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Based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study revisits public relations (PR) and marketing practitioners' perceptions of PR function and its relationship with marketing function in the digital context.

An online survey targeting 234 PR and marketing practitioners was first conducted, followed by a total of 27 in-depth interviews with PR and marketing practitioners.

Results from the two phases of analysis show that both PR and marketing practitioners perceive market functions as sales-oriented, whereas media relations is interpreted as more of a PR function. Content marketing and influencer marketing via digital communication channels help to enhance the convergence of PR and marketing functions. PR and marketing practitioners believe that PR and marketing functions are integrative, and they are willing to work flexibly for both functions within workplaces.

This study presents a continuum of PR and marketing functions in the digital era that illustrates the role of digital communication in the convergence of PR and marketing functions. The results help to advance the theoretical discussion on both the functional (excellent PR practices and relationship management) and critical (the social role of PR in the participatory culture) approaches of PR in the digital context. Managerial implications are also discussed in addition to the theoretical contributions.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the degree of success in international assignments that public relations (PR) practitioners experience and explores the influence of both organizational culture and national culture.

PR practitioners in the USA and South Africa were surveyed.

Results show that there is no difference between PR practitioners from the USA and South Africa with experience in international assignments, in terms of degree of success in international assignments and of level of preparedness for international assignments. It was also found that there is no significant correlation between national culture or organizational culture and the degree of success in international assignments for those respondents with international experience.

The response rate was limited and therefore the results cannot be generalized. Future research would be to further extend this study to include additional countries.

The results support the concept that a PR practitioner with an organic organizational culture and a long‐term orientation of national culture will be better prepared to engage in international assignments than a practitioner with a mechanistic organizational culture and a short‐term orientation of national culture.

This study adds to the literature on international PR practice, and compares the practice in a developing economy, South Africa, to a developed economy, the USA.

The purpose of this study is to look into Italian PR practitioners' opinions on whether or not specific social networks, the personalised networks of influence, are perceived to be one of the main strategic resources and the degree of relevance they give to such networks. Personalised networks of influence are also tested with Italian journalists.

The data of the study were gleaned from a survey on PR practitioners' and journalists' self‐perceptions and perceptions of each other that was conducted in Italy from March to October 2007. The survey was based both on qualitative data collected through personal interviews with senior PR practitioners and journalists and on quantitative data gathered through an online, close‐ended questionnaire. The study is based on the analysis of the survey data on personal influence.

The findings show no statistical difference between PR practitioners and journalists. PR practitioners and journalists did not perceive the importance of having personalized networks of influence differently with regard to their professional activities, although they valued more significantly having strong professional skills than personalised networks for their career advancement.

The study offers new insights into the personal influence model and the concept of influence and power in relation to public relations practitioners' career advancement and professional activities.

This research aims to describe business perceptions of public relations (PR) in New Zealand. It also intends to provide insights which will assist the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) to achieve its mission “to promote PR as a reputable, dynamic profession”.

Senior management from 28 of New Zealand's top 200 companies completed a questionnaire and participated in a 45‐minute interview to explore definitions of PR and its place in their organisations. A symbolic interactionist methodology was utilised to analyse the findings.

The study finds that CEOs had a low opinion of public relations practitioners. They tended to see PR as an integral part of doing business. They also saw reputation management as best conducted by themselves rather than a consultancy – except in a crisis. A clear distinction was made between PR (consultancy based) and corporate communication (in‐house). None of the companies used the term PR in their in‐house communications titles. Communications managers distanced themselves from PR, claiming instead to offer integrity‐based, transparent communication. Marketers saw PR as serving marketing. CFOs and Legal Counsel saw PR as serving strategic objectives but were sceptical about the competence of communications practitioners to deliver strategic communication.

Despite a very good response rate (66.7 per cent) the base was uneven in terms of geographic spread and category of organisation. Since this is a descriptive study links between observations and contributing factors can be suggested but do not establish causality. This study did not extend to the public sector that employs a number of PR practitioners in New Zealand especially in Wellington.

Larger businesses in New Zealand are wary of the term PR. Should the profession abandon the name or fight for a new definition? Communication is definitely part of senior management decision making in New Zealand but PR and communication practitioners need to demonstrate their value if they want to participate at this level. PRINZ can assist the promotion of PR by professionalising the practitioners and by influencing the training of the increasing number of PR graduates who are being introduced to the industry.

No such study has been completed in New Zealand so this study will provide a comparison with UK, US and European studies of perceptions of PR. This study aligns with the Murray and White study of CEO views of reputation management in that it gathers data from senior management.

The goal of the study is to develop an integrated, non-sequential framework for excellent public relations management for the financial services sector in Ghana. The study empirically analyzes how PR is conceptualized and practiced in relation to the purpose (models) and roles (activities).

The study adopted the qualitative in-depth interview approach to gauge the views of 22 PR practitioners.

Practitioners of most communication departments have no PR background, and this influenced their conceptualization of PR. Essentially, PR in Ghana is shaped, to a large extent, by a western ideology. PR is however influenced greatly by strong interpersonal relationships, which is premised largely on the culture of the country. What is obvious is that PR in the financial services sector is not fully strategic. Although practitioners occupy managerial roles, they are limited in their ability to make impact due a lack of understanding by management about the purpose of PR and budgetary constraints.

The use of a qualitative approach means the result cannot be generalized. As the study focussed on one sector, it will be essential to look at other sectors using a generalized sample.

The study developed an integrative non-sequential PR framework based on literature and empirical findings. The framework differs in certain aspects from some of the recommendations made by literature for an excellent PR practice.

Public relations is variously defined: those within the PR sector tend to view their activities as having strategic and corporate impact, while many marketers classify PR as little more than a tactical ingredient of the promotional mix. This contrast is important, given marketers are heavy users of PR activity. This confusion has hindered the development of the PR profession and added to the blurring of exactly what constitutes PR. Contributes to this discussion by identifying the core constituents of public relations and the underlying driving forces. Through a holistic approach, examines “PR‐ness” at three different levels. Survey data were gathered from public relations consultancies in the UK. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to examine the responses of 297 public relations consultancies in England. As a result, the many driving forces within the PR domain have been identified and grouped into nine measurement scales of “PR‐ness”. These findings provide PR practitioners with a set of issues to address in order to progress the perceived professionalism of their activities and they offer a framework for assessing subsequent progress in this respect.

Public relations research into career advancement has been frequently criticised for its focus on gender discrimination and the prevailing dominance of American academics, while widely ignoring the perception of “industry insiders”. This paper aims to provide new insight into PR career progression.

The paper considers alternative aspects to PR career progression, as emphasised by general management and continuous professional development literature, with a close examination of the UK's public relations industry and its practitioners' perceptions of career advancement impacting factors.

The results gained were used to develop a Five‐step PR Career Progression Model, which may act as a useful starting point for further research into career advancement factors and the move towards a widely accepted set of career progression benchmarks for the UK's public relations industry.

Overall, this paper encourages both PR academics and practitioners to work closely together on future research projects into career advancement in order to maximise the potential of the industry as a whole and improve career chances for individual practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to help enrich the body of knowledge of public relations by exploring the status of the practice in Kuwait. Using the generic principles of public relations, a well-known theoretical framework in the field, we study the three major types of organizations: government agencies, nonprofits and corporations.

The authors gathered data using a self-administered survey and qualitative interviews. In total, 250 questionnaires were distributed (both printed and electronic) to employees working in public relations departments in all sectors and received 66 completed responses for a response rate of 26%. In addition, the first author conducted nine elite interviews with a chief executive officer (CEO) of a non-profit organization, a CEO of public relations (PR) agency, four directors of PR department in the private sector and three directors of the PR department in governmental organizations.

The results indicate that the press-agentry and technical functions dominate PR practice in the country. However, there appears to be a slow momentum for more specialized PR practitioners, who can assist their organizations in coming up with strategies and thus help organizational effectiveness. PR in Kuwait continues to suffer reputationally including the assumption that someone with no relevant knowledge or experience can be employed and succeed.

To the authors knowledge, this is the to study the present some of the generic principles of PR in Kuwait. Therefore, this paper contributes to the PR in Kuwait body of knowledge and provides the generic principles of PR in a new cultural context to test its applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how public relations (PR) professionals develop co-narratives with legal counsel when formulating crisis communication strategies. Understanding how PR practitioners work with their legal counterparts may help lead to more advanced and effective PR practice in the area of crisis communication and management. The authors attempt to do so in this study through interviews conducted with PR practitioners in two Asian countries – South Korea and Singapore.

In total, 11 semi-structured interviews with PR consultants, 6 in Korea and 5 in Singapore were conducted between May and August 2016. Data analyses revealed key points of interest for PR practice.

First, PR consultants in both countries reported increased collaboration with legal counsel in times of crisis. Second, PR consultants report that legal professionals have begun to realize the significance of winning in the court of public opinion. However, the process by which PR–legal collaboration takes place to develop co-narratives followed extremely different patterns in the two countries.

This exploratory study is not exempt from limitations. The findings from this study may not be applicable to other countries. As data collection in both countries relied on snowball sampling techniques, the participants in the interviews may not be representative of PR consultants in South Korea and Singapore. E-mail interviews had limitations due to their lack of richness and details compared to other forms of interviews (i.e. face-to-face or Skype interviews). However, computer-mediated interviews including e-mail interviews can still create good level of understandings about the phenomenon in question.

This study was an attempt to understand PR–legal collaboration particularly in times of crisis and contribute to the development of Asia-centric models of PR practice. There has been little research that explores how legal and PR counsels actually collaborate to devise optional crisis communication strategies for their clients (or organizations) in the times of crisis. Given that crisis communicative strategies have been shown to affect publics’ perceptions of an organization’s credibility and trustworthiness, it is important to understand how PR work with legal practitioners to develop co-narratives for optimal crisis management, and understand how their different professional perspectives, practices, and approaches affect the collaboration.

This paper identifies key forces influencing the degree of managerial public relations (MPR), i.e. the practice of public relations (PR) as a strategic tool.

Using survey data of nearly 300 PR consultants from English firms, the authors propose a conceptual framework of MPR and test it through structural equation modeling (SEM).

Findings reveal that research expenditure and importance given to qualifications are key antecedents of MPR. Surprisingly, while the direct effect of the perceived quality of PR graduates on the practice of MPR is non‐significant, the indirect effect through research expenditure is highly significant and negative.

Future research is encouraged to identify key drivers of MPR by investigating clients' perceptions on this topic. Such an approach would bring interesting guidelines for improving the agency‐client relationship as well as consultancies' performance. Research is also encouraged to investigate not only MPR antecedents, but also MPR outcomes.

From a practitioner perspective, a better comprehension of MPR might promote the understanding of PR as a strategic tool, the understanding of the client's problem from a strategic standpoint, the inclusion of research and evaluation in the PR process, and incursion in long‐term policies.

Following the principle of strategy‐environment co‐alignment, this paper shows that the practice of PR is a result of a strategic response by consultants to the interplay of internal and external forces over their consultancy firm.