Public Relations Leaders as Sensemakers

A Global Study of Leadership in Public Relations and Communication Management

Bruce K. Berger, Juan Meng

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317938187
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

Public Relations Leaders as Sensemakers presents foundational research on the public relations profession, providing a current and compelling picture of expanding global practice. Utilizing data from one of the largest studies ever conducted in the field, and representing the perspectives of 4, 500 practitioners, private and state-run companies, communication agencies, government agencies, and nonprofits, this work advances a theory of integrated leadership in public relations and highlights future research needs and educational implications.

This volume is appropriate for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in international public relations and communication management, as well as scholars in global public relations, communication management, and business. It is also intended to supplement courses in public relations theory, strategic communication, business management, and leadership development.

Section III
Conversations With Leaders in Public Relations

This section provides a close-up look at public relations leadership in 10 countries and regions, each of which is examined in a chapter, as follows: the Chinese-speaking countries, India, South Korea, the German-speaking countries, Latvia, Russia, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. Each chapter explores the key issues in the country or region, how these issues affect leadership roles and practices, and organizational cultural and structural factors that facilitate or impede excellent practice. The 10 chapters are heavily grounded in 137 depth interviews (68 women, 69 men) conducted with senior leaders in the countries. Overall, these chapters provide rich cultural perspectives on the leadership concept.

10
Public Relations Leadership in the Chinese-Speaking Countries

Talent Development in the Dynamic, Digital Age

Chun-ju Flora Hung-Baesecke, Yan Jin,
and Juan Meng

This chapter discusses in-depth the important issues from public relations leaders’ views and perceptions on leadership development. Public relations development in the Chinese-speaking countries (mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan) had unique beginnings because of historical, social, political, and economic factors.

In mainland China, due to the economic reform and opening-up policy in 1978 (He & Xie, 2009), public relations departments and Sino–foreign joint venture public relations firms first began in the coastal cities. To date, public relations and communication practice in mainland China has been moving in the direction of a strategic and managerial function, especially in multinational corporations and public relations agencies. Some local agencies also were launched and have tried to apply diverse strategies and actions, although the majority of communication services are still limited to event planning, press conference hosting, and basic media relations (Jin, 2010a).

In Hong Kong, public relations started in the 1950s when the British introduced the modern concept of public relations and established a public relations office for the purposes of providing information to the media (Cheng, 1999). After the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, the developing public relations industry has been characterized by a growing body of professional public relations associations, practices, and functions that go beyond media relations and consumer marketing communication. There’s been greater emphasis on relationship building, accompanied by accelerated development, following the ever-growing influence from mainland China (Martin, 2009).

The practice of public relations in Singapore has evolved from the models used by the British colonialists to a professional status, but it was also heavily influenced by Chinese culture (Chay-Nemeth, 2009). Although the development of the profession itself has advanced rapidly, there still are differences between multinational firms and local public relations agencies in understanding the importance and functions of public relations (Chay-Nemeth, 2009).

Public relations in Taiwan developed with changes in government regulations and policies (Sha & Huang, 2004). A more democratic society allowed different voices to rise, and the “election-driven” (Wu, Taylor, & Chen, 2001, p. 319) political environment provided opportunities for public relations to grow. However, despite decades of professional development in Taiwan, the majority of public relations functions still fulfill the technician role (e.g., media relations and event planning; Wu & Taylor, 2003).

Because of differences in historical, social, and economic developments, these four areas had different foci in the public relations practices. However, with more frequent interactions among these areas, corporations inevitably have to expand their business across the region, which creates more opportunities for public relations in the region. Thus, this chapter provides a closer look at some of the opportunities and presents the findings based on in-depth interviews with senior public relations executives in the region as part of the global project.

Method

In-Depth Interviews

In this region, 22 public relations leaders were interviewed about their views on the important issues in their daily practices, the strategies they adopt to deal with the issues, and their visions for developing future leaders for public relations (see Appendix B for the Interview Guide). We recruited the 22 industry leaders through convenience sampling strategy (i.e., snowball sampling). The interviews were conducted via telephone or face-to-face communications between January and May 2012. Two participants are presidents of local public relations associations, and the other interviewees serve as heads of corporate communication, directors of local public relations firms, and regional heads of multinational public relations firms in the region.

Participants in the interviews work for diverse organizations (e.g., public relations agencies, private corporations, publicly held corporations, state-owned enterprises, and educational institutions). The average years of working experience in the profession is 13.75, with a range of 2 to 25 years. The interviews ranged from 30 to 60 minutes in length. All the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by the research team. The following section presents the major interview findings.

Findings

Top Issues for Leaders

Based on the interviews, the top three issues identified by the 22 leaders were (1) recruiting, training, and maintaining talent; (2) managing social media practices; and (3) improving client management.

Issue 1: Recruiting, Training, and Maintaining Talent

DeKrey, Messick, and Anderson (2007) contended that hiring and retaining talent has become a very important element in business operations in Asia, and it is one of the major responsibilities for top management. The issue of developing talent was mentioned a few times in the interviews. Participants indicated that public relations is a “people” business, which requires skills and knowledge in communicating and dealing with different groups of people and their demands. As a result, one senior executive from a multinational public relations firm expressed concerns over the lack of talent and the growing urgency to find “experienced, qualified, and capable talent to meet… the need for client servicing in terms of providing the all-round capabilities of fielding the various challenges for today’s communication environment.” The CEO of a public relations group in Taiwan shared her company’s system and incentive plans for recruiting and keeping talent:

Public relations is also a profession that requires creativity. In this creative profession, lacking professional management executives is a common problem. Senior executives need their successors. To prepare for a smooth succession and the company’s continuity, we have an “Eagle Planning,” a tailored training course to prepare professionals to become “eagles” in the future.

Although some participants mentioned the importance of providing training for developing future leaders, some also voiced concern in this aspect: The high turnover rate in this profession has discouraged some employers from offering more advanced training courses because of the fear of talent lost as commented by a senior public relations executive:

There are a lot of young people in our profession. They also have many opportunities in the job market. So, offering high salary probably can keep them… Yet, the depth and levels of training courses cannot keep up with the demands in the market. Why? These companies are quite pragmatic: If the companies provide solid training courses, they are concerned that these talents will leave and work for other companies. So, many employers are reluctant to offer training courses.

Issue 2: Managing Social/Mobile Media Practices

The most recently published Mindshare’s Digital Normalness Index 2013 (Mind-share, 2013) revealed that China scored highest in two motivations for going online: (a) self-expression and communication (e.g., visiting social network sites, posting comments, updating status, and communicating via instant messaging services) and (b) transaction (e.g., purchasing and online banking). Our interview data reflected such marketing research results. The prevalence of Weibo, WeChat, Line, QR codes, and other mobile apps have provided a handy communicating environment for young people. Such heavy usage in social/mobile media also presents a challenge in recruiting qualified professionals to manage related public relations functions. The Asia Pacific CEO of a public relations firm commented that “given the phenomenon of information overload nowadays due to the social media explosion, companies now have their digital departments, and public relations services ought to follow suit. Hence, hiring young talents who were digital savvy became important.”

The participants highlighted several aspects of the social/mobile media practice that need a particular attention:

• Using social media strategies in campaigns: Most of the interviewees shared their experiences on using social media strategies in their campaigns; specifically, Weibo has become a widely used social media platform for many campaigns in the Chinese market. Consequently, the term EPR (electronic public relations) has become commonly known among public relations practices and has been a dominating method in practices. However, the effectiveness of such electronic public relations practice is still under debate due to lacking reliable measures.
• Increasing stakeholder engagement: Corporations and consultancies have been using social media to engage internal and external stakeholders. For example, Facebook, although the access is blocked in China, is still a pervasive social media channel that has been widely used in other Asian countries. Participants mentioned they use Facebook to create fan pages and provide content for key stakeholders to share. They acknowledged it is effective to increase stakeholder engagement and facilitate community building.
• Reaching young audiences: Participants also mentioned the salient information consumption habit of young audiences. The Internet has become the major or the only source of information for the younger generation. Young people go to Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, or Ren Ren to access information on companies, or to read and respond to comments. Hence, organizations have to react quickly in order to satisfy the expectations of the younger generation, both in speed of the response and in depth of the content.

Issue 3: Improving Client Management

Improving professional development of the public relations profession itself is still a long-term goal for practitioners in this region. As an important indicator of professionalism, improving client management is another issue participants addressed in the interviews.

Clients usually have high expectations, especially multinational ones. International brands usually are more mature because they have been developed over quite a long time. However, the markets in the region are still developing, and consumer behavior is sometimes not rational as commented by a leader from a local firm in China: “This kind of cultural conflict between the East and the West became the alert for consultancies in China in striving for providing satisfactory services in keeping clients.”

Another reason for finding effective approaches to client management is a result of information overload. Interestingly, this point is relevant to one of the issues the interviewees identified: dealing with the speed and volume of information flow. Clients receive information online and off-line from various channels. Integrating information channels and providing useful and relevant information to clients has become a challenging task for consultancies.

On a pragmatic level, participants working in public relations firms acknowledged the interdependent relationship between the firms and their clients. The CEO of a public relations firm said, “After all, making profit is still very important. Managing clients well will allow my firm to secure stable profits.”

Emerging Future Issues in the Region

When asked to identify new issues in the next 3 to 5 years, participants believed that some of the issues identified will remain as critical ones, for example, training and retaining talent and the integration of social media into communication strategies. Participants also named a few new issues that are highly relevant to the macro socioeconomic environments globally, such as organizations’ social and environmental responsibilities, the impact of the 2008 financial tsunami on business behaviors, the engagement strategies with younger generations, and the city image management in China.

Although the Greater China region, compared with other countries in the Americas and Europe, was not heavily affected by the 2008 financial crisis, the domino effect from the global and euro economic crises will very likely affect this region more. Thus, it presents more challenges in communication practice as noted by one chief business officer, “The macroeconomic effects will bring impacts on business behaviors and budget allocation, which will eventually affect the communication strategies readjustments and the hiring of consultancies.”

However, while corporations are struggling to recover from the damages of the global financial tsunami, publics still expect to see social and sustainable responsibility initiatives demonstrated by organizations. A general manager said, “Each corporation is related to each public in the society, and nowadays, people pay more attention to their well-being part; they will look for a better environment in the future, and they will pay attention on the earth.” Thus, the issue of corporate social responsibility and sustainability will continue to get more attention.

Engaging with the new generations and city image management are two unique issues. The so-called post-80ers or post-90ers are considered the new generations in China, inasmuch as they grew up in a more affluent society and their behaviors, either purchasing pro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• SECTION I Shining a Light on Leadership in Public Relations
• SECTION II Results and Implications of the Global Leadership Survey
• SECTION III Conversations With Leaders in Public Relations
• SECTION IV Creating the Future
• Appendices
• Index