EXPLORIGN PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTITIONERS’ ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING AT WORK: A WHOLE-PERSON, PROCESSUAL, AND CONTEXTUAL LENS

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dc.contributor.advisorAnderson, Lindsey B.en_US
dc.contributor.authorGuo, Jiankunen_US
dc.contributor.departmentCommunicationen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2020-02-01T06:31:55Z
dc.date.available2020-02-01T06:31:55Z
dc.date.issued2019en_US
dc.description.abstractThe topic of ethics is gaining importance and urgency, particularly for public relations, a field responsible for communicating and building relationships between organizations and publics. While normative ethical theories abound in this discipline, tensions exist between traditional theories privileging rationality, autonomy, universality, and professional ethics, and emerging theories that value emotions, relationships, contexts, and personal ethics. Furthermore, practitioners’ ethical decision making process in their embedded organizational, industry, and sociopolitical environments has not been fully addressed. This dissertation fills in these research gaps by exploring public relations practitioners’ meaning making of ethics and thereby reconciliating tensions between traditional and emerging ethical theories (RQ1), detailing practitioners’ ethical decision making (EDM) process from a whole-person perspective (RQ2), and assessing how micro, meso, and macro level ethicality interact from a participants’ point of view (RQ3). 37 semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with current or past U.S. public relations practitioners who represent a variety of work settings, industries, specializations, and sectors. Interviews were transcribed and data were coded thematically and analyzed abductively. Findings suggested that practitioners constructed the meaning of ethics primarily via their concerns for work and organizational-public relationships, contextual particulars, and an alignment of personal and professional ethics. They utilized a variety of cognitive, emotional, intuitive, imaginative, and discursive skills during their ethical decision making (EDM) process exhibiting a whole-person based approach to EDM. Additionally, practitioners’ ethicality was both a result of contextual influences as well as a contributor to higher levels of ethical standards for their environment—on organizational, industry, and societal levels. Theoretical and methodological implications were drawn from the findings, so were practical implications provided in terms of ethics training programs.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/orrd-yikb
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/25366
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledCommunicationen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledOrganizational behavioren_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledEthicsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledcare ethicsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledethical decision makingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledethicalityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledethicsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledmulti-level ethicsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpublic relationsen_US
dc.titleEXPLORIGN PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTITIONERS’ ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING AT WORK: A WHOLE-PERSON, PROCESSUAL, AND CONTEXTUAL LENSen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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