This study expands the body of knowledge relating to Excellence Public Relations Theory to a new area--religion communication. The project replicated portions of the survey research reported in Grunig, Grunig and Dozier (2002). That research, done from 1991 to 2002, involved top communicators, employees and chief executives in 327 secular organizations across the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. This project surveyed members of the Religion Communicators Council in 2006 and 2007. A second survey in 2008 sought responses to similar questions from faith group leaders who supervised respondents to the 2006-07 survey. Answers from religion communicators were compared to those of their supervisors and secular practitioners in earlier studies. Comparisons showed that religion communicators in this study were a distinct subgroup of U.S. public relations practitioners. RCC members worked primarily as communication technicians, not managers. That made them different from practitioners in the 327 secular organizations studied by Grunig, Grunig and Dozier (2002). Furthermore, religion communicators and their supervisors did not always agree with the way four models in Excellence Theory described different approaches to public relations. Religion communicators also did not know what their supervisors expected from them or their departments. Communicators overestimated their supervisors’ support for the press agentry/publicity and public information models of public relations. Communicators underestimated support for the two-way symmetrical and asymmetrical models. Likewise, communicators rated their contributions to the work of their faith groups lower than their supervisors did. Faith group leaders said they wanted communicators to be managers more than technicians. Top executives were looking for expert prescribers and problem-solving facilitators. Religion communicators weren’t filling those roles. This study looked for--but did not find--evidence of a common dynamic in Excellence and Church-Sect Theory. The two-way symmetrical public relations model mirrors the social interaction that turns sects into churches and contributes to membership gain or loss in the U.S. religion environment of 2008. But the faith groups of religion communicators did not influence the way they answered survey questions about various public relations models. Consequently, no link between communication practices and membership change was shown. / text

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

There is an on-going discussion in public relation scholarship surrounding the implication of critical theory on the study of activists’ utilization of public relations tools. One side believes that the mainstream theoretical models are sufficient for explaining the situation in which conflicts and negotiations between activists and corporations are happening, the other believes that critical theory needs to be applied. The purpose of this thesis is to provide an example that sheds light on this type of situation. It will study the 2014 conflict between Greenpeace and LEGO to see if orthodox theories are applicable, or if not, how and why critical theory should get more attention from public relations scholars.   The aim of the thesis is to solve the conflict through studying a case. To solve the dispute two research questions are aiming to scrutinize the negotiation situation between LEGO and Greenpeace. The questions are asking what images of the Greenpeace campaign was most frequently used by the media, and how these frame LEGO. A method triangulation was applied to answer these questions. First, a quantitative study identified what images that were most frequently used by the media to cover the story. Later a qualitative text analysis in the form of semiotics was used to analyse how these images framed LEGO. The result shows that almost 90% of the images used by mass media was directly illustrating Greenpeace’s campaign. The messages in these images framed LEGO on one hand, as a passive player that would stand by and watch as their business partner polluted both the earth and kids’ imaginations.  On the other hand the company was portrayed as an almighty institution that would not take stakeholders wishes and opinions into consideration.   The study serves as an example on the negotiation situation between activists and corporations. The conclusion relates the thesis back to the problem definition. The public relation communication utilized by Greenpeace, and studied in this thesis, is evidence that the scholarship needs broaden the intellectual domain by incorporating activism and critical theory into the academic field.

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This thesis examines the optimal role for public relations practitioners to play in managing the communications of disclosure situations. The contribution to knowledge in this work is the clarification of decision-making around organizational disclosures and the role public relations practitioners play in these sometimes difficult and sensitive situations. Decision making around the disclosure of organizational information has not been given much attention in the public relations and communications management literature. While other fields such as medicine and finance have researched the merits of disclosure and transparency for a number of years, the topic has evaded in depth academic examination in communications literature. Given the involvement of public relations practitioners in organizational disclosures, it is somewhat surprising that a model for managing the communications of these situations has not been proposed previously in published research. This thesis closes this gap by proposing a normative, theoretical model that is grounded in practice, and uses ethical decision-making, to assist communicators in developing strategies for managing disclosure events and improving the transparency of their organizations to the public. Using the Strauss and Corbin (1998) approach to Grounded Theory, this thesis explored the topic of disclosure with senior level Canadian public relations practitioners to elicit key themes prior to the development of an initial model which was then tested through further empirical research and user-group contact. The model presented in this thesis is intended to help public relations practitioners and their organizations’ senior management teams, structure their thoughts about disclosing information and develop a communication strategy through a step-wise process that works to find a balance between the needs of the organization and the information needs of stakeholders to make an informed decision about the situation. This thesis provides unique insights into practitioner dilemmas and challenges; highlights a number of important themes and conceptual issues that have not received attention to date; and offers a model for practice.

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The objective of this master’s paper is to study the influence of public relations to the image of Šiauliai secondary schools. The analyses of literature dealing with the public relations in the management of educational organizations, the particularity and meaning of the image of educational organization have been carried out. The survey and the analyses of schools’ websites have been carried out. Parents of the pupils from Siauliai secondary schools and teachers took part in the survey. Purposeful developing of public relations influences the formation of image of Siauliai secondary schools. The choice of school is determined by the consumers – parents and pupils – therefore the image of secondary school is very important. In majority of schools public relations are still believed to be of minor importance, the attention to which is paid only when there are extra resources and time.

Corporate Communication Management (CCM) is an important concept within the communication and marketing discipline. The term corporate communication came to the attention of the general public more than 40 years ago, due to changes in global business environments. Although corporate communication received great attention from scholars and the business community, its complex concepts are still unclear. Furthermore, many scholars believe there are influences of corporate culture, ICT diffusion innovations and corporate leadership on corporate communication and its impact to organisational performance, yet there is a paucity of studies on the validation of this theoretical assumption. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address this gap by providing an elevated understanding of the concept of CCM and its antecedents, and in consequence, focus on organisational performance from the managerial perspectives. This study employs a two tier mixed-method research process involving qualitative and quantitative approaches. The first tier commences with a semi-structured interview (with 12 respondents) to refine a conceptual framework developed based on existing literature. Then, content validity (with 10 expert opinions) and pilot test (with 35 respondents) follow, to develop a measurement scale with good validity and reliability. The second tier involves online survey data (with 223 respondents) and secondary data (from Thomson DataStream) to test the research hypotheses and proposed conceptual model. In this stage, structural equation modelling (SEM) is employed. Results indicate a very good fit to the data, with good convergent, discriminant and nomological validity and reliability stability. The findings of this research show that corporate culture, ICT diffusion innovation and corporate leadership are factors that influence CCM directly. While CCM correlates positively with financial performance, it has no effect on mission achievement. Corporate culture was found to have a positive relationship with mission achievement but negative relations with financial performance. Furthermore, ICT diffusion innovation demonstrates a positive association with mission achievement. Despite corporate leadership having a positive relationship with mission achievement, there was no effect on financial performance. Therefore, this study answered the antecedents and consequences of CCM, and they were found to be influential factors. In addition, the study demonstrates that managers rely on internal factors such as corporate culture, ICT diffusion innovation and corporate leadership to predict and assess CCM. The findings have implications for knowledge of theories and practices, and also contribute in the development of a model that explains the CCM functions and shows that functions have a definite positive impact on financial performance. Furthermore, the research adds an insight to a growing body of communication literature (primarily corporate communication) and makes recommendation for future research directions.

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