Communicating on Behalf of Global Civil Society: Management and Coordination of Public Relations in International Nongovernmental Organizations

Abstract

In the last few decades, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become influential actors in creating awareness of international social, political, environmental and economic causes in global society. However, NGOs have not received much attention in research on international public relations. This study contributes to filling that gap by analyzing how NGOs manage public relations according to the generic principles of excellence in global public relations and how they coordinate strategic communication between headquarters and local units. An online survey of 440 practitioners revealed 2 excellence clusters and 4 clusters of organizations with differing degrees of centralization. Excellent NGOs were found to assign more resources to public relations and more frequently considered cultural context in their communication programs. Thus, the study gives significant insights into international public relations practice in the global civil society sector and reveals further need for modifying and extending public relations theory in that respect.

Notes

Note. All percentages except totals are within-cluster proportions.

^a The reduced number of cases is due to missing values.

Note. Rotation method: oblimin direct; total variance explained = 67%; KMO = .94; Bartlett's test: χ²(210) = 6886; p < .01; factor loadings below .2 were suppressed.

Note. All percentages except totals are within-cluster proportions. In each cell, the two categories with highest within-cluster proportions are displayed.

^a The reduced number of cases is due to missing values.

Note. χ²(3) = 11.4.

p < .01.