Transcript Chapter 5

Chapter 4
Stakeholders and Interactions
This is PR 11th Edition
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Objectives
• To appreciate the similarities and distinctions among the public
relations terms; stakeholder, public and audience
• To recognize and be able to identify and prioritize organizational
relationships
• To understand how priority publics can be described nominatively,
demographically and psychographically
• To develop sensitivity toward minority publics based on gender, age,
nationality, ethnicity, beliefs – value or faith-based
• To be able to identify potential issues for the organization within and
among different individuals, groups or other types of communities
that may create problems
• To understand the complexity of opinion formation and the fragility of
public opinion
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Stakeholders
• Another term for “publics”
• Like stockholders, they have a vested
interest in an organization
• But they may or may not own stock
• Employees, suppliers, customers,
government, investors, local community,
special interest groups
• Have expectations of organization and the
organization is accountable to them
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Publics
• More commonly used term than
“stakeholder”
• Any group that has involvement with an
organization: neighbors, customers,
employees, competitors, government
• Publics and organizations have
consequences on each other
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Audience
• Not synonymous with “public”
• Passive recipients of something: message,
performance, etc.
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Public as an Active Audience
Any Group or people who are tied together
however loosely by some common bond or
interest or common concern and who have
consequences for the organization.
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Target or Priority
Publics/Stakeholders
• Any public singled out as the focal point for
a public relations effort
• A definable audience for whom information
and advertising are specifically prepared
• “General public” notion is a myth
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Public as an Active Audience
• Each person is a member of many
definable, describable publics
• Members of a public share a common
interest and have shared consequences on
an organization
• External vs. internal publics
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Identifying Priority
Publics/Stakeholders
• Public Vulnerability Impact Index
• Key to proper prioritizing is research: Who
are they? What do they think?
• Priority publics may also be primary publics,
depending on issue; a primary public can
become a priority public
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Describing Priority
Publics/Stakeholders
• Nominatively: giving them a name
• Demographically
• Psychograhically
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Describing Priority
Publics/Stakeholders
• Nominatively: giving them a name
– Stockholders
– Neighborhood residents
– Employees
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Describing Priority
Publics/Stakeholders (cont.)
• Demographically: statistical characteristics
– Age
– Gender
– Education
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Describing Priority
Publics/Stakeholders (cont.)
• Psychographically: defining emotional and
behavioral characteristics
– Interests
– Attitudes
– Beliefs
– Behavior
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Prioritizing
Publics/Stakeholders
• Demographics may be easy, but not very
reliable
• Psychographics look at core personality
traits, values, attitudes, lifestyles, so
capture essence of people
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VALS 2 Psychographic
Casting
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Actualizers
Fulfillers
Believers
Achievers
Strivers
Experiencers
Makers
Strugglers
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Roper Starch Worldwide
• Determined top 10 global values
• Used these values to create six
psychographic categories
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Cross-Referencing Data
• Best understanding of publics comes from
cross-referencing data
• Demographics plus psychographics plus
media characteristics plus media use
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Employees as a Public
• Are important as organization’s “front line”
• Have great credibility with outsiders
• Are expected to have information only an
insider would have
• Will respond with loyalty when made to feel
valued
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Women as a Public
• Are majority of the world’s population, but a
minority in terms of economic, social and
political power
• An organization stands to lose a great deal
if it is seen as abusing, ignoring women
• An organization has a great deal to gain if it
treats this public fairly
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Minorities as a Public
• Can be ethnic or religious groups
• Can be physically present or represented
by a constituency abroad
• While linked by religion or ethnicity, there is
a lack of homogeneity among religious and
ethnic groups
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Issues: identification
• Identifying issues is the first step in the
process of monitoring an organization's
socio-economic and political climate for
developments that could have impact
• Helps foresee when opinion is likely to build
around an incident
• Emergence of issue creates opportunity to
avoid a crisis and engage in beneficial
communication
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Issues: management
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Sensing the problem: research
Defining the problem: setting priorities
Deriving solutions: selecting strategies
Implementing solutions
Evaluating outcomes
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Mahon’s Issues Strategies
• Choose appropriate strategy depending on
life cycle of issue
• Contain an emerging issue
• Shape an issue that has media attention
and is on the public agenda
• Cope with issues that face legislative,
regulatory or interest group action
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Convincing Management to
Address an Issue
• State the issue or problem specifically and
describe specific effects
• Identify adversaries and friends
• Develop a strategy that includes deciding
whether to take the initiative
• Determine whether to involve coalitions or
go it alone
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Issues and the Role of the PR
Practitioner
• PR plays biggest role beyond role played
by CEO
• Expected to know what is going on
• Expected to bring facts and objectivity to
decision making
• Not just a communicator but an intervener
and relationship builder
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Image and Perception
• A public’s perception of an organization is the
organization’s image in that public’s eyes
• This perception/image is based on what the
organization says and does
• This perception/image is often not the same for one
public as it is for another
• Collective perceptions about an organization by its
various publics, based on what it says and does,
constitute its image
• When external and internal publics share perceptions of
what an institution is and should be, the institution’s
image is likely to be cohesive because it is consistent
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Probing an Image
• If the institution has an image, does it live up to it,
or does it say one thing and do another?
• If the organization has an image, can employees
“deliver” on it?
• When an image change is necessary, have
employees been involved through participative
management?
• If the company has no recognizable image, does
this result in confusion, limited identification and
disparate values?
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Image and Corporate Culture
• Culture comes from the top down, but every employee
contributes
• Culture is set by the organization’s traditional communication
environment and new leaders are chosen who fit that mold
• Culture determines or strongly influences an organization's
willingness to embrace change, promote innovation, tolerate
dissent, encourage criticism, etc.
• Organizations with strong cultures may have a more cohesive
image, but they tend to be less flexible or able to change
• Corporate culture is also shaped by its environment, its
business and the primary societal culture of its employees
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Priority Publics and Planning
• Require careful, specific identification of
each priority public and its characteristics
• Require translation of this information into a
sensitive understanding of needs
• Require studying such a public for its other
relationships
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Public Opinion
• Public opinion is what most people in a
particular public think (collective opinion)
• It is the preferences expressed by a
significant number of people on an issue of
general importance
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Hennessey’s Five Basic Elements
of Public Opinion
• Public opinion must be focused on an issue
• The public must consist of a recognizable group of
persons concerned with the issue
• The opinions and nuances of opinion of every
member of the public are aggregated to form public
opinion
• The opinion may be expressed in a variety of ways:
printed or spoken words, symbols, etc.
• A group of persons is involved, large or small. The
key is that their opinion must have a measurable
effect.
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Public Opinion
• Expresses beliefs not necessarily based on
facts but on perceptions or evaluations
• Can be based on inaccurate, or a lack of
accurate, information
• Is notably unstable, usually a “body
temperature” at a particular moment in time
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Measuring Public Opinion
• It changes so often it can be influenced easily,
making measurement of it big business
– Public opinion surveys: Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research
• Some studies available free or at minimal cost from
academic or research institutions
• Pollsters such as Harris, Gallup, etc. often release
their data through the news media
• It is hard to capture: influenced by way questions
are asked, the very act of asking, the sensitivity of
the subject, etc.
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Public Opinion Research and PR
• Public opinion researchers: function is to
know, measure, analyze, and weigh public
opinion
• Public relations practitioners: function is to
help people and organizations deal
constructively with the force of public
opinion
• PR practitioners must know the difference
between information and opinion
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