A Reflective Essay on What Public Relations Is: Its Role in Strategic Communication Management in Organizations and MNCs

Abstract

This article has the objective of clarifying what public relations is all about in connection with how large corporate entities or MNCs manage or handle strategic communications. In the past, we have seen the demise of large Multinational Corporations due to scandals and failure to handle crisis such as oil spills, handling clients’ money during global financial crunch such as the sub-prime mortgage financial crisis of 2007-2009. That crisis saw the demise of huge corporations such as Lehman Brothers, Anderson & Anderson, Freddie Mae, and Freddie May, among others. Failure to handle various publics and interest groups strategically can spell the doom of a company or a nation. This article took an exploratory approach since the authors wrote the article for a master’s course and not as professionals in public relations. The methodology adopted was that of desk research based on secondary data sources accessed from books, the internet and journal articles. The author also did a lot of observations and reflection to come up with the insights expressed in this paper. The paper was also approached from a multidisciplinary point of view to give it breadth. The findings and conclusions are that in modern times, corporations and nations should utilize the speed, flexibility, transparency, interactivity, global reach, and easy accessibility of Social Media to engage various publics in a crisis in order to gain credibility and show their human and humane qualities of empathy, humility and readiness for fruitful discourse and dialogue. However, CEOs and political leaders such as Presidents of countries are judged by the way they conduct themselves on Social Media such as Facebook or Twitter, and their chances of re-election hinge on their tweets and mis-tweets. On Social Media, users are always called upon to observe netiquette or urbane and civilized behavior.