Editor’s Essay: Public Relations, the Public Good, and Prominent Pathways and Principles

Communicating for the public good is nothing new for public relations scholars and practitioners. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), perhaps the best-known iteration of that concept, has been a recognized piece of business and communication literature since at least the 1950s (Carroll, 1999), with proto-CSR activities dating back a century earlier, if not further (Browning, 2018; Lamme, 2014; Myers, 2020). More recently, public relations scholarship has extended that focus to include corporate social advocacy (CSA), as well as related constructs such as corporate political advocacy (CPA), CEO activism, corporate responsibility to race (CRR), and several others (Browning et al., 2020; Ciszek & Logan, 2018; Dodd & Supa, 2014; Ji & Hong, 2023; Logan, 2021; Overton et al., 2021). While not every article in this issue of the Journal of Public Relations Research speaks directly to prosocial communication, we feel each contributes to advancing theory and practice related to these core constructs of public relations – especially insofar as they relate to organization-public relationships (OPRs) and dialogic communication.

The lead article by Dr. Jordan Morehouse examines an oft-understudied sector in our field: communication by faith-based organizations. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with communication professionals working for U.S. mega-churches, she focuses on relationship management strategies to extend our knowledge of OPR. Morehouse notes that OPR studies are often limited in two crucial ways. First, they tend to focus on singular, dyadic relationships without examining how broader networks of relationships interact with and influence one another. Second, OPR studies typically treat the organization as the focal point, thus limiting our knowledge of how relationships the organization is either (a) uninvolved in or (b) derives little direct benefit from can still shape its operations.

The piece culminates with the introduction of the Devotional-Promotional Relational Engagement Model, which articulates an expanded theoretical approach to relationship management. The DPREM attempts to break out simpler organization-public dyads by conceptualizing the organization not merely as a singular entity but as something that comprises overlapping publics such as employees and leaders. At the same time, the model accounts for relationships with primary stakeholder groups and the broader community, as well as intra-stakeholder relationships. Moreover, rather than the organization serving as the focal point, relationships center on some object of devotion, which can be “a living or unliving entity, person, brand or being that is central to the relationship between the organization and stakeholders, and highly valued by both entities” (P. 182). While rooted in faith-based communication, Morehouse stresses the DPREM “could be studied with a variety of organizations and publics, as long as a unifying issue or entity that can serve as an object of devotion is present” (p. 200).

As we hinted at in our introductory paragraph, we see great promise for this model in a wide array of settings, particularly in studies related to corporate responsibility, advocacy, and activism. In past works, scholars have often relied on social identity theory, customer-company identification, cause involvement, and other related paradigms and constructs to demonstrate shared connections between organizations and publics around a given issue (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Zaichkowsky, 1986). Conceptualizing causes within the DPREM as objects of devotion offers an innovative organizing principle as well as a means to examine complex relational webs across these and several other subdisciplines of public relations.

Much like Morehouse’s piece, the second article in this issue by Drs. Yi Grace Ji and Weiting Tao also builds upon elements of OPR. However, they focus their efforts on internal communication, specifically the importance of leadership as manifested through CEO activism. Ji and Tao argue that, while CEOs have fiduciary responsibilities to their organizations, they also wield immense sociopolitical influence – particularly as individuals place less trust in other established institutions to address social issues. As such, CEOs are positioned to exercise moral leadership, which they feel an ethic of care best embodies.

In JPRR’s previous issue, Plaisance et al. (2024) contended that public relations exemplars often exhibit qualities consistent with a care ethics worldview. As Ji and Tao elaborate, an ethic of care acknowledges an interdependence and relational connectedness amongst individuals and groups, which is fostered through attentiveness and responsiveness to the needs of others. Unlike many other ethical frameworks, care ethics embraces the role of emotions – most notably sympathy, empathy, and compassion – in aiding moral decision-making, given these emotions reinforce a sense of interdependence. Within this framework, Ji and Tao propose a care-oriented leadership communication approach to CEO activism founded on attentiveness, responsiveness, and emotional expression.

The results of their survey research show that, when CEO activists engage in care-oriented leadership communication, employees experience heightened moral emotions, which lead them to perceive their organization as more virtuous and to engage in issue advocacy themselves. Ji and Tao conclude that, unfortunately, “CEO activism studies have been couched within a functionalist or instrumentalist worldview, overlooking the critical mobilizing potential of CEO activism in promoting positive social changes” (p. 225). In short, care-oriented leadership communication enables CEOs to engender employee support for what ultimately becomes a shared goal, which could perhaps serve as an object of devotion in its own right.

In either case, Ji and Tao note that their approach connects to a multitude of leadership styles, including authentic leadership, which is grounded in genuine connections. Fittingly, authenticity emerges as a crucial element in this issue’s third piece by Drs. Joon Soo Lim and Hua Jiang. Their work examines several facets of CSR communication, particularly the interconnections amongst the key constructs of authenticity, dialogue, trust, community, and loyalty.

Lim and Jiang stress that CSR communication has traditionally been one-way promotional, though dialogic processes that include marginalized or less powerful voices are rising. Such approaches rest in three tenets of dialogic communication: (1) grounding, which seeks to develop shared understanding; (2) equality, which strives for inclusivity, diversity, and democratic exchanges; and (3) responsiveness, which encompasses attention and empathy.

As was the case in the previous two articles, the authors examine not simply dyadic relationships, but more complex networks of interconnection. Lim and Jiang focus on the role of dialogic CSR communication in generating deeper engagement among online brand communities, which allow for a variety of relationships among consumers, brands, products, employees, and so on. The results of their study suggest that dialogic CSR communication boosts perceptions of authenticity, which then increases online brand community engagement, fostering trust in the company and loyalty to its brands. Beyond this significant finding, Lim and Jiang also argue that dialogue is necessary to achieve authenticity.

The importance of dialogue shines through yet again in our final piece in this issue by Ms. Katie Kim and Drs. Hao Xu and Hyejoon Rim. Continuing the prosocial communication theme, their article notes that employees place high expectations upon their employers to impact society positively, and that bottom-up CSR initiatives represent one means of achieving that impact. Bottom-up CSR occurs when management seeks employee participation in developing CSR initiatives, a process that Kim, Xu, and Rim stress is rooted in dialogic principles.

However, rather than focusing on positive outcomes among internal publics, they argue that such practices signal important organizational values and elements of company culture to external audiences. More specifically, Kim, Xu, and Rim suggest that “the interaction between the company and one stakeholder group has the effect of positive or negative spillover to other stakeholder groups” (p. 263), a supposition which their experimental findings bear out.

Across the four papers published in this issue, a variety of common themes emerged. Each focuses on processes of relationship management and looks beyond simple dyads to more complex connections. Each stresses the interdependence between organizations and various stakeholders and argues that responsiveness, attentiveness, authenticity, care, and dialogue provide valuable pathways for preserving relationships and exchanges. Finally, across these pieces we see that, while a push and pull exists in balancing normative and instrumental processes and outcomes, both elements can and do co-exist, and public relations plays an important role in advancing and communicating the value of each.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).