Public Relations PURE311 Learning Unit 3.1 Contribution of strategic Public Relations to strategic planning 24 March 2011

 PR in effective organisations  Strategic planning model related to four types of organisational issues  Concept of strategy  Define strategy by using concepts from different authors 2 DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR 24/3/2011

Why are we relooking strategy? 3 24/3/2011 Public Relation’s contribution to strategic planning evident from Learning Unit 1 WHY Involvement in all levels of strategic management Understanding of organisation’s internal and external environments Need to more clearly understand concepts of strategy and strategic management Need to link Public Relations and organisational systems and operations Understand how Public Relations functions within organisations or at least its potential to add value to organisations DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR

Value of PR to effective operation  Value of Public Relations to organisations lie in its contribution to strategy and strategy development  Center & Jackson propose that using a behavioural strategic planning model can assist with strategic management and strategy development  Major elements:  Which behaviours should be motivated, reinforced, modified to achieve goals?  From which stakeholders are behaviours expected? (can withhold behaviours or offer overt opposition)  Which intermediate behaviours will lead to desired behaviours?  Who are opinion leaders in stakeholder groups to stimulate the desired group behaviours? 4 24/3/2011 DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR

 Identify a current issue that reflects poor management  Apply the major elements of the behavioural strategic planning model  Evaluate for class discussion  Which behaviours need to change?  What are the desired behaviours? 5 DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR 24/3/2011

Public Relations behavioural model The model supposes to indicate at which stage stakeholders will engage in desired behaviours Three stages of engagement are:  awareness which only rarely leads to desired behaviour  readiness/latent readiness may occasionally display desired behaviour  reaction to trigger events will lead to preparatory or intermediate behaviour such as contacting the organisation and relationship building Stakeholder contact/action enables organisation to identify needs and build relationships that lead to the ultimate desired behaviour Review model in Student manual on p /3/2011 DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR

Trigger events or issues 7 Four types of trigger events/issues (Center & Jackson, 2003) that affect behaviour Latent: formulated by far-thinking scholars or social activists with enough validity that it become an issue in future Emerging: written about in scholarly journals or the media and early adopter opinion leaders become aware; starts to spill over into wider publics but no coherent plan or broad support Hot: current and hotly debated Fallout: leftover remnants that can return to public agenda due to visibility 24/3/2011 DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR

Communication and strategy Moss and Warnaby (1998) highlighted the relationship between strategy and communication Strategy communication refers to the role of communication in facilitating the strategy development process Communication strategy is an example of a functional organisational strategy derived from organisational strategy Communication of strategy communicates strategic intent to stakeholders and facilitates coherence between the different levels of strategy formulation and implementation in the organisation 8 24/3/2011DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR

Strategic roles of communication 9 24/3/2011 Roles as conceptualised by Barker & Angelopulo (2006) Defines organisational identity Provides information to evaluate external and internal environments Focuses on the ‘big picture’ during strategy implementation Acts as a change agent during strategy execution Acts as an early warning system of changes to external environments Identifies and illuminates emergent strategy Provides information for the evaluation of strategy implementation and the achievement of objectives DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR

 Revise Public Relations behavioural model for class discussion  Identify examples of where an organisation can use this model to identify the need for changing stakeholders behaviour to achieve strategic goals 10 DPR3-Public RelationsLU3.1-Strategic PR 24/3/2011