Is Public Relations an ethical profession?
Introduction
Public Relations has been defined in many ways over time and across industries. The Institute of Public Relations in USA defines it as the deliberate, planned and sustained effort that goes into maintaining a mutual understanding between an organization and its public consumer. Edward L. Bernays defined it as the method of information persuasion and a method employed to develop public support for a cause, an activity, a movement or even an organization . Herbert M. Baus proposed yet another definition that Public Relations was a combination of many subjects including philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology, journalism, language and communication, subjects which are aimed to develop systems of human understanding. Rex Harlow, who reviewed over 400 definitions of the subject, proposed a definition that is oft used – it as a management function that helped established mutual lines of communication and cooperation between an organization and its public . It is an essential part of the operations of an organization and influences marketing and sales by influencing public’s perception of the organization. In the light of several events over the recent decades including major corporate scandals where PR was used to hide serious problems, however, the public’s interpretation of PR has changed from conveyer of truth to manipulator of people’s minds . “Spin” has become a watchword in PR – the ability to weave stories that can take the public’s eye away from the problem to focus on extraneous issues. PR professionals are often unable to answer questions about what or what isn’t ethical. Therefore the question arises, if PR can be used to manipulate and influence people’s views, is public relations an ethical profession? This paper will attempt to answer this question through the critical examination of some of the oft-applied theories of ethical models in PR and through the application of one of the models to the Volkswagen emissions rigging scandal.
PR and ethics
Ethics involves the study of what constitutes right and wrong through the application of certain criteria to determine if something is right or wrong. While the moral viewpoint is that an action is ethical if it results in the greater good, it is not something that can be applied universally . Businesses, for instance operate for their profits, and rather than choosing between right and wrong, they often have to choose between obligations – for example, increasing production versus obeying environmental laws. In this case both obligations are right and yet they may be mutually exclusive which is detrimental to ethics at some level. Within companies ethics is generally defined by management by their behavior and the code of ethics that are required by the employees to follow. These ethical codes must be in written form so as to ensure that ethics is considered not just as a legal issue but as part of the behavior of the organization.
Public Relations is part of the organization and therefore should be subject to ethical standards of the organization itself. However the role of public relations has veered more towards methods of persuasion that resort to propaganda and even lying by omission. Fast food companies are a case in point. Their target demographic is children through marketing techniques like the addition of a toy to a meal that attract more and more children to these products . However nutritional information is not presented to the children who are the subject of the marketing technique. It is left to the parents, who are the spending public, to find out the nutritional values by contacting the company’s PR office or by reading the information that is published on the product. This is an example of public relations favoring the company rather than the public. Doesn’t Public Relations, then, include the moral obligation of informing the public of the details and truth about the products and services? When it comes to the ethical question in public relations it appears that the public relations agency of a company can remain true to the ethics of the business while remaining ambiguous about moral ethics. This is the essential dilemma of public relations - should PR be loyal to the organization or to the organization and all its stakeholders ? There is also the question of how open can public relations agents be? They are not obliged to reveal all of an organization’s workings, yet they may not be fulfilling their obligation to the public if they are withholding information. A public relations professional experiences ethical problems as an individual making a choice about their professional and personal behavior. A PR professional also will experience ethical issues as advocates for the overall organizational strategies. However, there has been an attempt over the years to codify the ethical obligations of public relations practices and several models have been applied to test the ethicality of a public relations practice with varying levels of success. Some of the commonly used codes are discussed here.
Ethical models
Enlightened Self Interest: In this model, the interests of both the organization and the PR professional are served best when both behave ethically . While it has been likened to utilitarian reasoning, the important distinction between the two approaches is that in the enlightened self-interest model the institutional benefits are the priority. The benefits for society and the other stakeholders is incidental to the decision making process. They are not the fundamental concern. This means that a strategic decision made by an organization would be presented for public consumption using any means (such as naming them as corporate social responsibility) that make such consumption viable even if the implementation of strategy may not benefit the public at all. This then is the inherent weakness of the model since applying this model does not clarify the ethical dilemma of the PR professional. The public remains at risk of receiving propaganda.
Social Responsibility: In this model, that was proposed by Sherry Baker as a possible baseline for professional persuasive communication , it is recognized that the corporate has an obligation towards the society within which it operates and that all stakeholders are inter dependent. This means that a corporate must espouse positive contribution to the society and the public. For the public relations professional it means that they should support and propagate strategies that impact the public in a beneficial manner. A similar model is the communitarian model which suggests that the ethical veracity of a corporation and its PR must be judged by its contributions to promote social values . However social responsibility models also display certain weaknesses when they need to be applied as criteria for judging the ethics of a PR practice. Social responsibility model focuses on the obligations of the institutions rather than the ethical obligations of the PR professional. If a company is held to be socially responsible and therefore ethical, then does its PR practice also become automatically ethical? In essence, this model still does not answer the question of loyalty.
The Two-way symmetric model: This theory of public relations ethics rests on the principal of mutuality. Both the institution and the public have to interact closely in order to enable institutions to develop behavior that is beneficial to society . However this model assumes that public will have equal power in understanding and implementing institutional policy. If an organization were to provide excessive access to its operational strategy to the public, it would impact the pace of the operations. Waiting for public approval for every policy would mean delays that lead to losses for organizations whether in terms of money or in terms of time and opportunities. This model provides a forum for dialog and discussion and as long as the rules for the dialog are ethical, the outcomes can be ethical. However, the rules would generally be made by the organization (or even in case it is made by the public) which means that the ethical outcome is governed by one party which in turn does not lead to creation of an unbiased ethical measure. Also in this model the public relations professional is expected to go to all lengths to counsel their clients or employers to address the needs of the public. This may be inherently conflicting since the PR professional has the obligation to defend the interests of the institution as well .
Professional Responsibility Theory: This theory proposed by Fitzpatrick & Gauthier (2001) is based on the need to reconcile the conflicts inherent in the role of the public relations professional. PR professionals need to be guided within the values and operational requirements of their job. The foundation of this theory is that the public relations professional must, as a professional, recognize their primary obligation is to the organization. They must also however represent the public conscience (as opposed to a social conscience) when guiding the organizations in matters of policy that impact the public. A successful measure of ethical conduct can be derived if the professional is able to minimize harm and promote benefits at minimum human cost, if the professional ensures that all humans are treated with respect, and that benefits and burdens of an institutional policy are distributed equally. A study by Neill & Drumwright (2012) involving participants from Australia and the US found that PR professionals who have provided ethics counsel to their organizations are generally aware of their duty towards the organization as well duty towards the public . The study also found that PR professionals often find themselves in positions to give criticism to people who outranked them and to persuade those who agreed with them. In fact, unlike public perspective, PR professionals are not naturally inclined to supporting blatantly unethical policy. All professionals recognized the need to retain their credibility as people who are able to say no to unethical proposals that outright harm or misinform the public. They also actively engaged with the legal counsels and key decision makers of the organizations in order to ensure that they were able to prevent PR disasters as opposed to recover from them. This shows that when compared to other theories, the professional responsibility theory is a better fit for measuring the ethicality of the PR professional or the PR practice in general since it measures the outcome in terms of the professional’s and the practice’s commitment to ethical behavior. Therefore, it is expected that applying this theory to a case of ethical debate will provide a concrete measure of the ethics of the PR profession.
The Volkswagen Case
Conservation and sustainable environment protection practices have become a major concern in most countries. One of the biggest contributors to environmental pollution is the emissions from automotive traffic which has grown steadily over the decades. The Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA has continuously tightened the regulations for light vehicles emissions in the USA especially cars manufactured after 2004. This has led to hardship for automakers who are trying to make headway into the US market . Companies like Volkswagen, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda and Nissan appeared to give up their strategies in that market. However in 2015 it was revealed that Volkswagen had developed TDI diesel engine vehicles that could cheat emission testing in lab scenarios. This had been done by adding a software program that determined if the car was being tested for emission levels and then adjusted engine settings so that the readings would be within the acceptable emission levels. The company had first on boarded the program in their 2008 vehicles and the first models with this additional feature were on the road in 2009 . While it was initially reported that 9 managers had been involved, by November 2015 it was announced that a great number of employees were involved in the rigging. It also came to light that red flags had been raised by engineers about the rigging software and supervisors had chosen to ignore them. One reason for the rigging was Volkswagen’s need to enter the diesel engine segment of the US automotive market . This indicates the case of company strategy that overlooked public responsibility. The other reason was the autocratic culture and the incentive system that rewarded both individual and teams on the basis of productivity and sales. Both these factors ensured that employees rarely present dissenting opinions. The financial impact of the scandal was significant with sales dropping and the company resorting to handing out financial packages for existing customers. Employee bonuses and share prices were affected. The emissions rigging process had led to the scrutiny of the company’s operations by several governments and opened the possibility of rigging by other manufacturers as well. Above all this is the increased threat to the health of people. If vehicles are able to bypass emission tests, then pollution levels will continue to rise and continue to adversely impact public health.
Based on the Neill & Drumwright study, it shall be assumed that the PR professionals at Volkswagen were aware of their obligations to both the company and the public. The first tenet of the professional responsibility theory is that a PR professional must support a policy that minimizes harm and avails benefit at the least cost and. In the case of Volkswagen, there was a clear choice to adopt a policy that harms the public while creating benefits only for the company and its employees. While it may be argued that the company’s culture does not allow for dissent, it is unclear why management would take a risk of this scale without having weighed the ethical council of the PR representatives. While literature is scarce on the PR counsel on the issue, given that PR professionals were involved in the post scandal crisis management, it may be assumed that PR professionals chose not to push for suppression of the strategy or were unsuccessful in persuading the organization. The second tenet to respect all persons also does not pass muster. Finally, as for the concept of distributive justice, the Volkswagen rigging strategy has resulted in more harm to the public than benefits and has exposed the automotive industry practices in general to governments’ scrutiny while adversely impacting the company as well. In this case, as well as others in recent history, PR has again become a firefighting tool, rather than a fire prevention tool.
Therefore the essential question of the ethicality of the Public Relations profession is not satisfactorily answered. PR professionals continue to choose or are forced to choose their obligations to their organization over their obligation to the public. In any case, the underlying dilemma of loyalties is not satisfactorily addressed even applying the professional responsibility theory. In conclusion, it may be said that the very nature of the public relations profession, with its intrinsic ties to the organization may limit its ethical performance. This opens the possibility that the ethical measure of the PR profession may increase if it can become fully independent of the organization’s policies and act solely as an adviser.
References
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