Editorial

Citation

Pieczka, M. (2006), "Editorial", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 10 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcom.2006.30710daa.001

Editorial

This issue of the Journal of Communication Management is the first I have helped to produce and the first I have the pleasure of introducing as an editor. The job of writing this editorial would have been easier if my first issue were a special one, maybe themed, or devoted to presenting papers from a conference. After all, the journal has presented examples of both in the past and will do so again – inside you will find a call for papers for an issue devoted to internal communication, planned for next year. But this is not the case for this number. Yet there are perhaps some connections beneath its seemingly disparate material.

We have five articles in this issue covering a range of topics and theoretical interests. Shannon Bowen writes about professional autonomy in public relations with reference to the function's involvement in strategic management. This paper brings together theoretical insights from management theory, recent research in public relations unpacking the concept of the dominant coalition, and the concept of autonomy, both in the philosophical and sociological sense. Glenda Jacobs in her paper offers a detailed study of communication techniques and their effects on employees in a modern organization, that is one dependent on communication and IT technology for conducting its business, transferring the necessary skills, and making a company out of the virtual army of its remoter workers. Augustine Pang, Fritz Cropp and Glen T. Cameron investigate the politics of the crisis planning process using the contingency theory of conflict management. Anné Leonard and Anské Grobler explore the challenges posed to South African corporate communicators in navigating a course between the government's labour legislation introducing employment equity, and the popular resistance offered to this policy. Tony Jacques's contribution argues that activists and issue management professionals not only share a common ancestor, Saul Alinsky, but also increasingly practice in similar ways due to a range of factors discussed in his article.

Behind this variety, however, there are two common themes: out of the five papers in this issue, four employ the case study approach; and three investigate factors shaping public relations practice, or to put it another way, the production of public relations. In what ways might these common themes be significant?

Case studies in public relations have traditionally been used by practitioners. Taking the narrative form, they have been used as a mechanism for learning from experience and disseminating this knowledge, or as a promotional tool in communicating with potential clients; they have not played such an important role in academic research in public relations. The fact that this single issue contains four very different research projects, yet all conducted through carefully-designed and confidently-handled case studies, could be interpreted as a sign of growing maturity of the discipline.

The same might also be said about the strong common interest in investigating public relations work and workers. Although some strands of sociological enquiry are well established in our field, for example research on public relations roles or gender, much still remains to be done. What has in the past been referred to as “introspective research” should perhaps be given a more ambitious name – the sociology of public relations – in order to reflect more accurately its scope and relation to other types of knowledge in and about public relations. Systematic research tracking public relations practitioners, how and where they work, tracking changes in the labour force and routine practices, as well as the market for public relations services, is crucial to understanding the professionalization of the practice. Such knowledge, however, is equally important for the contribution it can make to wider academic debates about the nature of modern society focused on the extended family of occupations and industries labelled “creative” “cultural” or perhaps most aptly from our point of view, “promotional”.

Reading through this collection of the papers I realized that I was witnessing something akin to a conversation: a community of researchers and practitioners with their own language and a shared frame of reference conducting a debate about issues of concern to them. Journal of Communication Management is indeed a way in which we conduct this public conversation and the voices and opinions heard here will hopefully resonate in work yet to be conceived, undertaken, completed and published.

Magda Pieczka