To begin with I`d like you to pay attention to the concept of public relations (PR). I find the concept especially difficult to handle in English, and would rather prefer something like communications or communication(s) management. PR reminds me constantly of the Finnish term (‘suhdetoiminta’) used often as one of the means of competition in marketing (or, actually ‘markkinointiviestintä’) which is far too narrow in the sense of this course, Development of Public Relations processes. My feelings were met as I glanced through the course materials, and the article called “On the Definition of Public Relations: A European View”.
Verčic, van Ruler, Bütschi and Flodin found the definition of public relations broader in the European context as compared to the U.S. According to the authors the 20th century public relations was dominated by North American scholars and thus it kind of neglected the work done elsewhere. They decided to put up a database of public relations literature in Europe, and this is where they ran into the problem of the concept ‘public relations’. The term has different meanings and dimensions in different countries.
According to the authors the European view of the concept of public relations includes another dimension than just relational, and that is public in the sense of publics and public sphere. Relational refers also to “a reflective paradigm that is concerned with [---] public consequences of organizational behavior”.
After a three year research project the authors suggested something that is called European dimensions of public relations, and identified the following roles for it:
1. Managerial – to develop strategies to maintain relations with public groups
2. Operational – to prepare means of communications for the organization
3. Reflective – to analyze changing values in society and discuss them within the organization
4. Educational – to help members of the organization to become communicatively competent.
Now if we look at the concept of public relations from this perspective it`ll give us a wider and deeper basis to our mission in Public relations in Western Europe.
-Anne Tapanainen/2.11.2009
