Donald K. Wright

Trends in Public Relations Roles: 1990-1995.

Abstract This study reported trend data on the roles of national Public Relations Society of America members. The authors posited that roles are constantly in process and illustrated this through analyses of activities within the broad manager and technician categories. The authors argued also that professional experience as a predictor of manager enactment should be defined not as number of years in the field but by looking at the kinds of experiences received on the job. Study results suggested that for this sample of PRSA members an agency role emerged in 1995 in addition to the manager and technician roleso found in 1990. There was still cross-over in the activities performed in each of the role profiles, indicating that public relations people do an assortment of activities. The agency role could be a result of the economic downturn that occurred in this five-year period. Women still seemed to be doing “it all” for less money. They did not carry out the same activities as the male role profiles that emerged and enacted a less pronounced agency role.

The role of corporate public relations executives in the future of employee communications

Abstract This article suggests existence of a third major organizational role for public relations—communication executive comprised mainly of corporate senior vice presidents of public relations and communication who report directly to CEOs. In studying those who function in this role, the article reports on a survey of senior corporate practitioners discovering these public relations executives, and the corporate CEOs they report to believe internal and employee communications are important. They also show that communications methods used to motivate employees five years ago are not effective today and the public relations function has not done much to discover, much less implement, any new ways to communicate with employees. Findings suggest the majority of corporate employee communications remains dominated with technical journalistic-like skills components such as producing slick employee newsletters instead of concentrating on developing relationships with employees.

Age and the moral values of practitioners

Despite considerable discussions about greater need for research and discussion about ethics in public relations, few empirical studies have been conducted on the topic. This study employs a well-known social science measuring instrument to gauge differences in moral and ethical values between younger and older public relations practitioners. The study finds that age has a progressive effect on moral values among public relations practitioners, particularly in areas such as basic morality and basic honesty. The two age groups were more similar in terms of legal issues, economic morality and religious morality. Dr. Wright, an associate editor of Public Relations Review , is chairman, Department of Communication Arts, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Ala.

History and development of public relations education in North America

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the history and development of public relations education in the USA and Canada.Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology used for this paper is the historical/critical analysis approach.Findings – This paper finds more differences than similarities between public relations educational development in the two countries. The first PR course at a US university was taught at the University of Illinois in 1920 and the first US degree program was offered by Boston University in 1947. The first Canadian university PR course was taught at McGill University n 1948 and the first university degree was offered by Mount Saint Vincent University in 1977. Although PR courses and degrees are offered at a small number of elite US universities, the greatest recent PR curriculum development has been at smaller, second‐ or third‐tier institutions. While a few Canadian universities offer courses and degree programs in the field, most of Cana...

Social responsibility in public relations: A multi-step theory

The pressure on public relations practitioners to adopt a posture of “social responsibility” has steadily increased as both consumers, clients, and management look for more harmony in their interrelationships. A great deal of the desire for socially responsible conduct in public relations has come from within the profession itself. Donald K. Wright surveyed a sample of the Texas Public Relations Association to plot their reactions to constraints placed upon them by the groups for whom they work and by public opinion. Most agreed that the level of social responsibility rises as cooperation by management with its PR colleagues increases, and as the public relations practitioners role in decision making is broadened.

Professionalism and social responsibility in public relations

How socially responsible are professional public relations practitioners? And how professional are PR people with a weak commitment to social responsibility? These are the questions posed in Donald Wrights study. His findings show that PR practitioners vary greatly in levels of professionalism and in degrees of social responsibility orientation. His study detected great frustrations for many public relations counselors because their actual jobs do not provide the levels of professional and social responsibility they expect. The majority of those polled in this study feel that there should be some regulation of the profession by peers, that educational preparation for a PR career is a good, and that altruism is important.

An Analysis of the Level of Professionalism among Canadian Journalists

journalism, he could not accept this premise made by the Davey Committee, especially since the committee’s report lacked significant evidence to justify this claim.3 Thus, this study was designed to test the assumption that Canadian journalists are low in professionalism, and to examine differences in professional orientation between various groups of Canadian news reporters. Many have recently discussed professionalism in journalism and it has been argued successfully both that journalism is a profession and that it is not .4 Although journalism has many elements and charac-

Examining how the 11th September, 2001 terrorist attacks precipitated a paradigm shift advancing communications and public relations into a more significant role in corporate America

This paper explores how corporate communications and public relations were affected by the 11th September, 2001 terrorism attacks on the USA.

Professionalism Levels of British Columbia's Broadcast Journalists: a Communicator Analysis

Soon after this was discovered, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) established a news department and private commercial stations followed suit. The growth and development of Canadian radio news has been phenomenal since then. The recent Davey Committee Report indicated that Canadians think broadcast news coverage is improving and are generally satisfied with the amount of news they now receive from radio and television.3 Although this report criticized commercial broadcast station owners, ’because news is for the most part a sideline ...’ for them4, it also listed broadcast news, especially television, as Canada’s most important media for national and international news.5 Radio news was praised for how well it satisfied local news needs.6 And, according to the Davey Committee, most Canadians think local news is more important than national or international news.7 7

Public Relations Education and the Business Schools.

In the Fall of 1980, a group of concerned public relations people—practitioners and educators—began work on a Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education project to attempt to interest American business schools in teaching courses in public relations. The philosophy behind the effort was that first-class citizenship as a profession today is best attained when you start with first-rate teaching and research in the field. As part of this project, Donald K. Wright coordinated a study to examine exactly what is being taught now in business schools. His findings clearly indicate that public relations is not being taught at most of the major schools, although many universities have courses such as public policy which tend to touch upon some elements important to the public relations process.