The Introduction of Professionalism in Public Relations and Its Importance in The Modern Organization

Public relations have emerged as a fastest growing industry in the past few decades. One of the reasons for this could be the fast pace of change that is taking place in today’s competitive market. However, this has not altered the scope of public relations greatly. The main role of public relations to maintain and harness the relationship between an organization and its publics remains the same (Johnston 1993). This is one of the main reasons, why public relations today have become the custodian of the organization’s reputation. Therefore, public relations practitioners play an important role in creating and maintaining an organization’s reputation. To achieve this, a high level of professionalism is required from the practitioners.

However, introduction of professionalism in public relations discipline was a gradual process. Lovell (1982) underscores those public relations as a discipline grew slowly. However, most colleges and universities today offer public relations undergraduate and graduate programs. Institute of Public Relations (IPR) (1999) statistics show that there are between 400 and 500 public relations 11 graduates each year entering the industry in UK. Organizations need services of public relations practitioners today because they are professionally trained for the job (Cutlip, et al., 2000). For example these days, public relations practitioners are doing thorough research about their target audience before launching a public relations campaign.

According to the professionals’ public relations is the only function which generally recognized in just about every area of human activity business, religion, education, government and social and civic welfare (Reilly, Deny Griswold, 1981). It is the main reason, why the public relations have the propensity to influence the public opinions, thoughts and views. Cutlip, Center and Broom (2006), declared that without the effective public relations, the organizations are not able to viable their operations appropriately and are likely to impervious to changes occurring around, which leads them dysfunctional with the passage of time (Cutlip, Center & Broom, 2006, Pg-25).

Cutlip, et al. (2006) further apprised their readers by stated that the organizations need public relations because public relations expect and respond to public perceptions and opinions, to new values and to other changes in the environment. Consequently, all the organization, big or small, private or public, local or international needs public relations to achieve success in the long run for the organization (Seitel, 1998). It has been seen frequently that, nowadays the organizations make their major management decisions based on public needs, and any negative opinion from the customer will affect adversely the overall performance of the organization, that is why all the organizations wish to contemplate on this particular issue rather any thing else.

Organizations, like any other industry, need to communicate with its public to survive. This is one of the main reasons why the organizations should establish a set of public relations goals. The success of an organization in achieving these goals can be understood in the backdrop of roles played by public relations today in the organizations. Wilcox (2005) underscores that public relations plays a key role in the organizations’ success. It helps a the organization to achieve its goals.

One of the key goals that it helps an organization to achieve is to get volunteers. However, public relations helps an organization to achieve much more than recruiting volunteers as Lattimore et al. (2004) underscores that the organizations have many stakeholders such as employees, volunteers, individual donors and all these people have different public relations needs, and it is not an easy job to satisfy them all. Therefore, one of the first steps in this direction should be to start using public relations internally within the organization before the focus is shifted to external clients (Dan Barker as cited in Feinglass, 2005). According to Reilly (1981) internal public relations programs must be developed to achieve effective internal communication through periodic meetings, effective supervision, and by creating friendly surroundings that may assist in recruiting volunteers and employees. In other words, public relations must motivate volunteers and employees because they need to be motivated to get the work done. In addition, organizations need public relations activities to improve their image in the eyes of its public. This is essential because they are accountable to their public who generously support them on various accounts.

The organizations in sharp contrast to other businesses are not supposed to use advertising to promote themselves. One of the main reasons for this is that use of advertising by the organizations is considered unethical. Another key reason is that these organizations have limited resources and therefore have to adopt creative means to achieve their goals (Rubenstein as cited in Feinglass, 2005).In practice, organizations today are using print and electronic media advertising to recruit volunteers and to raise funds. Feinglass (2005) underscores that public relations make activities more meaningful, sensitive and effective for the organizations. According to

A Wilcox et al. (1992) effective activity that makes news and attracts large groups is a way to increase public awareness. Therefore, it is a prerequisite for a public relations practitioner to develop good relationships with the media to achieve their organization’s goals. In short, public relations play a key role in helping the organizations to gather support for its mission on the one hand and on the other in communicating with its key public.

I have conducted a study to examine and understand the significance of ethical public relations especially in the organizations working in the area of charity and women welfare. The main theme of this thesis is to examine the need of a public relation department in an organization. The researcher has the intentions sketches the flowchart of a non profit organization. The chief prospective of this study is to gauge the importance of the public relations to viable an organization via its size and via it’s equity as well.

The study reveals that ethical public relations can play an incredible and impressive role to accomplish the goals either for the profit or non-profit organization, provided that all the codes of ethics and public relations duly comply. Public relations can play a key role in development and growth of a non- profit organization especially, in today’s world there is hardly a well established company without a strong ‘Public Relations’ department.