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Essay 1 - research is an essential part of any strategic PR plan. Discuss, in an essay, the various research methods that a PRP could use. You need to also discuss how the reading behavior of PR campaigns might impact on content analysis.
In well regulated management disciplines make use of rigorous research. Public relations is a management discipline and the lack of research is a barrier therefore, research is an important part of any strategic public relations plan. Public relations practitioners can make use of a variety of different research methodology in order to collect the desired information. It is also important for public relation practitioners to be aware of the reading behavior of individuals and how this can impact the constant analysis of the created plan.
There are various different methods that public relation practitioners can use to conduct their research. There is an abundance of methods but the top 10 research methodologies will be discussed. The first method is action research, this method focuses of finding a solution to a local problem is a local setting, and it forms part of qualitative research. An example of action research is an investigation in whether a campaign has lead to the improvement in stakeholders understanding in of values. The scone method is a case study, this is a type of quantitative research where in-depth data is gathered relative to a single individual/program/event for the purpose of learning more about an unknown or poorly understood situation. An example would be gathering data about how employees responded o an internal communications campaign.
The third method is correlation research, which is a statistical investigation of the relationship between two or more variables. It looks at the surface relationships but does not necessarily prove for casual resins behind them. This forms part of quantitative research, an example is conducting a survey on the media perceptions.
The forth method is developmental research, this is an observational-descriptive type that either compares people in different age groups or follows a particular group over a lengthy period of time. It is both quantitative and qualitative. The next method is ethnography, with is a qualitative inquiry that involves an in depth study of an intact cultural group in a natural setting. The sixth method is experimental research which is a study in which participants are randomly assigned to groups that undergo various researcher-imposed treatments or interventions, followed by observations or measurements to asses the treatments. The next method is historical research which is an attempt to solve certain problems arising out of a historical context through gathering and examining relevant data. Although these research methods are not often used in PR an example for them is reports done by research houses that can advise management on strategic direction.
Grounded research theory is the seventh method, it is a type of qualitative research aimed at deriving theory from the use of multiple stages of data collection and interpretation. An inductive approach is used but it is again not often used in PR. The next method is survey research, this is a common method used to describe the incidence, frequency and distribution of certain characteristics in a population. And example is when a PRP conducts a survey to answer predetermined questions.
The last method is content analysis. This is a detailed and systematic examination of contents of a particular body of material for the purpose of identifying patterns, themes or biases within that material. This method forms part of qualitative research, although computer programs can do it quantitatively as well. It is important to note the reading behavior might impact the research. As technology advances so does the use of social media platforms and networks it is important for the PRP to be aware of the benefits it give but to be sure that there is understanding of the practice in order for it to work. Research has been done into the reading behavior of people when reading on print and online, there are difference in how and what is read therefore it is important for PRPs to take this into consideration when conducting content analysis research.
Research is a fundamental part to creating a successful campaign or plan. Research can be carried out throughout the campaigns and is a great way to measure the how well the campaign is performing. It is crucial that the PRP selects the correct method to use when conducting the research to ensure optimal results.
Essay 2 - The challenge for public relations is for efficient operation at any given time to be present, clear PR management is required. In an essay, discuss the different views of ordinary and extraordinary PR management and the implication of both ordinary and extraordinary management.
Operation of the organization is a crucial role for the PRPs. It is imperative that there is constant clear management which can be a challenging task for the PRP. PR management can be broken up into two different types, mainly Ordinary PR management and extraordinary PR management, both of these management style have their own implications.
Ordinary PR management is necessary as it ensures that targets can be met and the organization survives through rational processes. It presupposes a stable environment and can only be practiced in contained change situations. It is not a negative concept because it must be practiced if an organization wants to control and deliver competitive advantage. It implies that PR is conducted on an asymmetrical communication. This means that the organization will find it difficult to adapt to a changing environment because it does not recognize that communication with the outside and inside must be a two way process.
On the other hand extraordinary PR management is the use of intuitive, political, group learning modes of decision making and self organizing forms of control in open ended change situations. It is the form of management that managers must use if they are to change strategic direction and innovate. It involves questioning and shattering paradigms and then creating new ones. It is a process that depends critically on contradiction and tension. Some organizations fail to recognize the need for extraordinary management and rather rely on CEOs and others who have little understanding of the problems. This is where the PRP has to be aware and cautious of conflicting demands.
There are various different implications involved around ordinary and extraordinary management. There is a need for extraordinary management in order for the organization to survive and flourish in Ana unstable environment has been emphasized, but control of the extraordinary process has to be achieved by informal organization of its activities. The formal organization exists to protect the paradigm managers who wish to change it will have to operate within an informal organization in informal groups that they organise themselves. These groups can cope with uncertainty and ambiguity and tap into each other’s perceptions. They are essentially political in nature. This informal system has been referred to as the network system and is often the heart of PR enterprise. It can coexist with hierarchy and bureaucracy, but must be encouraged by the actions of the bureaucracy and supported by top management.
In order to Successfully combine ordinary and extraordinary management a sound PR strategy plays a role in sustaining the organizations strategy. Extraordinary management may lead to groups within the organization attempting to undermine the control and ability of the organization to adapt.
Ordinary and extraordinary each have their own implications to the organization but it has been argued that both forms of management have to coexist if the organization is to evolve and survive in a changing environment.
Essay 3 - Strategic management is important to balance internal and external measures of the organization. In an essay, discuss the operational strategy of an organization and how the organization implements a feedback cycle.
PRPs are responsible to conduct communication between the organization and its internal and external publics. This is a part of strategic management. Communication is an important aspect of operational strategy and the feedback cycle plays an important role to opt he organization.
Public relations practitioners communicate with all the relevant internal and external publics to develop positive relationship and to create consistency between organizational goals and societal expectations. PRPs develop, execute and evaluate organizational programs that promote the exchange of influence and understanding among an organizations constituent parts and publics.
It is important for the PR manager to communicate the mission of the company, develop a company profile, asses the company’s external environment, analyze possible options uncovered when matching the company’s profile with the external environment, communicate long term objectives to the key stakeholders, develop annual objectives and short term strategies and review and evaluate the success.
The role of public opinion in the behavior of organizations continues to increase via the Internet and while the PRP has always been aware of its obligation to all stakeholder groups, a global economy is making for increasing onerous relations. Communicating constantly between stakeholders does not mean communicating the same message. Rather, a fandom entail requirement in PR to develop a consistent corporate message that appropriately reflects the organization in a way that the organization wishes to be reflected. Messages should also be adapted for different audiences.
Communication strategies should always start from the need to have specifically and ideal quantifiable communication objectives. The goal should be to achieve a specific positioning that will transecting the objectives for different audiences. The positioning should be derived from analysis. PR loses out to advertising in its controllability, but it has the advantage in its ability to communicate more complex messages and in its credibility.
PR strategies have to consider the ways that all its activities can be integrated and the most practical and definitive way is to base PR programs on stakeholder analysis. It’s critical to understand what the different stakeholders need to know.
Feedback data includes identifying the cyclical responses to a message from receivers over a period of time. Feedback is the return to the point of origin, evaluative or corrective action, about an action or process. Therefore it is possible to to provide computer tabulated information for managers about a firms stakeholders, practices and behavior. It is a powerful tool for communication analysis, reflection and adjustment.
Feedback can be derived from two sources: those identified for a generic program to help corporate communication managers focus on key behaviors and those identified on a custom basis where a number of activities or a particular group of stakeholders for the company are identified. Feedback questionnaires cover two areas: frequency and importance. A typical report will cover a section by section summary giving scores for each activity and a listing of the scores in order of importance. Feedback provides three principle areas of application. First, organizational surveys are used to determine the extent to which a company is following practices that help their reputation or culture. Second, used on a one to one counseling basis. Thirdly, used as a basis for highly focused continuous professional training and development. A research plan would take into account both positive and negative feedback given that stakeholder groups have different backgrounds.
Public relations have a big role to play in the organizational strategy, to ensure optimal results are achieved. In order for success, the feedback needs to be taken into account in order to improve.
Essay 4 - Public relations programmes differ from organisation to organisation or from programme to programme. In an essay discuss the Steyn and Puth model and how this model links to the long term strategic communication goals of an organisation.
Public relations programs can vary from organization of o organization and program to program. This is why the program’s selected should be chosen to fit the task at hand. There are various pr programs that can be used such as the traditional pr model or the communication by conjectures model. One of the greatly used programs is Steyn and Puths model which can link to the strategic communication goals that the organization has set out.
Steyn and Puths model is a working plan for developing communication plans that should be aligned with the overall communication and organizational strategy. This model consists of 8 overall phases or stages which further breaks down 20 steps that practitioners should follow in order to create a program to link closely to the strategy of the organization. This model links to the strategic goals of the organization by ensuring at every step that it links to what the organization wants to achieve.
The overall phases or stages are as follows; Research, planning, adaption phase, messages, implementing strategy and activities, scheduling, budgeting and finally the evaluation research. Each of these phases has various steps that need to be completed in order for the program to be completed. It is important to note that the implementation of this model needs to be done strategically and should have a strategic manager on board as this will increase the chances of a successful and effective model.
The first phase being research involves creating a problem or opportunity statement, whether the model will be focusing on solving a problem or making use of an opportunity needs to be determined. The second step involves doing a full situational analysis of this problem or opportunity. This is important as management would need to understand what the model would be focusing on and the benefits and weaknesses that may be evident. The second phase is the planning phase which involves three steps. Firstly the creation of communication goals, these are long term and broad goals that will be linked to the strategic goals of the organization, by linking these goals it ensures a holistic approach. The second step of this phase is creating the objectives which are short term and specific these are also linked to the organizations strategy. The third step of the planning phase is management liaison which is very important as this allows management to ensure that the plan is focused and in line with the organizations overall strategic goals and objectives.
The third phase is adaption phase and this include the step of identifying specific target groups, these groups are identified from the problem or opportunity and are crucial to the success of the plan. The adaption phase also includes creating a statement of limitations which is important to identify to set realistic ideas for management and what can be pushed or not. The message follows the adaption phase and includes the steps of creating an overall message that is derived from the goals that have been previously set as well as creating individual messages that will be sent to each target group as different target groups need to be communicated separately. The theme or slogan will also be created in the phase.
The next phase is the implementing of strategy and activities, which involve firstly the implementation of the strategy which is what their plan needs to communicate. This closely links to the overall strategy as it’s important that the organization is seen as a holistic element and the even projects are focused on archiving the overall goals. The second step of this phase is the the implementation of the activities which is how the message is going to be communicated. The next step is determining if it is a central action or if it will be a special event that will be done to communicate the message and achieve the goals and objectives. The last step of this phase is the media for each activity needs to be determined. The next phase is scheduling this is just determining which day, week or month this plan will be taking place as well as which tasks will be done at what time.
Budgeting is the next phase and it includes a breakdown of the costs of each activity and an inclusion of what the total budget needed for this plan would be. The final phase is the evaluation research phase and it includes the following four steps; firstly process/impact research. The next step is in-process/internal/external evaluation research, this is the evaluation research into the various elements contributing and affecting and can be affected by this plan. Third step is formative/summative evaluation research and this plan will then end of with selling this plan to top management, this is important as without their approval the plan will just stay a plan.
There are various plans that can be used by PRPs for their programs, Steyn and Puths model is a great model that allows the prp to align the organizations strategy and strategic goals into the communication plan in order to ensure a holistic approach and an effective and successful program that will not only achieve its own goals but take a step towards achieving the overall goals of the organization.
Essay 5 - Relationships and roles and responsibilities between the marketing and public relations industries have been in conflict for many years.
In an essay, discuss how marketing and public relations departments can work together to gain a competitive edge for the organisation. You need to bring in the basic sales and market intelligence model into your discussion.
One of the most popular competitive advantage theory’s is porters five competition forces in determining industry profibility, which is adapted to organizational level monitoring and evaluation through perceptual mapping and intelligence communication. This perceptual mapping is a technique that identify a the gaps in the market rose if there is scope for a new product. It is a useful concept to integrate marketing communication with corporate communication to ensure publicity is consistent with the aims on the communication programs. Such analysis can produce or intelligence that feeds into research, monitoring and evaluation information paradigm.
The importance lies in the focus on the competitor stakeholder group and subgroups within it, such as the rivalry between competitors, threat of a new niche. Thus short and long term relationship building is central to both marketing and pr involvement. Interest has been shown by the or industry in the notion that marketing tools and techniques can be applied to the competitive internal communication environment because of the political nature of competition for status and jobs thus creating a market of the human resource function requiring or. Where this was once the domain of the pr department is now seen that the marketing department is likely to be aware of the corporate climate, structure and culture.
Porters theory’s of competitive advantage suggest that it is essential that organization understand how the physical, financial, human and intangible aspects must be appraised together so as to quantify added value to the customer and thus the organization as a whole. The focus on data collection trends to be organized around the customer database, high provides insight into customers behavioral and motivation in markets. With the growth in the service marketing and the development of relationship marketing, more and more organizations have adopted customer awareness programmes to harness the organizations effort to deliver improved value to its customers. This coincided with the general global recession which removed or downsized the or departments, the need for or techniques remained. Market research departments found themselves needing to adopt the or skills and techies required to cope with their sales and marketing strategies, given to the rapid rise of consumers awareness and pr sure groups. Customers had access to IT and media but where also now well organisated and had a voice in their demands of value for money. If a brand have a bad publicity this could affect the corporate image, identity and reputation too.
Looking at the overall planning process, strkeholder communication must be integrated around core corporate values objectified by the production of mission statements. R presenting the bison of what the organization hope to become, th pro collates the communication aims and objectives of each function, assesses compatibility and integrates them with the corporate business plan.
Conclusion
Essay 6 - The Twente Organisational Communication model (TOCOM) aims to provide public relations practitioners with a frame of reference for designing strategic communication programmes. In an essay discuss the TOCOM characteristics and highlight how these characteristics may impact upon each other.
The TOCOM model which is also known as the Twente Organisational Communication Model aims to provide public relations practitioners with a frame of reference for designing strategic communication plans. This model also assists the prp to analyse communication within and outside the organization. This model is a encompasses many forms of communication and has various characteristics.
The TOCOM model has various characteristics that impact each other, it’s characteristics are as follows. Firstly this communication model takes into account all organizational variables. Is is also applicable to the organization as a whole as well as its various parts. Looking at the model as a subsystem as well as a whole system implicates the introduction of the concept of a system wholeness and system hierarchy. The way these systems are connected is called system networks. Even the organizational members can be seen as representatives of a subsystem and can be a part of one or more networks. Another characteristic of this model is that it is a systems theory model as it has a strong relations with its environment and interdependencies of the organizational units. The TOCOM model however is more complex than a usual systems theory model as it says that each unit and individual has its own external environment. This is why it’s very important for relationships within as well as outside the organization must be monitored continuously.
TOCOM is a open systems model and because of this it has three consequences: firstly the boundaries of the organization allow information to pass in two directions. Secondly the existence of the organization depends on this exchange of communication and finally the incoming and outgoing information is modified along the way. Due to the nature or the organizations contact with its environment, it gives rise to different kinds of networks. And the contacts also have their own goals, cultures, structures etc. therefore a separate TOCOM model can be filled out for each contact. If the organization depends on these contacts for its survival then they are referred to as stakeholders.
There is a relationship between all components of the model if there are design changes for example in the one component this will affect the other components either directly or in the long run. Components of the triangle and the environment cause construction or design changes. The model contains an organizational framework for designing strategic organizational communication. This is done by then filling in, or changing the model of the reality of the organization and environment. TOCOM is a descriptive model, however using the filled in components in contingency plans can add value. Organizations differ from each other quite a bit therefore it can be difficult o set communication standards and example is the contingency that states that all organizations are different and therefore problems and solutions differ. With contingency the components are interdependent and different for each organization and in order to be affective there needs to be a good fit between components and th environment.
Although management of communication is difficult, communication is seen as a management tool. Communication can to an extent b directed and controlled. In order for good management a vision of communication needs to be derived from the organizations vision. This is expressed in this model by vision of communication and communication goals at the top. Management needs some further clarification as its important to not try manage every communication as this will diminish the creativity and members responsibility. Even with minimum communication management members will find their own management structures to get things done. The last characteristic of the tocoms model is that the model is less suitable to convince organizations that a consultant should be hired. All complex models have a negative impact on clients because it t gives an impression that a lot of research has to be done before results can be available. If the model is to be used in the process of briefing then a consultancy version should be used.
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