Time served is the key metric for career progression in public relations

Thanks for all the feedback on my research over the past week. I missed a significant issue related to career progression and the development of managers in public relations.

Never let it be said that social media is no longer social.

Thank you to everyone who commented, directly messaged me and called me with comments t about the research hypotheses I shared via my blog and LinkedIn describing the role of public relations in management.

It’s very helpful. I’m grateful to everyone for their support and am slowly working through all the feedback.

I recognise the privilege that I’ve been granted in being able to spend five or six years studying after a lifetime in practice. The ability to test ideas with my practitioner network is incredibly powerful. 

I’ve inevitably missed some ideas. These are mostly additive however, there’s a big one that describes how we develop our managers in practice.

The public relations profession is conceptualised in research literature at two levels: technician and manager. Practitioners are typically promoted to managerial roles based on time served without expectation of formal professional development or qualifications.

This characterisation of the functional and managerial role occurs in lots of occupations. However, in public relations practice, we uniquely fail to prepare practitioners for management. It’s a issue related to the broader issue of professional development.

You only need to check the LinkedIn profiles of practitioners to spot that experience is described in terms of time served rather than professional achievements, and qualifications.

It leads to the research question: does the professional progression of public relations practitioners from technician to manager roles depend primarily on time served, rather than formal professional development or qualifications?

I’ve updated my research hypotheses and started organising my ideas into common themes. That’s the job for the summer, along with a rewrite of my literature review. The remainder of the year will be spent developing my own study.

Thanks again for your support.