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The aim of this paper is to begin a conversation about historicising the public relations (PR) curriculum in universities.

The paper discusses PR history and historiography to identify the underlying ideological and methodological influences. It considers scholarship on PR education, and the inclusion or, more often, the exclusion of history except where it serves to reinforce a narrative of steady, and apparently unproblematic, professional development. The paper reviews the presentation of history in textbooks and discusses the authors' experiences of teaching PR history. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the inclusion of history in the PR curriculum offers an important critical intervention in PR education.

The PR curriculum tends to meet industry expectations around practice and skills in order to develop students as future practitioners. But this paper argues that a more historical and historiographical understanding of PR can develop in students important skills in research, analysis and interpretation. It can also introduce students to working with ambiguity and alternate perspectives. Foregrounding new histories and challenging existing histories introduce students to richer and more complex understandings of PR. It also introduces students to epistemology and ethics, and therefore offers a way to introduce critical thinking into the curriculum.

A more historical understanding of PR develops student skills in research, analysis and interpretation as well as critical thinking.

The paper aims to analyse the published work of Ireland's pre-eminent public relations (PR) educator, across a number of literary genres in which he has written. More broadly, it considers the writing life of academics.

This paper examines Carty's writings about his own history, Irish history, the development of church-state relations in Ireland and PR. It seeks to make connections between Carty's subjects and his writing styles.

Through detailed analysis of a number of key texts, the paper explores the writing styles used by Carty to discern the nature of his distinctive “voice(s)”.

There is considerable research into a handful of (mostly American) “great men” in PR' history and development. But every nation has its own PR pioneers about whom little is known outside that country and who deserve to be more widely recognised.

This paper hopes to stimulate future work by other colleagues in other nations, reflecting on the contribution of their own PR educators and practitioners.

This paper seeks to compare different national PR histories in order to unfold the degree of abstract reflection in PR history writing. It aims to provide some suggestions for a future PR historiography, based on this comparison.

The paper compares British, German, and US American PR historiography. The study is based on a comparison of 36 PR histories. A triple matrix of theoretization is used in order to differentiate the histories.

Within the comparison American PR historiography accounts for 24 public relations history approaches, whereas Great Britain (1) and Germany (11) offer fewer histories. However, this richness in quantity does not lead to theoretical diversification. Owing to the paradigmatic obligation to a progressivist understanding, American PR historiography actually entails only one theoretic approach, while its German equivalent includes three different theoretic approaches and British PR historiography – being at its start – at least contains one explicitly non‐progressivist, methodologically well‐informed, fact‐oriented example. Paradoxically, the prevailing American PR historiography, on the one hand, conceptualizes PR as a modern phenomenon but, on the other hand, claims even ancient beginnings.

The corpus of analysis contains only studies that attempt to supply an encompassing overview of (national) PR history.

Public relations managers may use these findings to achieve a more nuanced critical understanding of the history of their occupation, and thereby reflect on its current state, which may lead to intensified ethical endeavours.

The paper presents a pioneer systematic comparison of the three national PR histories, which may lead to enhanced national and general PR historiography. Another value is the establishment of a theoretically informed comparative measuring instrument, which (in future) can also be applied in order to compare and improve other national PR historiographies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizations and their PR firms during crisis situations. It contributes to the field by identifying the role of communication consultants in contemporary organizational crises, tasks they are entrusted by their clients, as well as providing their perspective on current crisis communication practice and its future development.

The research is based on 13 semi-structured in-depth interviews with two groups of senior staff in 11 Croatian PR agencies: CEOs, directors, managing partners and senior consultants, all in charge of their clients’ crisis communication projects.

The research results suggest that PR firms define crisis differently than their clients, who tend to consider every risk a crisis, which causes a significantly broadened scope of work for their PR firms. The findings also suggest crises to be periods when new PR firm–client relations are often established and caution PR firms to balance between openly expressing their opinion when unfavorable for their clients and providing the best advice possible to achieve a sustainable business model with the clients that they consult.

This research provides rare insight into crisis communication consulting practice, especially consultant–client relations during crises. Methodologically, it includes a representative group of senior communication practitioners acting as consultants and can provide the management of PR firms and scholars valuable insight into the current and future trends of the crisis communication field in Croatia.

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 time is right for renewed and updated attention to the relationship between public relations (PR) and human resources (HR) departments in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. For too long, conflict between the two practice areas has obscured opportunities for collaboration which benefits organizations and stakeholders. This chapter offers theoretical underpinnings for examining an interdepartmental, cross-unit working relationship between HR and PR – and advances a vision for why it is needed now.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the foundation and development of public relations education (PRE) in Australia between 1950 and 1975.

This paper utilises Australian-held primary and official industry association material to present a detailed and revisionist history of PR education in Australia in its foundation decades.

This paper, which locates Australia's first PRE initiatives in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in the 1960s, contests the only published account of PR education history by Potts (1976). The orthodox account, which has been repeated uncritically by later writers, overlooks earlier initiatives, such as the Melbourne-based Public Relations Institute of Australia, whose persistence resulted in Australia's first PR course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1964. So too, educational initiatives in Adelaide and Sydney pre-date the traditional historiography.

A detailed literature review suggests this paper represents the only journal-length piece on the history of PRE in Australia. It is also the first examination of relationships between industry, professional institutes, and educational authorities.

This paper aims to explore the evaluation theory in a field closely related to corporate communication and public relations (PR) as well as in other disciplines and argues that embracing the evaluation theory more broadly can break the “stasis” and “deadlock” identified in evaluation of corporate communication and PR. Specifically, this analysis seeks to show that a transdisciplinary approach can contribute to standards and demonstration of impact – two long-sought goals in evaluation of corporate communication and PR – as well as inform methodology.

Critical analysis is applied to review the evaluation theory in a number of fields, including international development, public administration, management and health communication, compared with major frameworks, models and methods used for evaluation of corporate communication and PR.

This analysis shows that the evaluation theory in other fields and related theory of change, program theory and program logic models can contribute to advancing evaluation of corporate communication and PR in three ways: identifying standards in terminology and approaches, shifting focus from activities and outputs to outcomes and impact and applying appropriate and rigorous methodology.

While this paper does not present new empirical data, it expands the theoretical perspectives, models and methods applied to the evaluation of corporate communication and PR and identifies new directions for research.

As well as expanding the evaluation theory and opening up new ground for research, this analysis identifies a need for structural change in the field of practice.