Organization–public relationships is public relations between an organization and the public.
History
Viewing relationships as the core of public relations research was first advocated by Mary Ann Ferguson in 1984. The relational perspective became a major theory development in the field.
It took nearly 15 years for Ledingham and Bruning (1998) to propose a working definition of relationship management. Hon and Grunig (1999) outlined measurements for organisational relationships and suggested strategies that could be helpful in understanding these relationships. The burst of excitement around the emerging relationship paradigm at the end of the 20th century led to significant scholarship dedicated to understanding the role relationships play in public relations.
Ferguson investigated 171 public relations research abstracts published in Public Relation Review from 1975 to 1984. Ferguson identified social responsibility and ethics; social issues and issue management; and public relationships as important concepts. Ferguson predicted that public relationships had the greatest potential for theory development. She asserted that relationships between an organization and its key audiences were central to public relations research. Ferguson's widely cited paper was never published.
After conceptualizing OPR, researchers started proposing characteristics that could best represent the quality of organization–public relationships. Proposals:
Dynamic/static, open/closed, mutual satisfaction/dissatisfaction, distribution of power and mutual understanding, agreement, and consensus (Ferguson, 1984). Reciprocity, trust, credibility, mutual legitimacy, openness, mutual satisfaction, and mutual understanding (Grunig, Grunig, Ehling, 1992). Openness, trust, involvement, investment, and commitment (Ledingham, Bruning, Thomlison, Lesko, 1997) operationalized through stakeholders' discussion groups Investment, commitment, trust, comfort with relational dialectics, cooperation, mutual goals, interdependence, power imbalance, performance satisfaction, comparison level of the alternatives, adaptation, non-retrievable investment, shared technology, summate constructs, structural bonds, social bonds, intimacy, and passion (Ledingham, Bruning, Thomlison, Lesko, 1997). Open communication, the level of trust, the level of involvement, investment in community, and long-term commitment (Ledingham, Bruning, 1998).
Dimensions
Ledingham and Bruning's dimensions are: openness, trust, involvement, investment, and commitment. Their statistical analysis categorized OPR dimensions into three distinct types: personal, professional, and community. They claimed that these dimensions could be used to predict public choices. Hon and Grunig (1999) developed quantitative measurement scales for assessing six proposed dimensions of an organization–public relationship: control mutuality, trust, satisfaction, commitment, exchange relationships, and communal relationships. The Hon/Grunig scale, developed under the auspices of the Public Relations Institute, and the Bruning/Ledingham scale, as well as others, have been used in studies by these and other scholars.