by Mihaela Vorvoreanu. Cross-posted at PR Connections
There’s some discussion in the blogosphere about GM’s social media and crisis communication strategies these days, when they just filed for bankruptcy.
The arguments motivated me to finally start a new series of posts, For the Love of Theory.
In response to the question: Can PR save a company? I’d like to offer and overview of a “classic” PR theory, that of Issue Management.
PR can save a company, but not if it’s used to “get the message across”: If it’s used to listen, monitor and analyze issues, to enable the organization to adapt to its environment in a timely manner.
This is exactly what GM failed to do, and what the theory of Issue Management explains:
The theory posits that any issue in society (i.e. environmentalism, vegetarianism, etc.) has a lifecycle that revolves from dormant (no one thinks about it) to potential, as a few selected people start considering it, to imminent, when it starts picking up speed and media attention, to current, when it’s in the center of the public’s and the media’s attention, to critical, when the issue is demanding a solution. After being “resolved,” the issue goes back into the dormant stage, but it can wake up again at a later time.
The Issue Management function of public relations (which is thought of, at least in academic circles, as much more than media relations & publicity) is to continuously:
- scan the environment
- identify issues that can affect the organization
- analyze these issues to determine if action is necessary
- bring the issues to the attention of higher management, along with action recommendations
- design, implement, evaluate communication strategies around the issue (you often see companies taking positions on social or political issues)
Depending on how late/early a company identifies the issue and takes action, it can follow a reactive strategy (implementing actions imposed by others), an adaptive, dynamic, or even catalytic strategy – in this one, the company wakes an issue up from the dormant stage and moves it through the entire life cycle.
Of course, the earlier the company intervenes, the more power it has to frame the issue and to influence public discussion.
Can you see now how the issue management function of PR could have saved GM?
Many rhetorical scholars‘ view of PR is:
The good organization speaking well*
PR is widely understood as the “speaking well” part, but if the PR function is used strategically, and is given a seat at the management table, it is its job not only to speak well, but to help the organization be good.
Ultimately, the PR function can help an organization adapt to its environment (and change the environment to suit it better).
For GM, it’s a bit late. But I hope you can see now how PR can help an organization adapt, survive, and thrive. It’s just time we moved past the “free publicity” paradigm of PR and catch up to a bigger picture understanding of what PR can do for an organization.
If you’re interested in reading more:
Chase, W. H. (1977). Public issue management: The new science. Public Relations Journal, 32(10), 25-26.
* Cheney, G.D. (1992). The corporate person (re)presents itself, in: E. Lance Toth, R.L. Heath (Eds.), Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, p. 167.
Crable, R. E., & Vibbert, S. L. (1985). Managing issues and influencing public policy. Public Relations Review, 11(2), 3-16.
Heath, R.J., & Palenchar, M.J. (2008). Strategic Issues Management 2. Sage.
Thanks for your blog! Please keep on going and writing, its a precious thing! I have it in my favorites list, even without commenting, ill try to read it on a regular basis! Due to the intersting information!
no similar thing in Germany!
Mihaela – an interesting link between theory and practice. However, I don’t think that PR alone can save any organisation. Here, you propose that PR should have been monitoring “the issue” – although I’m not clear that you’ve indicated exactly what issue that should be here. In the case of GM’s failure to respond to shifting vehicle buying trends – wouldn’t that be the responsibility of marketing, rather than PR.
From a PR-government relations perspective, one could certainly argue that GM has taken a resistant stance over the years. The Big US car companies like many other major industries seem to have been more eager to try to block legislation than recognise the trend and anticipate the curve.
This strikes me more as evidence of a short-term strategic management focus at the top of the organisation – and probably ingrained in the culture of GM.
Having said that, I know that GM has invested hugely in environmental technologies and faced huge obstacles in modernising an organisation that in the US at least, has decades’ of legacy issues such as pensions and other benefits that were offered to employees in the “good years” of the 1950s-1970s.
I recently worked with an undergraduate on a crisis management dissertation in which she interviewed the former PR manager in the UK of Woolworths – which recently closed after 100 years of trading.
His view was that although PR can help manage issues and crisis situations – and buy time for an organisation facing the current economic situation, it cannot reverse the major business issues, such as financial arrangements with suppliers, that often date back decades and bring previously successful organisations to their knees.
I’d like to think that PR and issues management can help at an early stage at least – but you need open management who can instigate necessary changes, as well as an external environment that will support such change. That often means cash flow – and in GM’s case, the need for short-term income meant a focus on large vehicles which has proven to be the wrong strategy.
Anyway, great to see you relate theory to practice in this way.
Heather,
thank you for the very thoughtful comment.
PR alone cannot save an organization – I often tell my students to think of PR as one part of a body (say an arm). It takes the entire body working in harmony to be able to operate.
This part of your comment stands out to me and is exactly my point: “…but you need open management…”
Ultimately, this post is an argument for a different place for PR in the organization – not just media relations and message packaging, but a senior advisory role that can influence the decisions of an organization, not only communicate them.