Concept, Nature and Scope of Public Relations

In today’s business and non-business operations, PR has assumed a significant role. The public has now become aware and assertive and they seek to demand more communications from firms, departments of the state, and NGOs about their objective, operations, and motives. PR establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationship between a firm and the public upon whom its success or failure squarely depends.

Public Relations is the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key audiences or the public. The concept of public relations is an emerging notion, especially in mass communication discipline. PR is basically a management function which tries to build an image of an organization and tries to develop a good and sustainable relationship between the organization and its target publics.

PR should be based on truth, knowledge and information. Public Relations activities are a major part of the political process in many nations. Politicians seeking office, government agencies seeking acceptance and cooperation, officials seeking support for their policies, and foreign governments seeking aid and allies abroad all make extensive use of the services provided by public relations specialists.

The nature of Public Relations indicates that it is essentially a task promoting rapport and goodwill between a person, firm or institution and the community at large through dissemination of information. It seeks to earn support, mobilise or solicit favour for an IDEA, a CAUSE or a PROBLEM. It uses a two-way communication in dealing with public opinion.

First, it assesses the attitudes of the public towards the organisation. Next, it executes communication programmes to gain public understanding and acceptance of the management’s point of view. So nature of PR is to bring about harmonious and mutually advantageous adjustment between an organisation and the community through dissemination of ideas and also by providing feedback from the publics to the management.

PR also evaluates public attitudes, identifies policies that interests public and executes the programme of communication. Public Relation must begin at the heart of the organisation it serves – the Management. It must find the answer to these four questions.

a. What is the message that the management wants to impart?

b. To whom ?

c. How ?

d. Purpose ?

Without knowing WHAT, WHOM, HOW and WHY any PR programme can serve no purpose. Therefore, a purposeful PR programme should;

a. Understand the organisation’s nature and purpose thoroughly.

b. Communicate this understanding to others.

c. Observe and evaluate the effect of communication.

By doing so the management can gain the opportunity to make such internal changes in the organisation, product, services, or Methods to survive and prosper in a public climate of goodwill.

Public Relations consists of a number of little things and a few big things. It is the daily application of common sense, common courtesy and common decency. PR is doing a lot of favours to others, so that they will be inclined to do favours to you. PR can be just entertaining a visitor to your organisation, or it can be as important as providing counsel and advise that leads the management to solve a crucial strike situation.

PR can be organising a health check up camp for the family of the employees or it could be the formulation of a communication campaign to face the society at large. PR could be just writing a letter to a parent whose child was reprimanded for neglecting studies or providing information to potential investors of your company. So PR is a multitude of things.

Scope of PR is also like a “window out of the corporation through which management can monitor external change and simultaneously, a window through which society can affect corporate policy”. In today’s changing world most social conflicts are caused by changing values and higher superior expectations. There are constant conflicts between citizen- government, employee-employer, consumer-manufacturer, management-stake holders so on. These conflicts are mainly owing to misconceptions and misunderstandings.

The PR practitioners can play a crucial role. They must get to know the public mind and acquire skills in solving and avoiding such conflicts. Sam Black had visualized the scope of PR in a management team. He saw it as that of an “innovator, catalyst, conscience and the inward and the outward eye of an organisation”. So, in business, scope of PR is also as a tool of management like marketing, production or finance.

It is investing and creating assets for an organisation which is finally reflected in improved performance, profitability and growth.

Suresh Gaur 

P R Guru