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The practice of public relations (PR) is shaped by the ‘life world’ of the professionals; moreover, both the experiences of the professionals and societal changes shape the profession in a particular area (Hodges, 2006). Women have always played an important part in the development of PR as a profession and academic field in Turkey. Since PR Association of Turkey was established in 1972, five out of eight presidents have been women, and most of the members are also female. Female PR practitioners represent 70% of the total workforce of PR sector in Turkey, and most of the communication agencies are led by female entrepreneurs.

However, research on women' positions and their multiple roles in PR in Turkey are limited.

This chapter uses a qualitative study with 27 in-depth one-on-one interviews conducted in order to analyse female PR practitioners' experiences related to (1) the start of their careers, (2) their career experiences, (3) their evaluation of the profession, and lastly (4) their career goals. The interviewees included agency owners, managers, deputy general managers and group directors.

The research aimed to discover the female PR professional experience in respect of the difficulties they face in their practice and everyday life, advantages and/or disadvantages of being a female PR professional in Turkey and the ways women balanced their career and family duties.

Public relations (PR) education has not kept pace with the rapid globalisation that has occurred since 1992. The existing PR body of knowledge, and PR curricula around the world, have a US bias. In order to prepare PR students in various parts of the world to become effective multicultural professionals it is essential for experiences and perspectives from other continents to be integrated into PR education. The complexities of societal factors such as culture, political systems and media systems make Asia a challenging place to conduct strategic PR. It is time for educators to integrate experiences from other continents into the PR body of knowledge, thereby building PR curricula that contribute to training truly multicultural PR professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate enterprise social media systems and quantified gender and status influences on emotional content presented in these systems.

Internal social media messages were collected from a global software company running an enterprise social media system. An indirect observatory test using Berlo’s “source–message–channel–receiver” model served as a framework to evaluate sender, message, channel and receiver for each text. These texts were categorized by gender and status using text analytics with SAP SA to produce sentiment indications.

Results reveal women use positive language 2.1 times more than men. Senior managers express positive language 1.7 times more than non-managers, and feeling rules affect all genders and statuses, but not necessarily as predicted by theory. Other findings show that public messages contained less emotional content, and women expressed more positivity to lower status colleagues. Men expressed more positivity to those in higher positions. Many gender and status stereotypes found in face-to-face studies are also present in digital enterprise social networks.

Limitations include generalizability: all data were collected from a single enterprise social media system.

Managers establishing codes of conduct for social media use will find this research useful, particularly when promoting awareness of emotional expressiveness in online venues with subordinate colleagues.

This study offers a behavioral measurement approach free from validity issues found in self-reported surveys, direct observations and interviews. The collected data offered new perspectives on existing social theories within a new environment of computerized, enterprise social media.

The purpose of this paper is to explore trends in practitioners’ perceptions of their role within organizations as well as their influence among senior management both in the USA and Europe. It analyses practitioners’ beliefs about the status of their work as well as their understandings of the ways the new media environment is shifting their everyday practice.

This paper draws on data from two surveys of public relations (PR) practitioners, one in the USA and the other in Europe. These data enable comparisons between communication practice in the two geographic areas. The paper focusses the analysis on senior-level practitioners who reported working within the communication department of an organization.

The findings of this study suggest that practitioners in both regions are optimistic about the influence of communications within their broader organizations. However, European practitioners are more likely to adopt a “central but flexible” organizational strategy for managing the need to speak in many voices across media and publics. American respondents report much greater use of social media tools than do their European counterparts. These findings are discussed as they relate to the diverse circumstances characterizing the communication practice in each region.

This paper provides a rare comparative look at attitudes and practices within PR and communications in two distinct geographic areas.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether public relations (PR) students feel ready and adequately prepared for their future jobs and how they cope with the reputational and ethical issues of the public relations industry, also during the pandemic.

Survey research among public relations students in Poland was conducted twice, in 2019 and 2021, to explore their opinions on the applicability of public relations studies, career prospects for PR students in the industry and their approach to perennial reputational problems of PR. The 2021 survey also looked into challenges for the public relations education created by the pandemic, including lack of students' direct interactions with teachers and prevalence of online instruction methods.

The study shows that most public relations students feel confident about their career choices and appreciate their level of preparedness at PR schools for real-life assignments in the public relations industry. In addition, students are aware of the ethical and reputational issues of their chosen trade, and they tend to advocate for the field among friends and families and even rectify widespread misconceptions about PR. The role of public relations during the COVID-19 pandemic – according to respondents – has grown significantly, thus creating new, exciting opportunities for public relations professionals, though not necessarily for PR students or graduates.

This paper contributes to research on public relations education, its effectiveness, widely discussed reputational and ethical issues plaguing the field, relationships of educators and students with the PR industry and the role of PR students as advocates for their trade.

The purpose of this paper is to capture historical data relating to the enactment of public relations work based on gender in post-war Britain. The paper contributes new insights on gender formations in public relations practice during that period in that cultural context, providing a point of contrast with present day practice.

Historical sociology.

The paper presents data drawn from interviews and document analysis that reveals the separation of male and female work in public relations.

The research provides contextual historical background to the burgeoning contemporary research that is focused on issues relating to gender and LGBTQ in public relations, and highlights historical features which may have shaped the contemporary occupational culture in the UK. The research may provide useful background context for comparable studies in adjacent disciplines.

This is a culture-specific study and cross-cultural comparisons would be useful in understanding the extent to which female work in public relations has been similarly framed historically.

There is historical residue in the popular representations of women in public relations in film and media in the UK, for example the notion of “PR girl”. Understanding the origin of such stereotypes and their persistence is important for professional bodies and practitioners.

The paper brings to light previously unpublished opinions and perspectives from the post-war era.

The purpose of this paper is to report empirical research about the chronological development of the organizational structure, functions (functional groups) and competencies of the corporate communication(/public relation) – CC(/PR) department of the central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) in India. This paper also attempts to identify the specific organizational goals that influence CC(/PR) departmental structure and its effectiveness.

In total, 34 selected CPSEs reflecting most of the salient features of the public sector in India are identified. Key personnel (or designates) in the CC(/PR) departments are contacted to take an online survey that is built after analyzing previously reported instruments appropriate in this context. Analyses are conducted using SPSS 10.0.

Data analysis shows that in many PSUs, the development of full‐fledged CC departments is still at a nascent stage; however, in other PSUs development of CC is already streamlined with company vision and is mature as a division. Key acceptable PR roles include communication for the desired perception among target audience and brand sustainability. In established CC departments, CC is a strategic management tool, synchronizing all intentional forms of internal and external communications, thus helping the PSUs to define its corporate image and improve corporate performance. Through the built‐in measurement systems, PSUs are encouraged to become global players.

The paper empirically measures the efficiency of CC(/PR) departments of 34 operating CPSEs concerned with the development of the engineering industry in India. This paper would be of value to researchers and practitioners seeking to promote, practice or influence the structuring of CC(/PR) departments.

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.

Theory and exhortation about planning, research and evaluation (PRE) in PR still outweighs best practice. The tools exist to enable PRE to be used as a means of demonstrating PR effectiveness. Yet research continues to demonstrate that PR is either not validated or the methodologies used are considered suspect. Behind the lack of PRE usage are weaknesses in PR training and reluctance to do the obvious, such as tap into existing sources of research. While it is important to prove the effectiveness of PR through PRE, there is a bigger prize: to demonstrate the strategic role that PR can play in organisations and to raise the standing of PR. With growing recessionary pressure and the threat of competition from other service providers such as management consultants, the PR profession should seize on PRE as a means of putting PR on to a higher plane.

PUBLIC RELATION IS STILL clouded in mystique in the eyes of many managements—a concept they do not understand fully and which therefore frightens or baffles them to varying degrees.