In recent years public sector organisations in New South Wales have been subjected to changes in their operating environments. Changes have included micro-economic reforms by Government and changes in stakeholders' expectations of how public sector organisations manage their affairs. The need to deal with the increasing number and diversity of issues arising, has motivated public sector managers to become increasingly involved in strategic management. The focus of this research was to study how strategic issues were processed within the context of their approach to strategic management. Strategic issue management has been proposed as an appropriate management system for use in conditions of moderate to high levels of environmental turbulence as a means to providing a mechanism for real time response to emerging issues. Three of the four organisations in the study indicated a progressive increase in perceptions of environmental turbulence over a six year period to points mid way between the 'Changing' and 'Discontinuous' levels on the Ansoff and McDonnell (1990) environmental turbulence scale. Research findings indicted that all four public sector organisations undertake a form of strategic issue management which is separate to the periodic strategic planning cycle. In answer to the criticism of the theoretical void which is seen to exist in linking organisational response to changes in the environment, theoretical models were developed for the Sensing, Deciding and Executing functions of the processing dimension of Ansoff's (1987) proposed paradigm of emerging strategic behaviour. The models provide the framework for tracking how eight strategic issues were processed in four public sector organisations. Field research-was conducted over a fifteen month period collecting both secondary and primary data. A case study research methodology was developed for the project following a review of the relevant literature. There were clear indications that the Sensing, Deciding and Executing functions were performed and that the issues under study passed through numerous phases during their processing cycles. The interconnected and iterative nature of issue processing across the Sensing, Deciding and Executing phases were demonstrated in the research findings.

Like other communities across the country, Blacksburg, Virginia, has struggled with land-use policy, planning, and growth issues. This struggle intensified when town residents discovered a Walmart store might be included in a new retail development project. Local interest groups quickly formed, establishing different perspectives concerning the issue, while a Blacksburg Town Council member introduced an ordinance that would give the town the power to halt plans for the store. This measure became the focal point of the conflict, and groups both supporting and opposing it worked aggressively to gain community support for their respective sides of the issue. Using Cobb and Elder's (1983) agenda-building framework, the goal of this thesis is to examine the ways various groups involved in a local land-use conflict defined, and sometimes redefined, their messages to town residents in an effort to expand the issue beyond the core members of the groups to gain more widespread support. The results of these efforts are also evaluated. A case study was conducted incorporating interviews with some of the key members of the interest groups involved in the conflict and discourse analysis to examine group messages generated during the controversy. This study found that the way an issue is defined could influence its progression and play an important role in its resolution. It also highlights definitive times during an issue's evolution that are critical to its progression. These findings demonstrate some of the benefits that can result from integrating effective issue management strategies into a communication program. / Master of Arts

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Thesis (MTech (Public Relations Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017 / In popular opinion political public relations practitioners have long been regarded as spin doctors. Their lane of actions is mostly viewed as propaganda and they are perceived as spin doctors who manipulate power-relations. The pervasive role of public relations in political campaigns cannot be denied as political actors rely on communication to reach their key stakeholders. While it can be used as an important tool that can mediate in these power relations, the facts remain in the case of this study that the political party campaign communication was rather reactive than strategic. The answer lays in the accurate application of the strategic nature and role of public relations. I believe that there is a strategic public relations role that is evident and has to be played in political party campaign communication. As a matter of fact, public relations strives to ensure an effective and efficient communication on behalf of its organisation. The purpose of this study was to explore the application of public relations principles in political parties’ campaign communication of the Democratic Alliance, in the context of three other political parties in a regional newspaper during the build-up to the 2014 South African general elections. Four distinct political parties were at the centre of this research, namely African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters and Agang. Particular attention was given to the elite parties, African National Congress, and Democratic Alliance; the main environment of the study. It is true that political parties ‘communication with stakeholders reflects in essence public relations. Managing communication to promote the organisational agenda is to talk about issues important to both the public and the political party. This suggests that an effective political organisation will act on a two-way operation to build a common political position that influences public attitudes. Hence, a comparative case study was used as the strategy of inquiry. I conducted a content analysis of the political party campaign communication of the Democratic Alliance, covered in the Cape Times newspaper; as well as their election manifesto, to identify the public relations principles and strategies that were used. The daily newspapers were surveyed from January 8 to May 7, 2014. An overall of one hundred and forty-four related newspapers articles were analysed and formed the data for analysis. A close reading and counting of frequencies of varieties of themes in the newspaper revealed that the Democratic Alliance, as well as the African National congress, took a tactical and responsive approach, rather than a strategic and proactive approach, to their political party campaign communication. News coverage indicated that there was extensive counterpunching to other political parties ‘statuses, but very little promotion or management of the issues included in their election manifesto. Nkandla was the most controversial issue covered in the pre-election media coverage; while the proposed merger with AGANG; and the subsequent fall out was damaging to both political parties ‘reputation and relationship with voters. Therefore, more research on this topic needs to be undertaken, as public relations is crucial in translating public opinions to the organisation. In the political scope, this can serve as an attempt to adjust the socio-political environment to suit the political principles, as well as to help the political principles adjust to the environment by creating the right balance to mutual benefit an organisation and its publics that further ensures a real participatory democracy. Further studies should be done to investigate whether, the advocacy of the two-way symmetrical, as a way to central route to persuasion, along with the dialogical approach can impact on more effective decisions making, and ultimately create a more dynamic public sphere that seeks the resolution of socio-political conflicts. This new knowledge will lead to guidelines for public relations practitioners and can provide useful insights for political communication specialists.

Being able to perform good data analysis is a fundamental part of running any business or organization. One way of enabling data analysis is with a data warehouse system, a type of database that gathers and transforms data from multiple sources and structures it in the goal of simplifying analysis. It is commonly used to provide support in decision-making. Although a data warehouse enables data analysis, it is also relevant to consider how well the system supports analysis. This thesis is a qualitative research that aims to investigate how work domain analysis (WDA) can be used to evaluate the design of a data warehouse system. To do so, a case study at the IT company Norconsult Astando was performed. A data warehouse system was designed for an issue management system and evaluated using the abstraction hierarchy (AH) model. The research done in this thesis showed that analysis was enabled by adopting Kimball’s bottom-up approach and a star schema design with an accumulating snapshot fact table. Through evaluation of the design, it was shown that most of the design choices made for the data warehouse were captured in the AH. It was concluded that with sufficient data collection methods, WDA can be used to a large extent when evaluating a data warehouse system.

Some administrative border areas are recently defined as cross-border areas, and have become a key phenomenon that is challenged by disparities between urban and rural areas. In this setting, the cross-sector collaboration is presented as a type of organization to respond challenges generating from these disparities. Despite its complexity, the cross-sector collaboration is becoming a significant strategy in cross-border areas to instigate sustainable development issues through bringing new dynamics into the traditional settings. From a realist perspective, the researchers in this study explore the cross-sector collaboration and approaches to organizing cross-sector collaboration in cross-border areas. Each side ofan administrative border in cross-border areas, there exists three main societal sectors - public, private and third sector having representation as collaboration stakeholders. In order to deal with sustainable development of cross-border areas through cross-sector collaboration, resource management and stakeholder management approaches are problematized as not adequate to address various dimensions of complexities regarded in cross-sector collaboration in cross-border areas. Moreover, the village of Röstånga has been studied in order to examine the practice of these approaches to cross-sector collaboration along the administrative border between Svalöv and Klippan municipalities in Skåne region.Fundamental factors in organizing cross-sector collaboration in cross-border areas have been identified throughout the case study. In order to organize cross-sector collaboration in such setting, the researchers also find out that there are 'other issues', commonly known by public and third sector as meeting points, local logic and social capital, that are not approached within neither resource management nor stakeholder management approach. These other issues need to be instantly addressed in cross-sector collaboration in cross-border rural areas in addition to the identified fundamental factors. At the end, the researchersdevelop 'Social Issue Management Approach' that integrates management-with-stakeholders approach, as having no focal organization but a common focal issue, and social issue approach as an ideal strategy suggested to organize cross-sector collaboration in cross-border areas.

The aim of this study was to investigate how selected municipalities’ use social media, with a focus on how they are working to increase the dialogue between municipalities’ and residents. To answer the purpose of the study three questions has been formulated: how do the communicators use social media in their daily work? What opportunities and challenges are the municipalities’ experiencing with Facebook? How do they work with Facebook to increase dialogue with citizens? The theories that has been used in this study is Cutlip’s and Grunig’s public relations theories, Shannon and weavers communication model, Cutlip’s and Heath’s theory of issue management and Jenkins theory of convergence culture. The method that has been used in this study is qualitative semi-structured interviews and the analysis is done with a thematic text analysis. The material of this study contained interviews of four communicator officers that are responsible for social media in the municipalities’.    The results of the semi-structured interviews showed that the communicator officers used social media to quickly, easily and cheaply connect many citizens in comparison with the traditional media. The biggest opportunity with Facebook for municipalities’ was to improve issue management by spreading the information faster and have an improved dialog with the citizens. The biggest challenge was to think more strategically how to enhance the use of Facebook. The communicator officers try to invite citizens to dialogue by presenting information that citizens want comment and debate about. Municipalities’ also will have meetings with PR agencies to improve the dialog with the citizens in Facebook.