The public relations management gap

There’s a huge gap between public relations and management. We need practitioners to bridge the gap between theory and practice and researchers to agitate for progress.

I presented the first year of my part time PhD research at the Leeds Business School research conference yesterday. It’s been an intense 12 months of developing researching skills, reading public relations and management literature.

I set out with the ambition to discover why the role of public relations was elevated within management during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether this could be sustained. It’s not taken long to understand why the situation was short lived and is reverting if it hasn’t already.

Public relations is a professional discipline built on a series of paradoxes. There is no formal definition within management, there are countless worldviews, competency and the need for training is well understood but largely ignored, best practice is an aspiration practised by a fifth of organisations rather than the norm, and outputs are rarely measured in terms that management understands.

The shift into management research brought a personal moment of enlightenment at the end of last year. Almost every aspect of management has a requirement for public relations, managers have no preparation for working in the public sphere or managing relationships, and public relations is typically viewed as a promotional activity and a function of marketing or media relations management.

There are five situations that lead to management calling on public relations support: crisis, ethics, credibility, media issues, and leadership. Therein is the reason that public relations was elevated as a function during COVID-19.

Making the shift from practitioner to part time researcher has been the most challenging - but rewarding - aspect of the first year of PhD studies. I'm developing a position based on a pragmatic perspective that is critical of the failure of public relations practice to realise its potential within management.

My next 12 months are focused on further reading and starting to frame a study. I’m keen to continue to explore the management perspective of public relations. It’s likely that this will be through a series of case studies.

The relationship between theory and practice is paper thin in public relations. There are very few shared media or communities. Public relations has huge potential to create organisation and societal value and research is a fundamental driver.

We need more practitioners and researchers to bridge the gap between theory and practice to help find solutions, and a new generation of researchers to agitate for progress.