communication and marketing (chapter 15), and diversity (chapter 18). Ideas from the Excellence writings are used as stepping stones to discuss various topics in more detail and to apply other theories or principles to explaining the topics. The stepping stone approach serves both goals of the volume well.

It is helpful to move beyond this list and highlight interesting aspects from some of the chapters. Heath's chapter 3 presents a detailed discussion of advocacy. This often misunderstand topic is given full exploration including its role in dialogue and value to public relations. Murphy's chapter 7 demonstrates how complexity theories and excellence are complementary rather than oppositional. She ends by noting how excellence now accepts a contingent view of public relations rather than featuring the “one way” to practice public relations. Sung's chapter 9 provides a step‐by‐step guide to the scenario building process and its utility to public relations. Scenario building is used in other disciplines to it is helpful to understand its potential application to public relations. Finally, Sha and Ford's chapter 18 explores diversity through the lens of requisite variety. Their work notes the benefits derived through diversity and the value it can bring to public relations.

Bowen's chapter 14 on ethics and Hung's chapter 21 on cultivating relationships are the chapters that most effectively weave excellence throughout the chapter. Excellence's role in the two topics is consistently intermixed with other perspectives to build insight into ethics and relationship cultivation. Bowen weaves excellence into her discussion of various ethical topics including moral education, activists, and empowering the public relations function. Hung uses Excellence in her effort to develop a system for understanding relationship cultivation and management.

I felt only chapters 20 and 25 suffered from being in the box. Hagan's chapter 20 is about crisis management and that is a topic of great interest to me. Hagan's over dependence on excellence to explain crisis management seemed to me to do a disserve to the topic. The focus was far too narrow, meaning many interesting and useful ideas outside the excellence box were not in the chapter. This illustrates McKie's point of isolationism being problematic. Chapter 25 is an interesting exploration of global public relations. The results were viewed through excellence because that guided the data collection as well. Again, there were additional ideas that could have been used to help interpret the results and create a richer, more useful chapter to the reader. For instance, page 565 raises issues about activists and international public relations. There are some published works in public relations and activism that would have answered some of the questions posed on this page. Readers are not served well when questions for the future are posed that had already been answered.

The future themes (challenges) in the book are not specifically a function of Excellence research. Rather, I have identified emerging themes that should be addressed in future research. The dominant theme is culture. Discussions of culture and public relations can be found in chapters 12, 22, 23, 24, and 25. In chapter 23 a strong argument is made for the consideration of culture. Sriramesh, the author of chapter 23, reminds us that culture should already be more of a factor than it is in public relations research. He also warns against ethnocentrism and the need to understand public relations from the perspective of those in the country being studied. Trust is another factor that appears in a number of chapters, most noticeably in chapters 10 and 13. Trust is a variable with significant application to variety of public relations research. A final theme worth noting is empowerment found primarily in chapters 10 and 11. Empowerment is concerned with gaining power for public relations as a function/department. Empowerment raises the issue of power and chapter 17 emphasises how public relations can lend its power to activists (marginalized voices) by internal advocates for them. I would characterize the power discussion as sanitised. The mention of power is welcome but much more can be written on the problems and applications of power in public relations.

Of the series of books on excellence, I like this one the best. What makes it the most appealing is the variety of ideas in this volume that link to excellence as a stepping stone. The early works seemed designed to validate and to promote the excellence approach thereby creating a box. The authors in this volume seemed willing to move beyond just excellence. Some readers may feel there is still “too much excellence” in the book but you expect a heavy dose from the title. The Future illustrates how research can build from excellence when it is warranted as a stepping stone. Some research does not need to be grounded in excellence but this book is in part a tribute to excellence. So if you are looking for “excellence‐free” research you will not find it here. What you will find are some insightful chapters about how researchers can use excellence as a stepping to stone for building new approaches to examining public relations topics.