The driving force behind the International Public Relations
Research Conference, now in its eighth year, is to sit and discuss
research pertaining solely to public relations.
More than 70 papers describing research, theory and case studies
were presented in Miami March 11-13. So what are some of the
important takeaways from this year's conference for PR
professionals? Here's a sampling of some of the best practices:
The Transparent CEO Letter
University of Miami doctoral student Marcia Watson
compared CEO annual-report letters before and after the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act from a random sampling of 50 large companies.
Prior research has shown that the executive letter is the most
widely read section of a corporate annual report, and improving
readability seems an obvious way to improve disclosure and investor
confidence. Watson also found that the average CEO letter had
gotten longer. The overall average for 50 letters wasn't much
better. One more data point that might get a CEO's attention: For
48% of the letters, there was a change in the signer.
What Value CSR?
A study by University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Sandra
Duhé examined corporate reputation and social responsibility
from an insider's point of view. Looking at 21 years of data from
Fortune's "Most Admired Companies" series, it's clear that firms
perceived as being financially sound with high-quality management
do substantially better over time on a variety of financial
measures, including earnings per share and market cap. However, a
company's reputation for social responsibility also is a
significant predictor of financial performance.
Blogs Can Be Measured
Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners (see p.1)
and blogger Andy Lark examined how to measure blogs and other
consumer-generated media along with what to do with the data. The
paper argued that it is possible to follow best practices in
measuring blog outcomes (financial or relational), outtakes
(content analysis of the messages) and outputs (activity or
tracking of visitors). But the authors caution that the real
challenge with measuring blogs is not how to do it, but rather that
the nature of blogs may render management impossible.
Sorting Stakeholders
Brigham Young University professors Brad Rawlins and
Kenneth Plowman along with graduate student Elizabeth Stohlton
proposed a stakeholder-prioritization model based on combining four
previous methodologies. The resulting model allows an organization
to differentiate clearly among stakeholders by examining such
factors as their power, legitimacy and urgency on any given issue.
Most critical are those who can actually damage or dominate the
organization and its reputation, particularly the "definitive"
stakeholders who can truly define an issue and the organization's
response.
Death Of The Grapevine
University of South Alabama's Don Wright examined changes
in employee communication due to interactive technologies that
allow them to take control of both media and message selection.
Wright conducted a decade-long trend study based on interviews with
plant employees of a large, international manufacturing company.
Internal e-mail and the company's Internet and intranet Web sites
have now become the most frequently used as well as the most
credible sources of company information. What's more, even rumors
and the grapevine have declined sharply in usage and believability
when compared to electronic internal media - a statistic that
shouldn't get short shrift from PR managers struggling to get their
arms around all the information that's now flying at them.
(For more information on the IPRRC, previous papers or
abstracts, please go to http://www.instituteforpr.com.
The complete proceedings will be posted later this spring.)
Contact: Don W. Stacks, professor and director of the
advertising & public relations program at the University of
Miami's School of Communication, serves as director of the IPRRC.
He also chairs the Institute's Industry Affairs Committee. He can
be reached at 305.284.2358 or at [email protected].