2009 PROCEEDINGS - Public Relations Society of America

professional values. In this regard, the exploration of PR students’ values as future
practitioners might be considered as no less important than the examination of PR
professionals’ values.
Northouse (2007) argued that although everyone has ethical responsibilities,
leaders have a special—greater—responsibility: Values promoted by them have an
impact on organizational values. Kruckeberg (1998) said that public relations as a
professional area is ideological, “with its own set of professional values and beliefs as
well as its own theories of society and humankind” (p. 244). According to Abbott (1988),
professions grow, split, join, adapt, and die. He argued that for students of the
professions, focusing on forms of professional life—association, licensure, and ethics
code—missed the contents of professional activity—“who was doing what to whom and
how” (p. 1) as well as “a fundamental fact of professional life—interprofessional
competition” (p. 2).
In this light, it is important to understand the professions as an interdependent and
competitive system. As an example, Abbott mentioned journalists’ efforts to formalize
the professional structure in the 1920s in the U.S. under the pressure of competition with
publicity agents. Abbott suggested that “mobility between journalism and public relations
is quite common” (p. 225). Thus, competition between the two occupations over
“jurisdiction,” or control over areas of work might be taken as the key to their
development. However, journalism is not the only profession with which public relations
competes. The circle of challengers is not limited to “outsiders” (e.g., journalism). As the
literature suggest (Berger & Reber, 2006), company “insiders” such as marketing, law, or
human resources departments also encroach into public relations, meaning that other
professionals are assigned to perform the public relations manager role (Lee, Jares, &
Heath, 1999).
A profession as a social institution is responsible for promoting and sustaining
certain values, and a professional ethics governs in a field (Wueste, 1994): “Because they
profess, professionals ask that they be trusted” (p. 7). Acknowledging the importance of
values in PR practitioners’ professional practice, the final research question is proposed:
RQ3: What are students’ perceptions of the three most important values for PR leaders?
Method
Participants. The purpose of this study is to investigate student interpretations of such
notions as leaders and leadership in public relations. The sample included 196 American
public relations majors (67 males and 129 females). The students were recruited from an
introductory PR course and two upper-level PR courses at a large southeastern university
with more than 500 PR majors.
Participant ages ranged from 18 to 29, with a mean of 20 years old (SD=1.74).
The majority of American participants (108/196) were 19 and 20 years old. The sample
consisted of 20 freshmen, 65 sophomores, 63 juniors, and 48 seniors.
Students completed the survey outside of class time and received modest credit
for their participation. According to statistical data, about 73% of all PR students in this
university were females in 2007. This number also is consistent with the overall figure of
females (70%) in the public relations field in the United States (Aldoory & Toth, 2002).
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