Download Public relations as dialogic expertise?

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1363-254X.htm
JCOM
15,2
Public relations as dialogic
expertise?
Magda Pieczka
108
Received May 2010
Revised October 2010
Accepted December 2010
Media, Communication & Performing Arts, School of Arts and Social Sciences,
Queen Margaret University, Musselburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer critical reflection on the role played by the concept of
dialogue in public relations theory, pedagogy, and practice.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper is theoretical and therefore focused on the
elucidation of the history, meaning, and application of “dialogue” in public relations in comparison
with two other academic disciplines and professional fields: political science and organizational
communication.
Findings – The paper argues that, despite the key normative position occupied by the concept of
dialogue in much mainstream public relations scholarship, public relations as an academic discipline
has not engaged extensively with the theory of dialogue. While other academic and expert practitioner
fields have developed much theoretical reflection, a range of dialogical tools, and created spaces in
which the expertise is applied, public relations’ normative interest in dialogue seems not to have
translated into developing expert dialogic tools or spaces in which public relations experts routinely
use such tools.
Originality/value – The paper introduces literature and debates about dialogue largely ignored in
the mainstream public relations scholarship and aims to stimulate fresh discussion about the nature of
public relations knowledge and practice.
Keywords Public relations, Skills, Conversation, Communication
Paper type Research paper
[D]ialogue, discourse . . . we all like these words . . . Do they mean enough to us? (R. Heath)[1].
Journal of Communication
Management
Vol. 15 No. 2, 2011
pp. 108-124
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1363-254X
DOI 10.1108/13632541111126346
The aim of this article is to offer critical reflection on the way in which the concept of
dialogue has been used in public relations theory and practice. As the title chosen for
this discussion suggests, I question the extent to which the field can lay claim to
dialogic expertise. I also show that reflecting on the role of dialogue in public relations
allows us to take stock of how the field has developed over the last 30 years, both in
conceptual and practical terms. My approach is not to focus on the variety of practices,
or disciplines as practitioners sometimes refer to them, nor is it to lay out for inspection
all the possible strands of research. Instead I emphasise the key common concerns that
underpin this variety.
Dialogue has been at the centre of public relations theory for about thirty years and,
I argue, is where public relations’ conceptual centre of gravity is to be found. To be
more precise, concepts of symmetrical communication, relationship management, and
This paper was presented in an initial form at the Stirling Conference in September 2009 and
subsequently developed for the ICA Conference in June 2010.
responsibility, which have been fundamental to the trajectory of public relations
development since 1970s, overlap with the key concerns of the theory of dialogue.
In brief, I argue that despite assertive statements about the importance of dialogue
to public relations theory and professional practice, the field has a very poor
understanding of the concept, and has so far ceded this area of expertise to others to be
found in the broadly-defined disciplines of political science, community development,
management and organizational development. I present my argument in a number of
steps which correspond to the sections into which the article has been organized. The
discussion starts by sketching out the central conceptual space in public relations in
order to draw out the ways in which symmetrical communication, CSR, relationship
management, and dialogue overlap. I then move on to focus on the twentieth century
academic interest in dialogue and follow up these brief historical notes with two
sections that compare three expert areas: community development, organizational
development (“Dialogic expertise: knowledge and practice”), and public relations
(“Dialogue in public relations”). I offer conclusions in the last section.
It is important to acknowledge that this paper is written from a particular
perspective, i.e. public relations scholarship conducted in the medium of the English
language. Other perspectives, histories and debates can, therefore, only be
incorporated in this discussion if they have been made accessible through an
English translation or an English-language publication.
The conceptual centre of public relations scholarship
The discussion of public relations theory here focuses on concepts of symmetrical
communication, relationship management, and responsibility (as understood within
Corporate Social Responsibility) for two reasons: they clearly occupy a very important
place in textbooks and research; and, because of that, these concepts offer a good way
to identify the central preoccupations in public relations theory.
But before we attend to the passages chosen to illustrate the central conceptual
space, some comment is needed on how the texts have been chosen. In deciding which
texts to cite, it was not just a question of what was being said, but who was saying it.
James Grunig is one of the most quoted and influential writers in the field. Ron Pearson
was perhaps one the most promising scholars in the field whose contribution, sadly too
brief, was particularly important in the early 1990s and salient to this discussion. John
Ledingham and Stephen Bruning’s work is central to the whole stream of research and
writing on public relations as relationship management. And Tim Coombs and Sherry
Holladay’s statement comes from one of the most engaging of the new generation of
introductory textbooks in the field. So my selection is not based on notions of
representativeness in statistical terms, but on evident and widely understood scholarly
pre-eminence, influence and impact.
The following extracts taken together offer a good way to delineate the central
conceptual space:
With the two-way symmetrical model, practitioners use research and dialogue to bring about
symbiotic changes in the ideas, attitudes and behaviours of both their organizations and
publics (Grunig, 2001, p. 12).
What are the structural characteristics of a communication system that promotes
communication, negotiation and compromise (Grunig and Hunt 1984)? What are the
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
109
JCOM
15,2
structural characteristics of a communication system that promotes what Ehling (1984, 1985)
called message-exchange or communication-as-conversation, or what Ackerman (1980) called
neutral dialogue, or what Habermas (1970, 1984) called communication symmetry? How can
these characteristics be evaluated and measured? [. . .] A fruitful way to begin to look inside
the idea of symmetrical communication is to introduce [. . .] dialogue (Pearson, 1989, pp. 70,
71).
110
Broom et al. (1997) advanced a model for constructing theory concerning organization-public
relationships centred around the properties, antecedents, and consequences of
organization-public relationships. [. . .] we suggested that concepts of openness, trust,
involvement, and commitment may act as dimensions of the organization-public relationship
(Ledingham and Bruning, 2000, p. 58).
[. . .] public relations as a form of public communication [. . .] is associated with multiple,
special responsibilities to society. These responsibilities stem from the need to practice ethical
communication and the concomitant emphasis on two-way communication and dialogue in
the public arena. [. . .] The concern for balancing the needs of society and the needs of clients
produces a tension that may be difficult to manage. PR professionals may find it challenging
to function as “the conscience of the organization”. (Coombs and Holladay, 2007, pp. 28-9).
Thus, we can conclude that what the discipline deals in is communication, but what it
deals with is “relationship”. Although acknowledgement is made that relationships are
built from communication as well as other kinds of action (for example, product or
policy related ones), communication occupies a privileged position. Furthermore,
communication is defined, initially at least, by the dichotomy of symmetry/asymmetry
(Grunig and Hunt, 1984), which describes the relative positions taken by the parties
involved in communication and the concomitant communication behaviours. This,
however, is not a purely descriptive distinction; these are value-laden terms and the
normative stance articulated on the basis of this distinction favours symmetrical
communication. The rationale for this position is drawn from a number of sources,
some of them known and acknowledged more directly and used more extensively than
others.
The following discussion is merely a sketch of the key ideas, writers and theories
woven into public relations scholarship (by which I mean research, writing, academic
publications and textbooks). The idea of symmetry in communication theory can be
traced back to research in interpersonal communication and cognitive psychology. The
key moment in the development of this idea is Theodore Newcomb’s (1953) article
offering the co-orientation model of interpersonal communication as a way of
explaining the dynamics of human interaction. Symmetry here refers to the specific
feature of human communication, namely the link between similarity of interlocutors’
orientations towards the object of communication and the influence the perception of
this state of affairs has on the parties’ subsequent orientation to that object. In other
words, the closer interlocutors see themselves to each other in their views on a subject
(i.e. in their cognitions and evaluations), the more confident they become in these views,
and that change happens in a co-related manner, affecting the whole system, not just
its individual parts. Newcomb also asserts that symmetry functions as “secondary
reward value”, or to simplify, it is perceived as desirable, as good (pp. 394-395). Public
relations scholarship has recognised these ideas very directly in textbook references to
co-orientation (Cutlip et al., 2000; Broom and Dozier, 1990; Tench and Yeomans, 2006)
and indirectly in the idea of symmetrical communication and excellent public relations
which is present in much research and writing (see Toth, 2007; Grunig et al., 2006).
The intellectual link between public relations and dialogue theory which is buried
more deeply in scholarship produced in the area is that to Deweyan pragmatism. One
of the key themes in Dewey’s work is the fundamental role of communication in
democracy and community-building (Evans, 2001, p. 773). He sees that role as going
beyond transmission of facts and information and instead as being the way in which
the shared territory and social bonds are constituted:
[m]en live in a community by virtue of things which they have in common; and
communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common (Dewey cited in
Evans, 2001, p. 773).
It is worth pointing out the connection made by Taylor (2004, p. 126) between these two
writers: commenting on his own work on co-orientation in the study of organizations as
a study of dialogue, Taylor connects Newcomb and Dewey by their shared “ontological
stand on the nature of organization”: they both see it as “emerging in and through
communication”.
The constitutive nature of communication can be said to be the defining feature of
another key idea reflected in public relations scholarship – the concept of the public
sphere. Habermas’ interest focused on the constitution of public legitimacy for
democracy through communicative action, i.e. public communication conducted within
a set of rules regulating the conditions and relationships which need to be present for
public communication to underpin an inclusive, fair and rational system of
government. These are: intelligibility (which relates to mutual understandibility of
the utterance), truth (the propositional content of the utterance being transparent and
agreed to by the listener); truthfulness (sincerity, the speaker seriously and exactly
intending what is expressed); and appropriateness (a claim that the speaker is acting in
accord with socially shared norms and rules) (Burleson and Kline, 1979, p. 417; see also
Burkart, 2009, p. 146). In other words, the basis for substantive agreements rests on
procedural communication rules.
The ideas discussed so far view communication as the fabric of human society and
as the fabric of its political life. Corporate Social Responsibility tackles the problem of
responsibility from a different angle. Rather than relationships between individuals, or
individuals as citizens, CSR takes as its subject the relationship between corporations
– legally constituted entities involved in economic activity – and individual citizens,
i.e. between private economic activity and public life. Much of the legitimacy of
corporations is defined by their legal obligations, but what is of interest for public
relations scholarship lies outside that boundary and deals with phenomena such as
public opinion, or to draw from the public relations expert repertoire, with reputation
and image (Carroll, 1991; McMillan, 2007; Cowe and Hopkins, 2008). The importance of
these phenomena lies partly in their potential link to public debates about legislative
change and public policy as they impinge upon the arena of corporate action, and
partly in their importance for the competitive market positioning pursued by
corporations. Another important point to make is that these phenomena are largely
symbolic, constituted through various practices of representation. Consequently, it can
be argued that relationship management is another technique of managing the soft,
symbolic boundary of social responsibility. As illustrated above, in public relations
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
111
JCOM
15,2
112
theory relationship management is understood as communication activity producing
cognitive and affective outcomes measured as trust, openness, involvement and
commitment.
To sum up, the common concern reflected in the concepts discussed here can be
defined as enacting a particular kind of social relationships, and beyond that, a
particular model of governance, and a particular kind of society – a tolerant, peaceful,
deliberative democracy. The way in which this goal may be achieved is through
communication focused on qualities manifest through and created in communication
activity, typically explained through lists of features referred to earlier. As we shall see,
such qualities – trust, openness, involvement, commitment, intelligibility,
appropriateness – define dialogue as well as relationship management, symmetrical
communication, or aspects of social responsibility.
A brief history of modern dialogue
Having shown how public relations’ central preoccupations are made up of
overlapping concepts discussed above, a brief note relating to the intertwining
histories of the ideas is needed here.
The idea of symmetry in communication became popular in the 1950s, in the same
decade in which the idea of dialogue began its modern career. Publication of Buber’s
(1958) I and Thou[2] is often referred to as the starting point in the story of modern
dialogue because of the profound influence of the ideas it contained. In fact, as Stewart
et al. (2004, pp. 33-4) point out, the term dialogue did not appear in that seminal work,
but was introduced in a later essay “Dialogue” (1965) aimed at explicating the key
principle of human life to which I and Thou was devoted – the twofold orientation that
characterises human encounters with nature and other human beings, the I-it
(subject-object) orientation which is in tension with the I-Thou orientation (Stewart
et al., 2004, p. 32).
At first, dialogue was the domain of philosophy, humanistic psychology and
person-centred psychotherapy (Rogers, Tournier), education and theology (Buber,
Freir)[3] before it was taken up by communication scholars in the 1970s, starting with:
[. . .] Johannesen’s (1971) groundbreaking early essay in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, in
which he identifies dialogue as an “emerging concept” for the discipline and charts its
prominent characteristics (Anderson et al., 2004a, p. 5).
Equally important to note is the fact that many textbooks in interpersonal
communication starting in the 1970s “were in tune with many of [dialogue’s]
assumptions” (Anderson et al., 2004b, p. 7) and, consequently, popularised the idea.
The political impetus behind the modern study of dialogue in public life is usually
attributed to Jurgen Habermas whose work has been accessible in English translations
since the 1970s. Although his most influential work was published later, in the
1980s[4], his earlier work on the theory of communication had already attracted
attention and discussion: a special issue of Journal of the American Forensic
Association was devoted to him in 1979, and a longer article on Habermas appeared in
Quarterly Journal of Speech in the same year (Anderson et al., 2004a, p. 6). This revival
of interest in dialogue had a profound influence on ideas about communication ethics,
for reasons put in highly-charged language by Krippendorff (1989, p. 94) a decade later,
when he described dialoguing as:
an ongoing process that respects the autonomy of different reality constructions, enables each
participant to interrogate his or her own history and grow beyond it. Dialogue is the most
noble form of human interaction [. . .].
Thus when public relations scholarship turned to ideas of symmetrical communication
(Grunig, 1976) in its broad sense of a search for shared understandings, honesty,
listening, and genuineness; these ideas were already well-established in
communication scholarship.
Subsequently, the study of dialogue became a rich multidisciplinary field,
producing debate and much applied work, particularly since the 1990s. In order to
reflect on the status of the concept in public relations, it is important to understand
what was happening in this respect in other disciplines. In the next section of the
article, I shall discuss two such academic disciplines, in order to then demonstrate by
contrast public relations’ relative lack of expert engagement with the concept and
practice of dialogue. Before the argument can be made, however, a definition is in
order.
Dialogue is a somewhat slippery term: it is a word with a long history in English, it
has changed its meaning, or rather acquired new meanings, especially in the second
part of the twentieth century, and any definition is complicated by its colloquial usage
reflecting various aspects of the term’s history (see Wierzbicka, 2006). The basic
definition of the term she arrives at lists eight key characteristics of the phenomenon
and offers a useful start to this discussion:
(1) “dialogue” is a process which goes on for some time, not continuously, but in
separate episodes;
(2) “dialogue” is a group activity, prototypically involving two groups, and it is
reciprocal; consists in talking about a particular range of topics – presumably,
topics of mutual interest;
(3) “dialogue” [involves participants who] are aware of their differences: there can
be no “dialogue” between people with the same, or very similar, views. At the
same time, it shows that they are aware that the subject matter is important to
both sides and that it is emotionally charged: both sides feel something when
they think about things of this kind;
(4) “dialogue” is not merely an “exchange of ideas”; it is not just a matter of
knowing what the other group thinks, but of understanding how they think,
and being similarly understood oneself;
(5) “dialogue” [refers to participants who] do not aim at resolving all differences
between the parties and achieving a common way of thinking, at least not in the
sense that each group will shift its thinking and as a result get closer to the
other group. Rather, it is hoped that the two groups will discover some common
ground – possibly, through the clarification of their respective positions. It is
also hoped, however, that both groups are open to the possibility of change in
their thinking;
(6) “dialogue” [requires an] attitude of respect and goodwill;
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
113
JCOM
15,2
114
(7) “dialogue” [participants in “dialogue”] refrain from saying [certain things]: one
doesn’t attack or even criticize one’s partners (unless one wants to kill the
dialogue);
(8) “dialogue” is seen by participants as valuable and productive in itself. In due
course the two groups are expected to discover that about some things at least
they can think the same and, as a result, their thinking on some points may
chang. (Wierzbicka, 2006, pp. 689-90).
There is no fundamental disagreement among scholars and practitioners of dialogue
about any of the features included in this long, descriptive definition; where there are
differences, the arguments focus on the emphasis put on some rather than other of
these features, on the nature of the specific definition adhered to, and on practical
applications. Linder (2001, pp. 653, 652) deals with the task of sorting through various
approaches by relating them to two classical models of dialogue: the Socratic and the
Athenian models. While the first one is defined as “Socratic interrogations in pursuit of
self-knowledge and virtue”, the latter refers to “Athenian deliberations for collective
governance”. In short, they represent two directions present in the western conception
of dialogue: inquiry and will formation. Linder uses these models to think through
modern ideas on dialogue and argues that the work of Gadamer (1989) and Bohm
(1996) (for discussion see Stewart et al., 2004), two names usually found on the short list
of “fathers” of modern dialogue, represent the primary interest in dialogue as “a route
to discover new ways of understanding or to reach what is hidden from view” (Linder,
2001, p. 654). The modern thinkers falling in step with the Athenian model are
Habermas and Dewey (1927, p. 655) who view dialogue as a way for participants to
“form commitments, common purpose and to reaffirm the symbolic bonds of culture”.
Another way of thinking through the differences was proposed by Stewart and
Zediker (2000) who talk about descriptive and prescriptive approaches. The first see
dialogue as the “pervasive defining feature of humanity” in the way Bakhtin (1981)
does; the latter argue that “human meaning-making is inherently relational”, but only a
particular kind, or quality of relating is called dialogue, following Buber’s views
(Stewart et al., 2004, p. 21). These differences in views become very helpful when one
considers the practical application of dialogue.
Dialogic expertise: knowledge and practice
Public relations is not the only field to have made a claim to dialogue. In fact, other
academic disciplines have done so more fully and more successfully, as this section
demonstrates. Management – or more specifically organizational communication –
and political science, especially in relation to community development, have made
focused and sustained theoretical efforts linked to significant practical engagement in
solving real-life problems for organizations and communities.
Political communication has been particularly interested in dialogue as a way of
improving citizen participation in politics and reinvigorating the idea of democracy as
deliberative democracy (Gastil and Levine, 2005; Gastil, 2008). While the normative,
ethical argument for enhancing opportunities for citizens to deliberate can be drawn
from Habermas, there has also been much interest in the effects deliberation has on
citizens’ political efficacy, i.e. the feeling that political participation has an impact on
political process (for discussion see Morrell, 2005). Although there is some debate about
the issue and current research recognises that the relationship between deliberation
and citizens’ political efficacy is still poorly charted (Delli Carpini et al., 2004), it is
possible to think about the effects of deliberation in terms of increased social and
political capital (Morrell, 2005, p.65).
Equally noteworthy for this discussion is the evidence of a nuanced understanding
of dialogical communication in the two disciplines under consideration. Morrell (2005,
p. 55) refers explicitly to the possibility that different types of deliberation – the term
he uses for face-to-face public communication among citizens – may produce different
outcomes. He identifies three main types: civic dialogue, deliberative discussion, and
deliberative decision-making. On closer inspection, these three types of deliberation
mark a spectrum of dialogue from inquiry to will formation. While a civic dialogue is
predominantly focused on understanding, on diversity and ability to talk and learn
(inquiry); deliberative discussion is more focused on specific policy or decision making
area and on building citizen’s knowledge, but not necessarily consensus. Deliberative
decision making, on the other hand, is oriented towards a goal of making policy
decisions through dialogic communication (will formation). It is reasonable to expect
that the outcome aimed at in each of these types of deliberation will shape the exact
form communication takes; in other words, different outcomes can be linked to
different techniques.
Many techniques and examples of real-life projects using dialogue can be found in
literature. For example, the Public Conversation Project (www.public
conversations.org/) and National Issues Forums (www.nifi.org/about/index.aspx) in
the USA, which started in 1989 as groups of people interested in ways of improving
and growing deliberation in civic life (Gergen et al., 2001). They have since become
non-for-profit organisations developing deliberative techniques, training volunteers,
and supporting deliberative projects. A fuller exposition of public deliberation is
presented in Gastil (2008, pp. 192-206) who lays out examples such as: sequenced
forums, which as he admits is a rather clumsy term that refers to a reworked Town
Hall meeting; deliberative polls, a combination of random sampling as in opinion polls
and deliberation among groups constructed in this way; or citizen juries, a smaller
version of deliberative polls. Further examples could be offered from other countries
(see Gastil and Levine, 2005), however, the point has already been made: there is an
extensive body or knowledge and practical expertise about public deliberation which
works with dialogue as an innovative way of achieving goals outside communication.
All of the sources referred to in this paragraph offer details on dialogue as a technique
by breaking the process down to elements and describing how these should be
managed, for example by laying out details of preparation, approaches to putting
groups together, articulation of aims, moderation techniques, and evaluation.
Dialogue is also a topic of interest and a source of applied techniques in
management studies. As in the world of public policy making and citizen engagement,
there are numerous not-for-profit organizations and consultancy services which
promote and sell this expertise. As an academic interest, dialogue can be linked to the
Appreciative Inquiry approach to managing organizational development, usually
dated back to 1987 (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987)[5]. The AI approach originates in
a philosophical shift in the position taken on knowledge and action. The positivist
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
115
JCOM
15,2
116
stance of objective, disembodied knowledge is given up in favour of a stance similar to
that underpinning the philosophy of dialogue. Organizational knowledge resides in an
organization acting as a complete whole, rather than any particular part of the
organization. Knowledge is seen as an appreciation of the creative nature of
organizational life, and it becomes known through a process of inquiry which captures
personal stories and insights, which uses communication as a process of shared
discovery and reasoning. However, dialogue, as both a philosophy and a technique, is
more clearly discussed in the context of the Learning Organization concept, specifically
linked to Peter Senge and a group of academics at MIT. Isaacs’ (1999) book Dialogue
and the Art of Thinking Together is perhaps the most famous work articulating
dialogic principles in the context of their application to solving organizational
problems, rather than, as we have seen earlier, those of public political life. Like many
other guru books, it is a mixture of theoretical knowledge and an articulation of a
technique, laced with the rhetoric of epiphany, urgency, and the “common sense”
characteristic of management fashion-setting discourse (see Benders and Van Veen,
2001).
Isaacs’ (1999, pp. 9, 3) version of dialogue, while putting a strong emphasis on
collaborative inquiry, is also very clear about the problem-solving application of such
communication:
Dialogue, as I define it here, is about a shared inquiry, it is a way of thinking and reflecting
together [. . .].
If the problem of thinking together is both personal and larger than personal – then what is
needed is a powerful set of practical tools and practices that can help us deal with both
dimensions. They must produce pragmatic, successful results out of difficult conversation
[. . .].
The book then proceeds to introduce specific skills (listening, respecting, suspending
and voicing) as well as designing the dialogic interaction, to which Isaacs refers as the
“architecture of the invisible”. One element of his design is the well-known idea of a
dialogue container, something like a setting, both physical and normative, shaping the
rules of engagement to enable a particular kind of interaction to emerge.
Another dialogic technique with business (and other) applications is the World Café:
a particular way of running dialogues, also now promoted through a not-for-profit
organization called The World Café Community Foundation (www.theworldcafe.com/)
established in 2001. The World Café is built around the practice of small group
conversations, and a managed way of mixing groups to promote diversity and the
sharing of ideas in order to work towards problem solution. Confusingly, one of the
directors and contributors to the book showcasing the approach, The World Café
(Brown, 2005) is called David Isaacs.
Dialogue in public relations
Turning to public relations’ treatment of dialogue, it becomes clear fairly quickly that
despite the centrality of the relational approach in public relations scholarship,
demonstrated in the first part of the paper, the concept is somewhat marginalised and
“actual examples of dialogic public relations are very difficult to find” (Meisenbach and
Feldner, 2009, p. 253). The most comprehensive discussion of the concept is offered by
Kent and Taylor (2002, pp. 28, 27) who provide a bridge between public relations and
organizational communication literature on the subject and go beyond the
Habermasian framework by referring to the inherent unpredictability of dialogue
and the consequent risk involved in engaging in dialogue and by hinting at a more
nuanced distinction between dialogue and related forms of communication:
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
[d]ialogue is not synonymous with debate – which is the clash of ideas – but rather, dialogue
is more akin to a conversation between lovers where each has his or her own desires but seeks
the other’s good.
117
I see these as particularly important points in the discussion precisely because there is
very little in public relations scholarship to help the discipline think about how
dialogue can become an expert communication skill. Beyond familiarity with
Habermas’ ideas and their application to measuring levels of understanding in
communication between organizations and their publics in a model of
Consensus-Oriented Public Relations (Burkart, 2009), we have Pearson’s approach to
dialogic organizational systems which also draws on Habermas in proposing that
validity claims can be re-interpreted as communication rules. It remains, however,
somewhat unclear to what extent these ideas have been applied to thinking about
organizational systems rather then having been articulated in more universal terms.
The potential for a more comprehensive engagement with the concept of dialogue
offered by Kent and Taylor (2002) has so far has been associated with work on dialogic
features of websites, or more generally, the internet (McAllister-Spooner, 2009; Kent
and Taylor, 1998; Kent et al., 2001, xref . 2002). On the one hand, this represents a
theoretically good fit, given the original excitement about the interactive features of the
new communication technologies (Chadwick, 2006, pp. 22-7); on the other hand, there is
a danger inherent in the methodologies used so far of reducing the search for genuine
dialogue to somewhat mechanistic principles of building feedback loops, or “dialogic
loops” (Kent and Taylor, 1998, p. 326). Despite the identifiable stream of research in
that direction, McAllister-Spooner (2009, p. 321) concludes that, “the dialogic promise
of the web has not yet been realized” and one could also argue that it has not been
realized in the scholarly engagement with dialogue in public relations.
The only other way public relations scholarship deals with dialogue is indirectly, by
studying the relational outcomes of communication dynamics as suggested by
Ledingham (2003). Although this approach has much to commend it, in its present
shape it cannot deliver the way for public relations to work with dialogue, for a number
of reasons.
The first limitation is the conceptual difficulty with the assumption that an
organization or a company enters into relationships with individuals in a way that can
be understood using interpersonal communication models. Dialogic theory (and
symmetrical communication) is based on the interaction of individuals, or groups of
individuals, and face-to-to-face communication. First, it seems problematic to assume
that encounters between individuals and organizations can be treated in exactly the
same way as encounters between individuals. There are a number of issues that need
to be considered in this context, for example the fact of the centrality of the human
body and biology to our engagement with the world. We feel, we age, we construct our
lives in relation to the needs of our bodies and our species, and we remain in the same
body throughout our lives. Organizations do not have bodies (they may use their
JCOM
15,2
118
employees’ bodies to represent themselves) and their existence is ruled primarily by the
economic or political/administrative logic. Organizations also have an articulated
utilitarian purpose in a way that is alien to most philosophical or religious systems that
deal with the question of the meaning of human life. Thus when such different entities
interact, they interact within a structured sense of expectations and understandings
that construct the platform for this engagement. When we as individuals enter into
communication, or even a relationship with an organization, we operate in this
relationship by retaining a clear sense of the differences in the legal positions between
participants in the communication, a degree of sensitivity to strategic needs – both our
own and the organisation’s – and a sense of appropriate expectation of what our
mutual obligations in the relationship and the extent of the relationship are.
For example, if I am in a relationship with my bank, I have no illusion that I am
anything other than a customer, or potential customer for a related service (such as
personal finance advice), or part of some other strategic plan, and am fully aware that
our relationship is predicated on the bank’s position, both legal and competitive. Any
other stance on my part could be seen as a sign of lack of basic social competence, to
say the least. Thus the first limitation of relationship management as a dialogic
approach is that so far there does not seem to be a sufficient recognition of the
delimitations and subtleties of “relationship” in contexts discussed here.
Second, the task of reconnecting relational outcomes to behaviours tends to focus on
the individual’s behaviours towards the organisation, rather than on mutual changes:
for example, in conflict scenarios (Huang, 2001), or in deciding whether an individual
will continue or sever his or her relationship with an organisation (Bruning et al., 2004).
Dialogue implies mutuality, but relationship measurement so far seems to find it hard
to deal with mutuality: the line of inquiry tends to look at the relationship as the
predictor of the public’s, not the organization’s behaviour, and the mutuality of the
bond is thus underplayed.
Third, by focusing on the relationship between the organization and its publics,
organizational members seem to be marginalised, if not excluded altogether, from this
theory: What or who is the organization that enters into the relationship with this
internal public? To sum up, the phenomenon of relationship is, perhaps unavoidably,
simplified by the methodological decisions in this approach which is, therefore, not
ready to deal with the complexity of relationships in social life.
Finally, the discussion of public deliberation in public relations literature using
classical sources and ideas so far has not helped much in understanding dialogue. It
has principally been focused on dealing with the legitimacy of persuasion in public life,
and has preferred to stick with rhetoric as its key term (Heath, 1992, 2000, p. 71, 2009;
L’Etang, 1996). Heath’s treatment of rhetoric leads him to offer the idea of “rhetorical
dialogue”:
First ethical standards that guide the practice are continually refined by rhetorical dialogue;
the limits of one set of ethical principles is a counterset that seeks to elevate practice. Second,
public relations adds value to society because of the rhetorical dialogue by which interested
parties [. . .] forge standards of business and public policy that create mutually beneficial
relationships that add social capital to community. Third, public relations adds value to the
marketplace and public policy area because open dialogue gives people an opportunity to
participate in as well as witness discussions (statements and counterstatements) by which
customers (markets) and publics (stakeholders/stakeseekers) examine facts, values, policies,
identification and narratives leading to wiser purchases and more sound public policies.
Comparing Heath ’s treatment of rhetoric and dialogue with that of Linder’s (2001)
models of dialogue, it becomes clear that perhaps insufficient attention is paid to
different philosophies and traditions behind the idea. The term deliberation might fit
better in Heath’s proposition about how public communication contributes to social
wellbeing. In this article, as in his earlier writing on rhetoric, Heath et al. (2009) is
heavily influenced by the notion of rhetoric (or rhetorical dialogue) as a statement and
counterstatement dynamic, a rather adversarial model of debating retained in his most
recent published work on the topic. An interesting departure from this style of writing
and references framing his ideas on dialogue can be found in his discussion with
organizational scholars in 2006, where he seems much more in step with the theory of
dialogue as developed in that particular discipline (Heath et al., 2006).
Conclusions
What, then, does dialogue mean in public relations? This paper argues that dialogue is
poorly understood and used marginally both in research and textbooks. Other
academic disciplines and professional groups seem to have developed extensive
knowledge of the concept as well as models for its application including its use in
consultancy. This is a curious state of affairs as there seems to be something of a
disjuncture here between the discourse about the core of the public relations field as a
discipline, the focus of its pedagogy and, one could also propose, the practice (Pieczka,
2010). As this paper has demonstrated, research and theorising deals with dialogue to a
limited extent, but textbooks do not cover the term or offer any discussion of dialogue
techniques, and dialogue does not seem to appear in the discourse used by practitioners
to present their work – judging from a cursory examination of websites of professional
bodies in the UK, such as the CIPR, PRCA and a number of well-established
consultancies. The inevitable conclusion is that public relations functions, and in some
contexts presents itself, very successfully as advocacy practice and so far has paid
little attention to dialogic communication either in research or pedagogy.
Given the continuous growth of the public relations industry in the last three
decades (Pieczka, 2008; Miller and Dinan, 2000) and given the professionalization and
institutionalization of public relations (Sriramesh and Vercic, 2009, Van Ruler and
Vercic, 2004), a question arises about the extent to which the field needs extensive
expertise in dialogue.
There is a strong reason why public relations’ ambivalence about dialogue
discussed in this article may have long-term consequences. The constitution of public
relations professional jurisdiction needs to be broad and extensive in terms of
communication theories, applications, and practices in order to sustain the profession
in times of change. If the change in communication technology seems to be widely
discussed, the fashion for dialogue and engagement in public policy has not attracted
much attention in public relations. Yet it is significant. For example, science policy in
the UK over the last 25 years has been clearly and strongly tied to preferred, and
continuously evolving, models of communication between scientists and the public,
with dialogue being presented as the most recent solution to the difficulties of making
policy in this area. Similar trends can be found in health and local government (Pieczka
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
119
JCOM
15,2
120
and Escobar, 2010). What is more, these policy trends are of international reach, as a
series of documents and books published in recent years by the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development shows (OECD, 2001, 2003, 2008). These
policy initiatives have opened up a big area for communication specialists, but what is
perhaps equally important is the opportunity this creates for linking communication
experts to socially relevant work. So far, as I have shown, public relations as a
profession has not shown signs of building and publicly demonstrating appropriate
competence and commercial will to enter this area legitimately and with confidence.
Notes
1. This comment was made as part of the discussion in a Public Relations Division session
“Discourse and dialogue: A public relations approach to organizational rhetoric” (24 May
2009) during 59th Annual ICA Conference in Chicago.
2. The book was published in its original German version in 1923, translated into English in
1937.
3. The references normally given in this context in addition to Buber’s I and Thou are:
C. Rogers, Client-centered Therapy, 1951, Freedom to Learn, 1969; P. Tournier, The Meaning
of Persons, 1957; P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970.
4. The Structure of the Public Sphere was published in English in 1989, while the original
German work appeared in 1962. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vols 1 and 2 was
published in English in 1984 and 1987 respectively, while the German original appeared in
1981.
5. For a more detailed history of the idea see: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/intro/timeline.
cfm
References
Ackerman, B. (1980), Social Justice in the Liberal State, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Anderson, R., Baxter, L. and Cissna, K. (2004a), “Texts and contexts of dialogue”, in Anderson, R.,
Baxter, L. and Cissna, K. (Eds), Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies,
Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 1-17.
Anderson, R., Baxter, L. and Cissna, K. (Eds) (2004b), Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in
Communication Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Bakhtin, M. (1981), in Holquist, M. (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin
(Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. Trans.), University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Benders, J. and Van Veen, K. (2001), “What’s in a fashion? Interpretative viability and
management fashions”, Organization, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 33-53.
Bohm, D. (1996), On Dialogue, Routledge, New York, NY.
Broom, G. and Dozier, D. (1990), Using Research in Public Relations: Applications to Program
Management, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Broom, G., Casey, S. and Ritchey, J. (1997), “Toward a concept and theory of organization-public
relationships”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 9, pp. 83-98.
Brown, J. (2005), The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations that Matter,
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA.
Bruning, S., Castle, J. and Schrepfer, E. (2004), “Building relationships between organizations and
publics: examining the linkage between organization-public relationships, evaluations of
satisfaction, and behavioural intent”, Communication Studies, Vol. 55 No. 3, pp. 435-46.
Buber, M. (1958), I and Thou, 2nd ed. (Smith, R. Trans.), Scribner, New York, NY.
Burkart, R. (2009), “On Habermas: understanding and public relations”, in Ihlen, O., van Ruler, B.
and Fredriksson, M. (Eds), Public Relations and Social Theory, Routledge, London,
pp. 141-64.
Burleson, B. and Kline, S. (1979), “Habermas’ theory of communication: a critical explication”,
Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 65, pp. 412-28.
Carroll, A. (1991), “The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: toward the moral
management of organizational stakeholders”, Business Horizons, July-August.
Chadwick, A. (2006), Internet Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Coombs, T. and Holladay, S. (2007), It’s Not Just PR: Public Relations in Society, Blackwell,
Malden, MA.
Cooperrider, D.L. and Srivastva, S. (1987), “Appreciative inquiry in organizational life”,
in Pasmore, W. and Woodman, R. (Eds), Research in Organization Change and
Development, Vol. 1, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 129-69.
Cowe, R. and Hopkins, M. (2008), “Corporate social responsibility: is there a business case?”,
in Burchell, J. (Ed.), The Corporate Social Responsibility Reader, Routledge, London,
pp. 1001-110.
Cutlip, S., Center, A. and Broom, G. (2000), Effective Public Relations, Prentice-Hall, London.
Delli Carpini, M.X., Cook, F.L. and Jacobs, L.R. (2004), “Public deliberation, discursive
participation, and citizen engagement: a review of the empirical literature”, Annual Review
of Political Science, Vol. 7, pp. 315-44.
Dewey, J. (1927), The Public and its Problems, Henry Holt, New York, NY.
Ehling, W. (1984), “Application of decision theory in the construction of a theory in public
relations I”, Public Relations Research and Education, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 25-39.
Ehling, W. (1985), “Application of decision theory in the construction of a theory in public
relations II”, Public Relations Research and Education, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 25-39.
Evans, K. (2001), “Dewey and the dialogical process: speaking, listening and today’s media”,
International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 24 Nos 7/8, pp. 771-98.
Gadamer, H-G. (1989), Truth and Method, 2nd ed., (Marshall, D. Trans.), Crossroad Publishing
Company, New York, NY.
Gastil, J. (2008), Political Communication and Deliberation, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Gastil, J. and Levine, P. (Eds) (2005), The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for
Effective Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Gergen, K., McNamee, S. and Barrett, F. (2001), “Towards transformative dialogue”,
International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 24 Nos 7/8, pp. 679-707.
Grunig, J. (1976), “Organizations and public relations: testing a communication theory”,
Journalism Monograph, Vol. 46.
Grunig, J. (2001), “Two-way symmetrical public relations: past, present and future”, in Heath, R.
(Ed.), Handbook of Public Relations, Sage, London, pp. 11-30.
Grunig, J.E. and Hunt, T. (1984), Managing Public Relations, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York,
NY.
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
121
JCOM
15,2
122
Grunig, J., Grunig, L. and Dozier, D. (2006), “The excellence theory”, in Botan, C. and Hazleton, V.
(Eds), Public Relations Theory II, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 21-62.
Habermas, J. (1970), “Towards a theory of communication competence”, Inquiry, Vol. 13,
pp. 360-75.
Habermas, J. (1984), The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (McCarthy, T. Trans.), Beacon
Press, Boston, MA.
Heath, R. (1992), in Toth, E. and Heath, R. (Eds), The Wrangle in the Marketplace: A Rhetorical
Perspective of Public Relations, Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations,
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ.
Heath, R. (2000), “A rhetorical perspective on the values of public relations: crossroads and
pathways toward concurrence”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 12 No. 1,
pp. 69-91.
Heath, R. (2009), “The rhetorical tradition: wrangle in the marketplace”, in Heath, R., Toth, E. and
Waymer, D. (Eds), Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II, Routledge,
New York, NY, pp. 17-46.
Heath, R., Toth, E. and Waymer, D. (Eds) (2009), Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public
Relations II, Routledge, New York, NY.
Heath, R., Pearce, B., Shotter, J., Taylor, J., Kersten, A., Zorn, T., Roper, J. and Motion, J. (2006),
“The process of dialogue: participation and legitimation”, Management Communication
Quarterly, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 341-73.
Huang, Y. (2001), “Values of public relations: effects on organization-public relations mediating
conflict resolution”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 265-301.
Isaacs, W. (1999), Dialogue: Art of Thinking Together, Currency, New York, NY.
Johannesen, R. (1971), “The emerging concept of communication as dialogue”, Quarterly Journal
of Speech, Vol. 57 No. 4, pp. 373-82.
Kent, M. and Taylor, M. (1998), “Building dialogic relationships through the World Wide Web”,
Public Relations Review, Vol. 24, pp. 321-34.
Kent, M. and Taylor, M. (2002), “Toward a dialogic theory of public relations”, Public Relations
Review, Vol. 28, pp. 21-37.
Kent, M., Taylor, M. and White, W. (2001), “How activist organizations are using the internet to
build relationships”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 27, pp. 263-84.
Kent, M., Taylor, M. and White, W. (2002), “The relationship between web site design and
organizational responsiveness to stakeholders”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 28, pp. 63-77.
Krippendorff, K. (1989), “On the ethics of constructing communication”, in Dervin, B., Grossberg, L.,
O’Keefe, B. and Wartella, E. (Eds), Rethinking Communication, Vol. 1, Sage, Newbury
Park, CA.
L’Etang, J. (1996), “Public relations and rhetoric”, Critical Perspectives in Public Relations,
International Thomson Business Press, London.
Ledingham, J. (2003), “Explicating relationship management as a general theory of public
relations”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 181-98.
Ledingham, J.A. and Bruning, S.D. (2000), Public Relations as Relationship Management,
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Linder, S. (2001), “An inquiry into dialogue, its challenges and justification”, International
Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 24 Nos 7/8, pp. 651-78.
McAllister-Spooner, S. (2009), “Fulfilling the dialogic promise: a ten-year reflective survey on
dialogic internet principles”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 5, pp. 320-2.
McMillan, J. (2007), “Why corporate social responsibility? Why now? How?”, in May, S., Cheney, G.
and Roper, J. (Eds), The Debate over Corporate Social Responsibility, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, pp. 15-29.
Meisenbach, R. and Feldner, S. (2009), “Dialogue, discourse ethics and Disney”, in Heath, R.,
Toth, E. and Waymer, D. (Eds), Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II,
Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 253-71.
Miller, D. and Dinan, W. (2000), “The rise of PR industry in Britain 1979-98”, European Journal of
Communication, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 5-35.
Morrell, M. (2005), “Deliberation, democratic decision making and internal political efficacy”,
Political Behaviour, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 49-69.
Newcomb, T. (1953), “An approach to the study of communicative acts”, Psychological Review,
Vol. 60 No. 6, pp. 393-404.
OECD (2001), Citizens as Partners. Information, Consultation and Participation in Policy-making,
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.
OECD (2003), Open Government. Fostering Dialogue with Civil Society, Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.
OECD (2008), Mind the Gap: Fostering Open and Inclusive Policy Making. An Issues Paper, Public
Governance Committee, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.
Pearson, R. (1989), “Beyond ethical relativism in public relations: co-orientation, rules and the
idea of communication symmetry”, in Gruning, J. and Grunig, L. (Eds), Public Relations
Research Annual, Vol. 1, pp. 67-89.
Pieczka, M. (2008), The Disappearing Act: Public Relations Consultancy in Research and Theory,
Top Paper, Public Relations Division, paper presented at the International Communication
Association Conference, May.
Pieczka, M. (2010), “Public relations theory and the professional project”, in Maćkowska, R. (Ed.),
Public Relations – Efektywne Komunikowanie w Teorii i Praktyce, Wydawnictwo Akademii
Ekonomicznej, Katowice, pp. 13-26.
Pieczka, M. and Escobar, O. (2010), “Dialogue: innovation in policy making and the discourse of
engagement”, paper presented at Political Studies Association Annual Conference,
Edinburgh, April.
Sriramesh, K. and Vercic, D. (Eds) (2009), The Global Public Relations Handbook: Theory,
Research, and Practice, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York, NY.
Stewart, J. and Zediker, K. (2000), “Dialogue as tensional, ethical practice”, Southern
Communication Journal, Vol. 65, pp. 224-42.
Stewart, J., Zediker, K. and Black, L. (2004), “Relationships among philosophies of dialogue”,
in Anderson, R., Baxter, L. and Cissna, K. (Eds), Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in
Communication Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 21-38.
Taylor, J. (2004), “Dialogue as the search for sustainable organizational co-orientation”,
in Anderson, R., Baxter, L. and Cissna, K. (Eds), Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in
Communication Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 125-40.
Tench, R. and Yeomans, L. (2006), Exploring Public Relations, Prentice-Hall, Harlow.
Toth, E. (Ed.) (2007), The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communication
Management: Challenges for the Next Generation, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Mahwah, NJ.
Public relations
as dialogic
expertise?
123
JCOM
15,2
Van Ruler, B. and Vercic, D. (Eds) (2004), Public Relations and Communication Management in
Europe: A Nation-by-Nation Introduction to Public Relations Theory and Practice, Mouton
de Gruyter, Berlin.
Wierzbicka, A. (2006), “The concept of dialogue in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural
perspective”, Discourse Studies, Vol. 8 No. 5, pp. 675-703.
124
Further reading
Buber, M. (1965), Between Man and Man (Friedman, M. (Ed.), Smith, R. (trans.)), Macmillan,
New York, NY.
Pieczka, M. (1997), “Understanding in public relations”, Australian Journal of Communication,
Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 65-79.
About the author
Magda Pieczka teaches public relations at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Her research
interests include professionalization of public relations, dialogue and public engagement in
policy making, and discourse analysis. Together with Jacquie L’Etang, she has edited Critical
Approaches to Public Relations (1996) and Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary
Practice (2006) and she regularly contributes as an author, reviewer, and editor to key journals in
the discipline: Journal of Public Relations Research and Journal of Communication Management.
Magda Pieczka can be contacted at: [email protected]
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints