Management communication ILT’s

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 7; Chapter 8, pp. 329-335.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING 10

Complete the New Manager Self-Test ‘Does Goal Setting Fit Your Management

Style?’ (Samson, Donnet & Daft 2018, p. 280) and

check your score. What did you learn from doing the test?

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 11, pp. 473-85; Chapter 8, pp. 332-9.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 9

Read the ‘Management Challenge’ in the Samson, Donnet & Daft textbook (2018, p. 449) and answer the questions posed, then read the Response to Management Challenge (2018, p. 481).

Does the response substantiate your answers to the questions posed earlier and how?

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 11.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 8

Read the section ‘Why do people resist change?’ in Samson, Donnet & Daft (2018, p. 452-3). From your own experience consider one positive and one negative personal response to change. Reflect on the reasons behind your responses and reassess your choices.

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 1, pp. 36-7; Chapter 17, pp. 730–1; Chapter 7, pp. 303-5; Chapter 18, pp. 767–9

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 11

This week we explore Scenario Building as a way of exploring what might happen to an

organisation struck by crisis in difficult times and through unexpected events. From your

work experiences develop a quick ‘sketch’ of two scenarios – the most optimistic and the

most pessimistic – in the event of a major crisis. What would that crisis be and how might

you communicate with stakeholders about this situation to minimise confusion or

disorder?

What contingency plans might be appropriate?

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning, Chapter 2.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 3

Consider the comparison between Theory X and Theory Y styles of management in the

set textbook (2018, p.65-6).

What is your personal experience of either or both styles of management in the

workplace, or in a club or organisation you know? Compare the outcome with reference

to Theory X and Theory Y.

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 13.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 6

Take the New Manager Self-Test from the Samson, Donnet & Daft textbook, ‘Do

you have a gender and authority bias?’ (2018, p. 532). Look at your score and write

200 words about what you learned about your own biases or, perhaps, lack

of bias.

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 1, Chapter 17.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 1*

The set textbook presents a New Manager Self-test (Samson, Donnet & Daft 2018, p. 4)

1. Complete the questionnaire and score yourself.

2. Write a short piece (200 words) about what you have learned from the Questionnaire about your own management skills.

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 5.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 2

One key factor in this week’s study is an analysis of an individual’s specific personality and behaviour traits and how this may influence their communication skills in the workplace. Within the Study Guide, you will discover that these traits are divided into three levels. The third level is called post-conventional and these individuals are described as following their own set of principles of justice and rights. They are aware that people hold different values and they seek creative solutions to ethical dilemmas. They demonstrate a balanced concern for individuals and for the common good.

Think back through your work or life experiences and name an individual who fits this set of traits and write a short piece (200 words) on why you have chosen them.

REQUIRED READING

Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 13. Chapter 15, pp. 623-4; Chapter 17, pp. 707-8 also relevant.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 7

Comment on the table ‘Gender differences in leadership behaviours’ (Samson, Donnet & Daft 2018, p. 624). Write 200 words about what you know about gender differences in behaviour.

REQUIRED READING

Cheney, C, Christensen, L T, Zorn, T E Jnr, Ganesh, Shiv, 2011, Organizational

Communication in an Age of Globalization, Issues, Reflections, Practices, Waveland

Press, Illinois. Chapter 6, pp. 141-160.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 4

On page 159 of Cheney (this week’s required reading) you will find Figure 6.1 which plots

the intensity and intentionality of workplace incivility. Focus of the levels of intentionality

and describe some experiences you are aware of in the workplace where these negative

actions have been clearly targeted. It may be a personal or associate’s experience. Did

the supervisor take action or were they blind to the activities? Was there any positive

outcome? Write a response of between 200 words.

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Course of Study:
(COM21) Management Communication

Title of work:
Organizational communication in an age of globalization; issues, reflections,
practices, 2nd ed. (2011)

Section:
Chapter 6 Connecting through social relationships and networks pp. 141–176

Author/editor of work:
Cheney, George

Author of section:
George Cheney

Name of Publisher:
Waveland

oci

I

..

I

In this chapter, we’ll consider the nature of workplace relationships and net­
works. We start with relationships, since they are usually the building blocks of net­
works. Consider the frequent advice to “network”-to build a set of relationships that
can be advantageous to your career success. When organizations build networks of
suppliers, distributors, and other partners, these often boil down to a set of relation­
ships among individuals-even though such partnerships may also involve binding
legal contracts. Work relationships and personal or social relationships are not always
easily separated. In addition, communication at work is about much more than just
the work itself. There are all sorts of things we talk about other than how to get the
work done. Social talk is an integral part of our experience of organizations and orga­
nizational communication. We will also discuss some of the most important organiza­
tional functions of relationships and networks �and some of the implications for
relationships outside of work and the workplace. ·

.. Workplace Relationships
How can we describe relationships at work? Let’s consider the following scenario.

Cassandra, the on-duty manager of Habersham Kids’ Clothing, is leaning over the
checkout counter doing paperwork. She is white, in her late 20s, smartly dressed.
There are no customers in the store. A 19-year-old Polynesian salesperson, Kara, is
rearranging some clothing on a rack. A group of three women come in, one holding
a baby. Cassandra immediately straightens up, tugs at the sides of her blouse to
straighten it, changes her facial expression to a cheery smile, and tries to make eye
contact with the customers. Her face is bright and cheerful. She then looks to Kara,
who takes her cue from the manager.

Kara leaves the rack and approaches the customers. “Hello, how’re you?” The
customers smile and nod politely but don’t say more than “Hi.” “Can I help you
find something?” Kara asks. The woman with the baby says, “No, we’re just look­
ing.” Kara turns her attention to the baby, reaches gently to take his hand, and says
with exaggerated cheerfulness, “Well, you’re a cutie, aren’t you?” She looks back to
the women: “Let me know if I can help you.”

141

s2693330
Text Box
Cheney, George; Christensen, Lars Thoger; Zorn, Jr, Theodore & Ganesh, Shiv. (2011)
Organizational communication in an age of globalization : issues, reflections, practices. 2nd Ed.
Long Grove, Ill. : Waveland Press.
Ch. 6. “Connecting through social relationships and networks”, pp. 141-176.

142 � Chapter Six

The women stay together at first, looking at, touching, and commenting on the
clothes, the sizes, and the prices. Kara returns to rearranging clothes but to a differ­
ent rack closer to the shoppers. After a minute or so, Kara says to the women,
“We’ve gotten in quite a few new items for winter this week. Those on display
against the wall are quite nice.” The three women all look to her and smile. The one
with the baby says “thanks” and moves toward the display that Kara mentioned.
Apparently taking this response as encouraging, Kara walks with her and points
out one style of calor-coordinated shirts and pants sets. “Mrrun,” the woman
responds. The other two women have continued to look in other parts of the store.
Cassandra has come out from behind the counter and moved closer to them. The
woman with the baby seems very interested in the outfits to which Kara has led
her. Kara holds a blue version up. They discuss the appropriate size. All the while,
Kara is being very attentive, smiling, and occasionally playing with the baby. “That
will look darling/’ Kara says at one point. Shortly after, the woman buys the outfit.

The scenario in this case is recognizable by all of us as the sort of ritualistic cus­
tomer-salesperson interaction we expect when we enter a retail store. However mun­
dane it may be, there’s a lot that’s interesting about this interaction that took place in a
downtown shop in Hamilton, New Zealand. W hat do you notice about the roles, the
relationships, and the communication?

One way to look at the brief relationship is by considering its importance to the
organization. Jan Carlzon, former CEO of Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS), called
the interaction between salespeople and customers “moments of truth.”1 Such interac­
tions create a vivid and lasting impression of the organization for the customer-or
potential customer. Customers decide, for example, if the organization is one to which
they’d like to return. From the organization’s perspective, relationships like the one
between Kara and the woman with the baby are critical to attaining organizational
goals. But that’s not the only reason to consider such a relationship.

From another, quite different, point of view, such interactions are important in a
“consumer culture” in which sales interactions are perceived as defining moments.
There’s a ritualistic aspect to such interactions; the way they unfold is familiar and
comfortable, almost scripted. Recall from chapter 4 that rituals are rule-governed activ­
ities that have symbolic value.2 In a consumer culture, sales encounters can be thought
of as rituals of reification, semi-scripted activities that maintain or reinforce existing
social norms. We use the theoretical concept of reification here because it highlights the
human tendency to see norms or rules as solid or unchangeable-creating the impres­
sion that “things are like that” or “things have always been this way.” These are also
sometimes rituals of reproduction, in which individuals in an otherwise impersonal
world interact in order to establish, maintain, and reinforce a sense of community or
bonding.3 Basically we’re suggesting that sometimes the ritualistic aspects of the sales
encounter reinforce our understandings and acceptance of social reality, and some­
times they provide a sense of belonging or identity. We feel momentarily connected to
the other person, even if it is brief and fleeting and perhaps somewhat “synthetic.”

Many kinds of relationships exist in organizations. We are all part of many differ­
ent types: superior-subordinate, coworkers or teammates, buyer-seller, or friends,
just to name a few. The ones that have received the most attention from researchers are
those that are seen as instrumental to the success of the organization. Superior-subor­
dinate relationships are frequently studied because many people believe that such
relationships play a key role in the organization’s productivity.

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks Ill>- 143

Much of the research on relationships at work has focused on their instrumental
role in career success-the networks that people form and the role of those networks
in advancing careers. From this perspectiveF relationships are resources we compete
for with others in order to help us “get ahead.” Whlle there is no question that many
of the relationships we form do have a substantial impact on our careersF we form
relationships for other reasons as well. For exampleF one study that explored the rela­
tionships people considered significant in their professional lives found that many
people cited the relationships themselves as importantF not as a means to some end.
Among the most common reasons they gave were collegialityF admiration for the
other personF personal friendshipF and pleasure and satisfaction in the relationship.4

Social-Historical Trends in Relationships and Networks

Are relationships and relational communication at work pretty much the same
today as they always were? There’s evidence to suggest that these phenomena have
changed in some fundamental ways in recent times. A key facet of organizational life
today is negotiating relationships and identities. Contemporary relationships and iden­
tities are actively constructed. They are dynamic and fluidF not stable or unitary. More­
over, relational communication in the workplace is expected to take on an egalitarianF
interactive (versus one-way) nature. People don

F
t always fulfill those expectations, of

course, but these expectations shape our views about what sorts of communication we
consider competent. ThusF in North American and Western European organizations
we expect meetings to have a friendly, informal feel versus being highly formal and
structured (for exampleF following the rules for parliamentary procedure). Similarly,
managers are advised to use informal and personalized practices, such as “Manage­
ment by Wandering Aroundn (MBWA), and to listen, connect with, and develop rap-
port with staff. ,

The classical idea of organizations containing peopleF technologiesF and messages
(see chapter 1) points us toward considering our lives and our relationships inside and
outside the organization as separate-with professional, hierarchical relationships
inside and family and friendships outside. Just a brief reflectionF howeverF suggests
that such a model doesn

F
t describe our experiences very well. The division between

work and nonwork life has changed dramatically over the years and in multiple ways.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, the two domains were closely
intertwined. In societies based primarily on agriculture and craftsF families often
worked together; work and home life were not clearly distinct. The Industrial Revolu­
tion changed all that. Factories had strict rules and procedures to be followed, many of
which discouraged nonwork-related interaction. NowF there are some signs that the
lines between work relationships and the social/personal are being blurred again,
albeit in somewhat different ways.

For exampleF the number of hours worked has increased significantly in many
countries in recent decades. This is trueF for exampleF for university-educatedF full-time
workers and especially for women.5 This has important implications for relationships
and relational communication. First, if we have less leisure time and spend more hours
at work, the chances increase that our social and personal relationships will be with
coworkers. We simply have less time to spend with people with whom we do not
work. Despite developing deeper relationships with coworkersF the increase in stress
that accompanies increased working hours6 and more intense work7may strain work
relationships (as well as nonwork relationships). Also, as Arlie Russell Hochschild

144 <11111 Chapter Six

“Everybody’s getting together after work
to do some more work– you in?”

reports, some people use work to escape stresses at home-thus inverting our usual
assumption about people trying to be home and away from work as much as possible.8

Changes in the use of communication technology have important implications for
work-related relationships and networks. First, such technology has enabled an
increase in working virtually, either from home or other remote locations. This can
further blur the distinction between personal and work domains, as someone may, for
example, simultaneously work on a report and care for children. Second, more of our
work-related interaction is mediated by technology as we use e-mail, videoconferenc­
ing, £axes, and mobile phones to cooperatively accomplish tasks. Thus, we are simul­
taneously more connected and available to our network of work associates and
physically more distanced from coworkers.

The trend toward flattening organizational hierarchies and toward more team-based
work also has implications for workplace relationships (as we will discuss in chapter 8).
Many organizations today use self-managing teams or self-directed work teams (SMTs
or SDWTs).9 In these arrangements, groups of coworkers may work together without a
clearly designated supervisor. This changes the nature of organizational control, as we
will discuss later in the chapter. Many supervisors have been troubled by the change to
SMTs, since such a change often requires them to learn new ways of relating to cowork­
ers. Even if the organization doesn’t specifically designate SMTs, there is a greater
emphasis today on teamwork skills and less reliance on clearly defined hierarchies.

Finally, the trend toward increasing workplace diversity and globalization has inter­
esting implications for relationships and networks. People often find they are interacting
with a more diverse array of people from different cultural, ethnic, and religious back­
grounds. Because of technology, coworkers are often geographically distant. For exam-

C onnecting through Social Relationships and Networks .,. 145

ple, India has developed a strong international business in software design, such that
many firms from around the world outsource information processing work to Indian
partners. Someone in Europe or Australia may be communicating more frequently via e ­
mail with a colleague i n India than they communicate with a colleague two doors away.

Bu i l d i n g o n the work of other social theorists, British critical discourse a n a lyst N o r m a n Fa i r­
dough h a s i dentified several characteristics of com m u nication in “post-traditional” societies.
(Note the p a ra l l e l s in Fairc l o u g h’s c h a racteristics to the discussion of Mongin’s decorporation of
society, box 5.2 i n c h a pter 5.)
1. Assumed (or traditional) roles, identities, and relationships have been lost or discarded. In tradi­

tional societies, people “knew” their roles a n d i dentities and thus t h e i r relat i o n s h i ps with oth­
ers. For exa m p l e , you were either n o b l e or c o m m o n , a ristocracy o r working class. The type of

relat i o n s h i p one had with other m e mbers of society was accepted as a give n . Today, roles,
positions, identities, and relat i o n s h i ps m u st be negotiated; they are no l o n g e r fixed features
of societies (and orga n i zations). 10

2. There is a n increased demand for emotional labor and “communicative labor.”11 Because negotiat­
ing identities a n d relationships can be a delicate matter, c o m m u nication has become more
i mportant to everyday l ife and especially to org a n i zational life. For exa mple, superiors have to
work to treat staff with respect, courtesy, a n d sometimes warmth, even when they might feel l i ke
doing otherwise. As Fairclough stated, “A consequence of the i n creasingly negotiated nature of
relationships is that contemporary social life demands highly developed dialogical capacities.”1 2

3. Social interaction has become more conversational, informal, and democratic -the conversation­
alization of discourse. We expect less form a l ity a n d fewer power markers in o u r speech (e.g.,
c a l l i n g someone “Mister” or “Sir”)-at least i n the Western world. That doesn’t mean there
a re n ‘t power differences, of course, but the power d ifferences typ i c a l of, say, m a n ager-subor­
d i n ate relati o n s h i ps are not so easily reco g n i zed in conversat i o n .13 So, for exam p l e , each of
the a uthors-in three d ifferent cou ntries (and continents) a d d resses the d e a n by his first
n a m e , even t h o u g h in each case t h e d e a n is o l d e r a n d of a h i g her o rg a n i zatio n a l rank.

4. There is an increase in promotional discourse. Advertising practices seep into other rea l m s of
social life. Since identities and relati o n s h i ps are not fixed and m ust b e negotiated, we have
come to expect some self-promotion as n o rm a l . Consider how people today have personal
pages o n Web sites or social networking sites that are often q u ite s i m i l a r to advertisements.

5. Technologization of discourse. “Te c h n ology” d oesn’t j u st refer to m a c h i nes, of course, but also
to tech n i q u e i n the broader sense of the term (see cha pter 12). Orga n i zati o n a l c o m m u n ica­
tion researchers and c o n s u ltants tra i n mem bers of o rg a n i zations to c o m m u nicate. More than

l i kely, you r u n iversity o ffers works h o ps on how to conduct you rself i n e m ployment interviews.
Perh a ps you r com m u n i cation courses provide some g u i delines for cond ucti n g meetings,
making presentations, o r developing persuasive proposals. A l l of these are exa m ples of “tech­
n o l o g i zing” discou rse.

6. One result of the trends a b ove is an increase in “synthetic personalization, ” sometimes ca l l ed
“man ufactured fri e n d l i n ess,” which is a k i n d of emotion a l l a b o r. You may have noticed some
of this i n Ka ra’s treatment of the customers i n our earlier exa m ple. The effects of synthetic per­
sonali zation are m ultiple, i n clu d i n g , for exa m pl e , i ncreased q u esti o n i n g of a uthenticity a n d
perha ps even increased cyn i c i s m .1 4

146 411 Chapter Six

Key Elements of Relational Interaction

Communication between people in organizations is never as simple as the labels
we typically use to describe it-for example, “making a sales pitch,” “placing an order,”
or “gathering some information.” These descriptions each suggest a simple, one-way
transfer of information. Because there’s always much more going on, it is helpful to
review a few important communication concepts for a more sophisticated analysis.

Definition of the situation and communication goals. As we’ve discussed before,
we believe that reality is socially constructed. We develop our understandings of things
through interacting with other people and often by complying with social expectations
and norms-but that doesn’t mean we always reach the exact same meanings. W hen­
ever we have a conversation with another person or group, each of us has a definition of
the situation, which includes an understanding of the kind of conversation we’re having,
the goals of the conversation, and the kind of relationship we have (or are expected to

·have) with the other(s) in the conversation.15 Sometimes our definition of the situation
is quite similar to that of others involved in the conversation, and sometimes it’s quite
different. For example, let’s say you and a coworker are discussing an issue at work
You may think what’s happening is a lively discussion or perhaps a friendly debate.
However, if your coworker becomes agitated, her reaction signals that she perceives the
discussion as a fight. Different definitions determine the realities experienced.

Part of what makes these situations complex is that people almost always have
multiple goals when they communicate. Three types of goals are clearly identifiable in
most conversations: instrumental (or task), identity, and relationship goals.16 Most
often, the instrumental goal is easiest to determine; it’s usually the primary reason
given for a conversation. Some examples include persuading, gathering information,
instructing, informing, selling, and teaching. But even when we’re focused primarily
on instrumental goals, we simultaneously try to achieve identity and relational goals.
Identity goals include presenting yourself in a desired way and treating others as if they
are certain kinds of people. How would you describe Kara’s identity goals in the sce­
nario at the beginning of the chapter? Perhaps she wants to present herself as a
friendly, competent, child-loving professional; she talks to the woman with the baby as
if she is an important, valued customer, and mother. None of this is to say that Kara is
insincere. She may or may not be. But we are constantly pursuing identity goals in
communication-both in conversations like Kara’s as well as in public relations mes­
sages that try to shape a corporate identity. Sometimes this happens with very little
thought or “strategy.” At other times, it may be well rehearsed and planned. Closely
related to identity goals are relationship goals. Our messages in communication con­
stantly reflect what we think of the relationship and, sometimes, how we want to
shape or modify that relationship. As with identity goals, this process can be quite
spontaneous or strategic; it may be subtle or blatantly obvious. Often identity and
relational aspects of messages are sent nonverbally. For example, notice that Kara’s
facial expressions and touching the baby all suggest she is trying to create a bond with
the customer. Simultaneously; perhaps, she is trying to establish or shape her relation­
ship with her superior (the on-duty manager Cassandra) by demonstrating that she’s
a competent salesperson.

One of the ways that identity and relational goals are closely intertwined is that
we seek legitimation for valued identities in our relationships.17 For example, if you
desire an identity as a competent professionat you would like supervisors and

C onnecting through Social Relationships and Networks .,. 147

coworkers to treat you as if you are such a person. One of the factors that stimulate
relationship development is the exchange of legitimation. Continuing the example, you
would probably show respect for a supervisor who treats you as if you are competent
and efficient. Relationships, like other meanings, however, are situated, fluid, and
dynamic. As these examples show, identities and relationships are integrally con­
nected. The identity one wants to convey-for example, expert, leader, or adviser-is
closely connected to the kind of relationships established with others. The reverse is
also true. Relationships are based on perceived identities. Managers and subordinates,
salespeople and shoppers, and coworkers and friends all construct, perform, and
negotiate identities and relationships.

In order to converse and work cooperatively, communicators must negotiate
shared definitions of the situation, including shared definitions of identities and rela­
tionships. That is, while each of us has a subjective point of view, we try to achieve
“intersubjectivity,” or a mutually understood view of the situation. That doesn’t mean
people always reach shared definitions, of course. But communicators typically try to
understand each other and make themselves understood. Sociolinguist H. P. Grice
suggested that the cooperative principle underlies most attempts to communicate.18 By
this he meant that we typically assume that people are trying to be cooperative-by
making themselves understood-even when it’s quite difficult to figure out what
they mean. He suggests that when someone isn’t clear, we still search for a meaning
that would make sense. This is why communication can work even when, on the sur­
face, it may seem irrelevant or incomplete. So, for example, if someone asks you if
you support a proposal and you reply, “Is the Pope Catholic?” most of us will know
that you mean “Yes, I do support it.” Even though your reply is seemingly irrelevant,
we search for a meaning that makes sense given our assump tion that you’re trying to
be cooperative.

Dialectics. Th e concept of relationship dialectics is a particularly useful way to
examine prominent, recurrent tensions experienced in relationships.19 Let us start
with a few examples.

” Scenario# 1: You’ve socialized with the same group of workmates the past two
weekends in a row. One of them talks about plans for the coming weekend
assuming you’ll be joining them again. While you’ve greatly enjoyed your time
with the group, you’re uncomfortable with that assumption, and you are con­
sidering doing something else.

” Scenario # 2: Your supervisor reveals a bit of confidential information to you
about another member of your department. You’re definitely interested but
wonder about the appropriateness of his sharing that information.

” Scenario # 3: You are chairing a weekly status-update meeting of your project
team. Your team has a comfortable, routine agenda for these meetings, but
you’re thinking about trying something different.

In each of these scenarios, there is a tension between attractive choices (see box
6.2). In scenario one, you could strengthen your connection with your workmates or
establish your autonomy from them. In scenario two, your supervisor is being very
open with you, but you wonder if being a bit more closed in this case would be appro­
priate. In scenario three, the predictability of the routine is comfortable, but some nov­
elty might spice up the meeting a bit. Relational dialectics are tensions (opposing

148 � Chapter Six

Dialectic

Connecti o n ­
A utonomy

Openness­
Ciosedness

Novelty­
Predicta b i l ity

Equality­
Ine q ua lity

Essential tension

The desire to estab l is h con n e c tion
with others vs. the desire to estab­
l i s h freedom of action

The desire to a l l ow information to
be disclosed o r free flowing versus
the d e s i re to m a inta i n privacy

The desire for the relati o n s h i p to be
predicta b l e versus the desire for it
to be new a n d fresh

The desire to have people consid­
ered equals versus the desire to
have s o m e con s i d e red superior

Organizational examples

Wantin g to be p a rt of a team yet
wanting to sta n d o ut as a n i n d i­
vidual
In a networked organ i zation, want­
i n g to esta blish closer links to a
partner organ i zation yet not want­
ing to limit your business choices
by the partners h i p arrangement
Esta b l i s h i n g rapport with a sales­
person b ut not wanting to feel
obligated to purchase

Tal ki n g about your work with a
colleague who works for a com­
petitor b ut being careful not to
disclose organizational “secrets”
Tel l ing a member of your team
about o rg a n i zational plans b ut try­
ing not to disclose information you
were asked to treat as confidential
Chatti n g with your boss about
your weekend b ut wanting to
keep some t h i n g s private

Enjoying your friend’s ritualistic
gossi p a b o ut work yet fee l i n g a
bit a n n oyed at his compla i n ing
a b o ut “the same o l d things”
Bei n g comfo rted by a vendor’s
s ta n d a rd i ze d service proced ure
yet won d e ri n g if it’s time for it to
be updated
Fee l i n g excited a bo ut a restruc­
turi n g of the o rga n i zation b ut
anxious that i t w i ll d i s rupt familiar
routines and relationships

Fee l i n g excited by a promotion
yet anxious that it will stra i n rela­
tionsh i ps with coworkers i n your
former work group
A CEO downplaying sta tus d iffer­
ences (e.g., “Ca l l me Karen”) b ut
cultivating a l a rg e r tha n l ife image
Arguing for equitable benefits for
o rg a n i zational members but mak­
ing exceptions for con tract workers

Dialectic

Instrumentality­
Affection

lmpa rtiality­
Favo ritism

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks Jtll> 149

Essential tension

The desire for liking/affection to be a n
end i n itself versus t h e d esire to use
liking /a ffection as a means to an end

The des ire to have people treated
fairly a n d impa rtiall y versus the
desire to be “special”

O�ganizational examples

• I nviting a coworker to lunch with
the intention of asking for sup­
port on a con troversia l work issue
Won d e ring why a supervisor has
sudd e n ly started being so atten­
tive and conside rate

Wanting to get the “inside scoop”
from the boss (who is a lso a dose
frie n d ) wh ile wa n ting to portray
the workp\ace as fair and impartial
Esta blishing a policy to a d d ress
lateness yet m aking e xceptio n s
for certain people

forces) that are both interdependent and mutually negating.20 They are interdepen­
dent in that they are necessarily linked. For example, we can only know what being
open looks and feels like in relation to b,eing closed, and vice versa. But pursuing one
end of the dialectic necessarily negates the other. That is, by being more open, you’re
necessarily being less closed; by injecting novelty/ you necessarily lessen predictability.

Dialectics help explain why relationships constantly change and why, to make
relationships successful and satisfying, they constantly need our attention. W hile we
all experience the tensions, we don’t necessarily experience them in the same way. So,
while the usual routine in the third scenario may be reassuring to some members of
the team, others may get bored with it or question whether there’s a better way to do
things. People differ in terms of what they consider the right balance at a given time,
and an individual could change his or her interpretation of the right balance as well.
Too much of one desired feature (e.g., openness) pushes us toward the other end of
the dialectic (e.g., closedness). So, I may appreciate the routine of the status meetings
for a while and even work to maintain the routine by suggesting a standard agenda,
but later I could feel the agenda is too constraining. Or, a public relations practitioner
who chooses to leave a company to work as a freelance consultant may cherish the
increased autonomy at first, only to find later that she misses the connection to the
larger group. Successfully pursuing one end of a dialectic can make the other more
appealing. We become interested in the dimension that is absent or being neglected.
Because individuals differ from each other and differ in terms of their own prefer­
ences over time/ relationships are constantly in flux-ebbing and flowing between
the opposing forces. A move by one person to create more autonomy means less con­
nection within the relationship, which may spark a move to enhance connection, and
so on.

Notice how relationship dialectics help explain why certain kinds of conflict occlir
even in the best of relationships. We are different from each other in what we consider
the right amount of connection versus autonomy in a particular relationship, so we
may act in ways that are not preferred by the other person. Because our communica­
tion is typically focused on instrumental goals, the relational messages that manage
dialectical tensions are often implied not e’Xplicit. So, for example, I probably would
not say to the coworkers in the first scenario above “I’m feeling the need for more

150 <111l Chapter Six

autonomy, so I think I’ll stay away from you this weekend.” Rather, I might just say ui
have other plans.” The focus is on the instrumental goat giving enough information
to deal with the situation but not acknowledging the underlying relational goals (the
coworker’s request for enhanced connection and your desire for more autonomy).
However, the coworker may very well If read into” your response a relational message
that is asking for some autonomy.

The connection-autonomy dialectic is perhaps most basic to relationships. To
speak of any kind of relationship implies connection. Indeed, we only become humans
through our relationships. Yet, to be an individual requires a certain degree of auton­
omy. For example, communication scholar Jennifer Gibbs found autonomy-connec­
tion to be a central dialectic in the virtual teams she studied; team managers struggled
to preserve the sense of team (connectedness) while still allowing individual auton­
omy.21 While connection-autonomy, novelty-predictability, and openness-dosedness
are the most common relationships, researchers have also looked at three other pairs
(discussed in box 6.2): equality-inequality, instrumentality-affection, and impartial­
ity-favoritism.22

Communication is the means by which dialectics are manifested in the relation­
ship, and it is also the means to manage them. We notice the tension in a relationship
and we experience the choices that move a relationship toward one or the other end of
a dialectic through communication. Similarly, we can work to improve relationships
by raising awareness of (a) the natural tensions faced in relationships, (b) what is
being experienced in the particular relationship, (c) the individuals’ goals vis-a-vis the
dialectics, and (d) the array of choices available to the participants.

Communication competencies. People aren’t equally competent at managing
the complexities of relationships. Some people handle difficult situations effortlessly,
accomplishing their instrumental goals while simultaneously helping people feeling
good about themselves and their relationships. Others struggle with one or more of
the three types of goals. As discussed above, many analysts today believe that com­
munication skills and abilities are more important than ever. Based on a large-scale
analysis of changes in the workplace, one group of authors concluded: “New work
systems demand substantially more from employees than did traditional arrange­
ments. Employees need more skills, particularly team-related behavioral skills, to suc­
ceed in these new systems.”23

What sorts of communication skills are necessary? Researchers disagree on what
constitutes competent communication–or indeed how to conceptualize compe­
tence.24 One of the reasons for this is that what constitutes competent communication
depends on, among other things, the context and the evaluator. That is, someone may
seem very competent in a one-on-one counseling situation, yet hopeless as a public
speaker. Or, one can seem incompetent to other participants in a meeting because he
seems to ramble on and on without making his point, while he evaluates himself as
brilliant in the same context since his goal was to delay any decision to a future meet­
ing. National and organizational culture will also make a difference. For example,
someone who is assertive and flamboyant may be seen as a competent communicator
in U.S. workplaces. In contrast, communication scholars Nongluck Sriussadaporn­
Charoenngam and Fred Jablin found that communicative competence in Thai work­
places is most associated with demonstrating the ability to avoid conflict with others,
controlling one’s emotions, and displaying respect, tactfulness, modest}’i and polite-

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks .,_ 151

ness.25 While we cannot isolate one set of competencies as mandatoryr research does
suggest some communication skills and abilities that are important in most organiza­
tional contexts. We will focus on three sets of competencies: social perception skills,
message design skillsr and interaction management.

Social perception skills involve assessing people and situations: being able to think
about people and social situations in complex ways; being able to pick up on the sub­
tleties of social situations and adapt to them. Someone skilled in social perception
would be likely to try to imagine the situation from others’ points of view, to consider
the goals, valuesr feelings, and beliefs of others, and to use this knowledge to interact
accordingly. Research shows that social perception skills are a key factor for success in
the workplace. People with such skills tend to advance more quickly than those with
lesser skills.26

Message design skills are closely related to social perception skills because percep­
tion of the situation will influence the messages crafted. In public speakingr for exam­
ple, one of the basic principles is to analyze and adapt to the audience. We do the same
thing at the interpersonal level: sizing up the context and the other person(s) partici­
pating then adapting (at least somewhat) to them. Research has shown that people
with advanced social perception skills adapt to their audiences more than do those
with less developed perception skills.27

A basic dimension of difference in message design skills is listener adaptation: the
degree to which a speaker adapts m�ssages to the goalsr valuesr and beliefs of the lis­
tener. The importance of listener adaptation is obvious in the example of a salesper­
son-customer relationship. A salesperson who successfully adapts to the interests and
values of a customer has a much greater chance of being successful in making a sale
(the likely instrumental goal of a salesperson-customer interaction) and also in
achieving relational and identity goals.

There are many other important dimensions of message design skills: how well
we use evidence, the degree to which our messages are vivid and novel, the degree to
which our messages are confirming or disconfirming to othersr and so on. Messages
that are disconfirming-such as having one’s suggestion ignored or rejectedr or being
interrupted-can be very damaging to relationships. The degree to which messages
are clear versus ambiguous-and the degree to which ambiguity is intentional or stra­
tegic-is another dimension. Interpersonal communication scholar Barbara O’Keefe
describes differences in messages in terms of three primary message design logics (see
box 6.3).28

Finallyr a third set of skills focuses on interaction management, which includes man­
aging the flow of conversation. Appropriate turn taking and topic switching are two
key elements of this set of skills. While they may seem rather mundaner they can be
crucial in relating comfortably with others. If you’ve had a recent conversation with
someone who interrupts you mid-sentence or tries to switch topics when the rest of the
group is clearly enjoying the exchange of information on a topic that obviously inter­
ests them, you’ll understand the importance of competence in interaction management.

These communication competencies are crucial to being able to achieve instru­
mentat relationalr and identity goals in conversations with others. We will identify
other competencies and strategies that are specific to particular goals in other chap­
ters. For example, in chapters 7 and 10 we will discuss strategies for enacting leader­
ship and strategies for managing conflict.

152 .. Chapter Six

Message Design logic

Express ive

Conventi o n al

Rhetorical

Definition

Expressing o n e ‘s tho u g h ts
and feeli ngs with no attempt
to adapt to situ ational or rela­
tio n al constrain ts

Ad apti n g o n e ‘s messag e to
s h ared conventions or norms
for com m u n ication

Reframing or redefining the
situation to avoid thre ats to
identities and relatio n s h ips

Varieties of Organizational Relationships

Interpersonal Influence Examples

“! w an t t h at report d o n e by tomor­
row or else!”

“I really, really, REALLY want that
report tomorrow!”

“Would you p l e as e h ave the report
ready by tomorrow?”

“As your supervisor, I’m g o in g to
h ave to ask you to h ave the report in
tomorrow.”

“I know getting the report in by
tomorrow is as im portant to you as
it is to me.”

“How about we plan to celebrate
getting that report completed
tom o rrow afternoon ?”

Most research on relationships in organizations focuses on types of relationships.
In this section, we discuss some of the major categories of relationships found in orga­
nizations and consider particularly useful and provocative research findings on each.

Superior-subordinate relationships. We use the traditional terms “superior” and
“subordinate” to refer to dyads in which one person supervises another. However, we
do so with a bit of discomfort. Given the sensitivity to language and meanings we are
trying to bring to this book, calling one person superior to another because of his or
her job is a questionable practice. Many organizations today have become sensitive to
this issue as well, commonly replacing terms like “subordinate” or “employee” with
“associate,” “team member,” or “colleague.” For clarity, though, we’ll stick with the
traditional terms.

Structurally speaking, communication between superiors and subordinates con­
sists of upward and downward communication flows. Downward communication, accord­
ing to systems theorists Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn, includes five categories of
messages: (1) job instructions, (2) job rationales (the reasons justifying particular jobs),
(3) information on procedures and practices, (4) feedback on performance of subordi­
nates, and (5) indoctrination messages, which are intended to convey the organiza­
tion’s cultural values and assumptions and build employee identification.29 Katz and
Kahn focused on instrumental messages that served clear organizational functions.
Downward communication also includes messages that serve identity and relational
goals-boasting, bonding, and humor for example. Communication researchers
Stephanie Zimmerman, Beverly Sypher, and John Haas argue that there exists a cul­
turally shared meta-myth that more communication is better-yet in numerous organi-

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks � 153

zations people were unsatisfied because of a lack of downward communication.30
Consider also that the desire for more communication is in tension with the desire to
avoid information overload.

Similarly, a number of functions have been identified for upward communication.
These include messages conveying (1) job status and problems in performing work,
(2) information about coworkers, (3) perceptions of organizational policies and prac­
tices, and (4) ideas and suggestions. Again, beyond these work-related messages, sub­
ordinates also communicate upward about personal and social matters. Of course,
there are obstacles to the flow of accurate and timely upward communication, includ­
ing such things as impression management (“I want our department to look good”),
careerism (“I’ve got everything under control here”), and fear of relaying bad news to
superiors (“She told me never to complain like that again”).31

Phillip Tompkins refers to the process through which stories change as they are
communicated to different levels in the organization as uncertainty absorption. For
example, if problems are reported to a supervisor who doesn’t want to paint a bleak
picture to executives, he can portray problems as minor concerns. In his long-term
investigation of NASA’ s Marshall Space Flight Center, Tompkins found that the use of
a regular feedback mechanism, called “Monday Notes,” proved to be one of the most
useful channels of communication between levels of the massive space agency in the
1960s and 1970s.32 The director of the program, Wernher von Braun, asked each lab
director to submit a one-page summary of the week’s progress and problems every
Monday morning. Von Braun read all the summaries, made comments, and circulated
copies to all lab directors. All the units thus had knowledge-and responsibility-that
extended beyond their specific areas of expertise. Listening to people from various
levels in the organization plus people outside the organization, such as suppliers, con­
tributed to effective communication-and to a successful organization. After von
Braun’s departure, the flight center stopped using the Monday notes. The change in
leadership contributed to what Tompkins calls organizational forgetting-abandoning
founding values.

The superior-subordinate dyad is by far the most studied relationship by organi­
zational communication researchers. Much of the early research on organizational
leadership focused primarily on supervisory communication toward subordinates
(rarely considering communication from subordinates to superiors). In some respects,
this attention seems justified. Research shows, for example, that superiors spend from
one-third to two-thirds of their time communicating with subordinates.33 Research also
shows that people in organizations prefer to hear messages about organizational
change from their immediate superiors and that they generally trust superiors to give
them the most accurate information about organizations.34 We will consider some of
these concepts in chapter 7 on leadership; for now, we will focus particularly on con­
cepts that are helpful in explaining the relationship between superiors and subordinates.

One consistent finding is that superiors and subordinates have different percep­
tions of their relationships and that these perceptions are influenced by the nature of
their roles. For example, research shows that superiors tend to believe they spend
more time communicating with subordinates than subordinates believe. Also, superi­
ors tend to believe they initiate interaction with subordinates more than do subordi­
nates, whereas subordinates believe the opposite.35 Most people in organizations
perceive that their superiors provide them with inadequate information. This is often
true even though many of the same people complain of information overload.36 It is

154 _.. Chapter Six

easy to see how these differences in perception both contribute to and are influenced
by the dialectical tensions we described above.

Because of such tensions, relationships are dynamic. and change over time.
George Graen and Mary Uhl-Bien’s model of superior-subordinate relationship
development suggests three phases of superior-subordinate relationships, each char­
acterized by different patterns of communication.37 First, there is a stranger phase,
characterized by communicatiqn that fulfills the contractual obligations of their roles.
T hat is, superiors provide the direction and resources (including information) subor­
dinates need to perform their roles, and subordinates communicate to perform their
work, and not much more. Second, there is an acquaintance phase, often prompted by
one party’s offer to improve the working relationship by exchanging favors, thus
increasing interaction and allowing each to “test the waters” with the other. The third
phase is called maturity, which is characterized by a partnership in which the partners
exchange loyalty and support.

Of course, not all superiors and subordinates follow the same trajectory in the
development of their relationships. Extensive research prompted by George Graen’s
leader-member exchange (LMX) theory suggests that superiors develop in-group rela­
tionships with some subordinates and out-group relationships with others.38 In-group
relationships are much like what’s described in the maturity phase of the three-phase
relationship development model. In-group subordinates and their superiors establish
mutual trust, respect, and support. In-group members can communicate informally
about work and nonwork matters with their superiors; they can disagree with and
challenge each other without damaging the relationship. Communication scholar
Vince Waldron and his colleagues have found that having an in-group relationship
with a manager opens up a wider range of communicative options to subordinates,
including certain influence and “relationship maintenance” tactics that otherwise
wouldn’t be possible.39 Out-group subordinates, on the other hand, have relationships
with their superiors characterized by low trust and low support, often avoiding com­
munication or limiting it to task-related matters. Communication is often antagonistic,
characterized by high face threats and competitive conflict. (We’ll have more to say
about LMX theory in chapter 7.)

Sometimes in-group relationships between superiors and subordinates develop
beyond work relationships to become friendships. Such blended relationships can be
beneficial to both parties.4° For example, Nancy Boyd and Robert Taylor argue that the
“highest quality work experiences for both leader and follower potentially occur
when both a close leader-follower friendship and a high LMX are present.”41 How­
ever, blended relationships present special challenges, too, both for superiors and sub­
ordinates. For example, the impartiality-Javoritism dialectic is especially prominent,
since superiors usually do not want to give the impression of giving preferential treat­
ment to friends. Subordinates may feel uncomfortable being labeled the boss’s “pet” if
it’s widely known that the blended relationship exists.42

Substantial research suggests that effectiveness in superior-subordinate relations
depends on situational factors. Like effective communicators generally, effective supe­
riors have to adapt their communication to target listeners as well as to the context.
However, Charles Redding argued many years ago that competent supervisors value
openness and supportiveness, including empathy and sensitivity to others’ feelings.
In essence, Redding asserted that building trust in supervisor-subordinate relation­
ships was critical.43

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks .. 155

Peer relationships. The relationships we form with peers-both within and
external to the organizations in which we work-are critical to our career success and
to the quality of our work lives. Coworkers are often a source of information and
guidance, as well as emotional support. In addition, relationships with professional
peers outside one’s employing organization may be as important to one’s satisfaction
and success as relationships internal to the organization. On the other hand, while we
usually think of peer relationships as a positive thing, close connections to others can
provide the organization with a form of unobtrusive control by providing a reason for
people to stay with the organization and not risk upsetting the status quo for fear of
losing valuable relationships.44

While there has been much more research on superior-subordinate relationships,
most of us interact more with coworkers than with supervisors. This may be increas­
ingly the case as organizations move toward flatter structures and team-based work
arrangements. Relationships with peers can be quite influential in shaping attitudes,
beliefs, and assumptions. As we have emphasized in the previous two chapters, cul­
tures and identities are socially constructed entities. As people interact with cowork­
ers on the job, they jointly construct beliefs about the organization, the work they do,
and each other. For example, some research suggests that expressed attitudes about
work by peers are more influential than expressed attitudes of supervisors.45 One
study demonstrated that peers within teams of university students working together
on summer jobs eo-constructed norms for what constituted competent supervisory
communication.46 Thus, in what may seem counterintuitive, subordinates can some­
times set standards for supervisors.

Relationships with peers can take multiple forms, ranging from enemies, to casual
work relationships, to friendships, to romantic partners.47 Remember, too, that relation­
ships are dynamic, moving to different states through interaction, subtly negotiating the
dialectical tensions in the relationships. Relationships typically begin as casual work
relationships but may develop into other forms. Organizational communication scholars
Patricia Sias and Daniel Cahill interviewed pairs of coworker-friends to explore the fac­
tors that led them to become friends (from their initiat casual work relationships) and
the ways their communication changed as their relationships deepened.48 Their analysis
showed that the most prominent factors contributing to their relationship development,
as well as their patterns of communication, changed as the pairs became closer friends:

Friendships tended to develop early due to the coworkers simply being around
one another, working together on shared projects and tasks, and perceiving com­
mon ground. At this point the variety of communication topics discussed
increased; however, the coworkers were somewhat cautious about sharing infor­
mation and opinions with one another. Relationships developed into close friend­
ships usually because of important personal or work-related problems, although
perceived similarity and extra-organizational socializing continued to impact rela­
tional development. At this point, the coworker became a trusted source of support
with communication becoming increasingly more intimate and less cautious. Over
time, this trend continued into the third transition where the coworkers became an
important part of each other’s personal and work life.49

As we discussed earlier in this chapter, sometimes we value relationships in and
of themselves and sometimes we value them because we see them as means to an end
(the instrumentality-affection dialectic). Often in organizations, relationships are strate­
gically developed to help individuals accomplish personal or professional goals, rang-

156 <1111 Chapter Six

ing from garnering social support to attaining promotions. For example, one study
found that fast-track women managers strategically sought two kinds of relationships:
close, instrumental relationships with others inside the organization and relationships
with women outside the organization. The internal relationships were intended to
increase men’s comfort with women and to lessen gender bias; the external relation­
ships were intended to share strategies for overcoming obstacles unique to women.50
Communication scholar Janie Harden Fritz found that men’s and women’s peer rela­
tionships were similar in many ways, but women tended to develop closer, stronger
relationships with at least some peers than did men.51 As Fred Jablin pointed out,
communication among peers may serve either formal-organizational functions (such as
communication focused on task accomplishment) or psychological-individual functions
(such as communication that meets one’s need for affiliation).52 Our individual rela­
tionships with peers are the building blocks of our social and professional networks
and an important element in the quality of our work lives.

Internal-external relationships. When we think of workplace relationships, we
often think first of relationships between coworkers or between superiors and subor­
dinates. But there are many important relationships that bridge the “internal-external
divide.” People in organizations sometimes consider relationships with suppliers,
consultants, and customers as important as their “internal” relationships. Several
recent trends reinforce the importance of such relationships .

First, there is an increased emphasis o n being ” customer-driven” in the last
decade or so. Businesses, as well as government organizations, often organize with the
key principle of being “close to the customer” or “customer responsive.” This strategy
places immense value on creating close relationships with customers and potential
customers. One manager in a city government organization we studied occasionally
invited “customers” (local citizens) to meetings to be interviewed by his staff to find
out what his department was doing well and where it could improve. 53 A clear exam­
ple of a trend toward being customer responsive is what marketing professionals call
“customer relationship marketing” and “relationship selling.” These terms refer to a
strategy that assumes that successful sales and marketing result from developing close
relationships with key customers and clients, solidifying sales, and identifying oppor­
tunities for repeat business. For example, many organizations spend substantial sums
for their staff to entertain clients and p otential clients, assuming that such money is
well spent if it fosters close relationships that then result in sales.

Because of the importance of customer relationships, organizations spend sub­
stantial sums to train staff to initiate and manage these relationships. The Disney orga­
nization is renowned for its orientation and training of new employees-” the cast” as
Disney refers to members of its organization.54 Many companies, particularly service
organizations, use training programs to teach employees to develop positive and
upbeat (although brief and superficial) relational interactions with customers. And, as
already mentioned, sales and service staff are employed and trained to perform “emo­
tional labor” (discussed in chapter 3), a key task of which is to convey positive emo­
tions such as happiness, excitement, or a sense of fun. Such training is an example of
the “technologizing” discourse discussed in box 6.1. Workers are taught specific strat­
egies and tactics for performing emotion work (see box 4.8). The training typically
encourages the use of a personal, informal, conversational style-the style we might
use with close friends-and is intended to make customers feel special and connected

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks Jjl> 157

to the organization’s employees (and thus, to the organization). This is what we
referred to as the synthetic personalization of communication. While such emotional
labor is often effective in creating a positive experience for customers, it can be str{OSS­
ful to employees. 55 And, some critics argue that emotional labor can have more serious
negative consequences than stress. Workers may become more callous or manipula­
tive in their other relationships. As a result society can be negatively affected by the
technologizing of relational encounters, perhaps becoming more cynical, or perhaps
expecting superficial relationships and synthetic personalization to be the norm. 56

Marketing professor Stephen Brown from the University of Ulster, Northern Ire­
land, suggests that today’s customers are sick and tired of customer relationship man­
agement (CRM)57 and its implications for their shopping experience. People, he claims
“miss the days when a transaction was just a transaction, when purchasing a bar of
soap didn’t mean entering into a lifetime value relationship. ” Customers, he contin­
ues, want old-fashioned products and services and old-fashioned marketing: “Wary of
CRM-inspired tactics, which are tantamount to stalking, they appreciate the true
transparency of a blatant huckster.” Rather than listening to customers in order to give
them what they want (customers, he claims, neither know what they want nor what
they don’t want), Brown proposes a retro approach to marketing that implies new
relationships between producers and their customers based on exclusivity, secrecy,
amplification, entertainment, and tricks. While some may question his unconven­
tional and rather cynical view of the market, his perspective brings fresh air into a
field that keeps importing-and thus diluting-perspectives from real relationships,
like dialogue and interactivity.58

“‘ can assure you, madam, that our commitment to transparency
will never inhibit our willingness to kick ass. ”

158 … Chapter Six

A second set of trends likely to promote more internal-external relationships has
to do with changing organizational forms. Organizations have attempted to become
“leaner/’ often outsourcing some functions that would formerly have been performed
internally or hiring contract workers from temporary agencies. A closely related trend
is that organizations today often “partner” with suppliers and vendors, developing
long-term relationships with other companies. (We return to these trends later in this
chapter in the discussion of network organizations.) These two trends make it more
likely that staff in one company will have ongoing working relationships with staff
from another company. In fact, people employed by an outside company often work
for a year or more on the premises of another company, working more closely with
staff from the host company than they do with staff from their own company. While
internal-external relationships may be analyzed and influenced by many of the same
constructs-dialectics, communication competencies, and so on-they take on their
own special dynamics. Our main point here is to encourage you to think of work rela­
tionships more broadly and more critically.

Problematic relationships. Up to now, we’ve focused on varieties of relation­
ships based on roles. However, it is important to note another set of relationships that
occur all too often in organizations: those marked by negativity or incivility, that is,
those that are abusive, harmful, and unpleasant. Problematic relationships are impor­
tant to understand because they can adversely affect individuals in terms of stress,
mental health, and physical health. They can adversely affect organizations in terms of
reputation, lawsuits, absenteeism, turnover, and loss of productivity. If left unchecked,
they may result in a “spiral of incivility” that can be explosive.

Troublesome relationships can vary in intensity, from simply working with peo­
ple we dislike or find irritating to much more deeply troubling relationships that
involve bullying or abuse. Several studies have considered the kinds of relationships
and people we find most problematic. Communication researcher Janie Harden-Fritz
found that we tend to describe the most troublesome coworkers as lacking integrity
and being self-centered, defensive, and insecure.59 Other research indicates that we
use similar descriptions for the nonwork peers we most dislike, suggesting that we
may have culturally shared schemas (or mental models) for the characteristics of peo­
ple we find most troubling.60

Of course, simply disliking someone or finding them annoying is a long way from
relationships that are abusive or bullying. While people have had conflict in the work­
place as long as there have been workplaces, some observers note an increase in inci­
vility in organizations in recent years. Communication scholar Beverly Sypher refers
to a “rolling tide toward antisocial behavior at work,” with more than 70% of people
surveyed perceiving that incivility has increased in recent years.61 Sypher identifies a
number of trends that have led to an increase in antisocial behavior in the workplace,
including the intensification of work, longer hours, continuous change, and job inse­
curity. Related sodetal trends are suburbanization (which results in longer commutes,
more traffic, and “road rage”), increased geographic mobility (which decreases con­
nectedness and loyalty), and decreased amounts of sleep . Sypher suggests that incivil­
ity can vary on at least two dimensions: intentionality and intensity. As figure 6.1
shows, communication acts such as ignoring, interrupting, and excluding involve
lower levels of intensity and less intentionality, while physical violence, harassment,
and bullying involve high levels of each dimension.

High

Low

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks }i1> 159

i N T E N T I O N A l i T Y

Figure 6 . 1 Intensity and Intentionality of Worltplace Incivility

Communication scholar Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik and her colleagues go a step fur­
ther and suggest varying degrees of bullying. They argue that bullying is a specific
phenomenon marked by four key features. It is intense, repeated, enduring, and char­
acterized by p ower disparity.62 Higher degrees of bullying are associated with greater
intensity, frequency, and duration.63

Researchers differ on the consequences of acts at the lower end of the scale. Not
surprisingly, research shows that higher degrees of bullying have more severe conse­
quences.64 However, Sypher cautions that we should not dismiss or downplay acts on
the lower end of the scale. If engaged in repeatedly lower-level acts raise the intensity
of harm beyond what may have been initially intended. People may be motivated to
engage in incivility by a desire to hurt or to control.65 However, Sypher cautions that
behavior intended to control can still be hurtful. She cites the example of an office
assistant who repeatedly interrupted her supervisor and referred to the supervisor’s
“wrong” views. When confronted, the office assistant said, “I never meant to be con­
descending or rude; I certainly never meant to be hurtful. ” In this case, the motivator
may have been control, but such a pattern over time can still be damaging.

What behaviors do people associate with workplace bullying? Workers who
report being bullied-as opposed to experiencing other negative behaviors-point
most often to the following communicative acts: humiliation, ridicule, withholding
information, hints to quit, physically threatening behavior, and overt expressions of
hostility. Bullying is perhaps more frequent than most of us realize, with some surveys

160

suggesting that more than 25% of U.S. workers are bullied or emotionally abused
sometime during their careers. Lutgen-Sandvik and her colleagues report that levels
of persistent negative behavior toward others in the workplace in the USA and the UK
are similar and are 20-50% higher than reported by Scandinavian workers. 66

Sarah Tracy and colleagues suggest that one useful approach to helping people who
are victims of abusive relationships is to uncover the metaphors they use. Their research
found that victims of bullying used metaphors such as battle, nightmare, and water tor­
ture for the experience of being bullied; victims characterize d bullies as narcissistic dic­
tators and devil figures. The metaphors influence what people see. Raising awareness
about the metaphors used enables people to see how they are limiting their perspective
on the situation, while enabling them to generate new meanings and possibilities.67

The terms we use to describe particular behaviors are important; they direct peo­
ple’s attention to problematic behaviors and to possible solutions. “Bullying” has
become a useful label in part because everyone can visualize episodes on the primary
school playground-as well as remembering times when groups coalesced to confront
dominant, sometimes violent, individuals.

Changing and Reframing Relationships

As people interact over time, relationships change from one form to another with­
out a great deal of conscious thought or intention. As people respond to the ebbs and
flows of dialectical tensions, relationships evolve to a point where reframing is neces­
sary (for example, relabeling workmates as friends). Sometimes relationships are
reframed strategically. The many different kinds of relationships we experience in
organizations can retain their initial characterization or they can morph into new
types of relationships. If the frame we construct to categorize the nature of the rela­
tionship no longer adequately describes the roles, expectations, and obligations, we
choose a new frame. Relationships are not “given” by the roles or p ositions we are
assigned or develop. Rather, relationships evolve in response to individual, relational,
and contextual factors. The dynamic’ nature of various relationships is one of the
j oys-and one of the challenges-of organizational life.

Communication Networks

You have probably been advised to use your network of relationships to help your
chances of getting a job. You may also already understand the value of developing
and extending that network as a means for advancing your career. Such advice is
predicated on the belief that networks of relationships can (a) make you aware of
opportunities, (b) pass on valuable knowledge of trends or events that may affect your
career, and (c) act as a base of influence to help you take advantage of opportunities as
they arise. Organizations that emphasize relationship marketing may actively encour­
age network building by their members. Thus, professionals who depend on relation­
ship marketing often strategically join social and professional clubs and have an active
social schedule in order to develop their professional networks.

Most of the discussion in the first part of this chapter focused on relationships
between two individuals-that is, dyads. Dyads are the building blocks for communi­
cation networks, by which we mean patterns of contact between individuals that are
created by exchanging messages.68 The last part of this chapter is devoted to exploring

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks ., 161

the role of communication networks in and between organizations. First, we’ll take a
look at networks of individuals, then we’ll look at networks of organizations or, more
simply put, network organizations.

Network linkages are created through people communicating with each other and
establishing relationships. A single individual can be part of many communication
networks. Some of these networks may be comprised totally of members of the orga­
nization, such as a group of young professionals who socialize together or a group of
people in various parts of the organization who have a strong interest in a particular
technology. The same individual may belong to networks comprised of people totally
unconnected to the organization, such as a community improvement association or a
church group . The individual may also belong to groups that include people from
“inside” and “outside” the organization, such as professional associations.

Network Analysis

Network analysis has a long history in organizational communication studies. It is
also used in a variety of other fields, ranging from studies of political socialization (e.g.,
“How do we predict your voting patterns by knowing the people with whom you asso­
ciate”) to mental health (e.g., “How do we understand your difficulties with respect to
your roles in certain networks of family and friends and coworkers?”). Network con­
cepts are also now applied to global technological interconnections. Network studies
began in the 1940s and ’50s when social researchers asked schoolchildren to name
“your best friends in this class.” Today, network analysis is amazingly sophisticated
and combines examinations of the content of messages with the nature of linkages
between people (or “nodes”) in a system. Network analysis is useful for assessing the
flow of communication in a group or organization, the strengths of relationships, and
the topics discussed. For example, if you were trying to influence a group of people to
accept a major organizational change, a network analysis could give you a sense of
how information flows in the organization, who the key opinion leaders or gatekeepers
of information are, and who is outside the network and thus not privy to regular infor­
mation updates. Interestingly, the idea of “networks” is now commonplace-part of
everyday vocabulary. The term was borrowed originally from television networks and
then applied to an array of social and technologically mediated interconnections.

Network concepts such as those listed in box 6.4 can b e useful to analyze the com­
munication patterns and the structural and process features of groups or entire organi­
zations. For example, sociologist Mark Granovetter developed an insightful analysis
based on the “strength of weak ties.”69 Granovetter argues that while we typically
value strong ties in terms of network density and strength, for some purposes we
should value and cultivate weak ties. For organizations to be innovative, for example,
weak ties are essential because they foster new links that allow us to challenge taken­
for-granted routines and assumptions. We are more likely to be exposed to very differ­
ent points of view and different information sources from those with whom we have
weak ties-people such as occasional acquaintances or friends of friends. Additionally,
the concept of network density has applications in job-seeking (where weak ties are
often the ones that give you the most leads), grieving (where individuals tend to need
some “new blood” in their social networks after an initial period of loss), and innova­
tion (where new ideas often come from comparatively removed or distant sources).

Communication scholar Richard Farace and colleagues differentiated three impor­
tant types of networks in organizations. First, there are production networks, which

162 � Chapter Six

exist primarily to accomplish work tasks. Second are innovation networks, which
emerge around the creation, development, and diffusion of new ideas. Finally, mainte­
nance networks exist to develop and maintain social relationships . The types may over­
lap, such as when a group of coworkers in a production network begin to bond and
socialize together, forming a maintenance network. There will be also be differences­
sometimes subtle and sometimes blatantly obvious. Network analysis helps identify

Network roles (the positions that i n d iv i d u a l s occupy withi n networks)
Group or clique members: those connected to others through interaction

Isolate: a n i ndivid u a l who does n’t reg u l a rly interact with others

Bridge: an i ndivi d u a l w h o is a m e m be r of two or m o re g ro u ps

Liaison: an ind iv id u a l w h o interacts with two or more groups but is not a mem ber of them

Communication Star: a n i n d iv i d u a l who is highly central to a n etwork; stars are key points of
contact for th e i r g ro u p

Gatekeeper: a n i n d ivid u a l w h o controls t h e flow o f c o m m u n ication between pa rts of a n etwork

Dimensions of analysis for individuals

Centrality: the degree to which an individual is “at the crossroads of i nformation flow” in a group71

Connectedness: the n u m be r of contacts a n indivi d u a l has

Range or diversity: n u m b e r of l i nks with i n dividu a l s d ifferent from oneself

Accessibility: the d e g ree to which a n i n d ivid u a l can easily c o m m u n icate with others in his/her
network

Dimensions of analysis for dyads

Strength: the a m ou nt of interaction between two i n dividu a l s
��

Symmetry: degree to which the exchange of su p port or resources is relatively e q u a l or u n e q u a l

Direction: d e g ree t o w h i c h com m u nication i s from actor A t o B, o r vice versa

Stability: d e g ree to which the tie has lasted over a pe riod of time

Multip/exity: d e g re e to w h i c h the actors interact on more t h a n o n e i s s u e, o r for m o re than o n e
reason

Openness: degree to which the i n d ividuals i n a dyad have interaction with others outside the dyad

Dimensions of analysis for whole networks ( N ote that some of these can b e a p p lied to dyads,
j u st as some of the dya d i c d imensions can be a pp l i e d to n etworks.)
• Size: n u m ber of i n d ivid u a l s in the n etwork

Heterogeneity: extent to which members i n the network a re s i m i l a r or d ifferent from each other

Mode o f communication: the primary means by w h i ch m e mb e rs com m u n i cate

Density: the ratio of actual to possible with in-group l i n ks

Clustering: d e g ree to w h i c h the network is composed of s ub g ro u ps or c l i q u e s

Consider these terms a n d Granovetter’s notion of the “strength of weak ties.” Think about those
with whom you have the strongest ties-your closest friends; they are likely to share your views, have
access to many of the same information sources, and so on. Where do you encounter challenges to
your taken-for-granted routines and assumptions?

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks Ill>- 163

the variations. Finding the isolates, the bridges, and other ne.twork indicators can help
us understand why a network is functioning well or why it is experiencing problems.

Communities of Practice

One interesting form of network in the workplace today is what has been labeled
“communities of practice.” T hese are networks of relationships that bind people

together with a focus on particular projects or professional interests.

Etienne Wenger
and William Snyder define community of practice as “a group of people informally
bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise.”72 Consulting
firms that sometimes work within client organizations for months or even years often
propagate such communities. Consultants and their clients may come to see them­
selves as coworkers after working together for relatively long, intense periods on
projects. Similarly, contract employees may become part of a community of practice as
they work on long-term projects. Wenger and Snyder argue that people in organiza­
tions form communities of practice for a variety of reasons-to maintain connections
with peers when the company reorganizes; to respond to external changes such as
new technologies or regulations; or to meet new challenges when the company
changes strategies. Whatever the basis for forming the community, members share
knowledge creatively. The free-flowing exchange fosters new approaches to prob­
lems.73 Wenger and Snyder emphasize that communities of practice emerge; they are
not preestablished. However, organizations that value innovation and knowledge
sharing should create conditions in which communities of practice can flourish?4

Interorganizational Relationships

Some of the most important organizational relationships involve people,
resources, and procedures from several organizations. A growing number of organiza­
tions are entering into more or less formal relationships with other organizations in
order to conduct their business. Sometimes such relationships are short term and
loosely formed; at other times, they become long-lasting partnerships.

Interorganizational relationships are established for a host of reasons, including
strategic, institutional, symbolic, personal, etc. Although such relationships vary in
intensity, closeness, and scope of collaboration, they are typically designed to increase
the competitiveness of the involved partners by creating synergy between their indi­
vidual resources, strategies, and skills. Most writers, however, seem to agree that
interorganizational relationships are established primarily because organizations
hope (1) to reduce risk and uncertainty by linking up with other players in the market
and (2) to improve their resource base, including both material resources and the
information they use to guide their decisions and actions.

Many organizations today find that their plans and strategies increasingly
depend on the decisions of other organizations, that the problems they face are bigger
than they alone can solve, and that their attempts to manage environmental contin­
gencies often create unanticipated problems.75 With increased environmental com­
plexity and fi:irbulence, organizations expand their boundary-spanning activities to
include collaboration with other organizations. Interorganizational collaboration
involves pooling tangible and intangible resources, such as expertise, information,
money, technology, and labor by two or more organizations to solve problems that
neither of them can solve on their own?6 Collaboration, as Barbara Gray points out, is
based on the recognition that organizational activities are truly interdependent and

164 … Chapter Six

Strategic Alliance: a close association of o rg a n i zations, formed to advance c o m m o n i nterests o r
causes

Coalition: a l l ia n ce, typically temp o ra ry, between b u s iness o rg a n i zations

Industrial Cluster: organi zations in the same i n dustry that locate i n close geog rap h i ca l proxim­
ity for ease of i nteractio n a n d synergies (e.g., i n n ovation pa rks)77

Cartel: combi nation of i ndependent b u s iness organi zations formed to reg u late p ro d u ction, pric­
i ng, and marketing of goods by the m e m b e rs

Conglomerate: a corporation m a d e up of a n u m be r of d ifferent c o m p a n ies that each o p e rate i n
a specific m a rket

Joint Venture: pa rt n e rships or conglomerates, often formed to s h a re risk or expertise

licensing: official o r legal permission to m a nufacture a produ ct developed a n d owned by

a n9ther orga n i zation

Franchise: authorization granted to someone to sell o r d i strib ute a company’s goods o r services
in a certa i n area

Research Consortium: a n association o r a c o m b i n ation (fo r exa m p l e, b u s i n esses, fin a n c i a l i n sti­
tutions, or i nvestors) for the p u rpose of engaging in research of common i nterest

Network Organization: two or m o re org a n izatio n a l u n its i nvolved in a (semi)fo rm a l i zed long­
term relationsh i p

that organizations, in order t o reduce risk and uncertainty, need t o come together to
identify salient problems, develop shared interpretations of the situation, and gener­
ate joint frameworks to structure and, eventually, control the situation.

In addition to risk reduction, interorganizational relationships offer participating
organizations access to resources (materiat information, know-how), technologies,
markets, skills, or economies of scale (buying in bulk or having other advantages due
to large-scale operations) that would otherwise be beyond the reach of a single organi­
zation.78 Indeed, the relationships between organizations may well be termed “access
relationships” because they extend the reach of individual organizations.79 For exam­
ple, since most cars today have fairly sophisticated information technologies, a pro­
ducer of automobiles may establish a partnership with a producer of computer chips
in order to stay competitive .

Interorganizational relationships may also help organizations share important
knowledge, or /’intellectual capital.” A buzzword for this type of knowledge sharing
is c-commerce (collaborative commerce). Collaborative commerce refers to the develop­
ment of interorganizational teamwork, where organizations open their internal infor­
mation systems to their business partners. A Danish producer of work clothes
(uniforms), for example, has access to databases of several of its major customers,
including the police and the postal service. C-commerce also exists where several
organizations collaborate on the development of a new product.

Interorganizational relationships build public confidence in the value of an orga­
nization’s products or services. By linking up with well-known and respected part­
ners, organizations hope to attract customers and other corporate partners, develop

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks llll> 165

their reputations, and improve their performance.80 In order to improve the quality of
its customer orientation, J.C. Penney, for example, sends point-of-sale information not
only to its suppliers but also to its suppliers’ suppliers.81

Finally, collaboration itself can be the goal of interorganizational relationships. For
instance, Renee Heath has shown how a community partnership’s interorganizational
nature promotes democratic involvement in important public issues. She notes that
the chief goal and challenge of community collaboration is sustaining the relation­
ships that make it possible.82

One useful way to understand interorganizational relationships is in terms of verti­
cal or horizontal integration. An organization is vertically integrated when its upstream
suppliers or its downstream buyers have the same owner. If, for example, IBM buys
Intel, which provides the processors for many computers today, IBM is considered ver­
tically integrated. Organizations are vertically integrated when one suborganization
provides parts or services needed by another in order for the second one to produce or
deliver products or services. Conversely, organizations are horizontally integrated when
their customers are passed from one suborganization to the other in the service cycle.
Some physical therapy clinics, for example, are horizontally integrated with hospitals in
the sense that patients are referred to those clinics when discharged from the hospital.

166 .. Chapter Six

We can also distinguish interorganizational relationships by identifying two gen­
eral types: symbiotic and pooling relationships.85 In symbiotic relationships the partners
combine different yet complementary products, resources, or capabil ities to form an
entity that is qualitatively different from each of the participating organizations. This
is the case when, for example, Procter & Gamble (a consumer-goods company) and
Walmart (a retailer) invest in a joint information system in order to coordinate their
different activities and competencies (production and sales, respectively).86 Symbiotic
relationships sometimes involve public organizations. For example, universities form
strategic partnerships with industries and governments in order to facilitate innova­
tion. In pooling relationships, by contrast, the cooperating partners bring in similar
resources and capabilities in order to realize economies of scale or to augment their
quantitative presence and power in the marketplace. For example, most airlines are
now in pooled relationships. The Star Alliance is one such group, and includes Scandi­
navian Airlines System (SAS) Lufthansa, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air New
Zealand, United Airlines, and others (see www.staralliance.com).

The types of interorganizational relationships imply different kinds of challenges
to the organizations involved. While symbiotic relationships are established to exploit
complementary differences and facilitate mutual learning, these very same processes
potentially undermine such relationships. If, for example, one of the partners learns
faster or more effectively than the other(s), the differences and mutual interdependen­
cies that gave rise to the relationship in the first place may disappear and thus propel
that partner to leave the relationship or, alternatively, to take over the other organiza­
tion(s). As a consequence, organizations in symbiotic relationships may choose to be
very strategic and selective in the way they disclose information to their partners.
Indeed, such selectivity may be a prerequisite for the organizations to retain their spe­
cific identity and survival within the alliance. Interorganizational relationships are
highly dynamic and often need to be reviewed and adjusted. As organizational sociol­
ogist Mark Ebers points out:

Because in an interorganizational relationship the partner organizations regularly
exchange resources and information, the parties’ resource and information bases
indeed are affected by the interofganizational relationship. The outcomes of an
interorganizational relationship thus change the conditions under which the coop­
erating organizations act.87

Still, interorganizational relationships may be stable for other reasons. For exam­
ple, partner-specific investments (such as specific computer hardware or software)
may lock the partners into existing relationships. Or, an organization may rely on mul­
tiple links if it does not have sufficient information to make new decisions on its own.
Finally, personal relations between individuals in the partnering organizations may
prevent the organizations from investigating possibilities for partnerships with other
organizations. Ebers argues that symbiotic interorganizational relationships are more
stable if the relationship involves complex processes that organizations cannot repli­
cate on their own. Management scholars David Whetten and Howard Aldrich suggest
that interorganizational relationships characterized by “multiplex linkages” (that is,
connections between the partnering organizations on multiple dimensions) are more
likely to be stable than those connected only by “uniplex” (one-dimensional)
strands.88 Interorganizational relationships, in other words, are more stable the more
the partnering organizations have to talk about. Interorganizational relationships

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks Ill> 167

based on friendship or professional affiliation between individuals in the participating
organizations are more likely to continue; in fact, they often become the basis for more
formalized partnerships.

The Network Organization

The network organization can be regarded as the pinnacle of interorganizational
relations. Network organizations are comprised of two or more organizational units
from different organizations involved in a long-term, and more or less formalized,
relationship. The relationships of network organizations are often global in scope and
reach.89 The typical objective of a (global) network organization is to bring together the
resources controlled by different organizations to create a new and stronger organiza­
tion, one that is better equipped for a new market, a new technology. or a new service.

Network organizations typically emerge from relationships among individuals or
groups of individuals rather than from formal organizational structures. In contrast to
the emergent networks discussed .in relation to .individuals, however, several dimt:m­
sions of a network organization’s life-e.g., its legitimate authority, its strategies, and its
visions-are prescribed and imposed by management and reflected in organizational
charts and formal contracts.90 In other words, as the network is formalized, its emer­
gent nature is usually contained within a narrower frame of control. Still, compared to
the traditional organizational hierarchy, the network organization is highly flexible.

Before the 1980s, markets in the Western world were typically dominated by
large, hierarchically organized firms that were able to obta.in and susta.in advantages
of scale through growth, central planning, and control. Often, those companies were
able to use their size and experience to expand into-and to dominate-overseas mar­
kets as well. Many such firms still exist. Their advantages, however, have gradually
diminished . Although the efficiency traditionally associated with economies of scale is
still central in today’s market, contemporary firms also need to be flexible and adapt­
able .in order to stay in business (see chapter 11) . This change can be attributed to a
number of related developments, such as globalization, technological change, deregu­
lation, and demographic changes in the workforce.91

New information technologies eliminate, to a large extent, the constraints of time
and space (see chapter 12). New technologies shorten product life cycles and lower bar­
riers to market entry. The latter trend is augmented by recent legal, policy, and deregu­
lation changes. Globalization (see chapter 13) has .intensified competition and lowered
profit margins. Add to these market conditions the demographic fact that the work­
force of the Western world is generally becoming older, and the need for organizations
to become flexible without losing the advantages of economies of scale is evident.

Core Competencies

Many organizations today focus on the functions for which they have expert
skill-their core competencies-and outsource those activities that can be performed
more quickly or cheaply by others. When organizations learn to do //fewer things bet­
ter with less”92 they simultaneously need to search globally for opportunities,
resources, and partners. Often this search leads to vertical integration and the forma­
tion of strategic networks and alliances with companies upstream or downstream on the
value chain. Upstream integration means developing ties of coordination with suppli­
ers, while downstream integration means developing ties of coordination with distrib­
utors and customers. For examp’le, the first firm in a network may research, plan, and

168 .. Chapter Six

Org a n i zations today p l a ce a great deal of e m p hasis on value cha i n a nalysis a n d the creation o f
a network o f a l l i a n ces. These two features are closely related. Va l ue chain a n a lysis starts with the
reco g n ition that a series of events h a p p e n s i n the creation and d e livery of a product o r service,
a n d each of these events can be seen as a l i n k in the va l ue chain. That is, e a ch event contributes
va l ue to the process. To overs i m p l ify a bit, a business that m a n ufactures prod ucts (for example,
tires o r com p uters) involves research and development, purchasing and procurement, desig n
a n d e n g ineering, m a nufa cturin g a n d production, sales a n d marketing, a n d fi n a l ly, d e livery a n d
distribution. When o rg a n i zations engage i n va l ue cha i n a n a lysis, they ask, “On which pa rts i n the
va l ue chain d o we want to focus our business?” That is, w h e re do we as an o rg a n i zation want to ·
a d d val ue a n d extract value? What are we good at a n d what is susta i n a b l e ? After d e ci d i n g the i r
p ri m a ry expertise, they may decide t o create a network o f partners t o h a n d l e the l i n ks i n t h e

chain w h e r e they a r e l e s s effi cient.
A clear exam p l e of this is Cisco, which has been p raised often as a pioneer “new economy”

corporation. At one point there were 38 fa ctories making Cisco prod ucts, with Cisco own i n g o n ly
two of them. Many Cisco products s o l d are never touched or seen by a Cisco e m ployee. Rath e r,
Cisco contracts with partner organ i zations to do m uch of the m a n ufacturing a n d d i stribution o f
its products (mostly, computer networking equipment). Cisco focuses o n those parts of the val ue
cha i n that they consider their specia lties, or core competen cies, w h i ch i n clude the design a n d
m a rketing o f products. Then, they outsource the other functions in t h e va l ue chain, i n cl ud i n g
m a n ufacturing a n d d i stribution, to partner o rg a n i zations.93 This trend fo r orga n i zations t o o ut­
source a l l b ut core com petencies to create a network organization is referred to as “dis-aggrega­
tion,” w h i ch some pundits describe a s a central characteristic of the new economy.94

Some authors believe there is as much evidence for aggregation as for dis-aggregation-in
other words organizations joining together in mergers and acquisitions. 95 Can you fin d examples of
both trends? Which seems to be dominant? What are the possible social and economic conse­
quences of dis-aggregatio n ?

design a product; the second m a y engineer and manufacture it; while the third, fourth,
fifth, and sixth may handle marketing, sales, distribution, and service.

By choosing the right partners, organizations operating in networks hope to be
both efficient and flexible and to remain competitive throughout the value chain. Effi­
ciency is attained by housing specialized expertise in specific locations, and adaptive­
ness is secured by networking with many different specialized organizations. In
addition, many network organizations now establish clear performance measures for
internal divisions so that their performance can be continuously compared to that of
external suppliers. Often this implies converting each division into a business unit
that is encouraged or forced to sell their products on the open market. Charles Snow,
Raymond Miles, and Hemy Coleman describe the philosophy behind this system:

For the network to operate properly each of its nodes must interact regularly with
outsiders-trading, buying, or selling products or raw material to other firms in
order to bring real prices to bear on internal transactions. Thus, inside the com­
pany, clusters of business units, grouped by region and product category, can be
seen buying and selling from one another as well as from outside firms.96

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks Ill> 169

As competition intensifies in the twenty-first century, organizations will regularly
subject their activities to so-called “market tests”-that is, comparing the capabilities
of virtually all departments with the capabilities of external providers. The competi­
tion will determine who will be responsible for that link in the value chain. How do
you imagine that the introduction of such regular market tests will affect life in con­
temporary organizations and the way their members communicate? (Think both in
terms of interpersonal and interdepartmental communication and in terms of how
organizations collect and use information from the environment.) What do you see as
the advantages of this trend? What are the possible pitfalls?

Although network organizations are usually established in order to meet a num­
ber of critical needs-like getting access to technologies, products, skills, and knowl­
edge-the implications for the organizations involved are considerably more far­
reaching than these functional goals. In particular, ideas of “organization” and “envi­
ronment” need to be redefined considerably. As we have seen, organizations are tradi­
tionally regarded as bounded entities defined by their physical structures, their
resources, their markets, and their legal statuses. Following this line of thought, an
organization’s environment is understood as non-organization, that is, everything that
is not comprised by these definitions. In the network perspective, however, it becomes
meaningless to disconnect the organization from its environment. Although all groups
and organizations create their identity through interaction with their surroundings,
this is especially the case for the network organization that explicitly defines itself
through a complex set of interdependencies.

In contrast to the traditional, hierarchical firm, the network organization is
embedded in a web of relationships that is not fully external to the organization but
rather integral to its definition and existence. While resources, for example, tradition­
ally considered “internal” to the organization are now available to partners in the net­
work and thus not entirely controllable by the organization itself, a number of
resources from other organizations in the network, typically seen as “external,” now
become subject to the organization’s influence and control. In fact, one could claim

A q u arter of a cen tury a g o, marketing theorist J o h a n A rn d t d e c l a red tha t the buying and sell­
i n g process i n the Western world had become domesticated.97 The tra d i ti o n a l i mage of com p e ti­
tion in the marketplace d e te rm i n i n g s uccess o r fai l u re was g ra d u a l ly b e i n g eroded from within.
Arndt c l a i m e d the vagaries of u nrestra i n e d competition were b e i n g replaced by vol u n ta ry, l o ng ­
term, a n d b i n d i n g com m i tm e n ts a m o n g a g rowi n g n um be r o f organizations. Wi thi n such
arra n g e m e n ts-which we have cal led n e twork organizations-transactions are “tamed.” By
i n ternalizing a large n um be r of market transactions w i t h i n i ts b o u n d a ries, n e twork organ iza tions
transform the a nonymous market clearing process i n to a n a d m i n i s trative proce d u re where rou­
tines a n d a g reed- u p o n rules replace market negotiati o n . As A rn d t put i t: “More and more trans­
actions are cond u c ted n o t in a d hoc promiscuousness, b u t in the con text of often s u rpris i n g ly
s ta b l e l o n g-term corporate m a trim o n ies, a l l ow i n g for s o m e discreet asides.”98

Think of examples of network organizations that support Johan Arndt’s notion of domesticated
markets. Think of limitations to Arndt’s perspective based on what you know about contemporary
organizations.

170 � Chapter Six

that the network itself is one of the organization’s most valuable resources.99 By mak­
ing resources and activities available to the organization, the network becomes an
integral part of the organization’s definition. As a consequence, the meaning of orga­
nizational boundaries changes quite radically.

Communication in interorganizational Relationships

No matter how interorganizational relationships are organized, they challenge
our conventional ideas about organizational communication. Traditional organiza­
tional structures were developed to simplify and minimize communication needs;
indeed, they sometimes were a substitute for communication (as discussed in chapter
2) . In contrast, we expect interorganizational relationships to be highly communica­
tion intensive.100 This is especially true for global network organizations that depend
on sophisticated communication linkages between partnering organizations.101

Eric Eisenberg and his colleagues distinguished between “types” and “levels” of
interorganizational linkages.102 They identified two types of interorganizational link­
ages: material and information. Material refers to the flow of tangibles (money, goods,
and personnel); information refers to symbolic exchanges (data, ideas, goodwill). One
organization, for example, may lend equipment (or some of its members) to another�
organization. Or it may make its databases available to its business partners-as in the
case of c-commerce mentioned above.

Eisenberg and his colleagues found three levels of linkage: institutional, representa­
tive, and personal. An institutional linkage refers to exchanges of information or materi­
als between organizations without the involvement of specific organizational roles or
personalities, for example routine data transfers between banks. Although few studies
treat institutional exchanges explicitly, such exchanges-where transactions occur auto­
matically-are very important in contemporary organizations. In some countries, tax
authorities, for example, automatically receive information about people’s income from
their employers. A representative linkage is when an official representative of one organi­
zation has contact with an official representative of another organization, for example in
a negotiation situation. Representative lipl

Communication in interorganizational settings, and networks in particular, often
crosses traditional functional boundaries and hierarchical layers. Thus, information

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks IJII> 171

flows are potentially more efficient-fast and economical. The information exchanged,
however, is simultaneously more complex. In addition to receiving information faster,
current communication technologies allow their users to modify, enhance, or manipu­
late the received information in numerous ways. 103 As a consequence, the quality of
communication exchanges becomes the most central concern in interorganizational
relationships. Interorganizational communication centers around three important
issues: trust, identity, and coordination.

Trust. When organizations establish far-reaching interdependencies with other
organizations-implying, for example, mutual access to each other’s information,
skills, and resources-trust is an essential element in the relationship . Trust among
organizational partners involves goodwill, commitment, and equity. Organizations need
to trust that their partners enter the relationship with good intentions, that they are
sincerely interested in contributing to the relationship, and that they are motivated to

The i m p o rtance of trust i n interorgan izati o n a l relationsh i ps is even more pronou nced when
the relatio n s h i p o n l y exists in a virtual environment. Eva Kasper-Fuehrer a n d N e a l Ashkanasy
defi n e a n interorganizati o n a l v i rt u a l organ ization as, a “temporary network organization, consist­
i n g of i n d e p e n d ent enterprises (organizations, comp a nies, i nstitutions, o r specialized i n d i v i d u als)
that come together swiftly to exploit a n a p p a rent market opportu n ity. The enterprises utilize
their core competencies in a n attempt to create a best-of-everyt h i n g organization in a val u e-add­
ing partnership (VAP), fac i litated by information and com m u n ication tech nology (ICT). Virtual
organizations act in all a p p e a rances as a s i n g l e org a n izatio n a l u n it.” 104 A good exa m p le is Virtu­
e/le Fabrik Euregio Bodensee (www.virt u e l le-fa b rik.org), a virtua l network of com pa n i es that helps
other companies create tem p o ra ry interorg a nizational relation s hips.

I n contrast to other types of orga n izatio n a l relati o n s h i ps, the virtua l organ ization l acks the
d i m ension of nonverbal com m u nication u s u a l ly regarded a s essential in trust b ui l d i ng. As a con­
sequence, this type of interorg a n izati o n a l relatio n s h i p needs to find alternative ways to esta blish
trust. Also, the absence of h ierarchical control a n d a legal framework to regu late the formation,
operation (and dissolution) of the organization m a kes produ c i n g a n d organ iz i n g trust in d ifferent

ways even more i m po rtant. F i n a l ly, the temporality of these types of virtua l org a n izations makes
trust b u i l d i n g essential.

According to Kasper-Fu e h re r and Ash ka n a sy, interorga n ization a l virtual organ izatio n s m ust
use what they c a l l “a ppropriate ICT” to com m u n icate trustworthiness a m o n g its members.
Appropriate I CT, i n t h i s context, refers to both a tech n i c a l a n d a h u m a n d im e n si o n . First, ICT
e q u i p ment needs to be sta n d a rd ized, in terms of products a n d i n terfaces, to e n a b l e stab i l ity a n d
rel i a b i l ity i n t h e relati o n s h i p. Second, it needs t o a l l ow its users t o transmit a s many nonverbal
cues as possible, i n cl u d i n g fac i a l expressions. The use of”emoticons”-such as 🙂 o r 🙁 is o n e pos­

s i b i l ity. I n a d dition to the use of a ppropriate ICT, i n terorganizational virtual organizations n eed to
estab l i s h a common business understanding in order to com p ensate for the lack of legal sanctions
and formal control. Such an u nd e rsta n d i n g involves clea r com m u n ication a b o ut what the p a rt­
ners stan d for, a b o ut the nature of t h e i r b u s iness transactions (in terms of production, coopera­
tion, a n d a g reements), a n d about the expected outcomes of t h e i r relationship. Finally, Kasper­
Fuehrer and Ashkanasy e m p h a size that h i g h standards of business ethics a re essential to b u i l d
trust i n these relatio n s h ips. S u c h ethics can be esta blished, of c o u rse, b y agreeing o n s h a red
codes of ethics but also through concrete b e h avior such a s payment h abits.

172 � Chapter Six

deal fairly. This is not always the case. Some organizations enter partnerships with the
intention of absorbing the skills and activities of the other organizations, unfairly tak­
ing more than they contribute to the collaboration.

Trust is established through frequent communication between the partnering
organizations. As Peter Ring and Andrew Van de V en point out, “Trust in the goodwill
of other parties is a cumulative product of repeated past interactions among parties
through which they come to know themselves and evolve a common understanding
of mutual commitments. ” 105 Trust often builds on interpersonal relationships already
established between individuals in those organizations. The individuals may, for
example, have established strong ties through a shared professional affiliation or
through other shared interests. Or perhaps they are simply friends. The transition of
trust from one type of relationship to another, however, is not easy. The fact that a per­
son is willing to attribute sincerity and trustworthiness to another individual as a per­
son does not necessarily imply that the same characteristics will be attributed to the
individual in his or her role in the organization.106 In fact, the very institutionalization
of the relationship through a formal agreement may weaken the trust on which it was
established in the first place.

Conversely, interorganizational relationships established through formal chan­
nels may over time develop into more informal relations. Research has shown that as
interorganizational relationships become institutionalized, personal relationships
gradually supplement formal role relationships, that psychological affiliations increas­
ingly substitute for formal, legal contracts, and that over time formal agreements
increasingly mirror informal understandings and agreements.107 Formal and informal
communication, thus, are interwoven in complex ways in interorganizational relation­
ships. In fact, it may be argued that an imbalance between formal and informal pro­
cesses may lead to dissolution of the interorganizational relationship.

While partners in an interorganizational relationship rely on trust, they may fear
that the information they exchange Will become accessible to competitors outside the
network As a consequence, the openness that organizations encourage within the net­
work may be counterbalanced by carefully closing the network to outsiders.108

Identity. While transparency in transactions and decisions and an open commu­
nication climate between members of the partnership generally facilitate trust, it is
equally important that each participating organization has a clear sense of itself and
its stakes in the relationship . As we discussed in chapter 5, organizational identity has
become a growing issue for organizations of all kinds. Interorganizational relation­
ships intensify this issue considerably. If given the option, many organizations would
probably prefer not to engage in interorganizational relationships. Such relationships
constrain their autonomy by limiting their actions and challenging their identity. 109 As
mentioned above, there is always the risk that one party will absorb the sldlls and
activities of another party and then abandon the network In fact, this is often the case.
For example, Zenith, a producer of television sets, lost the manufacturing and design
of color television and VCR technology to its Korean partner Goldstar. General Elec­
tric lost several of its domestic home appliance products to its partner Samsung.
Because of this risk, organizations are often advised to enter a network with clearly
defined identities and strategic cores so that the competencies and skills in the net­
work are truly complementary and so that each partner is considered indispensable
by the others. 110

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks .. 173

On the other hand, it is
‘
through interaction with others that organizations

develop their own identity. Tirrough the process of projecting themselves onto their
surroundings, organizations get to know their own strengths, weaknesses, and prefer­
ences, and learn to appreciate their identity. Relationships with other organizations,
thus, can be instrumental for organizations to develop their identities and core compe­
tencies. Think of examples of organizations with strong and unique identities that
would be difficult for partners to emulate or take over. Then think of organizational
identities that would be too vague or fragile to retain their autonomy within an inter­
organizational network

Coordination. In contrast to the classical organization arrangement, interorgani­
zational relationships typically have unclear lines of authority and control. As a conse­
quence, processes of coordination within such relationships are potentially marked by
confusion and ambiguity. Interorganizational relationships therefore require a strong
commitment to cooperation. Although professionals are hard to supervise because
they often are more loyal to their profession than to their organization, coordination is
crucial. 111 While the motivation for organizations to enter relationships with other
organizations is frequently to become more flexible, the reality of the new network is
that activities-both within each organizational unit and across the network-must be
monitored closely and coordinated precisely. As W. Graham Astley and Richard A
Brahm put it:

On the one hand, the need for greater flexibility is requiring organizations to disag­
gregate their activities and externalize certain functions to be performed by collab­
orating partners, domestically or internationally. On the other hand, the need for
greater integration and coordination of ac,tivities across interdependent markets,
industries and countries is requiring organizations to manage their exchange rela­
tionships through negotiated arrangements designed to stabilize operations.U2

To accomplish these tasks, many network firms have assigned key managers to
operate across rather than within hierarchies, creating and assembling information,
skills, and resources from all parties.U3 While one may question the implicit assump­
tion that organizations in the network will be willing to fully disclose information to
each other, the task of organizing information across the network and communicating
it in relevant ways to all participants becomes a highly important activity in all phases
of the network’s life cycle. We conclude with a prominent example, the contemporary
global social justice network (box 6.10), to help you further appreciate how interorga­
nizational communication networks operate in a wide variety of social contexts out­
side the world of work and how these networks are helping to change our world.

SNAPSHOT SYNTHESIS

The relationships we form are important for the success of our work-that is,
accomplishing tasks-as well as for the quality of our work lives. These relationships
are created, developed, sustained, and sometimes terminated through communica­
tion. The relationships form the building blocks of networks-from personal networks
to organizational networks. In this chapter, we have explored relationships and net­
works in their cultural and historical contexts. Understanding the dynamics of rela­
tionships and networks and developing skills for managing them are essential to our
personal and professional effectiveness, as well as the effectiveness of organizations.

174 <4 Chapter Six

1 5 February 2003 saw the world’s most dramatic exam p l e to date of international coordi n a ­
t i o n . As the s u n moved across t h e world, over 1 0 m i l li o n people i n s i x continents m a r c h e d i n pro­
test a g a i n st the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Seven years after the fact, scholars are still h a i l i n g the

event as o n e of the most networked collective actions ever to occur.1 14 What produced such an
intricate mass p h e n o m e n o n ? Scholars of social movement n etworks say that it’s a m i stake to

t h i n k of such events purely as a product of rage against g l o b a l i nj u stices related to war o r eco­
n o m i c o r environmental injustices. While the concerns that have m otivated such p rotests are well
fou n ded, the networks that produce them are m o re accurately described as a product of interor­
g a n izatio n a l l i n kages, m e d i ated by technology.

Social movement scholar S i dney Tarrow argues that these complex networks do not emerge
as a d i rect result of s i m pl e factors and variables such a s the seriousness of the issue, avai l a b l e
resou rces, n u m be r o f activists, o r the a g e a n d intensity o f the movement.1 1 5 I n stead, Tarrow iden­
tifies six complex processes that have been particularly infl uential i n creating a m u lti-issue g l o b a l
social justice network: g l o b a l fra m ing, internalization, diffusion, scale s h ift, externalization, a n d
coalition b u i l d i ng .1 1 6 Here’s what these terms mean.

Global framing refers to the process whereby loca l issues a re d i s c u rsively fra m e d i n terms that
have g l obal res o n a n ce. For i n stance, activists i n a local com m u n ity may b e concerned about the
effects of a proposed coal m i n e. The instant they begin to use g l o b a l terms, such as “g l o b a l warm­

i n g” o r “ozon e layer, ” they a re entering a l a ng ua g e that begins to give them c o m m o n cause with
activists i n other areas.

Internalization refers to the process whereby issues from another area become local issues.
Thus, comm u n ities may i n te r n a l ize l a rger issues and protest against city councils who d o not
enforce enviro n mental sta n d a rd s o r recyc l i n g policies that exist i n other places, thus connecting

them s u btly with other people and policies.
Diffusion refers to the spread of forms and repertoires of contention-what a ctivists actually

do as they protest. For i n stance, protest i n g at the front gate of a l a rge factory o r corporation is a
time-honored tactic that has diffused a l l over the world. As d ifferent groups take up s i m i l a r forms
of contention, they b e g i n to get conn ected.

Scale shift describes a process w hereby collective action a n d organizatio n a l i dentity get trans­
formed a n d g l o b a l ized. For i n stance, u n i o n activists concerned with e q u ita b l e e m ployment
m i g ht start to help raise p u b l i c awareness about sweatshops in other countries, but if the g l o b a l
issue of sweatshops becomes their m a i n m i s s i o n , they h a v e u n d ergo n e a scal e s h i f t that orients
them toward the g l o b a l network.

Externalization refers to local protests about issues that lie elsewhere: the protests across the
world against the wars i n Iraq a n d Afg h a n istan are good examples.

Coalition building refers to explicit connections between groups of activists i n various parts of
the world wh o b u i l d techn o l o g ical connections in order to engage i n protests, o rg a nize, a n d
strategize. Activists themselves may sometimes m ove across borders.

it’s important to remember that global justice networks are built as a result of all these processes
put together. For instance, we might mistakenly consider coalition building as the most prominent
network-building process. However, consider how coalitions could not happen without a range of
other processes, including global framing, scale shifts or externalization. Have you or any of your
friends ever taken part in a protest? Based on this, can you think of examples of global framing, inter­
nalization or scale shift? How solid and durable do these processes and mechanisms seem? How do
you think technology has affected the global social justice network?

KEY CONCEPTS

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks /Ill> 175

” Discourse “Conversationalization”: the tendency in contemporary times for
discourse to be more informal and democratic, with less formality and fewer
power markers.

” “Technologization” of Discourse: the tendency in contemporary times for dis­
course to reflect more strategizing based on research and/ or training that
focuses on communication techniques that are effective in achieving communi­
cators’ goals.

e Synthetic Personalization: sometimes called “manufactured friendliness” this is a
kind of emotional labor in which organizations train and encourage their employ­
ees to use a friendly; informal, conversational communication style with customers.

” Definition of the Situation: a communicator ‘s interpretation of the situation,
which includes an understanding of the nature of the interaction, the goals of
the interaction, and the nature of the relationships between or among the com­
municators.

” Multiple Communication Goals: when people communicate, they simulta­
neously attempt to achieve instrumental or task goals (such as persuading or
informing), identity goals (including self-presentation and treatment of the
other party), and relationship goals (Such as increasing or decreasing intimacy).

” Intersubj ectivity: a mutually understood view of a situation or other phenomenon.
” Relational Dialectics: tensions, or opposing forces, in any relationship that are

both interdependent and mutually negating.
” Communication Competencies: individuals’ abilities that include social per­

ception skills, message design skills, and interaction management.
” Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory: a theory that suggests (among other

things) that superiors develop in-group relationships with some subordinates
and out-group relationships with others.

” Blended Relationships: relationships that combine both a work and personal
relationship, such as a superior-subordinate dyad who are also friends.

” Formal-Organizational Function of Communication: communication that
serves formally sanctioned organizational purposes, such as communication
focused on task accomplishment.

” Psychological-Individual Function of Communication: communication that
serves the needs of individual members, such as communication with peers
that meets one’s need for affiliation.

• Network Analysis: analysis of the structural or process features of a network or
networks, such as assessing the flow of communication in a group or organiza­
tion, the strengths and types of relationships.

” Network Roles: the positions that individuals occupy within networks.
” Strength of Weak Ties: the idea that for some purposes, such as encouraging the

flow of innovative ideas, we should value and cultivate weak ties in a network
” Community of Practice: a type of network of relationships that binds people

together with a focus on particular projects or professional interests.

176 � Chapter Six

NOTES

” Virtual Community: a network of people with common interests who interact
primarily online.

” Interorganizational Relationship: a (typically formal) relationship formed by
two or more organizations to share resources in order to achieve their individ­
ual and shared goals.

” Network Organization: an organization that brings together the resources con­
trolled by different organizations to create a new and stronger organization, one
that is better equipped for a new market or a new service.

1 Jan Carlzon, Moments of Truth (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1987).
2 J. Van Maanen and G . Kunda, “‘Real Feelings’ : Emotional Expression and Organizational Culture,”

Research in Organizational Behavior 11 (1989): 43-104.
3 Brenda Gainer, “Ritual and Relationships: Interpersonal Influences on Shared Consumption,” Journal of

Business Research 32 (1995): 253-260.
4 Connie J. G. Gersick, Jean M. Bartunek, and Jane E. Dutton, “Learning from Academia: The Importance

of Relationships in Professional Life,” Academy of Management Journal 43.6 (2000): 1026-1045.
5 Peter Cappelli, Laurie Bassi, Harry Katz, David Knoke, Paul Osterman, and Michael Useem, Change at

Work: How American Industry and Workers Are Coping with Corporate Restructuring and What Workers Must
Do to Take Charge of Their Own Careers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. 193-194.

6 Cappelli et al., p. 195-198.
7 Francis Green, “Why Has Work Effort Become More Intense?” Industrial Relations 43 (2004): 709-741.
8 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (New York:

Henry Halt & Company, 1998).
9 B . S. Kuipers and J. l. Stoker, “Development and Performance of Self-Managing Work Teams: A Theoreti­

cal and Empirical Examination,” International Journal of Human Resource Management 20.2 (2009): 399–419.
10 Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Longman Pub-

lishers, 1995) p. 137.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1992).
14 Fairclough, Critical, p. 136.
15 Donald W. Ball, ‘”The Definition of the Situation’: Some Theoretical and Methodological Consequences

of Taking W. L Thomas Seriously,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 2 (1972): 61-82.
16 Ruth Anne Clark and Jesse G. Delia, “Topoi and Rhetorical Competence,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 65

(1979): 187-206.
17 George J. McCall and J. L Simmons, Identities and Interaction: An Examination of Human Associations in

Everyday Life (New York: Free Press, 1978).
18 H. Paul Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” in Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and

Jerry Morgan (New York: Academic Press, 1975) pp. 41-58.
19 Leslie A Baxter and Barbara M. Montgomery, “Rethinking Communication in Personal Relationships

from a Dialectical Perspective,” in Communication and Personal Relationships, ed. Kathryn Dindia and
Steven Duck (New York: John W:rley, 2000) pp. 31-53; see also Kenan Bridge and Leslie A Baxter,
“Blended Relationships: Friends as Work Associates,” Western Journal of Communication 56 (1992): 20()…
225; and Theodore E. Zom, “Bosses and Buddies: A Constructive/Dramaturgical Analysis of Simulta­
neously Close and Hierarchical Relationships in Organizations,” in Under-Studied Relationships: Off the
Beaten Track, ed. Julia T. Wood and Steven Duck (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1995) pp. 122-147.

20 Baxter and Montgomery, “Rethinking Communication in Personal Relationships from a Dialectical Per­
spective,” pp. 31-53.

21 J. L. Gibbs, “Dialectics in a Global Software Team: Negotiating Tensions across Time, Space, and Cul­
ture,” Human Relations 62.6 (2009).

22 Bridge and Baxter, “Blended Relationships,” pp. 200–225; Zom, “Bosses and Buddies,” pp. 122-147.
23 Cappelli et al., Change at Work, pp. 8–9 .

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks .,_ 177

24 Fredric M. Jablin and Patricia M. Sias, “Communication Competence,” in The New Handbook of Organiza­
tional Communication: Advances in Theory, Research, and Methods, ed. Fredric M. Jablin and Linda L. Put­
nam (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001) pp. 819-864.

25 N. Sriussadapom-Charoenngam and F. M. Jablin, “An Exploratory Study of Communication Compe­
tence in Thai Organizations, ” Journal of Business Communication 36.4 (1999): 382-418.

26 Beverly Davenport Sypher and Theodore E. Zom, “Communication Related Abilities and Upward
Mobility: A Longitudinal Investigation,” Human Communication Research 12 (1986): 420-431; Theodore E.
Zom and Michelle Violanti, “Communication Abilities and Individual Achievement in Organizations,”
Management Communication Quarterly 10 (1996): 139-167.

27 Sypher and Zom, “Communication Related Abilities and Upward Mobility,” pp. 420-43 1 .
28 Barbara J. O’Keefe, “The Logic of Message Design: Individual Differences in Reasoning about Commu­

nication,” Communication Monographs 55 (1988): 80-103.
29 Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations (New York: John wney, 1978).
30 John Haas, “A Communication Metamyth Revisited: Is More Communication in the Workplace Better?”

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San
Francisco, CA, May 23, 2007; S. Zimmermann, B. D. Sypher, and J. W. Haas, “A Communication
Metamyth in the Workplace: The Assumption that More Is Better. The Journal of Business Communication 3
(1996): 185-204.

31 John C. Athanassiades, “The Distortion of Upward Communication in Hierarchical Organizations,”
Academy of Management Journa/ 16 (1973): 207-226.

32 Phillip K. Tompkins, Organizational Communication Imperatives: Lessons of the Space Program (Los Angeles:
Roxbury Press, 1992).

33 Fredric M. Jablin and Kathleen Krone, “Task/Work Relationships: A Life-Span Perspective,” in Handbook
of Interpersonal Communication, 2nd ed., ed. Mark L. Knapp and Gerald R. Miller (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 1994).

34 T. J. Larkin and Sandar Larkin, “Reaching and Changing Frontline Employees,” Harvard Business Review
(May-June 1996): 95-104; Helena Economo and Theodore E. Zom “Survivor Perceptions of Communica­
tion during Downsizing,” Asia Pacific Public Relations Journa/ 1 (1999): 19-41.

35 Jablin and Krone, “Task/Work Relationships,” p. 632.
36 Zimmermann, Sypher, and Haas, “A Communication Metamyth i n the Workplace.”
37 George Graen and Mary Uhl-Bien, “Relationship-Based Approach to Leadership: Development of

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory of Leadership over 25 Years-Applying a Multi-Level, Multi­
Domain Perspective,” Leadership Quarterly 6 (1995): 219-247. (They actually refer to their model as focus­
ing on leader-follower, not supervisor-subordinate relationships, but that seems to be what they’re talk­
ing about.)

38 Graen and Uhl-Bien, pp. 219-247.
39 V. R. Waldron, “Achieving Communication Goals in Superior-Subordinate Relationships: The Multi­

Functionality of Upward Maintenance Tactics,” Communication Monographs 58.3 (1991): 289-306; V.
Waldron, M. D. Hunt, and M. Dsilva, “Towards a Threat Management Model of Upward
Communication: A Study of Influence and Maintenance Tactics in the Leader-Member Dyad,” Communi­
cation Studies 44.3-4 (1993): 254-272; V. R. Waldron and M. D. Hunt, “Hierarchical Level, Length, and
Quality of Supervisory Relationship as Predictors of Subordinates’ Use of Maintenance Tactics,”
Communication Reports 5.2 (1992): 82-89.

40 Bridge and Baxter, “Blended Relationships,” pp. 200-225.
41 Nancy G. Boyd and Robert R. Taylor, “A Developmental Approach to the Examination of Friendship in

Leader-Follower Relationships,” Leadership Quarterly 9 (1998): 4.
42 Zom, “Bosses and Buddies,” pp. 122-147.
43 W. Charles Redding, Communication within the Organization (New York: Industrial Communication

Council, 1972).
44 Gary A. Fine, “Friendships in the Workplace,” in Friendship and Social Interaction, ed. Valerian J. Derlega

and Barbara A. Winstead (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986) pp. 185-206; also Patricia M. Sias and·
Daniel J. Cahill, “From Coworkers to Friends: The Development of Peer Friendships in the Workplace,”
Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 273-299.

45 Jablin and Krone, “Task/Work Relationships,” p. 641.
46 Theodore E. Zom and Sarah Ruccio, “Motivational Communication in College Sales Teams,” Journal of

Business Communication 35 (1998): 468-499.
47 Zom, “Bosses and Buddies,” pp. 122-147.

178

48 Sias and Cahill, “From Coworkers to Friends,” pp. 273-299.
49 Ibid., pp. 288-289.
50 Herminia Ibarra, “Paving an Alternative Route: Gender Differences in Managerial Networks for Career

Development,” Social Psychology Quarterly 60 (1997): 91-102.
51 }. H. Fritz, “Men’s and Women’s Organizational Peer Relationships: A Comparison,” Journal of Business

Communication 34.1 (1997): 27-36.
52 Fredric M. Jablin, “Organizational Entry; Assimilation, and Disengagement/Exit,” in The New Handbook

of Organizational Communication: Advances in Theory, Research, and Methods, ed. Fredric M. Jablih and
Linda L Putnam (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001).

53 Theodore E. Zorn, Deborah Page, and George Cheney, “Nuts about Change: Change-Oriented Commu­
nication in a Public Sector Organisation,” Management Communication Quarterly 14 (2000): 515-566.

54 John Van Maanen, “The Smile Factory: Work at Disneyland,” in Reframing Organizational Culture, ed.
Peter J. Frost, Larry F. Moore, Meryl Reis Louis, Craig C. Lundberg, and }oanne Martin (Newbury Park,
CA: Sage, 1991) pp. 58-76.

55 Arlie R. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of Cal­
ifornia Press, 1985); Sally Planalp, Communicating Emotion: Social, Moral, and Cultural Processes (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

56 Fairclough, Critical, pp. 137-138.
57 CRM is sometimes applied to the use of electronic systems to monitor customers’ buying habits and the

use of that data to target marketing efforts.
58 Stephen Brown, “Torment Your Customers (They’ll Love It),” Harvard Business Review (October 2001): 82.
59 J. M. H. Fritz, “How Do I Dislike Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” Management Communication Quarterly

15.3 (2002): 410-438; B. D. Sypher and T. E. Zorn, “Individual Differences and Construct System Content
in Liked and Disliked Coworkers,” International Journal of Personal Construct PsycholOgiJ 1.1 (1988): 37-51.

60 T. E . Zorn, M. S. McKinney, and M. M. Moran, “Structure of Interpersonal Construct Systems: One Sys-
tem or Many?” Journal of Constructivist Psychology 6.2 (1993): 139-166.

61 B . D . Sypher, “Reclaiming Civil Discourse in the Workplace. Southern Communication Journal 69.3 (2004):
257-269: 257.

62 P. Lutgen-Sandvik, S. J. Tracy, and J. K. Alberts, “Burned by Bullying in the American Workplace: Preva-
lence, Perception, Degree and Impact,” Journal of Management Studies 44.6 (2007): 837-862.

63 Sypher, “Reclaiming Civil Discourse in !:he Workplace.”
64 Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, and Alberts.
65 M. P. Tagle, “Violence at Home and Violence at the Workplace: Bridging Different Views on Violence,”

unpublished manuscript, West Lafayette, IN: Department of Communication, Purdue University, 2003
(cited in Sypher). ‘

66 Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy and Alberts, “Burned by Bullying. ”
67 S. J. Tracy, P. Lutgen-Sandvik, J. K. Alberts, “Nightmares, Demons, and Slaves: Exploring the Painful

Metaphors of Workplace Bullying,” Management Communication Quarterly 20.2 (2006): 148-185.
68 Adapted from Peter R. Monge and Noshir S. Contractor, “Emergence of Communication Networks,” in

The New Handbook of Organizational Communication, ed. Fredric M. Jablin and Linda L. Putnam (Thou­
sand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001) pp. 440-502.

69 Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 81 (1973): 1287-1303.
70 Adapted from the following sources: Monge and Contractor, “Emergence of Communication Net­

works”; Terrance L Albrecht and Betsy W. Bach, Communication in Complex Organizations: A Relational
Approach (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1997).

71 Albrecht and Bach, pp. 147.
72 Etienne C. Wenger and William M. Snyder, “Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier,”

Harvard Business Review (January-February 2000): 139-145.
73 Wenger and Snyder, pp. 139-145.
74 Theodore E. Zorn and Jarnes R. Taylor, “Knowledge Management and/as Organizational Communica­

tion,” in Key Issues in Organisational Communication, ed. Dennis Tourish and Owen Hargie (London: Rout­
ledge, 2003).

75 Barbara Gray; “Conditions Facilitating Interorganizational Collaboration,” Human Relations 38.10 (1985):
911-936.

76 Ibid., p. 912.
77 P. McCann and T. Arita, “Clusters and Regional Development: Some Cautionary Observations from the

Semiconductor Industry,” Information Economics and Policy 18.2 (2006): 157-180.

Connecting through Social Relationships and Networks � 179

78 William W. Powell, “Hybrid Organizational Arrangements,” California Management Review 30.1 (1987):
67-87. “Economies of scale” commonly emphasizes the advantages gained by moving from a smaller
size to a larger one. Here, the bias is toward growth and massification. On the other hand, there are
advantages to a smaller unit or system that are de-emphasized or kept out of view with the application

of this concept.
79 Toby E. Stuart, “Interorganizational Alliances and the Performance of Firms: A Study of Growth and

Innovation Rates in a High Technology Industry,” Strategic Management Journal 2l (2000): 791-811 .
so Ibid., pp. 791-811.
81 John F. Rockart, “Toward Survivability of Communication: Intensive New Organization Forms,” Journal

of Management Studies 35.4 (1998): 417-420.
82 Renee Guarriello Heath, “Rethinking Community Collaboration through a Dialogic Lens: Creativity;

Democracy, and Diversity in Community Organizing,” Management Communication Quarterly 21 (2007):
145-171).

83 Peter R. Monge and Noshir S. Contractor, Theories of Communication Networks (New York: Oxford Univer­
sity Press, 2003).

84 Noshir S. Contractor, Barbara J. O’Keefe, and Patricia M. }ones, IKNOW: Inquiring Knowledge Networks
On the Web. Computer Software. Urbana-Champaign: University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997,
; Noshir S. Contractor, Dan Zink, and Mike Chan, “IKNOW: A Tool to
Assist and Study the Creation, Maintenance, and Dissolution of Knowledge Networks/’ in Community
Computing and Support Systems, ed. Toru Ishida (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1998) pp. 201-217; Noshir S.
Contractor and Ann Bishop, “Reconfiguring Community Networks: The Case of PrairieKNOW,” in Dig­
ital Cities: Technologies, Experiences, and Future Perspectives, ed. Toru Ishida (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000)
pp. 151-164; Julie Fesenrnaier and Noshir S. Contractor, “Inquiring Knowledge Networks on the Web
(IKNOW): The Evolution of Knowledge Networks for Rural Development,” The Journal of the Community
Development Society 32 (2001): 160-175.

85 Mark Ebers, “The Dynamics of Inter-Organizational Relationships,” Research in the Sociology of Organiza-
tions 16 (1999): 31-56.

86 Stanley Baldwin, “Tying the Knot,” The Economist Newspaper, Ltd. (May 14, 1994): 73.
87 Ebers, “The Dynamics of Inter-Organizational Relationships,” pp. 39.
88 David A. Whetten and Howard Aldrich, “Organization Set Size and Diversity: Links between People

Processing Organizations and Their Environments,” Administration and Society 11 (1979): 251-282.
89 Peter R. Mange and Janet Fulk, “Communication Technology for Global Network Organizations,” in

Shaping Organizational Form: Communication, Connection and Community, ed. Gerardine DeSanctis and
Janet Fulk (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1999) pp. 71-100.

90 Mange and Contractor, “Emergence of Communication Networks. ”
91 Charles C. Snow, Raymond E. Miles, and Henry J. Coleman, Jr., “Managing 21st Century Network Orga­

nizations,” in Organizational Dynamics (Wmter 1992): 5-20; Mange and Fulk, “Communication Technol­
ogy for Global Network Organizations.”

92 Snow, Miles, and Coleman, Jr., “Managing 21st Century Network Organizations,” pp. 5-20.
93 Don Tapscott, David Ticoll, and Alex Lowy, Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs (Boston:

Harvard Business School Press, 2000).
94 Tapscott, Ticoll, and Lowy; see also Kevin Kelly, “New Rules for the New Economy,” Wired (Sept.1997):

1-12.
95 John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School

Press, 2000).
96 Snow, Miles, and Coleman, Jr., “Managing 21st Century Network Organizations,” p. 13.
97 Johan Arndt, “The Market Is Dying: Long Live Marketing!” MSU Business Topics 27 (Wmter 1979): 5-13.
98 Ibid., p. 6.
99 Hiikan HiikarlSson and I van Snehota, “No Business Is an Island: The Network Concept of Business Strat-

egy,” Scandinavian Journal of Management 5.3 (1989): 187-200.
100 Rockart, “Toward Survivability of Communication,” pp. 417-420.
101 Monge and Fulk, “Communication Technology for Global Network Organizations.”
102 Eric M. Eisenberg, Richard V. Farace, Peter R. Monge, Erwin P. Bettinghaus, Ronnie Kurchner-Hawkins,

Katherine I. Miller, and Lynda Rothman, “Communication Linkages in Organizational Systems: Review
and Synthesis,” in Progress in Communication Sciences, ed. Brenda Dervin and Melvin Voigt (Norwood,
NJ: Ablex, 1985) pp. 231-258.

103 Mange and Fulk, “Communication Technology for Global Network Organizations.”

180 .,. Chapter Six

104 Eva C. Kasper-Fuehrer and Neal M. Ashl

105 Peter S. Ring and Andrew H. Van de Ven, “Developmental Processes of Cooperative Interorganizational
Relationships,” Academy of Management Review 19.1 (1994): 110.

106 Ibid., pp. 90-118.
107 Ibid., for a review of this research.
108 Smen Skafte Overgaard, “Uvilje til videndeling,” Bersen Informatik (Apr. 24 2001): 7.
109 Joseph Galaskiewicz, “Interorganizational Relations,” Annual Review of Sociology 11 (1985): 281-304.
no Ha.kansson and Snehota, “No Business Is an Island,” pp. 187-200.
111 Eisenberg et al., pp. 231-258.
112 W. Graham Astley and Richard A Brahm, “Organizational Designs for Post-Industrial Strategies: The

Role of Interorganizational Collaboration,” in Strategy, Organization Design, and Human Resource Manage­
ment, ed. Charles C. Snow (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989) p. 253.

113 Snow, Miles, and Coleman, Jr., “Managing 21st Century Network Organizations,” pp. 5-20.
114 S. Tarrow, “The Dualities of Transnational Contention: ‘Two Activist Solitudes’ or ‘A New World Alto­

gether,”‘ Mobilization: An International Journal lO.l (2005):53-76.
115 D . McAdam, S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly, “Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention,” Qualitative

Sociology 31 (2008):307-331.
116 S. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

REQUIRED READING

Cheney, C, Christensen, L T, Zorn, T E Jnr, Ganesh, Shiv, 2011, Organizational

Communication in an Age of Globalization, Issues, Reflections, Practices, 2nd ed.,

Waveland Press, Illinois. Chapter 6, pp. 160 – 178

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 5

In our key themes, we have identified workplace heroes and knowledge workers as

people who show exceptional qualities within the workplace. Identify some heroes and

knowledge workers you have experienced and write a short piece (200 words)

stating reasons why these individuals might be key members of work team networks.

Describe the qualities they display that may enhance the power and reach of this network

within an organisation.

REQUIRED READING

Newsom, D, Turk, J and Kruckeberg, D 2010, This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations, 10th ed, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston, USA. Chapter 5, pp. 93–116.

INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 12

Focusing on the difference between publics and audiences, think about your own life and work experiences and identity some publics you might be a member of – as a customer or as a member of a social or professional organisation. You can also be a member of a public simply because of your race, religion, sex or ethnic or national origin.

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The material in this communication may be subject to copyright under the Act. Any further
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Do not remove this notice

Course of Study:
(COM21) Management Communication

Title of work:
This is Pr; the realities of public relations, 10th ed; student ed. (2010)

Section:
Chapter 5 Publics and public opinion pp. 93–116

Author/editor of work:
Newsom, Doug.; VanSlyke Turk, Judy.; Kruckeberg, Dean.

Author of section:
Doug Newsom

Name of Publisher:
Wadsworth Cengage Learning

To appreciate the similarities and distinctions among the public

relations terms stakeho/der, public and audience.

To recognize and be able to identify priority or “target” publics

for an organization.

To understand how priority publics can be described

nominatively, demographically and psychograghically.

To develop sensitivity toward minority publics such as women

and those of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

To be able to identify potential issues that may create problems

for an organization.

To understand the complexity of opinion formation and the

fragility of public opinion.

ublic relations or communications? Just as what to
call the person handling a public relations job is un­

dergoing some changes, so too is the subject of that public
relations activity. You’ll find many references to stake­
holders, rather than publics. The idea comes from the term
stockholders, who have bought into a publicly held company
and thus have a vested interest. However, there are many
others with vested interests in an-organization, such as
employees who may or may not actually own stock. Thus
the term stakeholders has evolved to capture that broader

·concept.
Stakeholders can be employees, suppliers, customers,

government, investors, a local community or even many

·

local communities where an organization operates, spe­
cial interest groups affected by the organization and others
interested in the organization and its activities including
activist groups, local and global, with some perceived ad­
versarial relationship. The concept is a good one because
stakeholders have expectations of an organization

and

the organization owes them some level of accountability.
Stakeholders have more than the peripheral exposure to an
organization that some publics might. Stakeholders may
have a financial investment, but their investment could
be intangible: tim�, energy, loyalty, self-identification, de­
pendency. Thus, public opinion is the collective opinion of
various publics.

s2693330
Text Box
Newsom, Doug. (2010)
This is PR: the realities of public relations. 10th Ed.
Boston, MA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Ch. 5. “Publics and public opinion”, pp. 93-116.

94 Part Two I Research for PR

In any public relations situation, whether it is at the
public relations management or public relations
technician level, you can’t even start without first
identifying your publics.

Every discipline seems to develop its own termi­
nology; sometimes, the same term is used in different
ways by people in different disciplines and profes­
sions. In this book, one exceedingly important term
is public, which has a very specific meaning in public
relations. It is essential that a practitioner grasp the
distinction between a “public” and an “audience.”

The term public has traditionally meant any
group (or possibly individual) that has some involve­
ment with an organization. Publics thus include the
organization’s neighbors, customers, employees,
competitors and government regulators. Publics
and organizations have consequences for each other.
What a public does has some impact on the organiza­
tion, and vice versa. You might imagine that “public”
and “audience” are synonymous. But in important
ways they are not.

From a public relations perspective, the term au­
dience suggests a group of people who are recipients
of something-a message or a performance. An audi­
ence is thus inherently passive. But this conflicts with
the goal of most public relations programs, which
is to stimulate strong audience participation. To
help resolve the semantic conflict, the term public
evolved to distinguish between passive audiences and
active ones.

In public relations, the term public (“active audi­
ence”) encompasses any group of people who are tied
together, however loosely, by some common bond of interest
or concern and who have consequences for an organiza­
tion. The best way to understand this concept is to
think of various publics that you, as an individual,
might be part of.

First, you belong to a group of consumers that, no
doubt, has been well-defined by marketing people.
You may, for instance, be in the 1 8- to 24-year-old
“college” market. This market receives a great deal
of attention because-although you may not believe
it-it is responsible for a vast outlay of cash. Sec­
ond, you may have an organizational identity. For
instance, if you belong to a preprofessional, social
or civic organization-the Public Relations Student
Society’ of America, a sorority or fraternity, a service
club, a political action group or an athletic team­
you are a member of a public. You also belong to

other publics because of your race, religion, ethnic
group or national origin. You probably would not
want to be thought of as a member of “the general
public,” and you’re not. No one is. No such public ex­
ists. Instead, you are a member of many definable,
describable publics. It is the job of public relations
practitioners to identify these publics,as they relate
to the practitioners’ organizations.

Publics are often identified nominatively, but
while we can name them, it’s important to remember
that any public has no homogeneity. All members of
that public are not alike. Making that assumption
can create problems. Perhaps it helps to remember
that another way to look at publics is by their de­
mographics and psychographies. Psychographic ties
among people create a sense of shared identity. Al­
though that’s usually positive, or at least benign, such
as scuba divers or football fans, it can be negative, as
we know from teenage gangs.

In traditional public relations literature, publics
are divided into two categories: external and inter­
nal. External publics exist outside an institution.
They are not directly or officially a part of the or­
ganization, but they do have a relationship with it.
Certain external publics, such as government regu­
latory agencies, have a substantial impact on the
organization.

Internal publics share the institutional identity.
They include management, employees and many
types of supporters (investors, for example). Oc­
casionally, the term internal publics is used in public
relations practice to refer exclusively to employees­
that is, workers. This usage is unfortunate, however,
because it results in employees being considered as
unrelated to management instead of as part of the
same team. Such thinking has a marginalizing effect
that creates serious communication problems. In a
strong union situation, the separation is real and a
team concept is not as likely. Still, the adversarial re­
lationship can be healthy as long as communication
between the two groups is maintained.

Realistically, the categories internal and external
are too broad to be very useful in identifying publics.
More definitive typologies are needed for planning
purposes. J erry A. Hendrix identifies major publics
as media, employees, members, community, govern­
ment, investor, international, special and integrated
marketing. However, even a term such as media has
become more complex with mass media conver­
gence, community journalism concepts and the par­
ticipation of “citizen journalists” in the news process.
Many specialized media exist only electronically,

Chapter 5 / Pub l ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 95

category is broader than ever. Each organiza-
needs to thoughtfully compile a comprehensive

of its publics.
particular public, regardless of its broad

may become the focal point for a public
effort. When that occurs, the public singled

for attention is called a target public or a prior­
public.

ot everyone approves of the connotations of the
target in the context of an important public.

“dean” of communication researchers, Wilbur
was one authority who early on dispar-

For nearly thirty years after World War I, the favorite
concept of the mass media audience was what adver­
tisers and propagandists often chose to call the “target
audience.” . . . A propagandist could shoot the magic
bullet of communication into a viewer or a listener,
who would stand still and wait to be hit! . . .

By the late 19 50s the bullet theory was, so to
speak, shot full of holes. Mass communication was not
like a shooting gallery. There was nothing necessarily
irresistible about mass communication or mass propa­
ganda. Many influences entered into the effect of the
mass media. The audience was not a passive target;
rather, it was extraordinarily active. 2

Certainly most PR practitioners would agree
that a target public tends not to be passive and may
exhibit unpredictable behavior. Still, the idea be­
hind the term is valid-as a silhouette or a statisti­
cal profile, and not as a life-size, full-color portrait.
Although priority public might be more accurate, the
term target public continues to be used today to sig­
nify some definable audience for whom advertising
and information are specifically prepared. The “mass

Prioritizing Publics

audience” is indeed a myth, and using the scattershot
approach to reach target publics is both foolish and
uneconomical.

As a public relations practitioner, you,must carefully
study your comprehensive list of publics and iden­
tify each priority public that is especially pertinent to
your particular project. You must also designate pub­
lics not on your initial list that might be affected in
the future. One way to isolate these peripheral pub­
lics (which are not normally a part of your contact
list) is to determine how you would get names, ad­
dresses and phone numbers if you needed to contact
each member of that public directly.

The PVI (public vulnerability importance) index
has been developed to help organizations identify
target or priority publics. The potential P of a pub­
lic plus the vulnerability V of the organization to ac­
tion from that public equals the importance I of that
public to the organization and to its public relations
program (see Figure 5.1).

The key to identifying and rank-ordering (that
is, prioritizing) target publics accurately is research­
finding out who these publics really are and what they
actually think. The danger of not doing research and
only assuming what a priority public thinks or knows
is quite serious. Alert public relations practitioners
consider not only the collective or majority opinion
of each public, but also the opinions of dissenters.

To develop sensitivity to the attitudes of various
priority publics, a PR person must develop empathy
for each one, much as an actor studies a role and then
becomes the character. The PR person must ask, “If
I were this public, with this background, these situ­
ations, this set of concepts, how would I react to the

Prioritizing publics may be done in several ways. One informal method is called the PVI index: P, the organization’s
potential to influence a public, plus V, the organization’s vulnerability to that public (which may change over time
and in different situations), equals I, the impact of that public on the organization. The higher the I value, the greater
the impact. Here is a tabular form for “computing” a PVI index.

Audiem:e or Public

p

Potential for Organization
to Influence (Scale 1-10)

Source: Reprinted with permission ofJim Haynes.

+ V

Vulnerability of
Organization to Being
Affected (Scale 1-10)

= I

Importance of Audience
to Organization

96 Part Two I Research for PR

set of circumstances being introduced by the insti­
tution I represent?” Developing such empathy for
a public-trying to imagine how that public will
react-not only helps in planning for a specific situa­
tion, but also helps in media selection.

Each institution has its own particular primary
publics, all or many of whom are priority publics­
although the terms are not necessarily synonymous.
A business, for example, has internal primary publics
(stockholders, employees, dealers and sales repre­
sentatives) and external primary publics (customers,
government regulatory agencies, suppliers, competi­
tors, the financial community-security analysts and
investors in addition to their own stockholders­
and the local community). At any time, depend­
ing on the issue or situation, one or more of these
primary publics can become a target (that is, a
priority) public.

Priority publics can be described in any of three ways:
nominatively, demographically or psychographically.
The nominative form of description consists merely
of giving the public a name, such as “stockholders.”
The demographic approach involves looking at the
public’s statistical characteristics such as age, gender,
income, ed;ucation and so on. The psychographic
method examines the public’s defining emotional
and behavioral characteristics. These psychographies
often show how one primary public resembles
another in interests, attitudes, beliefs or behavior.

Such descriptions are becoming more and more
important as the diversity of publics increases. Tell­
ing evidence of that appeared in The TiVall Street Jour­
nal in a story about jury selection.3 In the USA one
is supposed to be judged by “peers,” which has meant
that lawyers selecting a jury have used demograph­
ics. However, some lawyers realize that demographic
profiles corresponding to those of their clients may
not yield as favorable an opinion as expected, despite
the attitudes attributed to certain groups. One as­
sumption, for example, has been that women are less
likely to vote for a death sentence than men. This
cannot be relied upon. According to research by the
American Bar Association, demographics account
for no more than 1 5 percent of the variation in jury
verdict preferences. Then why are demographics so
commonly used? Because they’ re easy. Marketers fre­
quently make the same mistake. Assumptions about
demographics are risky. Religious preference, or the
lack thereof, often is assumed from demographic

data to be an indicator. Perhaps religion does suggest
a value system and maybe some lifestyles, such as
food choices or attire, but not always. Religion can’t
be discounted, but yet another demographic might
need to be considered at the same time, such as age.
Generations approach religion differently, and not
just in the USA.

Sophisticated approaches to publics exam­
ine core personality traits such as values and look
at attitudes as well as lifestyles. An example is the
psychographic casting done by SRI International,
which uses a system called VALS™.4 Adults re­
sponding to the SRI questionnaire are placed in
one of eight types: Innovators, Thinkers, Achievers,
Experiencers, Believers, Strivers, Makers, Survi­
vors. The VALS™ framework has two dimensions:
primary motivation and resources. SRI says the
following of these two:

Primary Motivation: Consumers buy products
and services and seek experiences that fulfill their
characteristic preferences and give shape, substance
and satisfaction to their lives. An individual’s pri­
mary motivation determines what in particular
about the self or the world is the meaningful core
that governs his or her activities. Consumers are
inspired by one of three primary motivations: ide­
als, achievement and self-expression. Consumers
who are primarily motivated by ideals are guided
by knowledge and principles. Consumers who are
primarily motivated by achievement look for prod­
ucts and services that demonstrate success to their
peers. Consumers who are primarily motivated by
self-expression desire social or physical activity,
variety and risk.

Resources: A person’s tendency to consume
goods and services extends beyond age, income and
education. Energy, self-confidence, intellectualism,
novelty seeking, innovativeness, impulsiveness, lead­
ership and vanity play a critical role. These person­
ality traits in conjunction with key demographics
determine an individual’s resources. Different levels
or resources enhance or constrain a person’s expres­
sion of his or her primary motivation.

Another psychographic approach was the media
cross-referencing used in a Roper Starch Worldwide
global study that surveyed the views of 1 .5 billion
people. Roper interviewed 35,000 people ages 13
to 65 in 35 nations on all continents using 1-hour,
1 ,000-answer questions in face-to-face interviews.
The questions were based on what Roper called 58
“guiding principles” for their lives . From these 58 ,
the top 10 global values were: (1) protecting family,

Chapter 5/ Publics a n d Publ ic Op in ion 97

(2) honesty, (3) respecting ancestors, (4) authen­
ticity, (5) self-esteem, (6) friendships, (7) freedom,
(8) health and fitness, (9) stable personal relation­
ships, and ( 10) material security. These values are
used to describe six psychographic categories, in­
cluding important variations in patterns of media
use.5 The way these patterns are interpreted by
public relations practitioners may be dramatically
affected by the increased use of the newest medium,
the Internet.

Psychographic researchers realize the difficulty
of predicting behaviors from attitudes, but attitudes
remain easier to measure than behavior (without
invading privacy). To improve educated guessing
before a final decision is made, demographic and psy­
chographic information should be cross-referenced
with other statistics. Numerous firms correlate such
data with the outreach potential of various forms of
the media. The study by Roper Starch Worldwide
described previously, for example, was one that ef­
fectively used media cross-referencing.

Research, Media Use

:Audience research is used by media to help sell ad­
vertising time and’space and by media buyers to
determine how to maximize their budgets to most
effectively reach their publics. Some media specialty
firms offer combined databases that they sell to me­
dia buyers. Research information firms often supply
these data at a lower cost than subscribing to all of
these databases, some of which might be used only

,.occasionally; certainly this is easier than trying to
maintain a usable library of information in-house.
:;Media relations people also use media specialty firms,
,some of which also offer placement of both advertis­
}ing and publicity. :An important service that specialty
firms can provide is interpretation of information
‘from the databases. A serious consideration for both
::placement of advertising and publicity is the falling
%�terest in news from traditional media. Newspapers
‘vp:ive fewer readers and television news programs per
i�� have only somewhat larger audiences than news­
�]?apers. Radio news gets the smallest audience. With
��raditional broadcast media, the falling statistics
��re related to news of international, national, state
��nd local events, not entertainment news or enter­
:���inment programs that include issues. These have
���igher ratings, as do talk shows and commentaries.
��agazines and books are being read, but not those
‘:ibout public affairs. Although the number of peo­
�ple exposed to news from traditional media sources

continues to decline, people do get news-from the
Internet.

A confounding problem for media use researchers
is how to interpret “audiences” on the Internet. Al­
though Web pages abound on the World Wide Web
and “hits” can be counted, it can be difficult to de­
termine who is doing the hitting. Web pages are set
up by organizations to put out information, publicity
and advertising, and to engage publics, especially pri­
ority publics, in responding. Exacdy who is accessing
Web page information and responding is becoming
increasingly significant to know in a global society
composed of fragmented publics.

One aspect of this fragmentation is the grow­
ing number of people, especially in the USA, who
feel inundated with information from all kinds of
media. Specialized media invade their privacy with
phone calls and unsolicited, unwelcomed mail­
postal and electronic. Of course, part of this comes
from the ability to electronically track all kinds of
personal information about people from just their
daily living: credit card use, telephone calls, plane
and hotel reservations, banking services and the
like. The result of all of these data is the growth
of services that sell information about individuals,
some of which is sold on the Web. Buyers of this
personal data can be anyone, but usually it is some­
one trying to sell something. The effect on market­
ing and market research has been great enough that
the Direct Marketing Association now requires its
members to publicly disclose how they gather and
use data.6

Many people have responded by effectively “tun­
ing out” all of these media, mass and specialized.
Additionally, as noted in the research chapter, mo­
bile phones have replaced landline phones, and the
numbers are not as easily available and are more
likely to change. Some of these changes are simply
the result of technology, others are backlash against
intrusions into privacy. Whatever the reason, orga­
nizations trying to reach publics with messages have
resorted to new methods, especially more personal
and more participatory approaches. Also increas­
ing is the use of intranets within organizations and
listservs on the Internet to reach special publics.
Participation is the key that media users hope will
facilitate messages getting through. 7

That sort of participation on the Internet, though,
serves to underscore the fragmentation of pub­
lics, inasmuch as it works through the building of
definable constituencies. For example, one of the
appeals of the Internet to teenagers is its anonymity,

98 Part Two I Research for PR

a quality which is also appealing to fringe groups
afraid to speak openly on controversial issues. For
the elderly, who were written off early as not likely
users of the Internet, it has become a way to socialize
and keep up with family, and to focus on issues that
concern them, such as Medicare and Medicaid. 8

Social Security is another item for concern but
the audience for that information, of interest to the
government, politicians, insurance companies and
the entire medical community, requires a careful
definition of what kinds of information go to which
groups and who constitutes those groups. Not
carefully defining publics has led to incorrect as­
sumptions. For example, the group called the Baby
Boomers-those born from 1946 to 1964-is not at
all a cohesive group owing to dramatically differ­
ent economic, political and social climates in those
years. Also, the assumption that people already
drawing Social Security are bystanders in the issue
is also wrong. These individuals worry about dimin­
ished resources for their children and grandchil­
dren. Contributing to the public discourse on this
topic is the declining middle class in the USA, many
of whom are college graduates with considerable
Internet savvy. The Internet savvy of teenagers, on
the other hand, is overrated. They may play video
games, but when it comes to getting information on
the Internet, they want simple, not flashy, sites that
are easy to use and that provide helpful information
and services.

The benefit of having these groups on the Web
has been significant for public relations people who
can use Web sites and chat rooms as part of their
issues identification and monitoring procedures.
The downside of the Internet for public relations
people is that constituencies can attack the orga­
nization directly by setting up rogue Web sites,
for example, which mimic the real site but which
contain negative information.9 In other cases, the
constituencies coalesce in much the same ways that
any fragmented, disenchanted public does. They
are outside the bounds of traditional institutional
spheres of influence and can affect an organiza­
tion’s operations and well being.10 Included in these
constituencies are some important conventional
publics, such as employees or customers of a par­
ticular ethnic group or women who have had some
relationship with the organization, as well as those
who may become concerned about an issue and use
the Internet as a platform to attract others to their
concerns.

Employees are always an important public because
they are any organization’s public relations “front
line.” Employees are seen as lmowledgeable about
the organization with the special insigl:t of an insid­
er’s experience and information, so they are credible
to other publics. In addition, employees often have
direct contact with other publics, such as customers
or suppliers. Women and minorities may be a part of
an employee public, but additionally, from a broader
perspective, they constitute significant publics who
can damage an institution’s reputation. Insensitivity
to women and minorities in all types of relationships
has cost profit and non profit groups both money and
status.

Employees Employees have incredible job pressures.
A headline in The Wall Street Journal in 2001 asked,
“Can Workplace Stress Get Worse?” The answer
seems to be “yes,” according to a number of studies
examining the cost of stress to national economies.
Contributing to this stress in most Western nations is
financial uncertainty because of the economy, merg­
ers and downsizings, and the ability of managers to
monitor individuals’ job performance. Information
overload comes from technology that makes employ­
ees reachable anytime and increases demand for in­
stant responses.11 Long hours and cramped quarters
are other factors contributing to “desk rage,” which
can range from lost tempers such as yelling and ver­
bal abuse to physical violence. Overwork is blamed,
as is crowding. Employees are packed tighter than in
the past, often in cubicles like those in the Dilbert
cartoons. High housing costs mean that some peo­
ple must commute long distances from affordable
homes.12

However, most employees will respond with loy­
alty to their employers when they are made to feel
valued.13 The key to feeling valued for most em­
ployees is not salary and benefits as much as it is the
quality of their work life-space and improved com­
munication from management, which helps build
stronger relationships. PR people can make impor­
tant contributions in this area.

Women Women in the workplace are more likely to
feel stressed than men, and although some women
say it is the combination of family and job pressures,
for many it is a problem of lack of power. Although

Chapter 5 / Pub l ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 99

women are a majority of the world’s population,
many, if not most, are in economic, social and po­
litical environments in which they are a minority in
terms of power. Because most women are working
in male-dominated environments in which they have
little authority, many experience sexual harassment.
Only a fraction of those complain about it, but in
the USA some of those cases have resulted in class
action lawsuits with high-profile trials. The damage is
not just monetary. A company that gets a reputation
for abusing women as employees or customers may
fail to get both. This is an issue that needs to be ad­
dressed in any organization before it creates a prob­
lem. The same is true for treatment of minorities.

Minorities Minorities can be ethnic or religious
groups, and they can be physically present in a nation
or represented by a constituency abroad-one now
connected to its counterparts any place in the world
by the Internet. This is an important consideration
in issues identification and monitoring. Although
an issue can cause diverse groups of any religion or
ethnicity to coalesce, it’s important to remember that
these groups often have no real homogeneity.

Hispanics, for example, now constitute the larg­
est minority in the USA. The greatest number is
of Mexican origin, but there are large groups from
other places, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico. These
groups should not be casually lumped together-not
by politicians, advertisers or public relations people.
Spanish is common, but not at all uniformly spoken.

The problem is finding the right Spanish for each
Hispanic audience, but there also needs to be some
confidence that the translated message fits the cul­
ture. The California Milk Processors Board, for ex­
ample, discovered that their “Got milk?” campaign
couldn’t be literally translated because the result
meant something like “Are you lactating?” Worse
than that, the notion of running out of milk in the
household was not funny because it implied that the
provider had failed to meet family responsibilities.
A California-based Hispanic ad agency was hired to
develop a campaign just for that state. Rather than
focusing on deprivation, the campaign by Anita
Santiago Advertising, Los Angeles, instead showed
milk as an important ingredient in recipes handed
down from grandmother to mother to daughter in
traditional Mexican families.14 The research showed
that simply translating the original campaign not
only would have been confusing, but also could have
been very embarrassing.

Hispanic cultures and histories are very different.
Moreover, the gulf between recent immigrants and
those whose families have been in the USA for many
generations often can be even more significant than
differences of national origin. The need to be sen­
sitive to the differences created by the diversity of
cultures exposed to messages is part .of what makes
the role of issues identification and monitoring so
important.

Identifying issues that are likely to create problems
for a company or nonprofit organization is the first
step in the process of monitoring not only the issue
but also the socioeconomic and political climate for
any event or development that could have an im­
pact on any of the organization’s publics. Not ev­
erything that appears on the PR radar can be dealt
with, but each must be evaluated for its potential
to create some serious problem or to offer an op­
portunity . Monitoring helps management foresee
when opinion is likely to build around incidents or
trends.

Anticipating problems makes it easier to deal with
them before a major difficulty arises and a crisis en­
sues. Not all problems result in crises. Some issues
can be managed, at least from the perspective of the
organization’s response. In many cases, the emer­
gence of an issue creates an opportunity, and even
a crisis may in the long run be turned into a benefi­
cial experience. Increasingly, issues are arising from
global situations. Typically these have come from
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), some of
which may be lobbying groups. Many, though, are
private voluntary organizations (PVOs) that have a
narrower focus, that of social goals. These include
some well-known names such as Oxfam, Greenpeace
and Amnesty International.15

Handling issues demands an integrated approach
to communication. The issue, the public and the sit­
uation in which an issue develops all require that an
evaluation consider strategies that use any commu­
nication tools available. This is where the artificial
barriers in an organization, especially among its com­
munication units, can be extraordinarily detrimental.
The organization needs to speak with one voice, and
that voice must be clear and unambiguous.

100 Part Two I Research for PR

A worldwide focus on terrorism caused social psychologists to look at su icide bombers beyond what

was known about their demographics and at thei r admiration of martyrdom. What they found was that

group dynamics are the determining factor. Terrorist g roups create a pseudo family for their recruits,

says Todd Stewart, retired USA Air Force general who d i rects the Program for International afld Home­

land Security at The Ohio State University. it is for this family that the bombers are willing to sacrifice

thei r l ives.

The concept that i dentification with a g roup, m ore than i ndividual personality, often determines

behavior that exists without peer pressure. Robert Cialdini gives the example of a woman visitor to the

petrified forest in Arizona who picked up a piece of forest there, despite admonitions to the contrary

posted everywhere by foresters. As someone who wouldn’t have taken even a paper cl ip from her of­

fice, she told her astonished boyfriend that taking a piece of the forest was normal behavior for visitors

and she was just doing what everyone else did-conforming to the group norm.

The lesson for publ ic relations practitioners is to look beyond however publ ics are classified and

examine g roup norms and how closely individuals accept and identify with those norms.

Source: Sharon Bagley, “Alternative Peer Groups May Offer Way to Deter Some Suicide Bombers,” in Science Journal,

The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2004, B1. Reprinted with permission.

The handling of issues once they have been iden­
tified is not a linear action that concludes when a
favorable solution is achieved. Instead, it is a cycli­
cal process with five steps: ( 1 ) sensing the prob­
lem (research), (2) defining the problem (through
judgment and priority setting), (3) deriving so­
lutions (through policy and strategy selection),
(4) implementing them, and (5) evaluating out­
comes (see Figure 5 .2). The process can recur as
each portion of a solution is worked through. The
feedback causes adjustments in the plans, which in
turn cause the next step of the solution to return to
step one each time.16

Issu es

In many instances, the appropriate strategy to use
depends on the life-cycle stage of the issue, ‘ac­
cording to John F. Mahon of the Boston Univer­
sity School of ManagementY He suggests three
strategies: ( 1 ) containment, for an emerging issue;
(2) shaping, for an issue that has media attention and
therefore is on the public agenda; (3) coping, for
issues that face legislative, regulatory or interest­
group action. When an issue is emerging, Mahon
recommends dealing directly with it, or with those
who are promoting it, to defuse the situation.

The most aggressive stance an organization can take
is to shape or define the issue in its own terms. Shap­
ing strategies include total resistance, bargaining,
capitulation, termination and cessation of activity.
If the issue has reached the coping stage, Mahon
says, the organization has no choice but to change
its behavior substantially.

Accepting the cyclical nature of issues, many the­
orists argue for the revised catalytic model (see the
theory for this in Chapter 6). In this model, the issue
is guided through its life cycle toward a resolution
that is in the organization’s favor. This takes into
consideration an intense examination of the publics
involved in the issue and their potential receptive­
ness to information about the issue, how that mes­
sage can be presented, and how the organization can
frame the issue and set the agenda for public discus­
sion to gain a favorable resolution.

One of the hardest parts of handling issues is
convincing management that an issue needs to
be addressed. The late Richard Long suggested a
four-step process: ( 1 ) state the issue or problem in
the most specific terms possible and describe the
various effects it can have on th·e organization,
(2) identify adversaries and friends, (3) develop a
strategy that includes deciding whether to take the
initiative, and (4) determine whether to involve
coalitions.18

Chapter 5/ Publ ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 101

The Issues Management Process

Performance
evaluation

Implementation

Judgment and
priority setting

Policy and
strategy selection

Source: Reprinted with permission from IPRA from International Public Relations Review, 13(4), 1990, p. 23.

More than any other executive (except the chief
executive), the PR practitioner must know what is
going on inside and outside the organization and
how the organization’s activities and functions inter­
relate and relate to those of others. He or she also
is expected to bring awareness and objectivity to the
job and to inject unvarnished, usable facts into the
decision-making process.

The PR person learns about what is happen­
ing outside the organization by being exposed to
pressures generated by various groups seeking sup­
port. The role of the practitioner here is sensitive
and complex. Sometimes the PR practitioner must
play devil’s advocate, raising all salient arguments
against a proposed course of action and explain­
ing which decisions will adversely affect certain
groups. Sometimes actions must be taken that
will offend a major public, and management should
be warned in advance and offered some way of

successfully explaining to the public why the action
is necessary.

Years ago, no one foresaw the role public relations
now plays in relation to current issues and social
crises. No longer primarily a communicator, the
PR practitioner must act as an intervener and
relationship-builder who tries to prevent a poten­
tial problem from getting out of hand. Indeed, the
most valuable public relations activity consists of
formulating plans and convincing management to
take steps designed to prevent problems or at least to
solve them while they are small.

Some of the tools the PR practitioner uses remain
the same, such as personal contact and mass media.
The proper measure of performance is not how ef­
fectively the client’s message gets across, however,
but whether a flare-up that can stop a client’s business
can be avoided. The public relations practitioner has
an obligation to help employers or clients conduct
their business in a way that responds to the new de­
mands made by concerned scientists, environmental­
ists, consumerists, minority leaders, underprivileged
segments of the community and employees.

102 Part Two I Research for PR

Management’s perception of priority publics-both
internal and external-is not always accurate. Know­
ing who your target publics are implies lmowing what
to say to them and how to say it (see Figure 5.3). You
need to know how your messages are likely to affect
the various publics you depend on for goodwill.

to back up their advice with scientific evidence.
As Wayne Danielson summarizes:

The point is simply this: Interest in science and in ask­
ing the scientific question is part of the spirit of our
times. Professional communicators cannot avoid these
questions. They encounter them all the time. They fre­
quently ask them themselves. And they cannot indefi­
nitely avoid giving a scientific as opposed to an artistic
answer.

Awareness of publics and their responses requires
heightened sensitivity, constant alertness and a lot
of guessing, unless you have and regularly update a
statistical profile of these publics. There has been a
trend in public relations away from the artistic to the
scientific. More and more clients ask practitioners

This is basically what communication research is
all about. It is an attempt to give scientific answers to
scientific questions about communication. 19

Internal and External Publics and Media

Internal External

Management (top and middle) Direct (marketing Indirect (institutional
Staff and employees (union and communications) communications)

employee organizations- Customers Potential customers
nonunion) Sales representatives Potential investors (stockholders)

Publics Stockholders Traders and distributors Financial community
Directors Suppliers Special community of institution

Competitors Government (local, state, federal)
Community (environmental)

Personal (person to person/person Personal (person to person/person to group)
to group) Audiovisual (Web pages with art and sound, films, slides,

Audiovisual (specialized media: videotape, mass media, specialized media available to
films, slides, videotape, closed- external audiences such as externally distributed
circuit Tv, computer networks- CD-ROMs, videos, etc.)
that is, on intranet) Publications (mass and specialized, including controlled

Publications (specialized media: and uncontrolled publicity as well as institutional and
books, magazines, newspapers, commercial advertising)
newsletters). Direct Mail (personalized, institutional and sales promotion)

Media Direct mail Exhibits (mass and specialized externally displayed and
Exhibits (including posters and product packaging, graphics, including point-of-sale

bulletin board materials internally promotions)
displayed as well as personalized CD-ROMs
items such as pins and awards) Broadcast fax

CD-ROMs ListServe (email)
Em ail Internet site (on World Wide Web)
Fax (or facsimile)
CD-ROMs
Web pages

Source: Reprinted from Doug Newsom andJim Haynes, Public Relatiom Writing, Fonn and Style, 8th ed. (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 2008), p. 8, an adaptation of a model used in pr reporte1; 33(30),July 30, 1990. Public Relations Writing
Copyright© 2008. Reprinted with permission ofWadsworth, a division of Cengage.

Chapter 5 I Publ ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 103

Being aware of publics and their opinions depends
on having ready access to information that helps give
an accurate picture of where they stand on issues fac­
ing an organization. Institutions accumulate a wealth
of information in their daily operations. Unless some
thought is given to how that information might be
used, it is useless.

Research for sound public relations planning can
be built into a record-keeping system, provided that
retrieval is also carefully considered. Information
about PR audiences is critical. (See Chapter 4 on
research.)

Perceptions

One important aspect of an organization’s inter­
.nal publics is their perception of the organization:
its image in their eyes. The collective perceptions
bf all publics for an organization_:_based on what it
says and does-constitute its image. A word needs
to be said about “image” in connection with public
relations. Most PR practitioners would gladly ban
;use of the word image because it’s so often misused
and misunderstood and because they don’t like be­
.;ing depicted as “image makers.” Nonetheless, image
:does describe the perception of an organization or
individual, and this perception is based largely on
”What the organization or individual does and says.
IQf course, the organization seldom is perceived in
exactly the same way by all of its publics at any given
time, but we will return to this aspect of the subject
a bit later.

A major contributor to virtually every public’s
·perception of an organization is the organization’s
;:employees. To complicate matters, employees are
£hemselves an organizational public that has its own
perceptions of the organization. The role of employ­
ees is a significant concern in most PR efforts.
. The lack of homogeneity in any public poses
fp.roblems for the public relations practitioner trying
‘to evaluate it. This is especially true of employees,
£because they exist on many different levels: salespeo­
�ple, clerks and receptionists, technicians, profession­
ials, administrators. Moreover, within each group,
;some people see themselves as embarked on a career
�while others see their work only as a job. Beyond
zthat, subgroups exist in all of the main categories;
}professionals, for instance, may include engineers,
‘,researchers and lawyers.
.. ·· The way these people work together and the
.way the administration works with them create a

corporate or organizational culture, which strongly
affects how employees behave in relationships with
each other and with outsiders. This in turn affects
how the organization is perceived. Furthermore, with
increased diversity in the workforce and with increas­
ing international ownership and operational linkages,
such differences among employees can be profound.

Although the best way to find out what various
publics think is by conducting scientific research,
you can also ask a few questions: (1) If the institu­
tion has an image, does it live up to it? Or does it
say one thing and do another? (2) If the organization
has a favorable image, can employees live up to it?
Or do conflicting demands, low pay or other factors
render this impossible? (3) When an image change is
necessary, have the employees been helped to make
the change through participative management?
(4) If the company has no recognizable image, does
this result in confusion, limited identification and
disparate values?

Internal publics are likely to be particularly sensi­
tive to how an institution is presented to an exter­
nal public because, as a part of that institution, their
ego is involved. All sorts of communication from the
organization to other publics must reflect most em­
ployees’ experiences as closely as possible, especially
the institutional presentations such as Web pages
and advertising. Furthermore, all internal publics are
seen as authorities on the organization, which is the
reason they need to have access to as much informa­
tion as possible.

Realizing that each member of an internal pub­
lic is a potentially significant public relations asset
could make most public relations directors’ jobs
easier. The best way to promote the use of internal
publics as PR’s front line is to make employees feel
involved. PR researcher J ames E. Grunig says that
a person involved in a situation seeks information,
and that a person motivated to communicate about
a situation is also motivated to develop a solution
for it.

Internal surveys to find out what employees think
of their organizations are now as common as exter­
nal ones. Evidence suggests that labor strife can be
reduced by regular employee attitude surveys. Such
surveys often influence organizational decisions on
personnel policies, work practices, communication,
productivity, compensation, organizational structure
and physical plant improvements.

The organizational behavior of employees, who
produce the corporate or organizational culture,
contributes significantly to the organization’s image.

104 Part Two I Research for PR

“Is there any way you PR people
can improve our image without
our being able to tell you
anything about ourselves?”

Source: Reprinted with permission of Punch Ltd.

J oseph F. Coates has described the concept of cor­
porate culture as recognizing that every stable hu­
man organization has consistent patterns of behavior
reflecting implicit and explicit beliefs and values.
Coates says that the cultural characteristics of an
organization are usually expressed in positive terms
by employees, who often fail to see how outsiders
may perceive the same company behavior or policy
in negative terms-for example, as “paternalistic,”
“moralistic” or “intrusive into personal matters,”
rather than as “offering counseling” or “genuinely
concerned.”

Coates identifies two widely held beliefs regarding
the corporate culture. One is that the culture comes
from the top down. The other is that it determines
or strongly influences a corporation’s willingness
to embrace change, promote innovation, tolerate
dissent, encourage criticism, experiment and allow
for other qualities that characterize a competitive
firm. Organizations with especially strong corpo­
rate cultures may enjoy a more cohesive image, but
they tend to be less flexible and don’t adapt well to
change. Furthermore, the influence of the corporate
culture is also shaped by its environment (location),
its business (for example, TV or manufacturing) and
the primary societal culture of its employees (for ex­
ample, American or Japanese).

Typically, PR practitioners are not asked to
persuade employees that they should accept the
corporate culture. People usually try to work in a
place where they are comfortable. The more com­
mon problem public relations must deal with is
changing a corporate culture when new leadership
arrives.

Coates recommends that employees be “brought
along” with a change in corporate culture through
discussions and requests for their input, although
he concedes that the job is not easy. Philip Lesly ex­
pressed more pessimism. He said it is akin to “turning
over an elephant with a shoe horn.”20 People are more
likely to change their jobs than to change their values.

External Publics and Perceptions of the Organization

External publics are not the exclusive property of any
institution. Any external public may become a target
for public relations activities. Prospective candidates,
for example, might be students in community col­
leges and working people who might want to return
to school or enroll for the first time.

Looking at the different subsets of people who
constitute an organization’s external publics helps
PR practitioners avoid the fallacy of considering ex­
ternal publics as a “mass public.” There is no such
thing as a mass audience or public. External publics

Chapter 5/ Pub l ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 105

Persuasion is a major component of publ ic relations efforts, and information is the tool. Although most

practitioners wi l l agree that it’s not as easy as it sounds, what might cause further dismay is that people

wil l bel ieve whatever they want to, even if it’s clearly false and they know that it is.

We believe what we want to believe, and a 2005 international study reinforces the fact that we also

choose to remember what fits our beliefs. People build mental models, says Stephan Lewandowsky,

psychology p rofessor at the University of Western Australia, by way of explanation.

The study took five “events” from the invasion of l raq-three had occurred and two hadn’t, but they

had been reported as fact and then later corrected. Even people who recalled the retractions or correc­

tions stil l contended that the events did happen as in itially reported because that bel ief fit their mental

model.

PR practitioners, especially those attempting to respond to false accusations or trying to correct

rumor, might look at who among their publics is likely to believe them.

Source: Sharon Bagley, “People Believe a ‘Fact’ That Fits Their Views Even I f it’s Clearly False,” in Science Journal,

The Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2005, B1. Reprinted with permission.

usually consist of larger segments of people than do
internal publics, but never should external publics be
thought of as an undifferentiated “mass.”21

External publ ics m a y be a supportive
constituency-like the residents of cities that
have a professional sports team-or they may be
adversarial-as antinuclear advocates are to electric
utilities that use nuclear energy. Both types must be
considered in public relations planning and com­
munication strategies. External publics also have a
great deal to do with an institution’s image. When
external publics and internal publics share similar
perceptions of what the institution is and what it
should be, the institution’s image is likely to be
sound because it is consistent.

T he perception of an organization’s image may
vary from public to public, and it may change over
time, owing to significant economic, technological
and demographic changes in the business environ­
ment. Organizations should always monitor percep­
tions of their identity, but they must reexamin\! their
identity under the following circumstances:

When public perceptions of a company do not
reflect reality. Vestiges of past management mis­
takes, poor earnings, environmental problems and
the like may still be having a negative impact.
When external forces such as a new competitor, a
breakthrough product, deregulation or an existing
competitor’s new identity require identification
countermeasures.

When competitors are slow to form clearly
defined and effectively projected corporate and/
or product presentation. In this sense, identity is
opportunistic and can become a competitive ad­
vantage in itselfP

In looking at relationships with external audi­
ences, keep in mind the differences between attitudes,
opinions and beliefs. Although some people use the
terms attitudes, opinions and beliefs interchangeably,
social scientists generally define each of them differ­
ently. Attitudes are tendencies or orientations toward
something or someone-a state of mind, a manner,
a disposition, a position. Opinions are expressions of
estimates or judgments-generally something not as
strongly held as a conviction, but articulating a senti­
ment or point of view. Beliefs are convictions firmly
fixed in the bedrock of one’s value system, embody­
ing one’s sense of truth.

and

Tailoring public relations programs to fit various pri­
ority publics requires careful and specific identifica­
tion of the publics and their characteristics (through
both formal and informal research methods), transla­
tion of this information into a sensitive understand­
ing of each public’s needs and knowledge of how to
communicate with each. To develop a program that
is both real and realistic-not merely a facade of
imagery that produces disillusionment and alienation

106 Part Two’/ Research for PR

when its insincerity is detected-you must have re­
spect for and empathy with the target publics.

A public is a priority, not only when it is centrally
affected by a PR recommendation, but also when it
is the group most influential in determining whether
an idea, policy, event, decision or product recom­
mendation will be accepted. Once identified as a pri­
ority public, the group must be studied for its other
relationships. Insensitivity to the composition of
publics, their interrelationships, their relationships
with members of other publics (as well as to your
organization), their ideals and their attitudes may
lead an organization to waste much time, effort and
money on public relations programs that bore or of­
fend the intended recipients or have a negative effect
on unintended recipients.

The news media are often overlooked as a target
public by PR practitioners in their planning. Those
who regard the press as “the enemy” generally find
this attitude reflected in news coverage of their or­
ganization. In contrast, consider a corporation that
had always cooperated with the news media and that
continued to do so when its plant was wracked by
explosions. The explosions received front-page cov­
erage, but only for one day-and the coverage was
generally sympathetic to the business. Media reports
described what the company was doing to help the
victims and how it was attempting to discover the
cause of the explosions. Clearly, PR practitioners can
benefit from keeping in close contact with both mass
and specialized media such as trade, industry and as­
sociation publications.

An important but seldom mentioned public is
the competition. The competition is an important
public to know, communicate and work with. Insti­
tutions that maintain fair and honest dealings with
their competitors usually establish this relationship
through trade or association organizations. It is
harder to insult someone you lmow personally. In ad­
dition, mutual respect within an industry or profes­
sion helps prevent open hostilities that could damage
everyone.

An American Airlines pilot training manual con­
tained copy that proved embarrassing when it was
made public in 1997 during a pretrial hearing in a
lawsuit over the crash of one of the airline’s planes in
Cali, Columbia, in 199 5. The manual said that Latin

American passengers are frequently unruly and in­
toxicated. Some Latin American passengers, it said,
may even call in a false bomb threat to delay a plane
if they are running late. On the other hand, it also
claimed that Latin Americans generally don’t expect
to depart on time. To make matters worse, the Latin
America Pilot Reference Guide contained instructions
for flying into Latin American airports that fell be­
low U.S. safety standards.

For an airline that is the leading carrier in the
Latin American market, this was an unfortunate dis­
closure. The airline’s senior vice president for Latin
America and the Caribbean, Peter Dolara, himself a
Latino, said he was offended by the manual, which he
noted got its bad information from Eastern Airlines
when American acquired Eastern’s Latin American
routes in 1 989 ! A spokesperson for the airline ex­
pressed regret over the generalizations and promised
that they would rewrite the guidebook to delete any
inaccuracies and misrepresentations.

That was seen as superficial action by some
members of the offended communities who flew
on the airline to Latin America and the Caribbean.
“”When we caught them, they supposedly apologized.
How many other stereotypical beliefs do they have
in place that haven’t been revealed?” asked Rosa
Martha Zarate, eo-manager of Quetzal Travel in San
Bernardino, California. 23

Public relations can help develop the proper man­
agement philosophy by listening and responding ef­
fectively. “When listening and responding effectively
go together, the conscience of management takes on
a new perspective. In an institution whose policies
are inconsistent and whose management lacks integ­
rity, no public relations effort can be effective.

American Airlines’ problem with its pilot train­
ing manual came to light in a pretrial hearing for a
lawsuit brought against it. Often before and during a
trial, the case is taken by the lawyers to the court of
public opinion. This has been called, variously, litiga­
tion journalism (because the media are used) or litiga­
tion public relations (because the lawyers are acting as
spokespersons for their clients and talking to news
media in a media relations role).

“What this means for those involved in the con­
flict is a battle for the minds and hearts-because the
appeals are often emotional-of a variety of publics.
(For more on litigation journalism/public relations,
see Chapter 8.) All media are used in these battles,
and the Internet is becoming increasingly impor­
tant. Attempts to influence public opinion are made
in formal settings such as news release postings on

Chapter 5 / Publics a n d Publ ic Op in ion 107

Transnational corporations long ago learned that their actions in one part of the world can easily and

quickly create negative public opinion elsewhere, and this is particularly true in this age of instantaneous

global communication. Whole nations are not exempt either. G lobal communication that compresses

time and space helps create empathy among people around the world. Actions in d istant Garners of the

world on ly a few decades ago might have gone by-and-large unnoticed elsewhere. Today those same

actions can quickly become part of the news agenda worldwide as well as subjects of public discussion

that helps create or change public opinion that, in turn, can affect goodwill toward the company as wel l

as sales of its products and services.

After recalls of pet food, human food and toys that had been made in China for export, that country

has a job of untangl ing internal problems that created the situations as well as external difficulties as

they work to reassure importers of its prod ucts that safety issues have been addressed. The nation

faced a problem of changing an image created by this series of problems, al l in 2007, that the Made in

China label is not a cautionary warning not to buy or use.

Difficulties such as the recalls of Chinese-made products can occur to a country, an ind ustry or an

organization-profit or non profit. Each situation offers learning examples that can be part of pol icy and

procedure changes.

I n 2001 students on U . S . col lege campuses were organizing “teach-ins” to protest d rug compa­

nies’ pr ic ing and patent practices; states were threatening p rice-control leg islation; longtim e busi­

ness a l lies were o rganizing campaigns to seek redu ced drug prices; and federal prosecutors were

i nvestigating an al leged ind ustry-wide scheme to defraud the federal government health care p lans

Medicare and Medicaid. Further, the Federal Trade Commission was probing whether the industry

had engaged in anticompetitive practices by b locking access to generic d rugs, and some mem bers

of Cong ress were discussing whether new Medicare benefits should contain price restrictions. These

pub l ic relations problems, many bel ieved, were to a g reat extent because of the African AIDS c ris is

two continents away.

I n the previous two years, the pharmaceutical i ndustry had responded to international cal ls for

lower AIDS d rug prices in poor nations with several actions that had created negative public opinion,

damagi ng d rug companies’ reputations i n the U SA and elsewhere. The pharmaceutical industry’s ac­

tions also d ramatized the companies’ profit marg ins when d rug manufacturers lowered prices to the

point where they claimed there was “no profit”-reveal ing that some medici nes were priced 8 to 1 0

times what they cost to manufacture and d istribute. Also, activists were drawing attention to the South

African lawsuit in which 39 drug makers were trying to block a law that would facil itate the purchase
of patented d rugs from generic makers. In what was called one of the industry’s “more visible publ ic­

relations stum bles,” the lawsuit named as a defendant Nelson Mandela, the antiapartheid hero who

was president of the country when the law was passed . These actions in one part of the world created

negative publ ic opinion elsewher.e throughout the world, a lesson that no publ ic relations practitioner

should forget.

Source: Gardiner Harris, “AIDS Gaffes in Africa Come Back to Haunt Drug Industry at Home,” The Wall Street Journal,

April 23, 2001, pp. A1 and AB. Reprinted with permission.

108 Part Two I Research for PR

established Web sites, on special Web sites often
with links to media Web sites, and informally in chat
rooms. A guide for evaluating the impact of Internet
news outlets and Web.sites on perception of an or­
ganization is available from the Institute for Public
Relations on its Web site (http:/ /www.instituteforpr.
corn). A Primer in Internet Audience Measurement
was written by Bruce Jeffries-Fox, whose firm con­
ducts media studies and a range of public relations
research.

Keeping information available and monitoring
the media are essential in these cases that are tried
in the court of public opinion. T his is true not only
for particular cases; issues can be tried in the court
of public opinion too. As noted in pr reporter, “When
unfair, greedy or antisocial actions or policies be­
come sufficiently widespread to cause outrage, the
public turns its wrath onto institutions. T his contrasts
with attacks on specific organizations, which is per­
petual and more immediate.”24

a 011 ic

Public relations practitioners function in a cli­
mate of public opinion that often conditions their
own perceptions and responses. Climates of public
opinion can be as broad as that of the international
community with regard to a nation’s presumed lead­
ership in an arms race or as narrow as that of secu­
rities analysts when a company’s bonds are re-rated
downward.

Public opinion is what most people in a particular
public think; in other words, it is a collective opinion
of, for instance, what voters or teenagers or senior
citizens or politicians think about a specific issue.
Bernard Hennessy said, “Public opinion is the com­
plex of preferences expressed by a significant num­
ber of persons on an issue of general importance.”25
Hennessy, who does not distinguish between opinion
and attitude, says that public opinion has five basic
elements. First, public opinion must be focused on
an issue, which Hennessy defines as “a contemporary
situation with a likelihood of disagreement.” Second,
the public must consist of “a recognizable group of
persons concerned with the issue.” A third element
in the definition, the phrase complex of preferences,
Hennessy says, “means more than mere direction
and intensity; it means all the imagined or measured
individual opinions held by the relevant public on
all the proposals about the issue over which that
public has come into existence.” T he fourth factor,
the expression of opinion, may involve any form of

expression-printed or spoken words, symbols (such
as a clenched fist or stiff arm salute) or even the gasp
of a crowd. T he fifth factor is the number of per­
sons involved. T he number of people in a public
can be large or small, as long as the impact of their
opinion has a measurable effect. The effect may be
as much determined by the intensity of opinion and
the organization of effort as by the size of the pub­
lic. Hennessy’s definition of public opinion does not
deal with what could be called “latent public opinion.”
He reserves that term for “describing a situation
in which a considerable number of individuals
hold attitudes or general predispositions that may
eventually crystallize into opinions around a given is­
sue.” In any case, public opinion has to be expressed
to be measured. 26

Public opinion expresses beliefs based not nec­
essarily on facts but on perceptions or evaluations
of events, persons, institutions or products. In the
USA, many people assume that “public opinion is
always right.” Perhaps this view should be expected
in a democracy, in which elected officials must be
concerned with public opinion. Long before the
pollsters were on the scene, nineteenth-century
essayist Charles Dudley Warner said, “Public opin­
ion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as
strong as the Ten Commandments.”

Obviously, public opinion can be misused or
manipulated-as Adolf Hitler’s master propagandist,
Joseph Goebbels, demonstrated. And it can be based
on a lack of accurate information-as in the period
before World War II when many Americans ap­
plauded Mussolini’s efforts at “straightening out the
Italians” (tourist translation: getting the trains to run
on time), while many Italians were beginning to live
in fear of the black-shirted fascist militia.

Public opinion also is notably unstable. T hat
is why the “bottom line” for political strategists is
election day itself, when the actual votes are tal­
lied, not public opinion poll results from earlier in
the campaign. Public opinion’s reliability as a mea­
surement resembles that of body temperature. For
accuracy, doctors say, “T he patient’s temperature was
101 degrees at 7 a.m.,” not “the patient’s tempera­
ture is 101 degrees” (unless the thermometer has just
been read). PR people would be a lot safer in their
judgments if they would take the same precautions.
Exposure to new information or events can quickly
change public opinion, rendering recent polling
research obsolete.

To keep pace with constantly changing pub­
lic opinion, you must accept a few basic precepts.

Chapter 5 / Publ ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 109

Not everyone is going to be on your side at any
one time. The best you can hope for is a majority
consensus. To achieve this, you need to retain the
partisans you have, win at least provisional support
from the undecided or uncommitted bloc and neu­
tralize or win over the opposition.

Winning over the opposition is the most difficult
part. Most of us read and listen for reinforcement of
our own ideas. We do not like to hear ideas that con­
flict with our own, and we make every effort to re­
ject them. For example, we may simply tune out and
fail to hear or remember what we have been exposed
to. We may discredit the source, without objectively
determining the legitimacy of its evidence or argu­
ment. We may reduce the conflicting argument to a
crude caricature whose fallacious elements we have
no difficulty pointing out. We may distort meanings
so that what we hear or read conforms to what we
believe. No doubt you have seen letters to the edi­
tor of a magazine from two different people, each
complimenting the publication for an editorial they
interpreted in opposite ways; the readers simply read
into the editorial what they wanted the publication
to say.

as a

The importance of the private, individual “opinion”
(attitudes and beliefs) that underlies public opinion
was described as follows by Daniel Katz:

The study of opinion formation and attitude change is
basic to an understanding of the public opinion process
even though it should not be equated with this process.
The public opinion process is one phase of the influenc­
ing of collective decisions, and its investigation involves
knowledge of channels of communication, of the power
structures of a society, of the character of mass media,
of the relation between elites, factions, and masses, of
the role of formal and informal leaders, of the institu­
tionalized access to officials. But the raw material out
of which public opinion develops is to be found in the
attitudes of individuals, whether they be followers or
leaders and whether these attitudes be at the general
level of tendencies to conform to legitimate authority
or majority opinion or at the specific level of favoring
or opposing the particular aspects of the issue under
consideration. The nature of the organization of at­
titudes within the personality and the processes which
account: for attitude change are thus critical areas for
the understanding of the collective product known as
public opinion. 27

The capriciousness of public opinion is due to
its fragile base in perceptions. Celebrities know (or
soon learn) how ficlde public opinion is. Influencing
it requires constant effort directed toward viable­
that is, credible and supportable-positioning of the
organization (or person) vis-a-vis the competition.
Positioning can sell a product, as Bernays proved
when a promotional campaign he developed made
smoking in public socially acceptable for young
women-a feat he later felt less proud of. Position­
ing can also sell a person, as many elected officials
can testify.

Ideas can be sold, too. During World War II, a
massive PR effort by government and industry con­
vinced the American public that the international
situation made it appropriate for large numbers
of single and married women to enter the paid la­
bor force.28 That effort put women in jobs never
before imagined as “women’s work,” but it also re­
turned them to hearth and home when those jobs
were needed by returning veterans. In moving
from one major model of American womanhood to
another-each based on American myth-the tide of
public opinion was manipulated each time to suit the
government’s perceived needs.

Because public opinion changes so often and can
be influenced so easily, measuring it is big business.
Most public relations people make use of published
public opinion surveys, and many buy public opinion
research. Published surveys, for instance, are avail­
able by subscription from both Gallup and Roper.
For Gallup, go to The Gallup Organization’s Web
site, which charges now but soon may be offering
its services free. For Roper, go to the Roper Center
for Public Opinion Research. Issues of its The Public
Perspective are also available online in Nexis (file
PUBPER). It often includes polls, such as those taken
by Louis Harris, George Gallup or news organiza­
tions, which sample the nation’s moods and pass on
the information through public outlets. Other public
opinion research is offered by a variety of groups for
a fee. Some studies-many done by academics or re­
search institutions-are available without charge, or
at minimal cost.

P ublic relations practitioners often perform
similar research themselves, although this is usually
proprietary-owned by the organization paying
for it, and unavailable to other firms or clients.
Even when no original research is done, however,

1 10 Part Two I Research for PR

familiarity with research methodology is essential
to be able to successfully apply the many published
surveys to a particular company, market or client.

Waiter K. Lindenmann, a prominent researcher,
observed that the most sophisticated public relations
practitioners measure outcomes-that is, changes
in opinion, attitude and behavior. Practitioners rely
on such techniques as before-and-after polls; experi­
mental research designs; observation, participation
and role-playing; perceptual mapping; psychographic
analysis; factor and cluster analysis; and multifaceted
communication audits.29

Although attitude research must be used promptly
because opinion is so unstable, old data should not
be discarded. Information from old polls can be
used later in developing simulated tests that will
yield some probable responses. For instance, when
John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960,
his campaign strategists used cards from the Roper
Public Opinion Research Center in Williamstown,
Massachusetts (depository for the old cards of the
Gallup and Roper polls) to design a program simu­
lating how people around the USA would react to
various critical questions and issues, based on how
they had reacted in the past. In fact, the simulation
came closer to predicting the November election
outcome than did the public opinion polls taken in
August. The reason, Philip Meyer explains, is that
the simulation, designed by Ithiel de Sola Pool,

was acting out how the voters would react to a [cam­
paign} strategy that had not been fully implemented.
After it was implemented and the voters began to re­
act, the polls began to reflect the results and came into
closer correlation with both the simulation and the
final outcome.30

The reliability of polls has from time to time
been questioned. Nevertheless, both the Gallup and
Harris organizations claim that polls are generally
accurate. The Gallup organization claims that, since
1 948, it has, on average, been off the actual ballot.
ing in important elections by a little less than one
percentage point.

The problem with public understanding of any
poll, but particularly political polls, was stated suc­
cinctly by authors and researchers Charles Roll and
Albert Cantril:

There is nothing immutable about the results of a poll.
The way polls are treated by the press and politicians,
one might be led to think otherwise. However, what

a poll provides is a picture of the public’s view at only
one point in time and on only the questions that were
asked. Yet, inferences of sweeping proportion are fre­
quently drawn from a poll, leading to fundamental
misunderstandings of what the state of public opinion
really is. 3 1

‘
Something else may be going on as well. The very

act of communicating an opinion has consequences
on public opinion. For example, a male candidate
for governor in one U.S. state appeared to be lead­
ing until the final hours of the election, but his op­
ponent, a woman, won without a runoff. What was
going on with the pre-election polling? Two factors
may have come into play. First, early polls had asked
how the respondent was going to vote and what he
or she thought others would do. While many women
said they intended to vote for the woman candidate,
they doubted that other women would. Mispercep­
tion of others’ opinions is a common phenomenon.
People often see themselves as holding opinions
that are different than those of their friends and
neighbors. 32

The second element that skewed the early pro­
jections involved social relationships theory.33 Not
only were women talking with other women about
the election, but they were getting more ideas from
these discussions than from the mass media. People
often won’t talk about how they feel or are going
to vote if they think their friends, family, neighbors
and others close to them will disagree. Many women
were not saying openly (in mixed company) that they
intended to vote for the woman candidate because
they didn’t want to argue with male family members,
office colleagues or bosses.

Some might say that another contributing factor
is embodied in the Noelle-Neumann “spiral of si­
lence” theory.34 This theory, which assumes a “pow­
erful effects model” for media, states that media can
suppress public expression of opinions opposed to
those presented in the media, creating a “spiral of
silence” that grows until the media’s picture of reality
becomes reality itself.

The difference between public opinion researchers
and PR people was stated many years ago by Fred
Palm er, a partner in the PR firm of Earl N ewsom

Chapter 5 / Pub l ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion. 1 1 1

and Company: “The public opinion researchers’
function is to know, measure, analyze, and weigh
public opinion. The practitioners’ function is to help
people deal constructively with the force of public
opinion.”35

there. Anyone who questions this sort of correlation
might find some adequate, if unscientific, support in
simple observation. Read the front-page headlines
of the newspaper, and check the Dow Jones aver­
ages. Any securities analyst or stockbroker will tell
you that a correlation exists between news on the AP
wires and subsequent information on’the Dow J ones
ticker. on

The study of public opinion ties public relations
research to both behavioral psychology and econom­
ics. Opinion research reflects seasonal and other
types of trends in attitudes that raise questions about
;behavior patterns, and these in turn often require
:researchers to look at the economic picture to de­
termine whether the roots of the problem might be

The study of public opinion is particularly impor­
tant to public relations people for another reason.
Information and opinion are fundamentally differ­
ent. Appreciating that difference means recognizing
how understanding and knowledge differ, Hadley
Cantril, public opinion authority and pollster, ob­
served that public understanding is “knowledge that

A broad col lection of theories support the idea of changing opinions to change behavior, but how to do

that in a global society is a complex undertaking. Culture bequeaths a collection of assumptions about

reality from a person or g roups of people that are passed along from generation to generation, even

though environments and situations may change.

What this m eans in terms of publ ic opinion is that understanding reactions to events, products

or pol icies has to be anticipated by using empathy to i magine someone experiencing them through a

d ifferent “lens,” or mind-set. In counsel ing corporations on p reparing for a crisis when management

seems reluctant to consider it, one question usually gets management’s attention: “If you wanted to

wreck this company, what would you do?”

That is the kind of training the U.S. m i l itary in Afghanistan is now receiving in counterinsurgency

classes. In the fall of 2007, groups of 60 m i litary personnel at a time began attending intensive 5-day

sessions training them to “think l ike the Taliban.” In April 2007, the U .S. Army gave the teaching job to

a 26-year-old Rhodes Scholar, Capt. Dan Helmer. Capt. Helmer tells his students of all ranks, enlisted

and officer, that the important battles are 80 percent political and just 20 percent mi litary.

The Wall Street Journal reporter Michael M. Phi l l ips summed up the job in the following manner.

The academy’s principal message: The war that began to oust a regime has evolved into a popularity

contest where insurgents and counterinsurgents vie for publ ic support and the right to rule. The i m ­

p licit critique: “Many U .S . and all ied soldiers stil l arrive i n t h e country (Afghanistan) well trained t o ki l l ,

b ut not to persuade.”

Writer C la ire Vi llareal, a stydent of Asia and particu larly Buddhism, has noted that it i s i m portant

to use a “culture map” to understand people ” l iving in their u nique cultural space.” Whi le Vi llareal i s

writing to improve understanding and empathy, and to encourage respect for other traditions, she re­

i nforces the concept of the necessity of looking at the world and what is going on in it through the lens
of others.

You can’t persuade people you don’t understand. Persuasion always has been the instrument of
publ ic d iplomacy.

Sources: Claire Villareal, “Cultural Relativity: My World, Your World, Our World,” Journal of General Semantics, July 2007,

pp. 230-234; Michael M. Phillips, “Course Correction: In Counterinsurgency Class, Soldiers Think Like Taliban,” The Wall

Street Journal, November 30, 2007, pp. 1 , A 1 3.

1 1 2 Part Two I Research for PR

is functional, that has been built up from experience,
that has been tested by action.”36 Public knowledge,
on the other hand, is more in the nature of intellec­
tual data that do not play a role in concrete percep­
tion. Cantril suggested that public opinion surveys
should watch for occasions when “knowledge” is
used for “understanding” and should inquire into the
reasons for its being linked to purpose and brought
to bear on decision making.

The first three of Cantril’s “laws” deal with the
impact of events on public opinion and provide
guidance not only for researchers who need to lmow
that an “event” is going to condition responses, but
also to spokespeople responding to issues and crises.
Their responses also are “events” that can sway the
opinions of publics, especially those stakeholders
most involved and impacted. That is reinforced by
Cantril’s fourth and sixth laws about the potential
for what they say to have greater force while pub­
lic opinion is yet unstructured and that self-interest
is a major component in responses of publics. But
the eighth law about when self-interest is involved
opinion is less likely to change suggests that the
response of a spokesperson is likely to “set” opin­
ion on an issue for those publics. The fourteenth
opinion fits somewhat with self-interest because it
says that when opinion is based mostly on desire,
it tends to move sharply with events. The seventh
law, which says only self-interest or continuing
events are likely to sustain public opinion, can be
good news except that self-interest groups may
sustain an issue by continuing events, especially if
they want change. However, the ninth law about
public opinion usually being ahead of official policy
offers an opportunity to have a greater impact by
changing policy in response to the situation, and if
it is government policy that needs changing, having
some influence on that change. The tenth law sug­
gests that an organization needs to move quickly
when an issue arises or a crisis occurs because when
an opinion held by a slight majority is unstruc­
tured, an accomplished fact moves opinion toward
acceptance.

The idea presented in Cantril’s fifth law that
people react to emergencies, rather than anticipate
them, has a connection to the eleventh law that at
critical times people are more sensitive to the ade­
quacy of their leadership at these times. The twelfth
law that people are more inclined to go along with
policy changes if they have a role in decision-making
also is a factor here as well as in times when there’s
not a crisis.

Finally, the thirteenth law states that people have
an easier time forming opinions that relate to goals
than to the means to reach them. And the fifteenth
law points out that the important psychological di­
mensions of opinion are direction, intensity, breadth
and depth-an important point to remember in con­
sidering polls and other opinion measurements.

There is still no continuing system of measure­
ment for the “climate of public opinion.” Specific
tests measure public opinion on a particular issue at a
given time, but no continuing study of a public’s state
of mind exists to reveal, for example, how much they
are willing to sacrifice in craftsmanship in return for
less expensive, mass-produced products. Who knows
what the real religious temper of the nation is, what
spiritual values are held and by whom and why and
when these values change? Such attitudes can have
political consequences, as the Italians demonstrated
in 1974, when they finally voted to provide a legal
process for divorce in that Roman Catholic country.

How much freedom are people in the USA will­
ing to relinquish in return for security? This question
has become even more critical since the terrorist at­
tacks on September 1 1 , 2001 , as Americans have had
to consider how to balance homeland security with
the personal freedoms and security they previously
enjoyed throughout their history. This question also
was raised repeatedly in 1 994 political campaigns
throughout the USA, in discussions on topics rang­
ing from gun ownership to teenage curfews. It is a
question politicians and businesspeople alike would
benefit from knowing the answer to.

In recent years, the advertising industry has shown
an awakened responsiveness to public opinion. The
ad agencies have been forced to meet the mood of
consumerism, which demands that ads tell what a
public wants to know about a producer or service,
rather than what the company wants to tell.

ic

Many publics share lmowledge or work together
on various issues. Hence, organizations sometimes
find, to their dismay, coalitions of unlikely political
partners involved in a boycott or other hostile ac­
tion against them. Computerized information banks,
electronic mail (email), facsimile (fax), video telecon­
ferencing and special interest organizations create
loosely affiliated publics with strong emotional ties
to particular issues. Because of crossover of commu­
nication among these loosely connected publics, it
pays to malce sure that a message designed to respond

Chapter 5/ Publ ics a n d Pub l ic Op in ion 1 1 3

I f you l ive and attend col lege i n the USA, what i s your univers ity’s ranking by such publ ications as

U.S. News & World Report, one of the most respected news publ ications?

it seems that some universities are “cooking the books,” so to speak, in counting their a lumni do­
nor contributions, one of the major ranking indicators. The a lumni-giving rate is being inflated faster

than g rades, accordi ng to a 2007 The Wall Street Journal report that offered such manipulations as
extending a d onor on the list beyond an orig inal gift by spreading the one-time g ift over several years

to keep the donor on the l ist. Another g uise is i nc luding g raduating senior g ifts with those of actual

a lumni donors. Yet another device is to simply not count alumni with whom the university has lost con­

tact. While that is generally seen as reasonable and approved by rankers, what is not is to del iberately

ignore locating alumni whom it is assumed would not give.

Non profit institutions, like universities, have a greater risk than commercial for-profit institutions in

losing favorable opinion over questionable ethical behavior because money given to them is given i n

trust. A number o f nonprofit institutions-such a s the American Red Cross, which was criticized for its

9/1 1 blood donation decisions-can testify to the problems of restoring trust and credib i l ity.

Source: Daniel Golden, “Math Lessons: To Boost Donor Numbers, Colleges Adopt New Tricks,” The Wall Street Journal,

March 2, 2007, pp. 1 and A9.

to one public doesn’t offend another. 37 Many subsets
of very tightly woven communities are tied together
by common experiences (for example, children of
alcoholics, or CoAs) or situations (for example, dis­
abilities or illnesses) or interests (for example, animal
rights). These webs of relationships are interlocking
even for a single individual.

Even though different publics often share some
common interests and values, it is increasingly dan­
gerous to assume that people share common sets
of values. Thus, an organization trying to deter­
mine a socially responsible course of action must
simultaneously try to respond to special inter­
est groups interested in changing broader public
opinion. An example is a revision of a high-school
history textbook that discusses Abigail Adams’s role
in the American Revolution at greater length than
that of her husband. The book’s author, Henry F.
Groff, says the changes resulted from his having
raised two daughters and from scholarship that has
illuminated the historical role of women (women’s
studies and the women’s movement).38

The PR manager often feels caught in a force
field of special interest groups. But allegiance to a
mission statement can keep PR efforts from being
scattershot and can work, instead, to strengthen the
organization’s image and the public’s perception of
its organizational values.

In dealing with public opinion, the organization
counts on maintaining credibility, accomplished
through trust. People trust people, not organiza­
tions, according to advice on trust from PR Week.
That trust comes from experience-direct contact
from an organization not when using its products
or services, but with its employees. Trusted employ­
ees are those who feel that they can speak with au­
thority for a company and do so knowledgeably and
confidently. Publics are also very forgiving when an
organization has a crisis, as long as it acts honestly
and communicates often. And they are more likely to
trust information from news, rather than ads, espe­
cially when the same news content comes from mul­
tiple sources. 39

Discussion

1 . What do you think of when you hear the word
public? How do you define public opinion? Can
you think of ways your opinion as part of some
public has been formed around certain issues?
What about the opinions of your friends? How
many publics do you belong to?

2. Think of three or four publics at your school.
What are the best ways to communicate with
these publics, that is, what media is best? What
else influences these publics’ opinion?

114 Part Two I Research for PR

3 . How do you think culture could affect an opin­
ion of a public? Gender? Race and ethnicity?
Religion?

4 . How much influence do you think public
relations practitioners have on public opinion?
Defend your answer with examples.

The term public (“active audience”) encompasses
any group of people tied together, however
loosely, by some common bond of interest or con­
cern and who have consequences on an organiza­
tion. No “general public” exists. External publics
exist outside an institution; internal publics share
the institutional identity. An audience is a group of
people who are recipients of something-a mes­
sage or a performance.

11 A “mass audience” is a myth, and the scattershot
approach is both foolish and uneconomical.
Publics can be described in three ways: nomina­
tively, demographically and psychographically.
Priority publics are those most important to an
organization in terms of their potential impact on
the organization.
Certain priority publics are stable, such as em­
ployees (who are always important), but others
may change as issues or situations develop.
Psychographies are increasingly important for
describing diverse publics. One system for anal­
ysis of U.S. consumers is VALS™ (values, at­
titudes and lifestyles), which puts consumers
into eight categories. An international study by
Roper Starch Worldwide uses six psychographic
categories and identifies a list of “top ten global
values.”

·

Increasingly people are not using traditional
media, which furthers the fragmentation of
publics.
The “tuning out” of traditional media, mass and
specialized, is partly the result of saturation, in­
cluding messages that people perceive as viola­
tions of their privacy.
Organizations are trying to reach some frag­
mented communities by using intranets and list­
servs to benefit from interactive participation.
The new.est medium, the Internet, is drawing
more use because it is participatory, offers
anonymity and affords the development of
“communities.”

Many of the communities develop into constitu­
encies that can be online critics of organizations,
even to the extent of setting up rogue Web sites
and otherwise using the Web to legitimize their
criticism.
Employees are always an important public
because they often have direct cont:act with a
number of other publics. With their insiders’
experience and information, they are perceived as
knowledgeable and credible. Keeping employees
informed and loyal is crucial for maintaining this
PR “front line.”
Women in the workplace and women customers
can create serious problems with an institution’s
reputation if they are victims of harassment or
discrimination and make that case publicly.
Minorities can be ethnic or religious, and it
should not be assumed that they represent any
sort of homogeneous public. Failure to recognize
that they can be in the nation or represented by a
constituency abroad is also a serious mistake.
Sensitivity to a minority culture is as important as
being aware of and using the language of that mi­
nority effectively.

11 Identifying issues that are likely to create prob­
lems for a company or nonprofit organization is
the first step in the process of monitoring not only
issues but also the socioeconomic and political
climate for events and developments that could
affect any of the organization’s publics.
Handling issues demands an integrated approach
to communication. The issue, the public and the
situation in which an issue develops all require
that an evaluation consider strategies that use any
and all available communication tools.
Issues are cyclical in nature. Understanding that
cycle helps to determine at what stage it is impor­
tant to act.
The catalytic model aims to seize the opportunity
to frame the issue and to guide it through its life
cycle toward resolution in the organization’s favor.
One of the most difficult parts of handling issues
is convincing management to address an issue in a
timely way.
More than any other executive, other than the
president or chief executive officer (CEO), the
staff public relations practitioner needs to know
what is going on both inside and outside the or­
ganization and how the organization’s actions and
plans will relate to its publics.

Chapter 5 / Pub l ics a n d Pub l i c Op in ion 1 1 5

The job of the P R person is to bring awareness
and objectivity to the job and to inject unvarnished,
usable facts into the decision-making process. This
is not always a popular position, but it is essential
for the PR person’s role in strategic planning.
The type of information known about internal
and external publics and the media used to reach
them must be as verifiable as possible, which
means using research that employs a mix of scien­
tific measurements.
Image describes the collective perceptions of an
organization or individual by all of its publics,
based on what it says and does, which constitute
its image.
The way employees and management work to­
gether creates a corporate or institutional culture
that strongly affects how employees behave in re­
lationships to each other and to outsiders. This, in
turn, affects how the organization is perceived.
The corporate culture has an impact on the im­
age that external publics have of an organization.
Mergers and acquisitions can, consequently, cre­
ate some confusion about the new entity.
An external public may be a supportive or ad­
versarial constituency. The perception of the or­
ganization varies from public to public and may
change over time due to significant changes in re­
lationships or in the environment.
A ttitudes are tendencies or orientations toward
something or someone-a state of mind, a man­
ner, a disposition or a position. Opinions are ex­
pressions of estimates or judgments-generally
something not as strongly held as a conviction but
articulating a sentiment or point of view. Beliefs
are convictions firmly fixed in the bedrock of one’s
value system, embodying one’s sense of truth.
Public opinion is a collective opinion-that is, what
most people in a particular public think.
Public opinion expresses beliefs based not neces­
sarily on facts but on perceptions or evaluations of
events, persons, institutions or products.
Tailoring public relations programs to fit various
priority publics requires careful and specific iden­
tification of the publics, an understanding of their
needs and knowledge of how best to communicate
with them.
A public is a priority not just because the organi­
zation says so, but because the public is influential
in the success or failure of an idea, policy, event,
decision or product.

Attempting to influence publics means being sen­
sitive about their reaction to imagery, going to
them instead of expecting them to come to you,
not assuming attitude change is necessary for
behavior change, using moral arguments only as
adjuncts and not as main points, embracing the
attitudinal public mainstream and JlOt offending
the people you want to change.
Insensitivity or unawareness of the interconnect­
edness of publics is a formula for failure.
Knowledge is power. That is why fact finding is
so important, and why understanding how orga­
nizations and institutions work is critical.
Often overlooked in research about publics are
the news media and competitors, two publics that
have the potential to do the most harm.
Not everyone is going to be on your side at any
one time. The best you can hope for is a majority
consensus.
There is still no continuing system of measure­
ment for the “climate of public opinion.” Specific
tests measure public opinion on a particular issue
at a given time, but no continuing study of a pub­
lic’s state of mind exists.
Internal communications can become public com­
munications, so these should always be prepared
with a consideration for the sensitivities of all
publics, not just those for whom they are written.
Perception is the reality for publics, so when
image and experience conflict, opinion of the
institution takes a nosedive.
Public relations people who think they can be
only image-makers or spokespersons for what­
ever management wants to say are borrowing
trouble and abdicating their role as institutional
strategists.
Public opinion is what most people in a pm·ticu­
lar public think-a collective opinion. Groups of
those publics can be seen as having an opinion
about an organization or institution. In order to
be measured, however, public opinion has to be
expressed.
Public opinion is unstable and is only as good as
the information involved in its formation.
Pollster Hadley Cantril developed some concepts
about public opinion that have stood the tests of
time and theoretical assessment.
Public relations practitioners measure outcomes,
changes in opinion, attitudes and behaviors to de­
termine the effectiveness of persuasive efforts.

1 1 6 Part Two I Research for PR

One of the ways to measure opinion is by using
polls. But to interpret results correctly, public re­
lations people must understand the mechanics of
polling as well as communication theories that af­
fect gathering information.
Some information about public opinion is avail­
able in public sources, and other information can
be bought; but research done by firms for-clients
or done by companies for their own use is propri­
etary and is generally not available.
Public opinion researchers know, measure, ana­
lyze and weigh public opinion; but the PR prac­
titioners’ job is to help their organizations and
clients deal with the impact of public opinion.
Information and opinion are different. Appreciat­
ing that difference means recognizing how under­
standing and lmowledge differ, and being careful
about which are used in decision-making.
Different publics may share some common inter­
ests and values, but it can’t be assumed that there
is enough homogeneity in a public to make as­
sumptions about how fully values are shared.
Organizations depend on the opinions of their
publics, so they need to be sure that these publics
get accurate information and can communicate
with the organization, especially about decisions
that may have an impact on them.

Reprinted with pernlission of King Features Syndicate.

Go to the Web site for this book at www.
cengage .com/m asscomm/newsom/
thisispr l Oe to find more Web links on this
subject.

Sites to

EUROPA Public Opinion Analysis
http:! I europa.eu.int/ comm/public_opinion/

The Gallup Organization
http:/ /www.gallup.com/

International Journal of Public Opinion Research
ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/

PollingReport.com
http:/ /www.pollingreport.com/

Public Agenda Online
http://www. publicagenda.org

Public Opinion Strategies (POS)
http:/ /www.pos.org/

The Roper Center for Public Opinion
http:/ /www.ropercenter. uconn.edu/