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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore the differing ways in which emancipation is conceived by (Burawoy, 2004) four types of sociology: professional, public, critical and policy. The chapter argues that taken in isolation these sociologies generate issues in research that can only be resolved by reference to the activities of other branches of the sociological enterprise.

Approach – The chapter starts with a conflict of values in public sociological research, where the researcher is confronted with respondents whose ‘voice’ is characterised as racist.

Findings – The chapter argues that whilst public sociology attempts to provide voice to marginalised social groups it often makes arbitrary judgments over the palatability of certain voices, preferring voices sympathetic to the sociological enterprise over populist voices. The nuance here is illustrated as a tension between public and critical sociology that is often overlooked in the literature.

Research implications – The chapter argues that to successfully make sociological judgments to marshal between divergent voices, public sociology needs to re-discover its relationship with professional sociology, in terms of its engagement with political normativity and uses of evidence. Ultimately, for the sociological enterprise to be emancipatory it has to have a functioning interdependence between its four main activities.

This chapter critically considers two conceptions of sociological labor as they have recently been articulated in two competing visions for public sociology. I use the contrast between Ben Agger's and Michael Burawoy's recent professions of public sociology as a lens through which to critically understand the way in which the narratives produced by sociological labor govern the emergence of knowledge, which would be the basis of transformation.

Using Marcuse and the 2008 economic crisis as a starting point, this work proposes a feminist critical theory for public administration that could inform how public administrationists can see themselves as defenders of human values against a status quo which favors masculine and market forces. Through an exploration of Marcuse's concepts of one-dimentionality, foreclosure, masculinization, and feminist socialism, this work asserts the need for a feminist critical theory for public administration theory and praxis that responds to current social injustices and explores a more complex analysis of the subject as subjugated and dispossessed. The conclusion proposes some directions that such a theory might take in the future.

This paper seeks to propose a simple four‐element model for how organisations should manage their public relations when they are faced with a critical incident.

The article brings together findings from previous research to construct a four‐element model. Five short case studies are then used to illustrate how the four elements contribute to the management of a critical incident.

Organisations need to follow four elements for their public relations when they are facing a critical incident. These four elements are: think of the public and the media; act fast; be straight; and, show concern and compassion.

Those organisations that used the four elements of the public relations process appear to have gained not only from the short‐term benefits of managing the incidents but also from a long‐term effect on their corporate reputations.

This paper is of value to senior managers and public relations professionals in that it provides a simple four‐element model for positively managing public relations in a critical incident.

The effective and efficient use of resources in public project management requires a commitment to driving down costs and exploiting value opportunities. In achieving this, public management, being a civil service, must also be aware of social, political and ethical requirements that can impinge upon strict economic reasoning. Opening public management to market pressures has been criticized as potentially weakening concerns of social justice, but in areas like civil construction, it is vital if procurement, build and operation are to improve. A hypothesis was formulated that uses a total quality perspective to link improvements in project performance with the effective promotion of public interest. This hypothesis – that a total quality orientation can reconcile and enhance economic and public interests – was tested through a survey of major stakeholders in public construction projects. It was found that, by developing a concept of critical leadership to drive through quality commitment, there were cogent reasons for further developing this total quality research.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reception and impact of Jürgen Habermas’s global academic best seller in the USA between 1974 and 2018. It specifically addresses the consequences of the long delay in the publication of the English translation of Habermas’s 1962 public sphere concept until 1989 in the context of Habermas’s paradigm shift from the Kantian ideal of a participatory democracy to a systems-theoretical interpretation of deliberative democracy, which informs Between Facts and Norms (1992/1996).

This paper can be classified as a “conceptual paper” that draws on empirical research, namely, Adrian Rauchfleisch’s (2017) bibliometric co-citation analysis of two decades of public sphere research, which features a multi-dimensional scaling of these research communities based on the distance matrix of the co-citation network.

As the 22,000 scholarly citations for structural transformation as of April 2018 already indicate, this paper confirms in detail that Habermas’s original public sphere concept attracts significantly more academic interest on an interdisciplinary basis than Between Facts and Norms, which no longer pursues a critical theory of contemporary democracy. Instead, this shift toward a uniquely sophisticated theory construction in the realm of normativity produces a work in Rechtstheorie (Thomas McCarthy) that is by definition removed from political practice. The paper demonstrates that only the criteria developed in structural transformation can be applied to the analysis of constitutional crises in the USA.

This paper was researched and written solely by the author. All sources are clearly identified.

This chapter applies recent theoretical developments linked to the concept of culture to the field of public relations research and practice, notably through the prism of creativity as a vector of cultural change.

The chapter is theoretical in nature and draws on relevant scientific literature in the field of public relations research, but also the social sciences more generally, and illustrates the issues being discussed with reference to relevant public relations campaigns.

While the field of public relations has moved beyond simplistic models of cultural values and characteristics, it is argued that more complex visions of culture have been neglected. Specifically, drawing on structuration theory, culture can be seen as a ‘system-generating mechanism’ relying on creativity to uphold and renew cultural references and norms. In this perspective, public relations is both producing/reproducing culture and being produced by culture. It follows that the concept should be apprehended not as an ontological category but as a social construct, as the source of heuristic and discursive categorisations.

A call is issued for public relations to also question the ideological underpinnings of the production of symbols in which practitioners partake on a daily basis.

While the chapter fits into an emerging body of work discussing the cultural dimension of public relations, the link with creativity and the use of structuration theory to conceptualise this link contribute to its originality.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine school health education in the USA and present alternative approaches for more critical and comprehensive health education.

An ecological model framework is used to identify the limitations and opportunities for improvement in school health education in the USA. An argument is made for school health education that embraces ecological approaches, political economy theory, and critical pedagogies.

US schools have been tasked with providing health education that is primarily rooted in individualistic approaches. Often missing from this education is recognition of the social and structural determinants of health that greatly influence one’s ability to practice the health behaviors promoted in schools. This raises pedagogical and ethical concerns, which can be addressed by teaching health education that is grounded in ecological and political economy understandings of health and in critical pedagogies that allow students to more comprehensively and accurately understand health, how their worlds influence health, and their agency within those worlds.

This paper offers justification for a critical model of school health education and for the professional preparation of school health educators that is grounded in critical pedagogy and ecological approaches.

This work complements other research on critical health education by adding explicit integration of the ecological model and the political economy theory within critical pedagogies.

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.

Collaboration in a public sector is a key to solving complex social problems. This research studies the mandated public sector collaboration in Malaysia. The purpose of this paper is to identify the success factors that are critical to effective collaboration outcomes.

The factors identified were transformational leadership, interdependence, and community. A questionnaire was constructed and distributed to 500 government officers involved in public sector collaboration in Malaysia. An integrated framework was developed and analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach.

The key findings of this study are transformational leadership that drives interdependence and collaboration outcomes and community that plays a critical role in influencing interdependence, and collaboration outcomes. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings have been discussed. The limitations of this research have been highlighted.

This study through the integrated model has identified the key success factors of public sector collaboration. The empirical results lend credibility to the governance of public sector collaboration.