Globalization and public relations: An overview looking into the future, Sriramesh

I read with pleasure Sriramesh's essay and I am going to make some notes on the most interesting points  for me . The cultural aspect of PR is one of my favourite topics, that is why I am planning to use Sriramesh's article in my future researches.

''Rapid globalization has created new opportunities and challenges as well to PR practice. The cultural aspect in PR could be defined with a view of the future.

In the past decade big number of PR scholars has contended that PR like practice had been in existence even in pre-biblical times. Other example is that in the Middle East PR can be traced back at least 4000 years. German scholars have traced the roots of ‘modern’ PR in Germany to the mid-nineteenth century.

            The early days of theorising PR was focused around two major streams of scholarship:

·         PR at the organizational level

·         Individual practitioner roles

The body of knowledge of PR had been largely ethnocentric until the middle 1990. After that scholarships started to study the practice in other countries.

Globalization is the reason of moving the PR body of knowledge toward greater cultural relativism.

The essay gives an overview of PR in the global sphere and provides a definition for PR.

Defining PR and linking it with globalization:

‘’PR is strategic communication that different types of organizations use for establishing and maintaining symbiotic relationships with relevant publics many of whom are increasingly becoming culturally divers’’   

There are three principal factors that put globalization on a different scale:

1.      The elimination of trade barriers among nations of the world

-          World trade organization – cultural diversity – consumers, employees, activists, members of media

2.      Media and Communications – need for global public relations

3.      The human race needs to come together and address common problems like – pollution, terrorism, etc

Moving PR scholarship to the ‘International arena’

Ø  The Excellence project - $ 400.000 research study

Ø  The growth of non-US graduate students studying PR in the US.

Thanks to the project was edited volum by Grunig and in it there was proposed culture as a variable that affects PR practice.

Internationalising the body of knowledge of PR:

Framework from the Excellence project:

1.       10 generic principles of PR – can be adopted by PR in different cultures

2.       Environment for PR

Ø  Culture

Ø  Media

Ø  Political system

Ø  Level of development

Ø  Activism


Future

The books used for teaching PR around the world came from US and UK. The need of global examples is very big.  The books from US and UK should contain more ‘global’ cases.

There are some scholarship in countries such as France, Germany, Brazil their studies has been limited by language. English language continue to be the ‘universal’ language of choice.