Lost in translation? On the disciplinary status of public relations

Abstract

The article deals with the current status of public relations (PR) as a scientific discipline which is in the process of breaking up into several subdisciplinary fields of research. It gives an overview of the problematic aspects of the disciplinary developments of PR and crystallizes the main points of the debate. The author criticizes the constant broadening and fragmentation of the field, occupying terrain from neighboring disciplines, and the eclecticism with which PR adopts concepts and theories from other fields without providing substantial theory building of its own. PR is considered a ‘postdisciplinary’ field of research, and the author points toward both the positive and the negative aspects that are associated with this. The conclusion suggests different approaches how to address the status quo.

Keywords

Disciplinary status fragmentation imperialism isolation public relations schools of thought

Introduction

Today, public relations (PR) as an academic discipline seems to be lost in several forms of translations or transformations with open-ended outcomes. To mention just a few, there is the translation from PR perceived as an art practised by the ‘gin and tonic brigade’ into PR conceptualized as a profession and a science which is increasingly being incorporated into university programs; second, the – albeit slower than hoped for – translation of PR as a low- or middle-management occupation related to media management into a strategic management position with growing budgets and spheres of influence. In conjunction with this trajectory, PR research today more than ever orients itself toward business management and in doing so slowly but surely leaves behind its roots in schools of communication and journalism. Even the term ‘public relations’ has become a taboo word, often being replaced by ‘communication management’ or ‘strategic communication’ (Moloney, 1997: 139; Zerfass et al., 2011). On the other hand, parallel to this development, the traditionally strong positivistic and functional voices within the field are increasingly being challenged by critical scholars calling for a ‘socio-cultural turn’ (e.g Edwards and Hodges, 2011; McKie and Munshi, 2007). PR research has been criticized for its heavy reliance on US models, concepts, and theories and the ethnocentricity that is linked to this, lacking multiculturalism and awareness for the socio-cultural variability in different regions of the world (e.g. Sriramesh, 2004, 2007, 2010). It has also been criticized for ignoring important trends within the philosophy of science like chaos and complexity, postmodernity, diversity, and post-colonialism (e.g. McKie, 2000). Meanwhile, however, critics cannot deny that things have been changing. Topics that used to stay at the fringes of the discipline are now moving toward the core. Scholars have increasingly been drawing on insights from adjacent fields such as sociology, political studies, business management, cultural theory, psychology, and organizational studies and incorporating them into their own body of knowledge. Up to now, the interdisciplinarity of the field has mostly been welcomed with suggestions that it will enrich the discipline and that PR scholarship will profit from this knowledge transfer (e.g. Sallot et al., 2003). There is no denying that PR is a progressive, vibrant field of research with rising numbers of conferences, journals, and university programs. However, at the second glance, it becomes apparent that PR lacks a consistent body of core knowledge, defining and demarcating the discipline. A study by Sisco et al. (2011) recently criticized that after more than three decades of scholarly efforts, PR still does not have enough of a central focus in its research and theory building to be deemed a mature discipline (Sisco et al., 2011: 145). Instead, PR puts a lot of energy into adopting concepts and approaches from other fields or incorporates whole areas of research formerly occupied by other disciplines (e.g. Issues Management, Corporate Social Responsibility). Situated in the no-man’s land between different disciplinary fields and scholarly traditions, PR shows, on the one hand, clear imperialistic tendencies toward all of these fields, but is, on the other hand, rather isolated and struggles for academic recognition. Its bad reputation, affiliated with its roots in propaganda, lobbying, and media manipulation, and also its excessive pluralism, eclecticism, and failure to accomplish a unique body of knowledge, acknowledged beyond its own boundaries, have prevented PR research from gaining true acceptance from any of its feeder disciplines (Toth, 2010: 712–714). This leaves the discipline in a vicious circle of self-assertion and self-defence.

This article stands in line with similar approaches that have critically examined the current status of the field (e.g. Botan and Taylor, 2004; Cheney and Christensen, 2000; Cropp and Pincus, 2000; Edwards, 2012; McKie, 2000; Toth, 2010). It updates these analyses and crystallizes the main points of the debate surrounding the disciplinary development and status quo of PR and outlines the different approaches and tensions within the field. The conclusion will offer some suggestions on how to address the unsatisfying status quo.

Ferment in the field

PR research ‘after Grunig’

There is a growing discontent with the managerial, corporation-focused kind of research still constituting the mainstream of PR research (Brown, 2010; Christensen and Cornelissen, 2011).

As Edwards and Hodges (2011) put it,

Historically, public relations research has been dominated by organizational interests, treating the profession as a function to help organisations achieve their goals, and focusing on practice and processes first and foremost. Such research is valuable in addressing how public relations can be used more effectively by organisations and institutions, but has tended to neglect the consequences of the practice on the social world in which those organisations operate. (Backcover)

They notice an increasing prevalence of research taking a different path from the functional, normative approach that has dominated PR scholarship and argue that at the moment a (radical) ‘socio-cultural turn’ is taking place in the field (Edwards and Hodges, 2011: 16) with a growing number of contributions (e.g. L’Etang and Pieczka, 1996, 2006; McKie and Munshi, 2007; Mickey, 2003; Moloney, 2006). Still, new topics and approaches wander from the periphery toward the core of the discipline. Long neglected fields and topics like gender, race, culture, colonialism, inequality, or ecology have gained more attention in recent years (Bardhan and Weaver, 2010; Edwards, 2010, 2012; Ihlen et al., 2009; L’Etang, 2010). Although these topics have been around for decades, the frequency and visibility with which they appear today – also in mainstream journals – are new. Slowly and rather belatedly, PR research seems to be catching up on the ‘turns’ that have befallen the humanities and the social sciences in the last decades – the postmodern turn, the interpretive turn, the cultural turn, to mention just a few. Despite their lack of homogeneity, critical PR approaches and concepts are united by their unanimous criticism of what is referred to as the ‘Grunigian Paradigm’ (Pieczka, 1996; Moloney, 1997, 2006) – the form of PR research introduced and promoted by the Excellence publication (Grunig, 1992) in the early 1990s.¹

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars argue implicitly (Brown, 2010, 2012; Ihlen and Verhoeven, 2012) or explicitly (Edwards and Hodges, 2011; L’Etang, 2008; McKie, 2000; McKie and Munshi, 2007; Moloney, 2006) that the dominance of the symmetry/excellence theory has hampered the progress of PR research and PR scholarship as it has prevented alternative philosophies and concepts from flourishing. Many scholars have criticized that PR research has since been mostly driven by organizational and managerial interests, with a singular focus that has tended to exclude the social world in which those organizations operate (L’Etang, 2008, Edwards and Hodges, 2011; McKie and Munshi, 2007; Moloney, 2006; Motion and Weaver, 2005). The ‘Grunigian Paradigm’ only examined one side of PR – the functional, corporate one. Edwards and Hodges (2011) pointed out that this narrowly focused approach has a number of drawbacks:

It frames public relations in a way that excludes the interests of increasingly diverse audiences; it ignores the dynamics produced by the profession pursuing its own interests; and it does not address the role that public relations plays as a discursive force in society; shaping social and cultural values and beliefs in order to legitimise certain interests over others. (p. 16)

Instead, a turn toward critical social theory, postmodernism, cultural theory, and critical realism, to mention just a few, is advocated (Brown, 2012; Curtin, 2012; Ihlen et al., 2009; Ihlen and Verhoeven, 2012; Radford, 2012; Sriramesh and Verčič, 2012).

There has also been a movement toward a deontological position in assuming that knowledge producers have special obligations and responsibility vis-à-vis society, and, as a result, the question of PR’s effects on society at large is put forward more prominently. Heath (2010) claims that the raising of PR to a societal level has been one of the major themes of the past decade and elaborates:

The question we ultimately have to ask ourselves as social scientists is, ‘Does that make society better?’ ‘Does it foster truly enlightened choices, actions, policies, and all that is necessary for a collectivity to function as well as possible?’ (p. xii)

Ihlen and Verhoeven (2009, 2012) emphasize the argument and argue that PR should be studied as a social activity in its own right and that it must be understood in relation to its societal context. Ihlen and Van Ruler claim that PR in itself is not good or bad, but can be used for good or bad purposes. From this it follows that the administrative approaches to PR should ‘be supplemented with societal approaches that expose what public relations is in society today, rather than only what it should be at the organizational level’ (Ihlen and Van Ruler, 2009: 5).

However, while these critical voices became much more prominent in recent years, at the same time managerial approaches experienced a revival and a new focus (McDonald and Hebbani, 2011). When the 1990s were clearly dominated by the Excellence theory, the new millennium saw fresh agendas and new academic personnel entering the field. Research agendas adapted to the evolving profession of PR. As Nothhaft (2011) discusses elaborately (part A), we have seen a shift from ‘public relations’ to ‘communication management’ during the 1980s and 1990s, not just in terminology but also in organizational practice. Nothhaft asserts that there have been three interdependent and mutual reinforcing shifts: (a) a shift of the actual job description and the corresponding self-conception of PR professionals and the field of PR as a whole; this was (b) accompanied by academic reflection that led to theoretical and conceptional shifts, which (c) led to a shift in terminology from ‘public relations’ to ‘communication management’ and ‘strategic communication’ (Nothhaft, 2011: 61).

With the expanding roles of communication personnel and the emerging role of the ‘chief communication officer’ (CCO) in large companies, the need for management skills and education brought a new impetus to the field of strategic communication. Corporate communication’s contribution to business goals, strategic management decisions, and top-management positioning came to the fore. Today, communication managers strive for a strategic position at the decision-making table in order to become a part of the strategic management of the organization (Zerfass et al., 2014: 83; Zerfass and Sherzada, 2014). In connection with this, scholars have identified the following main challenges for academics and practitioners: demonstrating a contribution to corporate goals through creating and promoting intangible assets such as reputation and brands, supporting ongoing business processes, and identifying future opportunities and risks (McDonald and Hebbani, 2011; Watson and Zerfass, 2011; Zerfass, 2010). When in the past, the research focus has often been on improving more tactical skills, like writing or campaigning, the current argument is that the professionalization of the field requires enhanced personal and professional qualities, as well as business and leadership skills. This perspective was strengthened by the import of various concepts based largely on rationalistic business management literature such as strategic planning and strategy (Smith, 2005), leadership (Berger and Meng, 2010; Meng et al., 2012), issues management (Heath and Palenchar, 2009), or evaluation methods (Watson, 2010; Watson and Noble, 2007) and controlling systems (Watson and Zerfass, 2011; Zerfass, 2010). The focus of this growing line of research is to further align former strands of PR research with the realities of today’s business environment and the agenda of business economics. This is also reflected in the terminology used by the respective authors. Although most of them have been socialized in PR research, the favored terminology today is that of ‘strategic communication’ or ‘communication management’ in order to signalize the realignment.

How can this shift be explained? Three theories are proposed by Nothhaft (2011: 62–63):

The ‘old wine in new wineskins’ theory argues that communication management is in fact nothing different than PR, but that the terminus ‘management’ was adopted on purpose in order to get rid of PR’s bad connotations and to upgrade the profession as well as the field of study.

The ‘evolution’ theory argues that communication management is a progressive and higher developed form of PR with new and more elaborate job descriptions.

The ‘quantum leap’ theory argues that communication management in its present form and modus has nothing to do anymore with PR but is a totally different kind of job with different kinds of knowledge, skills, and competencies needed.

While Nothhaft positions himself between the ‘evolution’ and the ‘quantum leap’ theory, I would not completely dismiss the ‘old wine in new wineskins’ theory, too. In fact, it seems that both in theory and practice, long existing ideas and concepts are constantly unearthed and brought forth as new management concepts. This ‘reinventing the wheel’ phenomenon is quite common in PR research especially as the discipline did not ‘stop at’ communication management, but has continued to produce new terminologies like ‘strategic communication’ which are equally hard to distinguish from existing concepts.

PR is dead. Long live PR

In recent years, PR has both been declared dead and then resurrected soon after and vice versa (Engeseth, 2009; Ries and Ries, 2004). The state of PR still draws a contradictory picture (Cropp and Pincus, 2000). In one respect, it presents itself as a growing field of research with rising numbers of university chairs, publication outlets, and student enrollments (Toth, 2010). At many universities, PR, often under different names like ‘communication management’, has become the most sought after degree in communication and media departments, many of which have become dependent on its student enrollments. PR seems to offer very good job opportunities worldwide. Graduates enter an ill-defined but broad and growing job market (Botan and Taylor, 2004: 645). Every kind of organization and institution nowadays employs PR personnel, from large enterprises to governments, political parties, the military, trade unions, universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), small sports clubs, and individuals with a task or message. However, its prominence does not bring PR social prestige, high status, or public approval. In particular, the media has always been very skeptical toward the PR industry and never tires of saying so. PR is conventionally thought to be bad for democracy and for its politics, media, and markets (Moloney, 2006).

The result of this is that just like ‘propaganda’ after the Second World War, the term ‘public relations’ itself has become a taboo word (Moloney, 1997: 139; Tilley, 2005; Zerfass et al., 2011). In Europe, many communication professionals think that the PR industry is portrayed negatively in the mass media, a fact that damages the reputation of the profession and communication professionals. In all, 42.2 percent consider the term ‘public relations’ discredited (Zerfass et al., 2011: 21). Instead they favor alternative titles such as ‘corporate communications’, ‘strategic communication’, or ‘communication management’ (Zerfass et al., 2011: 24). This did not leave the academy untouched. Quite the contrary, rebranding activity and renaming are often fueled by scholarly activities (Nothhaft, 2011, part A). Consider for instance the titles of the latest established scholarly journals that publish much of PR research. When in 1996 the journal Corporate Communications: An International Journal was founded, the editors then saw no need to justify and explain the cause for a new journal and the term ‘corporate communications’. But, a year later, in the same journal, Kitchen (1997) asked some pertinent questions concerning the relationship of PR and the new concept of corporate communications. Unfortunately, he did not return and endeavor to further explore them, and neither has anyone else bothered since then. However, his questions and doubts are still justified today, maybe even more so, as trends have accelerated and concepts have become even less clear. Kitchen suggests that

Before one can herald the emergence of corporate communications as integrative and synergistic in relation to its three theoretical foundations [public relations, marketing communications, and human resource management; L.D.], much more empirical evidence is required. Five research questions need to be explored:

Is it possible, in a theoretical sense, to separate management communication, organizational communication and public relations?

What precisely is the relationship between public relations, public affairs, and corporate communications?

Where is the dividing line(s) between the above three areas?

What are the parts, elements, skills, techniques, and tools of corporate communications? Do academics/practitioners agree as to ownership of these parts? To what extent do these resemble or are the same as those of traditional public relations?

Marketeers have been accused of ‘trying to hijack the profession of public relations’. Is corporate communications attempting to do the same thing in reverse? If so, which professional body is equipped to take responsibility for professional standards for the education, training, and practice of corporate communications in the UK? (p. 29)

These are valid questions, and I think that researchers would do well to reflect on them again because what has happened in the last decade is more likely to remind us of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Emperor’s New Clothes than of substantial, theory-based reconceptualization.

In 2007, the International Journal of Strategic Communication was founded, a journal that deliberately situates itself at the interface of various professional fields engaged in the development, dissemination, and assessment of communications on behalf of organizations and causes (Hallahan et al., 2007). According to Hallahan et al. (2007), ‘strategic communication focuses on how the organization itself presents and promotes itself through the intentional activities of its leaders, employees, and communication practitioners’ (p. 7). This definition is not much different from those of PR or corporate communications. Maybe that is why the editors obviously felt the need to justify and explain the new title and focus of the journal (Holtzhausen and Hallahan, 2007). However, their attempts to distinguish strategic communication from earlier conceptualizations of corporate or organizational communication (Hallahan et al., 2007) are not particularly convincing. This is largely due to the fact that the criteria they use to differentiate strategic communication from PR, marketing communications, or organizational communication have become obsolete in the last decade. The convergence of communication roles and functions has been a main characteristic of all communication-related research areas and corporate departments, although this convergence has mostly been researched in the context of the relationship of PR and marketing communications (e.g Hutton, 2010).

The term ‘strategic’ was clearly chosen because it is associated with power and decision-making (Hallahan et al., 2007: 12). Hallahan et al. consider strategic communication ‘a new paradigm for analyzing organizational communications’ that ‘focuses on the purposeful communication activities by organizational leaders and members to advance the organization’s mission’. They stress that ‘these activities are strategic, not random or unintentional communications’ (Hallahan et al., 2007: 27) – which somehow implies that former forms of corporate communication have not been strategic. This is a statement which will certainly be attacked by the majority of PR scholars. McDonald and Hebbani (2011) sing from the same song sheet when proclaiming that

The strategic management focus aligns the practice and discipline as a whole with the dominant coalition within organisations, thereby increasing its legitimacy. […] The strategic management paradigm provides an organisationally- and socially-valued approach to public relations practice which is necessary for the discipline to reach its full potential as a profession. (pp. 10–11)

Although on the surface all this can be dismissed as irrelevant struggles around terminology and research paradigms which have been with the field for decades (Cropp and Pincus, 2000), I think that the present process of differentiation has reached a new depth and quality. It seems that PR as a discipline is breaking up into several subdisciplinary fields with distinguishable research foci and a rather closed set of scholars. This process is different from what has been discussed under the notion of different ‘paradigms’ elsewhere (e.g. Aldoory, 2005; Botan and Hazleton, 2006; Edwards, 2012; Hallahan, 1993; Toth, 2010). As I do not think that there are ‘paradigms’ in the initial, Kuhnian sense of the word (Kuhn, 1996) – unclear as it may be (Masterman, 1972: 61–65) – to be found in the PR discipline, I prefer the terms ‘schools of thought’ or ‘disciplinary subfields’.

According to marketing historians Shaw and Jones, ‘schools of thought’ evolve over time when in the study of any academic discipline, ideas and issues are discussed and debated. Over the course of time, these concepts and arguments cluster into critical masses that may be described as a means of organizing subject matter, an approach to understanding the discipline, or as a ‘school of thought’ (Shaw and Jones, 2005: 239–240). A school of thought is thus a substantial body of knowledge, developed by a number of scholars, and describing at least one aspect of the what, how, who, why, when, and where of performing disciplinary activities (Shaw and Jones, 2005: 241). It is difficult to distinguish schools of thought from sub-areas within a field, such as crisis communication, corporate social responsibility, or internal communication. One can differentiate one from the other by pointing out that a school represents a perspective on the whole or at least a large part of a discipline, whereas sub-areas are elements within a school. In historical analyses, schools of thought are usually presented chronologically, but it is important to realize that also they appear consecutively. It is not always the case, that one school supersedes the former. Instead, most often, several schools co-exist parallel, or latter schools include ideas and concepts of the former (Shaw and Jones, 2005: 242–244). Therefore, in fragmented fields like PR with diverse schools of thought dominating the field at the same time, it is difficult to speak of ‘paradigms’ as there seldom is a school of thought dominant enough to unite the whole field.

Taking into consideration what has been said before, I propose three distinct schools of thought that are in the process of turning into subfields and that now dominate the ‘former’ PR discipline:

Public Relations, turning away from the ‘Grunigian Paradigm’ and toward the humanities and critical theory tradition. The future focus of research will be on investigating the consequences of PR practice within the social world, especially the role that PR plays as a discursive force in society, shaping social and cultural values and beliefs in order to legitimize certain interests over others. This school of thought will also explore the interests of minorities within and affected by the profession. PR will distance itself from functional, positivist, empiricist research and instead turn toward cultural studies, linguistics, gender studies, ethnic studies, and so on. Methodology will predominantly be hermeneutic, interpretative, and qualitative with case study approaches instead of large-scale, corporate-funded research projects.

Strategic Communication, with a clear orientation toward management studies and business economics. Research will focus on the management of the corporate communication function and of communication processes within and initiated by the organization. In addition, the emerging function of senior level or even c-suite level communication professionals and the new job profile and educational demands that go along with that will be researched. Methodology will orient toward those applied by the majority of management research and economics with a clear focus on corporate research, sponsored by or conducted in cooperation with large companies, agencies, or institutions. It is important to note that this school does not inherit and pursue the ‘Grunigian Paradigm’ but constitutes a new, independent field of research.

Corporate Communications,² a field that will continue much of the traditional topics and research interests with a focus on the tactical and practical skills of low- or middle-management communication professionals. Research will focus on the integration of different communication functions and messages, on the improvement and alignment of different communication departments and communication tools. Research will be unsophisticated, very close to daily practice, and application-oriented. This school will follow in the footsteps of the ‘traditional’ focus of PR research and practice in the 1980 and 1990s.

It has been argued elsewhere that PR ‘cannot be neatly compartmentalized into different schools of thought’ (Edwards, 2012: 23); however, I believe that the field tends to ‘compartmentalize’ itself – through the logic of the academic system and the factual realities of social science research (Cole, 1994). It compartmentalizes itself through journals, terminology, textbooks, anthologies, university courses, professorships, grants, conferences, formal and informal networks, and so on. This does not imply that schools of thought are closed systems without any exchanges taking place. However, they are a ‘natural’ way of clustering, organizing, and institutionalizing ideas, knowledge, mindsets, and people in an ever-expanding field. Similar processes can be observed in every other academic discipline. New scholars try to carve out space for themselves by establishing new lines of research, often positioning themselves in opposition to former approaches or existing schools of thought. As Edwards pointed out, much of the research that can be subsumed under the ‘socio-cultural turn’ contests former functional PR theory. The respective scholars position their view explicitly in terms of a reassessment or reconsideration of ‘Excellence’ principles (Edwards, 2012: 11–13).

This differentiation into new schools of thought can be seen both positively and negatively. First of all, it is a sure sign of professional and academic maturation. Similar processes can be observed in adjacent fields. All social science disciplines have diverse subdisciplinary branches and are characterized by a high degree of pluralism as well as multiple, somewhat unconnected lists of theories, variables, and concepts – a situation that led to frequent discussions about their disciplinary core (Cole, 1994; Rule, 1997). Usually, these subdisciplinary branches are located at the fringes of their ‘mother’ disciplines and are of interdisciplinary nature. Oftentimes, subdisciplines grow by incorporating topics, methods, and philosophies from other disciplines.

PR as a ‘postdisciplinary’ field

The interdisciplinarity of social science disciplines and their fragmentation into specialized schools of thought have been discussed by academics for decades (Abbott, 2001), and talking about interdisciplinarity feels stale given how overused and abused the term is at this point. Interdisciplinarity has been around since the late 20th century and is so common in all disciplines that the term has lost its meaning. Young disciplines like communication have been interdisciplinary right from the start, with founding fathers from a diverse set of disciplines. As a result, conversations about disciplines have entered a new phase. We no longer ask how or when interdisciplinarity emerged and whether we are interdisciplinary enough; the questions that arise now are whether there were really any justifiable disciplinary boundaries to start with, and what the disciplinary core might be (Herbst, 2008: 606). Meanwhile, the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ has become so overused and inadequate that scholars even speak of ‘postdisciplinarity’. In a well-received article on the topic, Menand (2001) describes the fundamental changes that took place within the education system in the United States between 1945 and today and shows how academia entered a new phase in the 1970s that deeply affected the epistemology and ontology of all sciences, especially the liberal arts and humanities. He argues that what happened to the humanistic disciplines happened in two stages, and we are just emerging, if we are going to emerge at all, from the second stage. In the first stage in the 1970s and 1980s, according to Menand, what took place was not a redefinition of disciplinarity so much as a kind of anti-disciplinarity. Academic activity began leaning toward paradigms that defined themselves essentially as anta-gonistic toward traditional disciplines. Science, fueled by the writing of popular philosophers like Kuhn and Feyerabend, was characterized by a widely diffused skepticism about the universality of any particular line of inquiry or pedagogy and a rigorously enforced suspicion of the notion of concepts such as ‘truth’ or ‘rigor’. ‘Anti-disciplinarity arose from the marriage of the theoretical position that the disciplines are arbitrary (or at least limiting and artificial) ways to organize knowledge, with the institutional failure to integrate new areas of inquiry adequately into the traditional disciplines’ (Menand, 2001).

Once the anti-disciplinary stage had passed, the academy entered into a different phase, which might be called the phase of postdisciplinarity. Some professors established themselves as stars not by attacking their own disciplines, but by writing books on subjects outside, or only marginally related to, their disciplines. A useful definition of postdisciplinarity comes from Case (2001):

The term ‘post disciplinarity’, now in current usage, announces a different relationship to fields of study than the earlier term ‘interdisciplinary’ might connote. We can imagine ‘interdisciplinary’ as a term that signals a sense of a unified field, produced through the historical convergence of subcultures, social structures, and training practices. […] ‘Post disciplinary’ retains nothing of the notion of a shared consciousness, or of a shared objective that brings together a broad range of discrete studies. Instead, it suggests that the organizing structures of disciplines themselves will not hold. Only conditional conjunctions of social and intellectual forces exist, at which scholarship and performance may be produced. Scholars do not work within fields, but at intersections of materials and theories. (p. 150)

Taking into consideration what has been said before, PR can certainly be considered an interdisciplinary field on its way toward postdisciplinarity. Up to now, PR scholars have mostly embraced this status and asked for PR theory to become even more interdisciplinary and open to other fields. However, this article deliberately takes a different stand and wants to point toward the problems and dangers that accompany the path PR research has taken. By this, I do not deny the importance of paradigmatic variety, conflict, and hybridization and fully agree with authors that stress the plurality of views in the field and that want to create a more balanced context for their interaction (Edwards, 2012: 23). Interdisciplinarity and fragmentation into subfields reflect the dynamics within a field and signal a response to pressing issues and developments, as well as the high level of specialization that is needed to foster research and teaching. Moreover, realignment toward new disciplines can introduce important insights and perspectives into a field. Thus, I criticize neither the differentiation and opening of the field itself nor its move toward non-functionist, deontological, and critical-reflective positions. Instead, this article critically observes the way these developments take place and points toward possible consequences.

PR research between imperialism and isolationism

The fragmentation of disciplines and disciplinary knowledge is undoubtedly one of the main characteristics of postdisciplinarity. Most of the social sciences are characterized by a high degree of pluralism, incoherence of concepts, the proliferation of different paradigms, as well as multiple, somewhat unconnected lists of theories, variables, concepts, and perspectives. Their pluralist fragmentation has made them susceptible to being caught up in a faddism that frequently involves the recycling of pre-existent arguments (Newton, 2010).

As Deetz observed with regard to communication studies in general, fragmentation makes it increasingly difficult for scholars to internalize significant epistemological and content developments in the overall field that lie outside of their specific niches, let alone to remain abreast of developments that are located at the nexus of that field and other disciplines. In a field characterized by the rampant proliferation of specialty literatures, the tendency is for scholars to burrow deeper into their respective niche, treating their own specialty as if it were isolated and self-contained (Deetz, 1994: 570). It gets increasingly difficult to tell what different approaches have to do with each other. Fueled by various disciplinary and philosophical backgrounds, they become more and more incommensurable: They neither agree nor disagree about anything, but effectively bypass each other because they conceive of their nominally shared topic in such fundamentally different ways. Thus, inevitably, ‘the field’ loses meaning and salience as an object of orientation; instead, particular subfields and clusters of related subfields become the primary structures of identification and reference. As interdisciplinary subfields grow and develop their own organizations and publication outlets, scholars and students may come to orient to the subfield more than to their parent discipline as the primary site of scholarly work and interaction. The subfield may become inward-looking and self-absorbed as it searches for its own center, or its main point of reference may change from the mother discipline toward new feeder disciplines. Also, the field’s intellectual capital may be transferred from the center to the periphery. As a result, slowly the core domains begin to decompose into narrowly defined subfields that struggle against disciplinary traditions and limitations in order to build more focused, discipline-spanning research communities (Swanson, 1993: 166–168).

These processes can be observed in many disciplines, especially the social sciences. What distinguishes PR is that the field started its process of fragmentation relatively early in its still young academic history. PR did not manage to establish itself as a self-standing discipline, closely linked to but independent from other fields of communication and media research before the late 1980s and then started to fragment again around the turn of the century. Other social science disciplines had longer phases of ‘maturation’ and identity building which were usually also marked by paradigm struggles but still provided some disciplinary core.

A second problem is that PR research still lacks the academic infrastructure and resources to build strong schools of thought which are able to formulate some identity and voice of their own. Today, we find informal networks of scholars pursuing research interests offside the mainstream that have only recently begun to institutionalize and build up publication outlets and a forum for discussion. PR inquiry is an example of this. However, the different branding and new terminology leads to a status where these accomplishments do not add up to strengthen the discipline itself but rather reinforce its fragmentation and cloudy identity.

Interdisciplinarity and fragmentation into subfields are often accompanied by what I have termed as ‘imperialism’ or imperialistic behavior. By this I mean the ‘occupation’ or incorporation of new terrain (topics, concepts, ideas, methodology, philosophies) from other fields by or into the PR discipline. Although this process is quite common, especially within the field of PR, imperialism is usually discussed from the opposite angle: A very frequent topic in the 1990s was ‘marketing imperialism’, ‘the expansion of the marketing function into domains or areas traditionally regarded as public relations’ (Lauzen, 1991: 247; see also Ehling, 1989). At the corporate level, marketers were criticized for encroaching upon PR functions and occupying strategic tasks and posts. However, PR scholars usually ignore that PR is also engaging in imperialism as it moves into former marketing areas (Hutton, 1996, 2010). This process can be observed not only at the corporate level and with regard to marketing. In the last decade, the PR discipline has expanded its borders in multiple directions and has grown by incorporating theories, concepts, and sometimes whole areas of research from other disciplines. Obvious examples are the incorporation and occupation of the discussion surrounding corporate social responsibility, both academically and in practice, which had a long-standing tradition in the marketing discipline as well as the field of internal (employee) communication usually found in HR, and all aspects of corporate communication that are linked to strategy formulation and management.

Although interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinary borrowing are useful practices in themselves and ought to be encouraged in order to mitigate the fragmentation of knowledge among disciplines, they have always been a problem for less established fields. In relation to communication science, Peters (1986) criticized that mostly borrowed goods were leveraged to sustain institutional claims to disciplinary status without articulating any coherent, distinctive focus or mission for the discipline itself. Many fields of research became productive by importing fragments of various other disciplines into their own culture, but the fragments did not and could never, in the ways they were used, cohere as a self-sustaining whole that was something more than the sum of its parts. Menand (2010) described this as ‘borrowed authority’ (pos. 1226): incorporating insights from other disciplines without truly engaging with it or being even able to evaluate the others claims and ideas. Interdisciplinarity is thus ‘not something different from disciplinarity. It is the ratification of the logic of disciplinarity. In practice, it actually tends to rigidify disciplinary paradigms’ (Menand, 2010).

Craig observes similar processes in communication science. Communication scholars seized upon every idea about communication, whatever its provenance, but accomplished little with most of them – ‘entombed them, you might say, after removing them from the disciplinary environments in which they had thrived and were capable of propagating’ (Craig, 1999: 122). This led to ‘productive fragmentation’ and ‘sterile eclecticism’ (Craig, 1999: 122–123). On the other hand, communication scholars contributed few original ideas of their own. Herbst (2008) underscores the tensions in the field of communication science:

On one hand, communication is a field born of other established disciplines. We cannot shed the borrowed notions from other fields because they are intellectually critical to us. And to prove to other fields that we matter, we have had to talk their talk to some extent. Yet, communication researchers have needed to downplay some of this heritage as well, to justify a new field. These conflicting dynamics, manifest in varying ways, have led to productivity and brilliant contributions but also to confusion, self-doubt, and even unfounded arrogance at times. (p. 60)

These critical analyses certainly apply for PR research, too, maybe even more so. The frequent borrowing or adaptation of concepts and theories from neighboring disciplines is especially characteristic for PR research. Hardly any other field among the social sciences is so prone to theory importation while, on the other hand, providing no substantial theory building of its own, especially none that is of interest to other disciplines. As early as 1979, Tirone pointed toward the problem that ‘the predictable consequence of borrowing concepts and theories and dressing them in new phrases is that the significant reviews of literature of communication simply ignore the contribution of public relations’ (Tirone, 1979: 19). This is a prediction which has unfortunately come true. McKie, analyzing the isolated status of the PR discipline (McKie, 2000: 76), pointed toward the problem that PR scholarship is not esteemed by other disciplines. Findings by PR scholars which certainly are of interest to other social scientists or applied disciplines like business management do not seem to cross-disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinarity in PR means a one-way street. PR scholars adopt theoretical concepts from other disciplines but do not provide substantial theory building which is of interest to other disciplines. In a chapter with the fitting title ‘Testing symmetry in two locations: can’t live without it (in PR) and don’t notice it (outside PR)’, McKie and Munshi present results from a small literature study in which they analyzed the impact and influence of the Excellence Theory and especially the notion of symmetrical communication on adjacent fields like organization theory, political theory, or communication theory (McKie and Munshi, 2007: 40). As a rough test, they sought out any references to the Grunigian two-way symmetrical model by authors publishing in recent handbooks or collections in adjacent fields between 2002 (18 years after the publication of Managing Public Relations and 10 years after the Excellence volume − and therefore time enough for impact and influence to permeate) and 2006. Of the different handbooks and anthologies from the fields of International Relations, Political Communication, Public Affairs, and Organizational Communication they examined, only one, The New Handbook of Organizational Communication (Jablin and Putnam, 2004), held any references to Grunig and Hunt’s theory. This is not surprising as the authors of the respective articles (Sutcliffe, Cheney, and Christensen) have already published widely in the field of PR. This adds weight to the argument that even the most prominent theoretical approach in the field of PR is not relevant enough to be considered outside the borders of the community. Thus, despite the omnipresence of PR today, the PR discipline is academically isolated.

Conclusion

I suggest two conclusions that can be drawn from what has been said above. At the first glance, they seem to be mutually exclusive, but I think they go hand in hand and are equally important.

First of all, it is important to accept and consolidate the status quo. Although the PR discipline has proven quite immune to attacks from inside and outside and resisted all attempts to address and alter its disciplinary development (Cropp and Pincus, 2000: 202–203), it is still a vibrant, flourishing field of research with new topics and perspectives entering the field every day. The process of differentiation and fragmentation described above appears to be natural, inherent in the academic system, and can be considered a sign of professionalization and maturation. The emerging schools of thought are important and constitute a necessary reassessment of traditional perspectives and research foci. The inclusion of multiple perspectives from various disciplinary backgrounds enriches the discipline and ensures that PR research does not lose contact with its neighboring disciplines. Why not take the emerging, strengthening schools of thought as a chance to reestablish new, more closely defined fields of research? If nearly a century of attempts to capture the essence of PR has led to no satisfying outcomes, maybe it is time to embrace its fragmented status and invest in building up an academic infrastructure for more narrowly defined subfields. While academia still adheres to the disciplinary ideal and scholars surely want to give their students an all-encompassing picture of the field, the reality is they do not and they cannot. The fact is that whatever a course or program is named, the educator teaches what he or she understands the program to be about. Emphasis and foci result from the individual research interests and focus. PR has long grown too large and diffuse to be taught and conveyed in its totality. It is also probably necessary to accept incommensurability at some points as long as it does not turn into antagonism.

Despite this, I believe it is equally important to acknowledge the difficulties, but also the potential discussed above and accept the challenges this poses to PR research. I consider it necessary to continue the search for a disciplinary core but to stop searching for an all-encompassing, unanimous definition. I do not think that PR will be able to change its negative reputation as an academic discipline and shed light upon its cloudy identity if it continues to fail to formulate a consistent body of core ideas, concepts, and theories which is clearly distinguishable from other fields and provides a unique contribution to the social sciences. However, this disciplinary core will inevitably possess too much variety and dynamic to be pressed into a static definition. Likewise, PR research should address its problematic relationship to other disciplines and reflect on what has been discussed under the catchwords of imperialism and isolationism above. The eclecticism with which PR researchers from all schools borrow and adopt concepts from other disciplines in the end hampers PR’s scientific progress and academic reputation. Instead, it is important to build up mutual, two-way ties to other disciplines, for instance in the form of common conferences, research networks and projects, anthologies, and so on. The prerequisite, however, is that PR has something to offer in exchange. We are called upon to rethink our ‘local’ accomplishments and their importance for other disciplines and the broad public of ‘outsiders’. Important questions to ask are as follows: What knowledge do we produce that can legitimately promise to retain its force in any longer historical assessment? Which of our theoretical insights provide guidance for coping with social forces, conditions, or processes that pose enduring problems for practical social action and which are only expressive ends in themselves? (Dühring, 2012; Rule, 1997). Without some account of why the results of our research outcomes in the long run will benefit a community beyond that of our scholarly peers, we are left in a difficult position. Rightly or wrongly, society tends to reserve full scientific legitimacy for those inquiry systems which are perceived to be operating in the higher interests of knowledge and general societal welfare. The perception that PR is primarily concerned with the interests of only one segment of society will surely retard its transition to a consensus science. If the discipline truly wishes to gain wider legitimacy, it is clear that it must adopt a different set of goals and a different attitude toward its ultimate purpose. This is why each of the different schools of thought is important and has a right to exist. However, what needs to be overcome is the remaining antagonism between functionalist and non-functionalist approaches and the parallelism of the different schools of thought.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Lisa Dühring is a PhD candidate and research assistant to Professor Dr Ansgar Zerfass at the Department of Communication and Media Science, University of Leipzig, Germany. She graduated from the University of Leipzig with a dissertation on complexity in communication management. Her research has been published and presented at several international conferences. In 2011, she won the IPR Best Paper Award at the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) conference. In her PhD thesis, she is reassessing the relationship of the marketing and the public relations discipline from a historical and philosophical perspective.

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