Handbook of Corporate Communication and Public ... - Blogs Unpad

the specialist journal Public Administration and
demonstrated their understanding of the
importance of monitoring the wider environment
to aid and influence public policy. Public
relations was seen as a tool to facilitate
smooth administration. It was local government
public relations officers who formed
the nucleus of those responsible for setting
up the IPR for which task they clearly possessed
the appropriate administrative skills.
The contribution of British civil servants to the
development of public relations in the United
Kingdom was substantial both in terms of
practice but also intellectually and ideologically.
A prime value for them was that of
government responsibility for the public interest
and in their writings we can see a clear
articulation of what could be called ‘the
public interest model of public relations’.
The idea that public relations should work
in the public interest remains today and is
alluded to in professional codes of conduct.
The notion of professional neutrality remained
an important value in the British
Government Information Service after the
Second World War and was an important
contrast to the heavily politicized American
counterpart. Latterly, however, there is evidence
of the erosion of that principle.
It was not until 1949 that the first British
book on public relations was published
(Brebner, 1949). It was written by the practitioner
J. H. Brebner whose distinguished
career included public relations at the Post
Office; membership of the committee which
set up the Ministry of Information (MoI) in
1937; Director of the News Division, MoI;
special overseas operative 1943–5; Director
of Press Communications at Supreme Allied
Headquarters; public relations at the British
Transport Commission. Apparently influenced
by management writers Taylor and Barnard,
Brebner’s argument for the existence and
justification of the role of public relations was
that it was an administrative or managerial
tool both to counteract the negative results of
specialization within organizations, and to
motivate the workforce. This seems to have
been the earliest explicit claim in a British
context that the role of public relations is to
support management. Like Lippman and
Grierson, Brebner argued that the PR practitioner
should have senior status and access to
the policy makers in an organization.
Thus we can see that the shape and trajectory
of British public relations has been influenced
partly by intellectual developments
originating in the United States but also by
some key home-grown thinkers and policy
makers.
Critical issues
Intrinsic to the concept of contemporary
democracy is the idea of popular debate and
the resolution of issues via discussion and
negotiation. However, in a free society debate
between the organizational actors, publics
and individuals is a consequence of specific,
directed intentions, usually focused on persuasion,
and not conducted as an end in
themselves. In other words, corporate communication
has to support the goals of an
organization and is not explicitly conducted
to support democratic values, although sometimes
this might be a side-effect of such communication.
Thus, communication in modern
democracies is a haphazard and contingent
affair in terms of democratic practice, however
focused and goal-oriented it may be
in organizational terms. To claim that
public relations is either specifically promoting
or undermining democracy is overstating
either case since it is an outgrowth of fundamental
political and social structures and
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors