By: Er. Prabhat Kishore
In a democracy, such as ours, the existence and growth of any business eventually depend not only on public support in purchasing its products and services but more importantly on the sanction of the general public. Legislatures, who enact laws governing and regulating business, are elected by, and represent, the public. The management of public companies derives their power from and owes their tenure to the shareholders, who are members of the general public. Its employees are recruited from the public and live amongst the public. Therefore, it is only good business policy to practice ‘Public Relations’ to inform, to educate, to persuade, through effective communication, and create understanding and obtain the willing cooperation of various publics in business.
The skills and techniques to create and develop mutual understanding are provided by public relations (PR) practitioners. But first, it is essential to define the objectives that have been agreed upon which a PR program can be drawn up. These may be both long term and short term, but as John Maynard Keynes once said, ‘in the long term all of us will be dead.’ So, it is necessary to define the perspective of the long term.
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Some form of research is necessary both before the PR program is drawn up and when a PR campaign has gathered momentum. In most business enterprises, top management consists of wise people, but there is no fun in flying blind when one can use a reader. Research is a word that seems to frighten many people. It conjures visions of long-bearded intellectuals working away in the backrooms on problems of no conceivable practical significance. Many people discount the value of research and say they prefer to rely on their own judgment. In this connection, there is much truth in the story of the man who, when given the results of research, says ‘It is not true.’ When it has been proved beyond doubt that it is true, he says, ‘It has no practical value.’ When it has been shown to have distinct practical possibilities, he says, “The research has only proved what was already known.”
Public Relations is essentially an art of persuasion, and to influence people, it is obviously helpful to know as much as possible about the way in which people think and the manner in which they react to particular circumstances. There is also an urgent need for research into the results of public relations activities. Too little is known about the effects of PR programs on public attitudes and public action.
In discussing the place of PR in any organization, one important point has to be noted. It relates to the nature and functions of PR, as contrasted with those of other departments such as production, finance, marketing, personnel, etc. While all the latter departments are largely concerned with the respective spheres of responsibility, PR tends to flow over the whole gamut of business and management. From this point of view, PR has been called an extended arm of management. Each department or aspect of business and industry has its specific PR problems and tasks, and those have to be tackled by PR with the top man of each department and top management.
If, therefore, an organization takes its PR responsibilities seriously, then the PR men must be given the status and position they deserve. Public relations must have full and continuing access to top management if it has to succeed in its job. Not because PR men are anything special, but because PR is ultimately the responsibility of top management. Too many organizations misuse or waste their PR men, e.g., in employing PR men as organizers of VIP hospitality and travel. This is not the job of public relations, or perhaps only a small part of PR.
A good PR man represents the management and communicates the policies, problems, and performances to the public on the one hand and feeds back the socio-economic and political trends and public opinion to top management and counsels them on possible lines of action, on the other. Therefore, fearlessness and objectivity are essential qualities in PR practitioners. And top management must create the necessary environment for such attitudes. A PR man that feeds the management with what it likes to hear, viz., the glory and greatness of the organization, is doing himself and his company little good.
All this underlines the importance of the selection of PR men in regard to their abilities to counsel wisely; use effectively all the techniques of communication and their personnel and personality attributes. Good PR men can do the company a great deal. The difference is considerable, and top management must recognize this and pay more attention to the recruitment and training of PR men and create the necessary environment for good PR men to practice their skills and techniques.
For its day-to-day existence and functioning, a business has to reckon with its public. Each firm has to plan its communications program by carefully assessing the relative importance of its key public, the messages that it wishes to convey, the selection of the specific media through which its key groups could be reached most effectively and economically.
In the present Indian context, one of the most important segments of any business public is the government. In our country, the government is at the driver’s seat of the economy, and any business is dependent on government policies and action for its existence, functioning, and growth. Therefore, it must communicate effectively with the government in the case of a large public or private undertaking. Communications with the government assume even greater importance for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the company is accountable to the government. Secondly, because the government is run not only by ministers but by a large number of officials at various levels in the ministries and departments, many of whom may influence a decision. Lastly, the government, in its turn, is answerable to Sansad and the public.
Communications with MPs are also very important since parliamentary proceedings receive such wide publicity. It is in the interest of any company to communicate with MPs and tell them about its performance and problems.
Large public and private undertakings are always in the news and are under the searchlight of public scrutiny and attention. In spite of the fact that Doordarshan, private electronic channels, and Cinema have a wider audience than the press, public opinion in Bharat is largely influenced and molded by what is read in the press. There is, of course, no obligation on any organization to have any dealings with the press, but since the activities of all large companies, both in the public and private sectors, affect the public interest, the press will publish reports and comments irrespective of whether they have received a company’s cooperation or not. Communicating with the press, or press relations is, therefore, of vital importance in the interests of any company’s PR department. (The author is a technocrat and educationist)
