Organization and Key Public Relationships: Testing the Influence of the Relationship Dimensions in a Business to Business Context

Abstract

The notion of public relations as the “function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends” (Cutlip, Center, 8c Broom, 1994, p .6) provides a management framework for public relations scholarship and practice. Within the relationship management paradigm, communication is seen as the vehicle that can be used to link organizations and their key publics (Grunig 8c Huang, chap. 2, this volume). Moreover, the distinction between public relations as a m an­ agement function and public relations as a communication function can be seen in Thom sen’s (1997) definition of public relations as “the building of relationships and the management of communication be­ tween organizations and individuals” (p. 12). Thus, many scholars are moving toward the notion that the prim ary purpose of public relations is to manage the relationship between an organization and the organi­ zation’s key publics. Communication, then, becomes is a vehicle that organizations should use to initiate, develop, maintain, and repair mutually productive organization-public relationships.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.