Lesson 5 - Part 2 - Ethical Practice

My mum always teaches me to ‘Do The Right Thing’ in any circumstances. Even though if I am in dilemma, I should not choose the outcome that would harm or damage the relationships with each others.

That’s called ethics.

Ethics is not equal to morality. It is the personal values which emphasize the behavior and moral choices made by an individual response to a specific situation. It is the standards of integrity.

So how do the practitioners put the ethics into practice?

I think the key points to remember from this week’s reading are the public relations consultant use the Potter box technique to help them in making more precise decisions and actions.

The Potter Box

Besides the potter box that helps to identify consistent and inconsistent values,principles and loyalties, there are three basic ethical doctrines, which are:

- Deontolory (doctorine that ethics is duty-based and relies on moral obligation)

-Telelogy (an outcome-based ethics doctrine where 'the ends justify the means ')

-Aristotle's Golden Mean (based on what is best for majority )

The readings made me think more about public relations theory or practice in that there are actually several roles that played by PR practitioner.The four major roles are counsellor,advocate,corporate monitor and corporate conscience. The best practice of public relations serves the public interest by devoloping mutual understanding between the organisation and its publics.

There are empirical evidence shows that practitioners who based on their decision-making and recommendations to management on ethicasl principles are more likely to have a greater role in management decisions and activities.(Grunig 1992:309)

Lesson 5 - Part 1- The Legal Environment.

I didn’t know a public relation practitioner need to learn the legal environment until I read the relevant chapter of the book. It was quite surprising that the practitioners are required to have the basic understanding of legal environment.

I think the key points to remember for this part of the reading is all the decisions made by public relations practitioners entails with the consideration in the context of ‘legal environment’. Therefore, the practitioners are responsible to negotiate with lawyers on strategies employed to minimize the harm and risks.

A public relation practitioner has the part to

- protect it’s organizations reputation ,
- to protect the creative ideas that originated from the organization,
- handle the legal risk management
- be the role of contracts in global legal environment

The reading made me think that defamation can be test in three kinds of circumstances:

-the publication exposed the plaintiff to hatred, contempt or ridicule
- it lowered the plaintiff in the eyes of right-thinking members of community
-it cause plaintiff to be shunned or avoided, without moral blame.

Apparently, there are also defenses against defamation balance the right of the individual to protect their reputation and show the need for freedom of speech and the public’s right to receive the information.The three defenses are usually :

-Truth defence , which the publisher must prove the truth by providing admissible evidence but not only hearsay from anyone.

-Fair comment, to allow people to express opinions.

-Priviledge, to protect a person from liability for the publication of defamatory material.

Lesson 4- Strategy, PLanning and Scheduling

“Strategy is a pattern or plan that integrates an organization’s major goals, policies and action sequences into a cohesive whole.” (Mintzberg and Quinn 1991:5)

Strategic planning is the nutshell in every organization. Without a proper planning, no matter how good the strategic is, it won’t be successful if there is no vision and mission of organization. Strategy is not a series of campaign steps or tactics. It is underlying rationale that guides the selection of these tactics or stages.

There is a quote that suits this chapter, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

I think the key points to remember for this week’s reading were that strategic planning is not as easy as playing ‘lego’ but to plan consistently and logically in order to achieve the public relations goal. These are the key elements to consider before start doing strategic planning:

-vision and mission statements
-key performance indicator (KPIs)
-budgeting
-scheduling
-making lists

The readings made me think more about public relations theory or practice in that a effective and well-prepared framework of strategic planning leads to clearly set and relevant goal and objectives of its organisations.

Lesson 3 - Internal and community relations

Building a good relationship with anyone is essential in our social life. Every one has their own sets of thinking and perspective in life. It is impossible to agree fully on other’s perception. Therefore, people tend to try and understand each other by communicating with each other effectively, it is also the simillar application that applyed in between the organizations and their employees.

I think the key points to remember from this week’s readings are that the internal relations is always important and put on priority in public relations practice. It is vital and inevitable to reveal good relationships between the employee communication and job satisfaction and productivity. Also, goodwill is important asset for businesses too. The two-way symmetrical model focuses on the management in internal relationships.

The readings made me think more about public relations theory in that internal relations might tarnish one’s organization just because of one employee’s dissatisfactory. I was inspired by this quote in the PR book: “It is people who make businesses successful.”

Indeed.

Without coping well in internal relationships and community relations, an organization will be in hard to develop efficient and productivity results. Lastly, I personally think a strong bond that build in internal relationship will serve to enhance the organization’s overall operations and outcomes.