THEORIES OF RELATIONSHIPS

Both systems theory and situational theory are considered theories of relationships. We look at
each theory here.

Systems Theory

Systems Theory Systems theory is useful in public relations because it gives us a way to think
about relationships. Generally, systems theory looks at organizations as made up of interrelated
parts, adapting and adjusting to changes in the political, economic, and social environments in
which they operate. Organizations have recognizable boundaries, within which there must be a
communication structure that guides the parts of the organization to achieve organizational
goals. The leaders of the organization create and maintain these internal structures. Grunig,
Grunig, and Dozier state that the systems perspective emphasizes the interdependence of
organizations with their environments, both internal and external to the organization. According
to the systems perspective, organizations depend on resources from their environments, such
as “raw materials, a source of employees, and clients or customers for the services or products
they produce. The environment needs the organization for its products and services.”5
Organizations with open systems use public relations people to bring back information on how
productive their relationships are with clients, customers, and other stakeholders. Organizations
with closed systems do not seek new information. The decision-makers operate on what
happened in the past or on their personal preferences. Organizations are part of a greater
environment made up of many systems. We use as an example a hypothetical
organization—United PRworks. It is depicted as an oval in the center of fi gure 3.1. Moving out
from the organization, you can see that it has an environment—the area between the large
circle and our organization. In that environment we see most of the groups we considered in
chapter 1—customers, media, community, fi nancial institutions, and government. These groups
are called stakeholders because “they and the organization have consequences on each
other”6—they create problems and opportunities for one another.

We can use systems theory not only to examine relationships with our external stakeholders but
also to look at the internal functions and stakeholders of our organizations. Organizations
structure their employees by specifi c jobs and functions. Many different departments, such as
accounting, legal, and public relations, make up the managerial function. The production
function of an organization might include skilled and unskilled employees who actually make the
product or provide the service to customers.

Situational Theory

Grunig and Repper agreed that it was a good start to use the concept of stakeholders as a way
of describing relationships.10 However, they concluded that not all people in stakeholder groups
would be equally likely to communicate with an organization. They felt that public relations
people could more effectively manage communications by identifying specific publics within
stakeholder groups (see spotlight 3.2). These publics were subgroups that were more or less
active in their communication behavior. An example of a stakeholder public would be active
voters within the broader group of all registered voters. Candidates for political offi ce focus their
communication efforts on those voters who can be counted on to go to polls on election day.
Grunig and Hunt proposed what they call a situational theory of publics to give us more specific
information about publics’ communication needs.11 Grunig and Hunt theorized that publics
range from those who actively seek and process information about an organization or an issue
of interest, to those publics who passively receive information. According to these researchers,
three variables predict when publics will seek and process information about an issue: problem
recognition, constraint recognition, and level of involvement. The key is that public are
situational. That is, as the situation, problem, opportunity, or issue changes, the publics, with
which the organization must communicate, change.

Problem Recognition

Publics facing an issue must first be aware of it and recognize its potential to affect them. For
example, parents of school-age children will be more aware of subpar school facilities than will
taxpayers without children.

Constraint Recognition

This variable describes how publics perceive obstacles that may stand in the way of a solution.
If they believe they have a real shot at influencing an issue, they will tend to seek and process
information on that issue. Think again about parents with school-age children. They have more
access to school decision-makers because they have more contact with school principals,
teachers, and administrators than do taxpayers without children.

Level of Involvement

This variable refers to how much an individual cares about an issue. Those who care a lot would
likely be active communicators on an issue. Those who care little would likely be more passive
in seeking and processing information. We anticipate that the level of involvement would be
much higher for those parents who saw fi rsthand substandard school facilities than those who
had not.

Situational theory also helps explain why some groups are active on a single issue, others are
active on many issues, and others are uniformly apathetic. The specific relationship is
determined by the type of group (active, passive) and how an organization is linked with the
issue. Public relations people can plan their communication strategies much more accurately if
they know how actively their stakeholder publics will seek information from the organization.
Situational theory keeps us focused on the kinds of information that publics want rather than the
organization’s choice of information to distribute. It also assumes that publics will pay attention
and seek out information that is in their best interests.

Social Exchange Theory

Diffusion Theory

Diffusion theory is another way to look at how people process and accept information. Diffusion
theory says that people adopt an idea only after going through the following five discrete steps
(or stages):
1. Awareness. The individual has been exposed to the idea.
2. Interest. The idea has to arouse the individual.
3. Evaluation. The individual must consider the idea as potentially useful.
4. Trial. The individual tries out the idea on others.
5. Adoption. This represents the final acceptance of the idea after having successfully passed
through the four earlier stages.

This theory is useful for explaining how we reach important decisions—not acts of impulse. We
know from testing this model that mass media are important in the first two stages; personal
contacts are important for the next two.

Social Learning Theory

So far, we have discussed theories that consider the receiver to be actively involved in
information processing. Social learning theory attempts to explain and predict behavior by
looking at another way receivers process information. This theory helps us understand that
personal example and mass media can be important to receivers acquiring new behaviors.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

It’s important to remember that not everyone regularly reads the daily paper, watches the 6
o’clock news, checks a Facebook page, or listens to talk radio. Papers, TV, and radio are called
mass media, but each person chooses how and when to use mass media. Similarly, you
shouldn’t presume that employees uniformly read internal publications or view company videos.
Even a note in every pay envelope could go straight into the wastebasket. How do we explain
this behavior? Uses and gratifications theory asserts that people are active users of media
and select how they will use it.20 Researchers have found that people use media in the
following ways: As entertainment To scan the environment for items important to them
personally As a diversion As a substitute for personal relationships As a check on personal
identity and values.
Framing Theory

Mass media scholars such as Entman21 suggest that the messages and information sent to
audiences carry with them a preexisting set of meanings or frames. Entman defi ned framing as
an active process of drawing out dominant themes from content. These meanings come from
the cultural and social groupings in which we live and work. For example, the U.S. culture
includes a deeply held belief in individualism. This belief shows up in mass media stories all the
time—stories of individuals overcoming diffi culties or excelling at sports, for example. We read
these stories framed by “individual behavior” so often that “individual effort” has shaped the way
that we communicate about our society. A preexisting interpretation or frame that audiences
instantly know and accept is very useful to communicators. Common devices used in media and
public relations stories are “catchphrases, depictions, metaphors, exemplars, and visual
images.”22 Think how easily we can communicate a meaning by simply stating “War on Terror,”
or “Fourth of July.” As public relations advocates for organizations, we seek to get our frames
adopted by our publics. In fact, theorists suggest that if we want to communicate successfully
with one another, we are bound to use common frames as a necessary condition to being
understood.

Agenda Setting Theory

Bernard Cohen noted that although the media can’t tell people what to think, they are stunningly
successful in telling them what to think about.23 This was an interesting idea but not widely
accepted in 1963. About a decade later journalism scholars Maxwell McCombs and Donald
Shaw demonstrated that Cohen was onto something.24 During the 1968 presidential campaign,
they followed public opinion and media reports of the key issues in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
They found that a strong positive relationship existed between what voters said was important
and what media were reporting as important. Because the issues were evident in the media
several weeks before they appeared in public opinion, McCombs and Shaw were reasonably
sure that the media set the agenda and not the reverse. Even more amazing was that voters
were more likely to agree with the composite media agenda than with the position of the
candidate they claimed they favored. McCombs and Shaw do not say that simple agreement
with the media changed voting behavior. They simply demonstrated that the media can set the
agenda for what we talk and think about. This talking and thinking can lead to information
seeking and processing, following the situational theory of publics, but only if other conditions
are met. That’s an important point for public relations practitioners to remember when their
organization is taking a beating in the press. People may be talking about you, but it doesn’t
necessarily mean that strong opinions about your organization will be changed. You will need to
do some research before you can draw such a conclusion. Public relations practitioners attempt
to infl uence the media agenda by providing news items for public consumption. To accomplish
this, they identify subjects that editors and news directors consider news, localize their
messages, and help media representatives cover the story. (See spotlight 3.3 for a summary of
the public relations theories.)
Elaboration likelihood model

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a model of information processing and persuasion.
Hence, the model attempts to understand how people process information; i.e. the term
‘Elaboration’ refers to the extent to which people think about issue-relevant arguments
contained in persuasive messages.
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