PR must grow up and appreciate the value of qualifications, learning and research
A personal commitment as CIPR Past President in 2015 led to the publication of the fifth edition of Exploring Public Relations and Management Communication.
There’s a series of perennial issues in public relations. These include value, measurement, gender, BAME diversity and the reputation of the industry itself.
All of these issues and more are being debated and taught among scholars and students in universities around the world. But public relations is seemingly the profession that never learns.
Qualifications, continuous learning and a mature community of practice that engages theory and practice are among the hallmarks of a mature profession.
The public relations industry has a thriving research community but there’s limited exchange between theory and practice. It would be unthinkable in another professional discipline such as engineering, law, management or medicine.
Public relations constantly seeks to reinvent itself and justify its value to organisations. It has a latent insecurity about its contribution to reputation, corporate communication and marketing. In my view its attitude to education, learning and research lies at the root of the issue.
The numbers are well rehearsed. Only a third of practitioners in the UK are members of either the CIPR or PRCA, and only a fraction of these commit to any form of continuous learning.
I sought to improve the relationship between theory and practice as Past President of the CIPR in 2015.
It led to my appointment as a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, supporting students through teaching and mentoring.
I attended academic conferences such as Bledcom, the annual research conference that takes place in Slovenia each year, to learn from academic colleagues.
A trip in 2017 led to a call from Ralph Tench at Leeds Beckett University to join the team on Exploring PR. We’ve published the fifth edition of the book this week.
Exploring PR was originally conceived in 2005 as a collaboration between Ralph Tench and Liz Yeomans at Leeds Beckett University.
It is the definitive textbook on public relations that has led the way over four editions in the field of public relations and strategic communication textbooks. It blends theory and practice with critical analysis and case studies, campaigns, exercises, and discussion questions.
Since the last edition Liz has retired. I joined Ralph to create a new editorial partnership for the fifth edition bringing insight from practice. That began with a modification to the title to Exploring PR and Management Communication in a bid to reflect the growing contribution of public relations to management – it’s original purpose.
The new book has been written by an international communication of 35 authors over the past three years. It was originally due for publication in September but in the past six months the whole world has experienced transformational change due to COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic will affect aspects of society and the economy. It is fundamentally impacting the communications industry. We made a start at reflecting this by adding new material in the past few months as the book went to print.
Launching a book during a pandemic via social media has been an opportunity to engage in conversations with people in the public relations industry around the world. I fear history continues to repeat itself.
A practitioner on Twitter who used a previous edition of Exploring PR as a reference for her PR Masters explained that she’d failed to persuade her boss to buy a copy of the new book for the office. They didn’t see the value.
As we head towards the end of the year and 2021 please consider your own commitment to learning and development. Investigate the work of academic colleagues. My new book is a good start although there are lots of other good books available.
