Communication

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    CULTIVATING #CUPFUSION: AN EXPLORATION OF THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF COMMUNICATION IN A PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN
    (2018) Penn, Timothy Shaw; Toth, Elizabeth L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation is an exploration into the application of Merton’s (1936) typology of the unanticipated consequences of purposeful social actions, to a public relations campaign. Merton gave consideration to using scientific analysis to understand factors leading to the unanticipated consequences of purposive actions, rather than attributing them to chance or fate. Four of his five factors, including lack of foreknowledge, habit, myopia, and values, have proved applicable to the public relations campaign examined in this case study. The case involves the 2016 Reese’s #Cupfusion campaign. When news of a new Reese’s product, Peanut Butter Cups stuffed with Reese’s Pieces, was leaked on Facebook, the brand manager at Reese’s and a small public relations team at Ketchum decided to “tease” the truth about the release of the product, rather than reveal the existence of the candy. Using qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, organization-provided document analysis, and content analysis of the Reese’s brand Facebook page, this researcher found that by using innovative public relations strategies, combined with a proactive relationship management technique which used social media to cultivate an existing relationship with Reese’s fans on Facebook, the #Cupfusion team was able to cultivate an unintended “viral” outcome for their product roll-out. Merton’s typology of unintended consequences has application for public relations theory and practice. The concept of lack of foreknowledge has implications for both chaos and complexity theory, and how they can be applied to the digital environment and social media, including how organizations can respond to unintended consequences and crisis. This research also supports and adds to social media and strategic campaign planning practice, by providing a lens for the analysis and execution of both pre-implementation and evaluation of public relations campaigns.
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    When the Organization-Public Relationship is More Than Just Calculation: What We Can Learn from the Case Study of an Exemplar Community-based Intervention
    (2008-05-09) Austin, Lucinda; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Working with publics and organizations at the community level has become increasingly important for government and non-governmental organizations, although, little is known about how to foster development of these relationships. Through the case study of an exemplar relationship between a national organization and a community-based organization, organization-public relationship theory is used to explore relationship type, antecedents, cultivation strategies, and relationship outcomes. Methods within the case study include in-depth interviews with organizational members, participant observation, and documentation. Strong support is found for the covenantal relationship type; capacity, readiness, and climate antecedents; cultivation strategies of networking, sharing of tasks, and access; and all relationship outcomes. Admiration, received support as an additional outcome and as a relational antecedent. Additionally, themes of customer service and researching and understanding publics emerged as cultivation strategies. This study has implications for forming relationships with publics and organizations at the community level, especially in health and social contexts.
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    Relationship Management and Member Retention: A Case Study of an Advocacy Organization
    (2007-12-05) Derville, Tiffany Lynn; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    A case study of a grassroots advocacy organization was conducted to test and expand relationship theory and to explore perceptions about the relationship between members and the organization. The case study included interviews with 39 staff members at national, state, and affiliate levels; 58 members; and 5 former members, for a total of 102 participants. Additional methods included 49 hours of participant observation and an examination of both internal and external documents. The primary relationship type between the organization and its members was communal, and strategies were presented to cultivate communal relationships. This study empirically justified the critic's perspective for classifying relationship types due to one case in which three relationship types emerged, depending on whether the former member's, affiliate staff member's, or my interpretation was used, which also resulted in a new relationship type. Due to these differences in perceptions, this study used the terms intended and perceived when identifying relationship types, which is a clarification for future studies to use. Cultivation strategies were organized in a new way by classifying them as either organizational management strategies or as interpersonal strategies. This study also discussed cultivation strategies by characterizing some as particularly important to either the early stage of the relationship or to the mature stage of it. Several new cultivation strategies were presented, such as priming, problem parking, and insulation. This study also opened a new area for relationship theory through a conceptualization and exploration of relationship stresses. This category is organized by stresses that are internal to the organization and those that are external to it. Examples of relationship stresses include the emotion tax, relationship speeding, and relationship stalling. Cultivation strategies are suggested for mitigating relationship stresses. In addition, this study produced significant insights outside of the research questions by identifying new relationship outcomes, such as co-production, and by claiming capacity to be a higher goal than survival for systems theory. Furthermore, this study clarified the difference between an advocacy and an activist organization. This study also provided rich insights for public relations practitioners, such as presenting strategies to diversify an organization's membership.
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    Exploring the Value of Public Relations in Strategy Implementation: Employee Relations in the Globalization Process
    (2006-04-25) Ni, Lan; Grunig, James E; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the value of public relations in strategy implementation as demonstrated through the cultivation of employee-organization relationships in the context of globalization strategies and cultural influences. The key theoretical constructs included organization-public relationships, organizational strategies, resources, and strategy implementation. Incorporating the resource-based view from the management literature, this study explored organization-public relationships as organizational resources and examined their contributions to strategy implementation. This overall framework was examined through globalization strategies, employee-organization relationships (EOR), and the influence of societal and organizational cultures. I conducted 69 qualitative interviews with managers and employees in companies in China. Among them, 60 participants came from 14 case organizations (11 multinational companies, 2 mainland companies, and 1 Taiwanese company) and included 17 public relations managers, 10 strategy managers, and 33 employees. The 11 multinational companies followed different globalization strategies, 3 with high global integration and low local responsiveness, 5 with high global integration and high local responsiveness, and 3 with low global integration and high local responsiveness. Another 9 interviewees from separate organizations provided supplemental information. The findings suggested that relationships were recognized as a resource that could contribute to competitive advantage. Both public relations managers and strategy managers recognized that characteristics of relationships overlapped with those of organizational resources. They also acknowledged the contribution of relationships to the implementation of strategies. Consistent with the concept of fit in the literature, participants pointed out the strategic use of relationships that corresponded to organizational strategies. When applying this to EOR in the globalization context, I found that the cultivation strategies of EOR, types of EOR, and outcomes of EOR reflected the demands of globalization strategies. Companies following different strategies, although they used similar relationship cultivation strategies, focused on different dimensions of them. Finally, data suggested that both societal and organizational cultures influenced EOR. The interaction between societal and organizational cultures was influenced by other factors, the most important one being different orientations in globalization strategies. Overall, this study showed that 1) the value of public relations can be demonstrated through its linkages to organizational strategies, which facilitated its participation in strategic management; 2) EOR cultivation that corresponded with globalization strategies contributed to the implementation of these strategies; and 3) refined understanding and cultivation of EOR can benefit from an examination of perspectives from both managers and employees. The study also provided practitioners in multinational companies with practical guidance in cultivating relationships with local employees.
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    The Effects of Organization-Public Relationships on Organizational Reputation From the Perspective of Publics
    (2005-05-13) Yang, Sungun; Grunig, James E; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In recent years, organizations have demanded evidence that public relations is effective. Consequently, professionals and scholars alike have looked for the key concepts to establish the value of public relations. The terms "relationships" and "reputation" have emerged as the focal concepts in explaining the purpose and value of public relations. The concepts of organization-public relationships and organizational reputation can be integrated within a theoretical framework of public relations effectiveness. When those concepts are integrated in a model, the role of public relations can be captured more clearly than when there is a separate focus on each of the concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the link between organization-public relationships and organizational reputation. In particular, the dissertation examined how organization-public relationships affect organizational reputations in a causal model. Survey research was used to collect data, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to empirically test the causal effects of organization-public relationships on organizational reputation for four South Korean-based organizations. In the causal model, organization-public relationship outcomes and types of relationships (communal and exchange relationships) predicted organizational reputation, taking into account the exogenous influences of communication behaviors of publics, experience, and familiarity with the organizations studied. The hypothesized structural equation model had tenable data-model fits for all organizations studied, supporting the hypotheses proposed in the study. More specifically, the research produced the following important results. First, this study found a significant positive effect of organization-public relationship outcomes on organizational reputation for all organizations studied. Secondly, this study found significant effects of types of organization-public relationships on organization-public relationship outcomes and organizational reputation. Third, it showed the relevance of key antecedents of organization-public relationship outcomes and organizational reputation. Fourth, the study found a stronger effect of communication behaviors on the quality of relationship outcomes than the effect of familiarity. Finally, it found a different distribution of cognitive representations for profit and nonprofit organizations. The final causal models for all organizations studied showed three distinct routes to organizational reputation, based on significant causal relationships in the models: a communication-based route, a communitarian route, and a familiarity-based route. An unexpected result was a differential effect of types of organization-public relationships on organizational reputation for profit and nonprofit organizations: Exchange relationships had more of a negative effect for nonprofit than for profit organizations. Finally, the results for one of the organizations showed that familiarity can have a negative effect on organization-public relationship outcomes. Overall, the results of this study show that public relations has value to an organization and to society in general when it cultivates quality relationships with publics and that favorable reputation can be obtained through the development of quality organization-public relationships.
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    THE EMPLOYEE-PUBLIC-ORGANIZATION CHAIN IN RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF A GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
    (2004-04-30) Rhee, Yunna; Grunig, James E; Communication
    This dissertation examined the critical roles that employees play in an organization's relationship-building process with its publics. By conducting an in-depth case study of a government organization's exemplary community relations programs, the researcher explored links among three focal concepts: employee-organization relationships, employee-public relationships, and organization-public relationships. Field research was conducted over the course of seven weeks. Data were collected through long interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. Based on the findings of this study, a normative public relations theory of integrative internal and external organizational relationship management was proposed. The findings suggest that employees who have positive employee-organization relationships (i.e. employees who have high level of commitment) and those who are capable of using symmetrical cultivation strategies contribute significantly to the development of positive organization-public relationships. The study also found that when the external publics have positive interactions and develop trusting individual relationships with employees, they tend to evaluate the overall organization positively. In other words, when employees have positive employee-organization relationships and employee-public relationships, external publics who interact with those employees tended to develop positive organization-public relationships. The study also found that employee empowerment can occur through employees' participation in public relations programs for external publics. Employees in this study believed they were acting as "the ears" of the organization and that they were contributing to the betterment of the organization and the community at the same time. Employees also developed personal networks with other employees through participating in public relations programs, which contributed to the building of an internal community. The study showed that public relations programs that tap into the intersection of internal and external publics contribute to the simultaneous development of positive relationships within and between both arenas. Visible leadership, continued dialogue, listening, face-to-face communication, and educational communication were newly identified as significant strategies effecting the development of positive organization-public relationships. In conclusion, this dissertation proposes that in order for public relations to enact its role as an integrated relationship management function for both the internal and external publics, it should be organized according to the principles outlined by the excellence theory and practice symmetrical communication.