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Given the link between quality relationships and supportive behaviours among organisations and publics, it is not surprising that public relations scholars and practitioners have turned their attention to trying to measure public relationships and understanding their value for organisations and publics. As part of the development of a diagnostic tool for measuring relationships, the present study attempted to test a measurement scale for the organisation‐public relationship. This research effort was designed to test empirically Hon and Grunig’s proposed organisation‐public relationship instrument. Although each of the two data sets displayed slightly different operationalised items, the two groups of subjects similarly perceived the six‐factor (trust, satisfaction, control mutuality, commitment, exchange relationship, communal relationship) measures as a valid and reliable instrument for measuring their relationship with the university.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the relationships non‐profit organisations develop with their annual giving and major gift donors and to compare the differences between the giving levels.

A web‐based survey of individual donors (n=120) to a non‐profit healthcare organisation evaluated their relationships with the organisation using Hon and Grunig's four dimensions of organisation‐public relationships.

To explore the dynamics of the fundraising process, donors were categorised into two different schema. First, donors were classified as either major gift donors or annual giving donors. With this classification, major gift donors were more likely to have stronger feelings of trust, satisfaction, commitment, and control mutuality with the organisation than annual gift donors did. The second classification divided the donors who have made multiple contributions to the organisation and those who had only made one donation at the time of the study. This study found that donors who gave multiple times to an organisation evaluated the relationship stronger than one‐time donors. Finally, these dimensions were also able to predict past giving behaviour 91 per cent of the time for the participants in this study.

The findings strengthen the bridge between public relations and fundraising. Additionally, they further validate the organisation‐public relationship measures created by Hon and Grunig, and they demonstrate the indices' ability to predict behaviour.

The findings stress the importance of donor cultivation within the non‐profit organisation‐donor relationship particularly since the number of non‐profit organisations is rapidly growing and competing for donations. Additionally, the results demonstrate the growing importance of demonstrating financial and social accountability.

The study extends the growing organisation‐public relationship paradigm into a specialisation of public relations that is rarely studied from a social scientific perspective. This study strengthens the reliability and validity of Hon and Grunig's variables as well as strengthening the connection between public relations and fundraising.

Organizational trust is an important construct for organizational and public relations scholars and practitioners for its influence on key organizational outcomes, yet the convergent validity of organizational trust instruments has not been investigated by any study. The purpose of this paper is to address an important gap in the literature by reporting the results of a systematic investigation of the convergent validity of three organizational trust measures, taking an interpersonal, public relations, and organizational approach to trust in organizations respectively.

IRB approval was obtained for a cross‐sectional study design gathering self‐reports from participants through an online data gathering system of a large Midwestern university in the USA. Correlational matrices, along with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses adapting the multitrait‐multimethod matrix, were employed for data analysis.

The three trust measures demonstrate mixed evidence of convergent validity with each other and with a theoretically correlated construct, organizational identification, demonstrating that while the three measures share the same conceptual ground, there is a need to clarify their underlying theoretical specification, especially with respect to organizational identification.

Future large‐scale studies can extend the findings based on a student population by employing multiple and diverse data sets, as well as investigate method variance.

Recommendations to improve convergent validity include: increasing item parsimony to decrease redundancy; revise item construction; and improved theoretical specification investigating the conceptual boundaries organizational identification with trust.

The study provides empirical evidence of the need for greater conceptual and operational clarification of the theoretical bases of trust. It is the first to advance research on trust in organizations by providing empirical support for the convergent validity of organizational trust measures assessed from organizational, interpersonal, and public relations perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal public relations practices (e.g. internal communication and relationship management strategies) enhance employees’ organizational social capital in the Korean context by examining the mediation roles of employee-organization relationships.

The researcher then recruited 23 field research assistants to collect data from 23 organizations in South Korea. For the purpose of this study, the researcher trained each of the research assistants, kept the confidentiality of each research participant, and used common methods of data collection. After this training process, the research assistants distributed an online link and encouraged employees in 23 organizations to participate in this survey. From these 23 organizations, 287 participants completed the survey. However, the authors had to delete 11 invalid responses. Consequently, the authors used a total of 276 responses to analyze the data.

The results of this study showed that two-way and symmetrical internal communication strategies were associated positively with employee-organization relationships and organizational social capital. Additionally, satisfaction and control mutuality had mediating effects on the relations between internal communication strategies and organizational social capital.

These results contribute to expanding the functions of internal public relations practices into organizational social capital.

This study was designed to test two models linking relationship perception, attitude, and behavior‐based involvement in a membership organization. This study helps fill a gap in the relationship management literature by exploring the hierarchy of effects among a strategic public some of whom could be characterized as having low involvement.

After a couple of pilot tests, a state‐wide mail survey was conducted. As recommended by several studies, the mail survey for this study was included in a packet with a cover letter and a pre‐addressed, pre‐stamped return envelope mailed to 2,100 randomly selected current members of the organization. Of the 2,100 members who received questionnaires, 493 usable responses were collected, resulting in a 23.4 per cent response rate.

For the four relationship quality dimensions used in this study – i.e. control mutuality, satisfaction, trust, and commitment – current members' perceptions of relationship trust and commitment positively influenced their attitudes toward the organization. More importantly, this study demonstrates that the public's perception of commitment can also directly engender supportive behavior toward the organization among members of a key public.

This study was designed to empirically test two models that link relationship quality perceptions, attitude, and behavioral intentions with members in a membership organization based on their levels of involvement. By testing a model of standard sequential order (relationship perceptions → attitude → behavioral intentions), this study found that the originally tested model met the criteria. However, the model was revised based on the modification index and theoretical justification. A new path directly connecting commitment of the relationship quality outcomes to behavioral intentions was added.

This study seeks to provide further testing of access in the context of government – community relations within the political context of the Republic of North Macedonia. The study analyses relationship cultivation strategy of access and explains how it contributes to achieving trust and relationship satisfaction in government–community relations. This paper also provides insights into the importance of access to achieving positive government–community relations based on mutual trust and satisfaction.

For this research, a qualitative inquiry was conducted, and qualitative in-depth interviewing was used as the main research method. In total, 39 interviews were conducted: 12 interviews with Macedonian civil servants, eight interviews with Albanian civil servants and 19 interviews with Albanians.

The findings of this study showed citizens not to have enough access to government and its institutions. Besides, the results showed access to be crucial to building positive government–community relations based on mutual trust and satisfaction. In particular, discrimination and social distance were crucial in building trust between government and citizens.

The study provided evidence on the importance and contribution of the cultivation strategy of access to government-community relationships in general and to the relational outcomes of trust and satisfaction in particular. The findings supported the initial assumptions that access constitutes an important factor in predicting the government–community relationship quality.

This study aims to examine the effect of publics' legitimacy evaluations on Arthur W. Page's conceptualization of “reasonable freedom of action” by breaking it into two parts: (1) perceived organizational autonomy and (2) trust in the organization.

This study conducted an online experiment using a 2 (legitimacy: low, high) × 2 (legitimacy type: institutional, actional) between-subjects design. Measured variables included perceived organizational autonomy and trust.

Organizations acting in their own self-interest while ignoring community norms and expectations were perceived to be exercising higher levels of organizational autonomy and have lower levels of trust. The interaction between legitimacy type and level had an effect on perceived organizational autonomy and trust.

Public's view their relationships with organizations from a perspective that prioritizes responsibility and conformity to community norms and expectations. Also, organizations have more to lose by acting in their own self-interest to resolve institutional legitimacy concerns and more to gain by handling them in a way that includes the public interest than when they are managing an actional legitimacy situation.

Societal norms, values and beliefs, which may have accommodated, or even supported, an organization's approach to doing business in the past, can change over time, calling into question an organization's legitimacy and its ability to operate in the public interest. As a result, organizational leaders need the Chief Communication Officer to help them understand current societal norms, values and beliefs.

This study addresses a core assumption of the organization–public relationship paradigm that has not yet been studied empirically. It also expands the understanding of organizational autonomy from a public perspective and examines the effect of legitimacy on organizational autonomy and trust.

The purpose of this paper is to link public relations to peacebuilding. Although scholarship has discussed public relations as relationship management, the nexus between public relations and peace building has been understudied. To address this deficiency, this research studies the negotiations between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP separatist group that lead to the landmark peace treaty between the two entities that had fought for over five decades with thousands of deaths. Three research questions addressed the communication factors that contributed to the two sworn enemies – FARC-EP and the Colombian Government – finally sealing a peace agreement; the specific public relations strategies and techniques that led to relationship building between the two sides leading to the landmark peace agreement; and the use of the indicators of relationship building proposed by scholarship in the negotiations between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP.

The case study method was used and a purposive sample of news reports from three national newspapers at specific key dates yielding a final sample consisted of 504 articles was analysed. A codebook with deductive and inductive categories was developed specially to study the existing communication factors (RQ1), public relations strategies and techniques (RQ2), as well as contributions by relationship indicators (RQ3). Given the sensitivity of the issues, only secondary data could be relied upon for this study.

The results of RQ1 fall within the scope of Grunig’s (2001), Sriramesh’s (1992) and Hung’s (2001) notion of the personal influence model where the leveraging of individuals’ network is important to facilitate communication. Indeed, the relations already existing and established with third parties are revealed to be fundamental to the success of the negotiation process. As for RQ2, findings demonstrate that the Colombian Government used third-party mediation, principled and distributive strategies, while FARC-EP mainly used contending strategies. But results showed that both used compromising during the whole process, and that both transitioned from one-way asymmetrical strategies, such as principled or contending towards compromising along the peace talks. Finally, findings demonstrate evidence of the four indicators of the relationship and their link with public relations techniques. The most evidenced indicators of the relationship were trust, commitment and control mutuality. Trust was the indicator of the relationship the most evidenced in the Colombian case. The dimension was built during the whole process and evolved continually. Distrust was the total between the two enemies at the beginning of the pre-negotiation. However, as parties entered into a relationship, confidence and trust increased.

The inability to obtain primary data is the major limitation of this study. It was caused by the sensitivity of the topic.

This study links public relations to a very practical case that is also vastly understudied/underreported – peacemaking/peacebuilding – while also addressing communication by governments and civil society in Latin America – an area that is largely understudied.

This is the first study that links public relations with peacebuilding.

A monopolistic relationship between utilities and their customers creates a unique relational context in which the basic assumption of one's ability to terminate a relationship with an unsatisfactory relationship partner is violated. The purpose of this paper is to examine how attitudinal and behavioral outcomes are influenced by relational gap as the discrepancy between the expected relationships under deregulation and the experienced public relationships under monopolistic completion.

With this purpose, an online survey was conducted with customers of a monopolistic utility provider; a sample of 1,145 adults living in the region was provided from an academic online panel database project for research participants, yielding a response rate of 32 percent.

The key findings are that, among the four relational outcomes, control mutuality and satisfaction showed the biggest and significant shift to higher levels of performance expectations under competition than under a monopoly. Further, a shift in control mutuality and satisfaction led to more negative attitudes toward the company and a stronger intention to switch.

This study can contribute to the practice and study of communication management by suggesting a sound empirical framework in managing public relationships.

This paper aims to develop five public relations scales as a substitutions for models/dimensions that were subject to much criticism. Based on this conceptual re‐evaluation of the excellence study, one of the dominant public relations paradigms, the manuscript proposes a measurement approach for the public relations practice.

This is a conceptual paper based on a critical literature review aimed at understanding the errors in the public relations models conceptualization and their empirical tests. Based on this review, new and improved scales of public relations are proposed.

The study developed five scales of public relations as substitutions for models/dimensions. The study proposed a measurement approach for the public relations practice. Finally, the study concluded that further research advancing the excellence scholarship is essential to better understanding the profession of public relations.

This manuscript creates a measurement approach which public relations practitioners can use to plan, monitor, and evaluate public relations campaigns and ongoing programs, as well as to manage knowledge and expertise of public relations practitioners and departments, and the expectations of the dominant coalition toward the public relations unit.

This re‐conceptualization can finally address the criticism of the earlier models and dimensions of public relations, establish a measurement approach for the practice of public relations, as well as provide a tool that can be used by both academic and practitioners in planning, monitoring, evaluating, and managing public relations.