Search results

This chapter explores the extent to which female public relations (PR) practitioners perform professionalism in the workplace by interrogating and examining their professional behaviours. Using an ethnographic approach, where the researcher is immersed in the field, it uncovers the lived experiences and behavioural responses of women working in PR agency environments in the United Kingdom and enables a rich description of professional behaviours to emerge.

Fawkes argues that research into roles in PR ‘has tended to assess roles using management rather than sociological theory’ (2014, p. 2). That is not to say that all PR research adopts the same paradigmatic stance. Several scholars have encouraged the development of a research agenda rooted in social theory. Holtzhausen called for a move away from what she termed the ‘modernist approach to organizations’ (2002, p. 251), which focuses on management discourse, and encouraged instead a focus on the postmodern concept of discourse, where meaning is constructed and conveyed through social and institutional practices.

In seeking to discover the ‘lived experience’ of female practitioners, this chapter locates professionalism in the context of their behaviours and enables individuals to articulate their understandings of the relationship between performance and professionalism. Using Goffman's (1959) work on social encounters as performances in conjunction with Foucauldian discourse and Feminist theory, this chapter explores the three stages of performing professionalism – preparation, performance and reception – through the eyes of women working in PR agencies in the United Kingdom to explore their lived experience and determine how gender affects their performance of professional behaviour.

This paper aims to analyse the current literature on women in public relations to establish trends and areas of inquiry in the literature and identify research gaps for future research.

A total of 223 articles have been empirically analysed using thematic analysis to identify trends in the existing literature. The data has been coded and analysed per decade (1982–1989, 1990–1999, 2000–2009, 2010–2019). The articles have been identified by searching major journals in the field of public relations and communications, as well as snowballing from identified articles.

The results show that the majority of academic articles have been produced by using lived experiences of women working in the public relations industry and thus reflect the professional situation of female public relations employees. The results show that the position of women has reached a full circle in four decades of research and returned to the discriminatory work environment. Finally, the results show that a liberal feminist perspective has an advantage in the literature since the majority of works have been produced in the United States; however, there is an increase in authors calling for the use of socialist and radical feminism.

The paper provides a comprehensive literature review of works published in the field. The paper takes an empirical approach to the analysis rather than the descriptive one, which helped in identifying major trends in the research and identified a research gap for future inquiries.

Despite the growing amount of literature on women′s career life histories and individual career paths, analysis of the different and changing organizational contexts in which women pursue their careers is sparse. Uses an in‐depth case study of Public Sector Utility to examine how the restructuring of a public sector bureaucracy over a five‐year period affected the careers of women managers. Finds that although restructuring at PSU has opened up opportunities for women through an increase in the number of managerial jobs and through changes in the objective requirements of managerial work, a number of factors operated to keep glass ceilings in place: the concentration of women in the “velvet ghetto” of human resources, or their isolation in the cul‐de‐sac of other professional specialisms; the increased significance of informal organizational processes and networks as a means to career progress in a time of uncertainty; poor line manager support for access to work‐related career development opportunities such as special development projects and task force memberships; and generic corporate‐wide equal opportunity policies and processes which emphasize formal procedure and practice, and which have become marginal to core business concerns and the rest of human resource policy.

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.

This paper seeks to map the employment of female professionals to create a collective biography of women in US public relations from 1940‐1970. It aims to suggest that women were active leaders in many areas of public relations, despite the exclusion of women from most historical accounts.

The author completed a content analysis of a women's professional directory published in 1970. This directory summarizes women's accomplishments during this critical time period in the development of the public relations profession. The sample of 520 entries was analyzed for demographics and career statistics in relation to social perceptions that prevailed during this timeframe.

The paper offers empirical insights into the work of female public relations practitioners. It quantifies employment in managerial and technical positions in a variety of industries, charts the trends in employment, and offers support for theoretical explanations for why women were essentially invisible in public relations publications and historical records.

The findings from this research are limited in that they are based on a directory full of self‐reported success stories. Therefore, additional research is needed before these results can be generalized to the population under study.

This paper creates a collective biography of women in public relations that complements the research that has been done on a few individual women. This research contributes to a more robust explanation of the development of US public relations.

Explores the resurgence of interest in public relations as relationship building; and the three‐stage model that has been developed to research this. Concludes that the present chaotic environment requires public relations professionals to assume the responsibility of identifying the organization’s most strategic publics as part of the management process.

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.

This paper explores the nature of managerial work in the public relations context drawing comparisons with the way mainstream management research has defined the main elements and processes of management within organisations. The paper begins with a critical review of the public relations and management literatures relating to managerial work and behaviour, highlighting the distinctively different approaches taken by public relations and management scholars in defining the nature of managerial work and behaviour. The paper goes on to present the findings of a qualitative investigation into the role and work patterns of practitioners occupying senior positions in cross sections of both US and UK organisations. The study identifies a number of common elements in pattern of “managerial” work performed by both UK and US‐based practitioners. The study also reveals the extent to which senior practitioners participate as members of the dominant coalition within their organisations and contribute to strategic decision making. The paper concludes by reflecting on the adequacy of existing definitions and understanding of the managerial dimension of the role played by practitioners within organisations.

This paper examines critically how the manager’s role in public relations has been conceptualised, comparing how the work of managers has been defined from a public relations and management perspective. Here the paper provides a critical review of the relevant public relations and management literatures, pointing to the relative weaknesses in the public relations literature. The paper concludes by examining a particular case study to illustrate some of the weaknesses in current practitioner role models to conceptualise the weaknesses in the public relations manager’s role.

This paper aimed to research attitudes of women working in the Croatian public relations (PR) industry regarding office culture (networking, banter, dress codes, etc.).

This paper uses Bourdieu's habitus theory and analyses the experiences of women working in the Croatian PR industry with a focus on office culture. The study is based on 21 in-depth interviews with women working in the Croatian PR industry. Thematic analysis has been used to analyse data.

Although female employees (76.84%) dominate the PR industry in Croatia, the so-called masculine patterns still prevail in the PR sector. Results show that women are often exposed to gender discrimination but at the same time, they also perpetuate gender-based prejudices.

Employees in the PR industry should consider working on their own gender stereotypes that impact their patterns of behaviour. Relinquishment of the ideas of patriarchal essentialism would consequently change career progression opportunities, and it would particularly improve networking among women, which could lead to career advancement opportunities.

Structural changes are needed in society to avoid women perpetuating inequality through masculine behaviour and unrealistic expectations that many women cannot meet.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first paper that explores gender-biased office culture in the Croatian PR industry. In doing so, the paper also applies Bourdieu's habitus theory, thus contributing to studying cultural masculinities from a Croatian perspective. The paper also introduces the concept of gender-biased behaviour.