Smith & Wesson negotiated a settlement that signified changes in its gun marketing and manufacturing practices. An opportunity to lead the industry in public safety resulted in a public relations blunder. “Topical transformation”, a concept that applies structuration theory to explain the...

This paper explores how corporate communications and public relations were affected by the 11th September, 2001 terrorism attacks on the USA.

This paper shows how new technologies open up significant research and development opportunities for the PR industry. It reviews public relations evaluation methodologies that can progress from evaluating media coverage of small numbers of “messages” to the development of systems for...

This paper confirms the importance of the various aspects of public relations as necessary skills for senior managers, both in the profession and in organisations, and the need to raise the level of management skills among practitioners. It argues that a specialist MBA in public relations (PR)...

This study proposes a new construct and a measure for understanding the embeddedness of public relations capability at the organisation level. The public relations orientation measure assesses the degree to which organisations (1) pursue both behavioural and symbolic relationships with publics,...

Organisations differ in the ways that they organise their communication disciplines. Contemporary literature features contributions from a number of noted authors, all focusing on the centralisation of communication. Scant attention, however, is paid to factors that are potentially capable of...

This paper considers the implications of mass communications theory on public relations (PR) evaluation and briefly reviews mass communication effects, persuasion, and cognition, attitude and behaviour change theories. The implications for evaluation are then examined. Reliance on domino models...

This paper explores the creation of a global protocol on ethics in public relations. It begins by looking into the global ethical debate. It examines existing codes of ethics of a selection of public relations institutes and associations around the world, provides comparative analysis of these...

The paper takes up the challenge offered in the call for papers for this special issue to explore the notion of public relations as “ethical guardian”. The approach taken is to review some influential academic perspectives as well as practitioner perspectives that emerged throughout the 20th...

Ostensibly, it is a plausible assumption that advertisements receive greater attention when disguised as editorial content. This assumption does not, however, stand the test of empirical validation. Nevertheless, editorial advertising tips and product placement have now seemingly become...