I think the important points from this weeks reading were the clear understanding of what ethics entails in regards public relations and its relevance to the practice of public relations, the four major roles in PR that have ethical implications and the ethical challenges for practitioners and the ethical framework by which PR practitioners work.
Ethics...
My understanding of ethics was made clearer when i read "Ethics refers to the personal values which underpin the behaviour and moral choices made by an individual in response to a specific situation" (Johnston & Zawawi: 2000)
In being able to understand simply what ethics means it is easy to relate this definition to the owrkings of public relations.
The role of ethics in PR
In today's context the purpose of PR is to build strong relationships with organisations and different publics to create a pleasant environment in which varying businesses, organisations etc can operate. This conducive environment can only be fully up and running with the help of law and ethics.
"As ethics is important to organisational excellence on the one hand and to public relations on the other, practitioners should be at the forefront of the movement for ethical organisational conduct." (Johnston & Zawawi: 2000)
This connection between both ethics and PR is vital to a well-oiled PR practice. By upholding moral and ethical ideals PR practitioners build a positive image and create a respected organisation throughout the many publics.
The four major roles
Counsellor
Counselling involves the unbiased observation and analysis of a client's or employer's situation and the strategic solutions to management.
Within PR, the PR counsellor needs to be open minded on a whole industry rather than on their own organisation and to be able to have good judgement as regards various publics' opinions on organisational activities.
Advocate
Advocacy is the act of publicly representing an individual, institution or ogranisation with the idea of persuading targeted audiences to look favourably upon these entities. With this definition it is easy to say that the main objective of advocacy is persuasiveness. It is this mentality that has stuck with the practice of public relations. Public relations practitioners are advocates for their profession and the accounts they represent.
Corporate Monitor
PR practitioners need to act as a corporate monitor for their organisation. "This means they need to interpret and guide an organisation's policies, programs and actions to match public expectations." (Johnston & Zawawi: 2000)
Corporate Conscience
With this role a PR practitioner serves as the moral keeper for an organisation's communications and actions. The PR sector controls the bad and good news to employees and the community.
Ethical Challenges
These challenges can be broken down into three aspects:
-Interpersonal
-Organisational
-Stakeholder
Most ethical dilemmas stem from social responsibility issues or from relationship issues. These are usually the result of a poor relationship, inadequate corporate standards and conflicting obligations.
Ethical Framework
"The basic ethical framework that practitioners need to follow is to observe their professional association's code and the code of conduct of their workplace." (Johnston & Zawawi: 2000).
4 comments:
I believe you have a good summary here however, I do not agree with your simplification about PR in the contemporary world. If anything this course has opened my eyes to the varied and constantly changing nature of PR. Whilst nurturing relationships is important it is only one small facet of the PR profession. Also I believe it is important to look at ethics within globalisation. In a world where business is run cross-border and there are numerous cultures intertwining it is difficult to have not just ethical boundaries but legal ones also.
You have provided a very thorough account of the ethics component of the readings this week. We seem to share some similar insight with the topic, in particular the importance for public relations practitioners to have strong ethical conduct because it contributes to the positive image of a respected organisation. Similarly, we both recognised the significance of the four roles of a public relations practitioner (counsellor, advocate, corporate monitor and corporate conscience) that entail ethical components. It is comforting to know that a fellow student values these as much as I do. Finally, your point about the prominence of ethical codes of conduct and the codes of conduct of a professional association is very important. From the readings I truly appreciate the role that these codes have for public relations and to a large extent how they direct the behaviour and professional actions of public relations practitioners. In one sense however I blogs are different in that you did not comment on the legal framework covered in chapter four of the readings. It may be because of my law degree, but I found the information contained in this section very significant because it reinforced the need to have legal knowledge in the field of public relations. All in all, well done Annika. You clearly have a strong grasp of the ethical subject matter from this weeks readings.
I think from reading your other blogs that you understand the everchanging nature of Pr you were just using relationship building as an example in relation to ethics. I focused more on the chapter four reading but by reading youre blog I understand chapter five and ethics a lot better you give great insight and show that you understand the ethics topic very well.
Your blog is coming along really well. Good summaries with some commentary that indicates you are starting to think about the issues raised in the readings.
Melanie
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