Search results

Reports on a mailed questionnaire survey of corporate managers and executives from fields other than communication and public relations (accounting, administration, engineering, legal, operations, marketing, etc.) in four major corporations. Analysis included frequency and mean tests plus factor analysis. Results suggest these managers and executives consider the public relations function to be significantly important to their organization. However, most of those surveyed do not know what the public relations function in their organization is or does. Respondents (n = 423) ranked external communication activities to be considerably more important than internal communication. Technical public relations skills were also considered more necessary than public relations management abilities. Few thought corporate communication or public relations people needed to be involved in strategic planning or organizational decision making.

In this paper we give a synoptic view of the growth of the text processing technology of information extraction (IE) whose function is to extract information about a pre‐specified set of entities, relations or events from natural language texts and to record this information in structured representations called templates. Here we describe the nature of the IE task, review the history of the area from its origins in AI work in the 1960s and 70s till the present, discuss the techniques being used to carry out the task, describe application areas where IE systems are or are about to be at work, and conclude with a discussion of the challenges facing the area. What emerges is a picture of an exciting new text processing technology with a host of new applications, both on its own and in conjunction with other technologies, such as information retrieval, machine translation and data mining.

This is the first of a new occasional feature which will offer comment on topical aspects of the distributive scene. The pseudonym adopted by the author cloaks the anonymity of an executive concerned with the planning function in a major national retail organisation. This month Donald Wright discusses statistics, consumerism, and food multiples.

This paper reports on personal and telephone interviews with senior‐level corporate managers and executives from fields other than public relations and communications (administration, engineering, finance and accounting, human resources, legal, marketing, sales and production) in three corporations. This qualitative study (n = 61) is a follow‐up to the author's earlier quantitative postal questionnaire survey of a similar group of subjects (n = 423). All interview participants were subjects in the quantitative research. The results add additional evidence to the author's previous findings suggesting that corporate executives from other fields do not understand the corporate communications or public relations functions. As was the case in the quantitative research, subjects interviewed in this qualitative study considered external communications — especially media relations — to be the most important task that their organisation's public relations professionals were responsible for. Technical public relations skills were considered more necessary than communications management abilities for public relations professionals. The findings also suggest that the public relations function needs to do a better job of being accountable by establishing metrics to measure the effectiveness of communications efforts. Public relations also needs to be managed in such a way that it will help organisations better to achieve business goals, especially those of the new global economy.

This paper explores how corporate communications and public relations were affected by the 11th September, 2001 terrorism attacks on the USA.

Two questions broadly drove this research: Donald Trump promised to fix the economy and create jobs, and he is ending or renegotiating trade treaties. Is he creating more jobs? How can Trump create a more inclusive economy? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper closely examines Trump’s economic policies and draws from past Democratic and Republication track records to explain how Trump’s policies will contribute to greater income inequality.

By all measures, President Trump fails on measures of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

This original paper examines the implications of the Trump administration’s policies in the areas of tax cuts (for small- and medium-sized enterprises rather than large corporations), incentives to support small business growth, entrepreneurship training, education and skills training (to retool Americans), and infrastructure spending.

APPROVAL of a plan for a new Birmingham Central Library was given by the City Council on July 26 1938. One world war and heaven knows how many financial stringencies later, on June 5 1970, the foundation stone of the building was laid. The new library stands adjacent to the present building and is part of the re‐development scheme for the centre of Birmingham.

THAT gulf which is reputed to exist between engineering and production units has frequently been romanticized by stories in which either an engineering genius or a production wizard casually solve each other's problems while surrounded by insurmountable troubles of their own. Unfortunately, industry cannot avail itself of these fictional heroes and must, therefore, arrive at the same end by commonplace methods.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the history and development of public relations education in the USA and Canada.

The research methodology used for this paper is the historical/critical analysis approach.

This paper finds more differences than similarities between public relations educational development in the two countries. The first PR course at a US university was taught at the University of Illinois in 1920 and the first US degree program was offered by Boston University in 1947. The first Canadian university PR course was taught at McGill University n 1948 and the first university degree was offered by Mount Saint Vincent University in 1977. Although PR courses and degrees are offered at a small number of élite US universities, the greatest recent PR curriculum development has been at smaller, second‐ or third‐tier institutions. While a few Canadian universities offer courses and degree programs in the field, most of Canada's recent PR program growth has been at colleges rather than at universities.

Rightly or wrongly, academic institutions often look to North America for direction when it comes to establishing and developing public relations education programs. A number of factual inaccuracies about public relations education history have frequently surfaced in books and journal articles. This paper corrects a number of those inaccuracies and in doing so improves public relations scholarship.

A thorough review of the literature suggests that this paper represents the only journal‐length piece about the history and development of public relations education in Canada and the USA.