Before, two or three decade public relations had been used as a diplomacy of the organizations to gain short term goals along with diversified advertising and marketing strategies, which is now become one of the essential ingredients to run the functions or operations of an organization smoothly. Public relations is often confused with advertising and publicity, however, it is an entirely different function of the organization (Reilly, 1981), because advertisement is totally a marketing function and by contrast public relation is a purely a management function. According to Reilly (1981), often peoples conflict the term public relations with the publicity, which is nothing but just a state of confusion. No doubt, that the public relations and the media has severe amount of similarity but by nature they both are separate things. The basic role of the public relations professional is to develop and provide long relationships with key publics by presenting the most favorable, but still completely honest, information, with the peoples. On the contrary, the role of the press is to report what is going on to help keep the public informed. Both of these goals of public relations and the press should be ethical to society (Lordan, 2005).
Public relations have come in a numerous forms which affect almost every one who comes and contact with it. All of uses the essence of public relation in our daily life. Organization has a very good idea, that how they add value if they hold the public relation quandary in their hand pertinently to influence the public with public relations campaigns and tools.
The spirit of public relations got a high level of importance from the organizational view point as it provides a vital link between the organizations and the general public. We are well cognizant with the fact that the core mantra of the public relation is to create good communications and relations with the end users of your product or services. The role of a public relation practitioner can not be denied in this regards because he/she plays an important role in reating and developing sustainable communications channels between the organization and its attached public.
According to Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the public relations practitioner performs several activities like programming, writing, relationship building and editing press releases, speeches, and newsletters, organizing special events and engaging in Research and evaluation process as well (Lovell, 1982). Some school of thoughts consensus that, a pubic relation practitioner perform and have to perform several key roles for the sake of the organization, and this is the main cause that, why the public relation practitioner are in stable touch with those publics that have an effect on an organization’s activities. The public relations practitioner is the face of a company, by which the general public recognize the company and therefore they should be ethical, truthful and creative with their duties and responsibilities (Johnston & Zawawi, 2000).
The basic duties include proper arrangement and conduct different meetings with the existing as well as the new clients and investors. Generally the public relations practitioners have an ample idea to communicate with people either inside or outside the organization. According to Newsom et al, (2000) public relations practitioners must be creative in solving problems in the organization and also in relation to the public because it reflects their credibility before the customers. To solve a person’s problem is really an uphill task, and the public relation practitioners envisaged these problems recurrently but their confidence level and extroversion doesn’t laid them down and they always ready to help the public by accumulating and compiling a large amount of data, which is really not a piece of cake (Newsom, Turk & Kruckeberg, 2000). Bernays (1986) states the same, as per him “ public relations practitioner should have a deep interest in solving problems of the public”. Public relation practitioners referred as the indomitable personality, who can change the entire structure of the organization through theirr inclination towards work. Public relations practitioners are always in the middle of an organization and public, so they must be effective communicator to reach people. Some professionals referred the public relation practitioners as a superhuman, because they have a flair idea to do research about the target public (Newson & Scott, 1985). The immense knowledge and sharp mindness of these personnel help them to find out what the public thinks of the company’s products and services so, that necessary courses of actions can be consider taken in an instant, such as to eliminate misunderstandings or to bring essential changes in the organization.
All the above discussion assists us to understand the importance of the effective public relation for the organizations. Now it becomes imperative to first understand development history of the public relation industry, which is prerequisite to create a holistic understanding of the role of the public relation.
It is a universal truth that every organization has need public relations regardless with the size, to achieve success and accomplish their tasks plausibly. This is one of the main reasons why the largest professional organization is the Public Relations Society of America; with approximately consist of 20, 000 members. Likewise the ciudad (2002), and other officials that the public relations has become a popular career choice among the women these days, and this is the main reasons that an enormous number of companies prefer females in their public relation department. The key reason behind this is that women are perceived to possess qualities like patience, politeness, initiative and organizational expertise. Peart and McNamara (1996) affirm that more than 50 percent of public relations practitioners in the United States, the U. K., Australia and New Zealand are women, and this shows that women are starting to play important management roles in public relations. After the little intro, now I would like to define something about the historical developments of the public relations, which surely will help the readers of grasp the concept more appropriately.
