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week six

'The Legal Environment' and 'Ethical Practice'

'The Legal Environment'

The readings suggest that public relation decisions must be made in context of the ‘legal environment’. But when legal risks are being assessed, strategies to harm must take account of the commercial and professional risks arising from the legal action. Practitioners need a rounded knowledge of laws that affect their work. The global nature of business and communication means individual public relations practitioners face a minefield of legal obligation as domestic jurisdictions attempt to provide a regulatory framework for global product. Thus the practitioners must examine some major legal risks in more detail. Legal issues can arise in relation to negligence, ones duty of care to clients and the general public, defamation, contracts, statutory obligations regarding liability and consumer protection and intellectual property laws.

Johnston & Zawawi also suggest that maintaining a good public image and reputation is pivotal to good PR practice, in some circumstances it may be better to avoid litigation and seek alternative means of dispute resolution. Under common law the tests for defamation exists where a publication exposed plaintiff to hatred/contempt/ridicule, lowered the plaintiff’s reputation or caused the plaintiff to be avoided/shunned. A company has to work on the legal path for:

• protecting their reputation in industry.
• protecting their creative ideas.
• the practitioners duty for care and respect of other's rights.
• work the purpose of creating global legal contracts in a global legal environment.
• using the technology in a wise way by putting legal directions in public context.

chapter 4 also talks about The Trade Practice Act 1974(Cth), which helps in:

• Promotional activities activities associated with the supply of goods and services to actual or potential customers have trading and commercial character.
• Intention is irrelevant
• Conduct that is merely likely to mislead or deceive in banned by the Act.
• Disclaimers and exemption clauses cannot usually excuse misleading and deceptive conduct.
• Silence may constitute misleading a deceptive conduct.
• Statements of opinion may mislead or deceive.

Working with legal input, public relation practitioners can move towards a systematic approach to dealing with the law. Organisations should move towards developing a legal strategy for their area specialty, setting benchmarks of best practice in potential problem areas, such as contract law, intellectual property, defamation, contempt and consumer protection law. Developing a legal strategy and compliance systems will not eliminate legal problems, but will go a long way towards minimising harm arising from the problems.

'Ethical Practice'

According to Johnston & Zawawi ethics refer to the personal values which underpin the behaviour and moral choices made by individual in response to a specific situation. Ethics are standards of integrity- in a nutshell ethics is about doing the right thing.
In a business, ethics is is about prioritising moral values for an organisation and ensuring its behaviours are aligned with those values. In a Public relation practice, ethical behaviour relates both to the practitioner and to organisation. The practitioners also need to serve public interest. He needs to ask 'will my decision benefit society, even if I hurt myself, my client, my employer or my profession?' Seib and Fitzpatrick (1995) talk about the five duties of public relations professionals as being to oneself, the client, the employer, the profession and society.
The potter boxidentifies ethics in situation, values, principles and loyalties. Three basic ethical doctrines (109). Deontology is the doctrine that ethics is duty-based and relies on moral obligation regardless of the consequences. This system depends on the morals and self-discipline of the individual, however, it will change from person to person depending on their cultural and traditional biases.

PR practice takes care of connection between both ethics and PR by upholding moral and ethical ideals. PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.

Though, the ethical dilemmas, at times become hard to crack the challenges. The challenges can be divided down into three aspects:-

• Interpersonal
• Organisational
• Stakeholder

Most ethical dilemmas come from social responsibility issues and from the relationship issues. These dilemmas usually the result of a poor relationship, inadequate corporate standards and conflicting obligations.
The purpose of PR is to build strong relationships with organisations and different publics to create a pleasant environment in which varying businesses, organisations etc can operate. This conducive environment can only be fully up and running with the help of law and ethics.

Johnston & Zawawi explains "As ethics is important to organisational excellence on the one hand and to public relations on the other, practitioners should be at the forefront of the movement for ethical organisational conduct."

A connection between both ethics and PR is cruical for a PR practice. By upholding moral and ethical ideals PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.The role of a PR practitioner does not remain till this extent. He needs to work as

• Advocate
• Counsellor
• Corporate Monitor, and
• Corporate Conscience

There is a common perception about the PR people that they are the ones who are out to benefit their organisations first and foremost, though no one realises that there are many legal and ethical codes and statutes in place that help govern such behaviour, the common stereotype is somewhat outdated as legal consequences are more common in our age of litigation, therefore making practitioners and their job more socially responsible.

week five

'Strategy, Planning & Scheduling'

and

A Typical Public Relations Program

This week’s reading discusses about strategy, and the plan that integrates an organisation's
major goals, policies and action. The chapter covers a wide ranging critical areas of public relations practice. The strategic communication thinking recognises the cause and effect relationship between our communication activities and the achievements of organisation's mission. It talks about the creation of campaigns within a public relation job via strategies, planning and scheduling.

Part of a good strategy is the development of a vision and mission statement. The reading also majorly focuses on the theory by Johnston & Zawawi saying, "There is a cause and effect relationship between communication activities and the achievement of an organisation's mission. It means that communication programs support successful completion o the organisation's strategic activity in a measurable way."

The reading also discussed different both sort of strategies

• organisational strategy and
• public relation strategy
  

I understood from the reading that the strategic system and systematic design of public relations plans is vital to the effective identification, implementation and management of public relations goals and objectives that complement and support organisational goals.
The strategic public relation plan and budgets can firmly establish the goals and objectives of a firm.
The reading later also discuss briefly the roles of
strategic planning

• budgeting
• scheduling
• listing or checklist making and
• flowcharts

in a strategic planning of public relation. Key Performance Indicators should also be identified to measure the progress of the company towards its mission. PR strategies, to my understanding, are very important and useful skills to have in this industry for creating a firm organisation.

week four

'Insider Info' in Public Relations'

by

James, M. (2006). Sydney

also from

Chapter 11 Internal Communications In C. Tymson, P. Lazar, P and R. Lazar, (Eds.)The new Australian and New Zealand public relations manual.

In my opinion, the most important point of this week’s readings is about internal communication. Also, understanding the changing behaviour of employees and to match the objectives of the organization on the basis of understanding, within a company is important. It is important for an organization to achieve its objectives that employees be satisfied with there work environment. Especially in large enterprises, where the goodwill matters and the company has to care about having better reputation in local community.

This is done through internal communication, which is quite an interesting pattern of controlling. The internal communicating is found to be generally the most effective one when done by authority within the organization. But it is crucial to involve all members of the organization in the process of communicating.

This chapter gives the readers a closer look into the practical aspects of the industry and how to give themselves the best opportunity for securing a job in the industry.

The twin way strategies of the employees work best within the outfit of business.

week three

Theoretical Perspectives

To think theoretically is to use a set assumption about how the world works in order to be able to predict and make conclusions about what happens.
Key points to remember from the readings are related to the varying elements about public relations theories and how they can be used to better understand and develop public relation practices.

When Public Relation is theorised, an approach based on certain assumptions is offered from a particular perspective. Another theory based set of another assumption will make this view impossible or perhaps laughable.

The chapter talks about a whole range of most important theoretical approaches towards public relation. Earlier most of the public relation theories were taken from other adjacent disciplines. The system theory came from philosophy and sociology. Another came from agenda setting followed by the General Systems Theory, Semiotics, critical theory, Gruing’s models, Rhetorical Theory’ and so on.

Initial ideas assist in understanding the complexity of PR, but later these theories more recent ideas are also be placed into consideration including Situation Theory, Social Learning Theory, Social Exchange Theory.

All of the theories have their own limitations, purpose and importance, which are made clear via reading.

Summary of readings of chapter 1 and 2

CHAPTER ONE

The chapter talks about the misunderstandings which people have in their minds regarding the term Public relation. People are unsure about the parameters of the profession as it is used inappropriately in our day-to-day life.

Public Relation is the ethical strategic management of communication and relationships in order to build and develop coalition and policy, identify and manage issues and create direct messages to achieve sound outcomes within socially responsible framework.

The functions of public Relation are:

• To advise management on the policy and its effects on public relations;
• To channel and coordinate within an organisation the activities that affect public relations;
• To provide the machines for explaining an organisation and its policies to its various public through communication media;
• To ascertain and explain to management what various public think about the organisation

Public Relation activities
some activities which fall under the envelope of Public Relation Practitioner's job are:

• communication
• publicity
• promotions
• crisis management
• marketing
• financial relations
• media relations
• event management
• fund raising etc.

Public Relation is indeed a really hard job. It requires many skills and talents. Some of the really interesting skills which the reading reveals are:

• an understanding of how public relation and communication theory informs public relation practice;
• the capacity to plan and analyse while developing a problem solving approach;
• strong technical and communication skills;
• strong readership/interpersonal skills;
• a strong social, political and ethical appreciation with an understanding of the big picture and the interconnectedness of event;
• industry knowledge and perspective with knowledge of application and processes.

CHAPTER TWO

History of Public Relation in Australia.

The emergence of Public Relation:

• Promotion through press agentry-

Significant developments started between 1840s and 1890s.

First was the implementation of Education Act 1872. With the development of schools and schooling programs over the next twenty years, nearly all the young Australian men could read and write by 1890s.

The second development was the creation of a technology that would allow the production of daily newspaper.The Sydney Morning Herald became Australia's first daily in 1841.

The third development lay in the depoliticisation of the newspapers. The earliest newspaper had been highly political, often owned or heavily subsidised by political parties. However, newspapers that targeted political factions could not attract a wide enough audience to satisfy the requirements of advertisers. But still all this encouraged the birth of new systems.

Publicity to Public relations changed during 1930. Many more magazines etc. started, which helped in opening up of the job of public relation. Public Relation in Australia saw many changes from 1943.

Now a days, the modern public relations work in areas as media relations, sponsorship,, crisis and issues management, shareholder etc.