Defining the Contours of Contention: Facets of Intractability in Social Issues Management

ABSTRACT

The contentious issues endemic to many cases within social issues management practice share a common feature: intractability, or the perception of being unsolvable. This study takes steps toward clarifying and defining the concept of intractability as part of strategic communication engagement with contentious challenges, asking how practitioners make meaning of ostensibly intractable issues. Data from in-depth interviews with 41 practitioners provide a detailed examination of the engagement challenges with such issues. This research extends social issues management theory by defining four facets of intractability through which contentious issues can be understood and categorized: degree of intractability, issue type (natural or situationally driven), issue locus (internal or external), and practitioner identity involvement.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

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

Notes

¹ Scholars and practitioners have used both the singular and plural throughout the concept’s history, but the majority of recent scholarship tends to utilize the plural form, which I follow in this paper.

² IRB Reference #: 1,379,414–1.

³ This approach follows recommendations from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), as it strongly recommends five years of experience for practitioners prior to taking the APR exam (Sha, 2011), as practitioners with more experience are more likely to enact a managerial role (Dozier & Broom, 1995).

⁴ Rev (http://www.rev.com) is a professional transcription service widely used by social scientists.

⁵ SeaWorld was not mentioned as a direct employer or current client of a participant.

⁶ The problematic “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy was in effect from 1994–2011 for all branches the U.S. military, instructing officers not to ask about the sexual orientation of servicemembers, but preserving punishments, including discharge from the armed forces for those whose sexual identity came to light (Burks, 2011). Historically, the military did not allow LGBTQ servicemembers as part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. DADT was put in place as a compromise due to intractability between military leadership who were against a policy change to remove heteronormative requirements from military service and activists (both inside and outside of the military) pushing for a repeal to the discriminatory status quo. It still led to thousands of LGBTQ servicemembers being removed from service (see also Bailey, 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.