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Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 11 Number 4 pp 303 315 (2011)


Published online 18 August 2011 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.423

Special Issue Paper

A prole of South African public


relations practitioners in top
performing organisations
Tanya le Roux* and Annelie Naud
School for Communication Studies, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

The public relations practitioner is expected to have the skills and knowledge to be able to operationalise the description and denition of public relations within their specic environment. Although various studies describing South
African public relations practitioners had been performed, these studies are limited in terms of size and scope and
do not offer a clear prole of the practitioner and whether they are equipped to perform the necessary tasks. This article is based on a study that obtained data from practitioners in top performing organisations. It proles South African
practitioners and conrms that they need support in order to play a strategic role. Copyright 2011 John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION
In the recent debates that focused on the description
and denition of the public relations function, it has
been agreed that the function is expected to focus on
the building and management of relationships with
stakeholders, ideally by means of symmetrical twoway communication, in order to create mutually
benecial relationships, to contribute to the greater
good of society and to ensure the survival and
growth of the organisation (Steyn, 2000a; Grunig
et al., 2002; Van Ruler and Veri, 2005; Grunig,
2006; Van Tonder et al., 2006). The question is
whether public relations practitioner1 has the necessary skills to perform the aforementioned tasks effectively. This question can be answered by a
comprehensive investigation to prole South African
public relations practitioners in terms of demographic variables, their experience of the profession,
their career experience, their organisational environment and the roles the practitioners performed.

*Correspondence to: Tanya le Roux, School for Communication


Studies, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa.
E-mail: tanya.leroux@nwu.ac.za
1
The author acknowledges that various labels such as communication manager, communication management practitioner, communication management professional and communication management
consultant are in some instances suggested. However, for the purposes of this study, the more generally accepted terms of corporate
communication practitioner and public relations practitioner will be
used interchangeably or in correlation with the source used.

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND


LITERATURE REVIEW
Overview of the public relations profession in
South Africa
The industry has taken the lead in Africa on producing public relations literature (Rensburg, 2002).
South Africa was also the rst country to compile
a body of knowledge for public relations in Africa
in 1980; Public Relations and Communication Management Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA) was
the rst public relations association globally, to obtain International Standards Organisation certication and was a founding partner of the Global
Alliance for Public Relations and Communication
Management, and South Africa published the rst
text book on strategic public relations (Rensburg,
2002; Smith, 2002; Steyn, 2005). The role research
in South Africa has also made huge advances in dening and empirically verifying the role of the strategist, manager and technician within the South
African environment (Steyn, 2000a, 2000c; Everett,
2006). The specic South African roles identied require different skills and make different contributions to the organisation than the roles identied
in the USA and Europe (Steyn, 2000a, 2000c; Moss
et al., 2005; Everett, 2006).
South Africas developmental context and everchanging political and economic situation result in
a great need for the existence and excellence of corporate communication as a function, as this function

304

T. le Roux and A. Naud

becomes even more crucial in fast-changing environments where stakeholder relationships can be
more volatile (Grunig, 1992; Cutlip et al., 2002).
The latest King Report (King III Report), published
in 2009 (Steyn, 2008; IoD, 2009), is expected to have
a great inuence on public relations owing to the
focus on stakeholder relationship management as
part of good corporate governance (De Beer, 2008).
Steyn (2008) states that the public relations practitioner will still need the necessary skills and insight
to use this opportunity within their specic organisation. From the aforementioned, it is clear that the
South African environment offers the public relations
practitioner very specic challenges and opportunities, which should be reected in their prole.
Roles and tasks expected from
South African practitioners
In South Africa, the practitioner performs the strategist, managerial and technician roles as identied
and veried in different studies (Steyn, 2000b,
2000c; Everett, 2006). This three-role categorisation
as dened for South African practitioners was used
in this study.
The South African public relations strategist
The public relations strategist practises public relations at the macro level and focuses on the boundaryspanning role. In this role, the practitioner analyses
the environment and interprets this information
for managementas an early warning system
and, in return, interprets the organisations viewpoints for stakeholders to assist organisations to
adapt to changes in their environment and therefore
survive (Warnaby and Moss, 1997; Moss et al., 2000;
Steyn and Puth, 2000; De Beer, 2001; Grunig, 2001;
Grunig et al., 2002; Steyn, 2007). The strategist further focuses on actions such as, amongst others,
relationship building with stakeholders, reputation
risk management, and is responsible for public relations strategy (Steyn and Puth, 2000; Everett, 2006;
Everett and Steyn, 2006).
The South African public relations manager
In the role of manager in South African public relations, the practitioner gives input on the functional
strategy by advising on consequences of behaviour,
suggests communication messages and formulates
strategy and plans for messages to be communicated outside the organisation at the meso level
(functional, departmental or divisional level) (Steyn,
2000c, 2007; Steyn and Puth, 2000). The public relations manager assists the organisation to explain itself to stakeholders. The relevant duties include,
amongst others, developing and implementing public relations strategy (on the meso level), developing
plans, managing, leading the public relations department and educating management on their communication responsibilities and capabilities (Everett,
2006; Steyn, 2007).
Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The South African public relations technician


The South African public relations technician role,
similar to those identied in other countries, is performed at the micro level and is used to express the
organisations strategy and plans on an operational
level to stakeholders. It includes producing communication products such as writing and editing
communication publications, producing audiovisual
messages and creating graphics (Steyn, 2000c, 2007;
Steyn and Puth, 2000).

STUDIES CONDUCTED ON THE SOUTH


AFRICAN PUBLIC RELATIONS
PRACTITIONER PROFILE
A few studies were conducted in South Africa to
investigate and provide more information on the
public relations practitioner prole. The rst was
the study by Petersen et al. (2002) and the second
a study by Holtzhausen (2005). This was followed
by the Corporate Communication International
study titled Corporate Communication Practices and
Trends South African Benchmark Study 2007/2008,
conducted by De Wet et al. (2008) and a study on
the professionalisation of the function in South
Africa conducted by Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies
(2008). These studies found that the public relations
practitioner landscape in South Africa has the
following main characteristics:
Most practitioners are female. Niemann-Struweg
and Meintjies (2008) reported the gure at 64%
females; De Wet et al. (2008) reported 57.7%; and
both Petersen et al. (2002) and Holtzhausen
(2005) reported 70% of respondents to be female.
Practitioners are highly educated. NiemannStruweg and Meintjies (2008) specically reported
that 37% of practitioners have 4-year degrees,
Honours or 4-year diplomas; 27% held a 3-year
degree or diploma and 25% a Masters degree.
De Wet et al. (2008) found that 34.6% of respondents held a degree, 26.9% an Honours degree,
19.2% a Masters degree and 7.7% a Doctorate.
Holtzhausen (2005) found more than 90% of
respondents degreed, and Petersen et al. (2002)
found that 78% of respondents had formal education beyond high school level, with 14.5% having
a Masters degree and 1% a Doctorate. In these
studies respondents were only asked to indicate
their level of education, regardless of it being specically in corporate communication or other
disciplines.2

2
In Petersen et al.s (2002) study, respondents were asked what
education level they held, then if they had public relations training before starting their rst job and in which country this education took place. Therefore, education levels of public relations
specic education were not taken into account.

J. Public Affairs 11, 303 315 (2011)


DOI: 10.1002/pa

Proling South African PR practitioners


According to Petersen et al. (2002), half of the
respondents reported a combination of Afrocentric and Eurocentric worldviews, but were leaning more towards the Eurocentric views.
It was argued that most practitioners perform all
roles. This indicates multi-skilling and multitasking (Petersen et al., 2002). De Wet et al.
(2008) reported on how practitioners viewed the
functions of corporate communication (those of
strategist, manager and technician) and the specic
tasks they perform, but not specically the roles that
they perform.
Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies (2008) found
that most practitioners (97%) argue that professionalisation of the public relations industry is necessary. De Wet et al. (2008) agreed and found that
respondents were in favour of professionalisation
that focused mainly on improving the body of
knowledge.
Although the foregoing studies provide valuable
information on corporate communication practitioners and the corporate communication eld,
there are certain limitations. The Corporate Communication International study conducted by De
Wet et al. (2008) used a convenience sample of only
26 top organisations. Although the sampling
method was scientic, the sample size was too small
to safely generalise any ndings from the study.
In the Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies (2008)
study, convenience sampling was used, although
with a much larger sample of 1213 respondents of
whom 900 were registered members of PRISA.
However, only 49 responses were received for this
study, resulting in a 4% response rate. Of these 49
respondents, 65% were PRISA members.
Following a similar trend, the studies of Petersen
et al. (2002) and Holtzhausen (2005) included only
PRISA members as part of the sample, resulting in
a general bias towards PRISA members in the studies on the South African public relations landscape.
The minority of corporate communication practitioners actually belong to a professional organisation. OConnor and Muzi Falconi (2003), for
instance, argued that only one-twelfth of practitioners globally actually belong to a professional
body. Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies (2008) further agreed that PRISA membership consists of
approximately 3500 practitioners, with many practitioners falling outside its membership.
When taking into account the estimation that approximately 10 000 people were employed in the
profession in 2003 in South Africa (OConnor and
Muzi Falconi, 2003), one can argue that the foregoing samples are not representative of public relations practitioners working in high-performing
organisations in South Africa. Membership of
the other main professional body active in South
Africathe IABCwas not taken into account in
the samples of these studies. Therefore one could
Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

305

argue that the aforementioned studies results are


restricted by their sampling methodology, limiting
the studies in terms of size and scope.

METHODOLOGY
In this study, methodological triangulationusing
both qualitative and quantitative research methods
was applied (Robson, 2002). This method was used
to increase reliability and validity in the study, as
the shortcomings of one method is compensated
for by the other method. The data generation activities included a literature study, semi-structured
interviews and a questionnaire.
The literature study was used to examine existing
literature on, amongst others, the prole of public
relations practitioners globally and in South Africa.
The literature study was followed by semi-structured
interviews with four purposefully selected senior
practitioners, well established and with experience
and standing in the profession. (Baxter and Babbie,
2004). The chairpersons of the South African corporate communication professional bodies (PRISA and
IABC) were also interviewed. The interviews were
used in order to verify information obtained in the
literature study and to guide the compilation of
the questionnaire.
The largest challenge in the data collection phase
was to determine the population and drawing a
sample for the study, as a list of public relations
practitioners in South Africa is not available, other
than the practitioners who belong to professional
corporate communication bodies. These membership lists cannot be regarded as a suitable population for this study, as the membership lists of the
two professional bodies in South Africa (PRISA
and the IABC) had the potential to exclude many
practitioners from the research population (Grunig
et al., 2001; OConnor and Muzi Falconi, 2003).
The population was therefore then dened as
public relations professionals working in the 1319
top performing organisations in South Africa across
all industries as listed on South Africas Top 300
National Companies List (Fletcher, 2007) and the Financial Mail Top 200 Companies List (Williams, 2005).
All government-owned organisations (state or
para-statal sector), non-private sector organisations,
non-prot sector organisations, small and medium
business sector organisations and organisations
that were duplicated on the aforementioned lists
were eliminated. The data were collected in the
10 months from October 2006 to July 2007.
The number of completed questionnaires
obtained was 262. This constitutes a response rate
of 19.9%. Acknowledging practitioners limited time
to take part in research which does not form part of
their jobs, the response rate is satisfactory. It
matches well with other public relations studies that
yielded response rates of 12.8% (Grunig et al., 2001),
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306

T. le Roux and A. Naud

19.3% (Kim and Reber, 2008) and 20.9% (ONeil,


2003), respectively.
The questionnaire data were coded, captured
and analysed with the assistance of the Statistical
Consultation Services at the North-West University.
Both the programs STATISTICA (StatSoft Inc., Tulsa,
Oklahoma, USA) and SPSS (SPSS Inc., Chicago,
Illinois, USA) data analysis software were used to
calculate descriptive statistics, as well as inferential
statistics such as correlations and differentiations.

FINDINGS
Demographic data on South African public
relations practitioners
The respondents demographic data included typical
demographic information on gender, race, age, language abilities and education, as well as data on their
worldview.
Gender, race and age
As could be expected, most South African public
relations practitioners are female (80.2%, n = 210).
Most are White (80.5%, n = 210), although there
were a small number of Black respondents (11.9%,
n = 31), and an even smaller number of Asian,
Mixed race and Indian respondents (7.6%, n = 20).
Because these ndings could be a result of those
practitioners who selected to participate in the
study, conclusions on the success or not of afrmative action cannot be made.
Most of the respondents (79.3%, n = 208) were between 25 and 50 years of age, although most fell into
the 3140-year-age category (35.0%, n = 92). This can
be explained and is supported by the fact that the
profession is still very young. This is also in line
with other international ndings, such as those of
Beard (1997) and the IABC (2002).
As expected, age correlated positively with the
respondents monthly income (r = 0.441, p < 0.000,
n = 250) and years of experience in corporate communication (r = 0.678, p < 0.000, n = 255). However,
in the semi-structured interviews the respondents
indicated that age should not necessarily be viewed
as equal to appropriate experience.

Table 1

When investigating the differences between age


and the other demographic data, KruskalWallis
tests indicated that there are some statistically and
practically signicant differences between age and
role performed by the practitioners (H = 8.006,
p = 0.018).
Table 1 indicates that older practitioners are more
likely to perform more senior roles, as can be
expected.
Language abilities
When indicating their home language, more than
half of the respondents (53.7%, n = 139) conrmed
that their home language is English, whereas 29%
(n = 75) indicated Afrikaans, and 4.2% (n = 11) indicated that they spoke both English and Afrikaans
at home. A small number of respondents (11.2%,
n = 29) reported their home language was Xhosa,
Zulu, Tswana or Sotho. The rest of the respondents
(1.9%, n = 5) indicated languages such as German,
Greek and Portuguese as their home language. A
further question on multi-language prociency
was then asked.
All the respondents could speak, read and write
English, which is the accepted business language
in South African. A very large number could also
speak (88.5%, n = 232), read (90.5%, n = 237) and
write (79.0%, n = 207) Afrikaans. The third most
widely spoken language is Zulu (17.2%, n = 45), followed by Sotho at 9.2% (n = 24) and Xhosa at 6.5%
(n = 17). The languages that were read or written
followed the same pattern as indicated in the languages that could be spoken, namely English, followed by Afrikaans and then Zulu.
When comparing the number of respondents who
indicated their home language as English and those
that indicated that they could speak, read and write
English, it would seem that bilingualism is indicated in almost half the cases. Therefore, the assumption can be made that many practitioners are
able to understand, and even speak, more than
one language.
Education and skills
Respondents were asked to indicate their qualications (not specically pertaining to corporate communication) in a multi-response question (total

Percentage of respondents per role and age


Age, years (% of respondents)

Actual
role
Technician
Manager
Strategist
Total

Younger than 25

2530

3140

4150

5160

Older than 60

Total

8.3
4.8

24.2
21.4
13.5

34.8
40.5
21.6

16.7
20.2
56.8

12.9
9.5
5.4

3.0
3.6
2.7

100
100
100

132
84
37
253

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

J. Public Affairs 11, 303 315 (2011)


DOI: 10.1002/pa

Proling South African PR practitioners


percentage will therefore exceed 100%). Except for
two respondents, all the respondents had completed
matric (nal year at school). The results showed that
56.5% (n = 148) of the respondents had obtained a/
any degree or a post-graduate degree (in calculating
this number, multiple mentions were eliminated)
(Figure 1).
Respondents were also requested to indicate their
corporate communication qualications. Because this
was also a multi-response question (respondents
could indicate having a degree and a diploma, or
more than one degree), the total percentage for this
question will not add up to 100%.
The results indicated a lack of formal corporate
communication education. Specically the small
number of respondents, who had obtained a Bachelor
of Commerce degree in corporate communication
and/or a postgraduate qualication, is worrisome.
Groenewald (1998) found the background obtained
through a Bachelor of Commerce degree (business
background) to be necessary, and various other
authors (Plowman, 1998; Steyn, 2000a; Le Roux,
2004) argued it to be benecial, for a practitioner
to be able to contribute to organisational performance. Furthermore, it is acknowledged that in many
cases, knowledge of research and evaluation procedures is usually only gained at a Masters or Doctoral level (Grunig, in Plowman, 1998).
In general, it would seem that respondents are
well educated, but not necessarily in corporate
communication, although they are performing corporate communication tasks. This implies that
respondents most probably lack the necessary
managerial, strategic and business knowledge of
corporate communication within the strategic
andrelational framework (Steyn, 2000a; Ferreira
and Verwey, 2004; Le Roux, 2004; Plowman, 2005;
Boynton, 2006; Yeo and Sriramesh, 2009), which
would assist practitioners in contributing to organisational performance.

307

As shown in Table 2, the ndings of this study


differ considerably from those reported by other
researchers. This could once again be due to the different populations used by this study and those of
the mentioned authors, which only focused on professional body members.
The interviewees pointed out that only education
within the strategic and relational paradigms would
equip the practitioner to contribute to organisational performance. Furthermore, both the interviewees and chairperson of the IABC agreed that
even more than formal education, an attitude of
life-long learning would mostly benet the
practitioner.

Practitioner worldview
It is interesting to note that in four of the aforementioned statements the practitioners mostly agreed
with both an Afrocentric and Eurocentric worldview (Table 3). In only two statements they
favoured one specic worldview:
On the question of all people share a common bond
(Afrocentric), most practitioners were leaning towards Afrocentrism. This is in agreement with
the suggestion of Van Heerden (2004) that practitioners need to understand people as social
beings in order to be successful in Africa.
On the question of living in harmony with nature
(Afrocentric), respondents were leaning towards
an Afrocentric worldview.
In summary, one could argue, therefore, that
practitioners have a relatively balanced Eurocentric
and Afrocentric worldview and sometimes lean
more towards the Afrocentric worldview regarding
nature and human relationships. This balanced
worldview is argued in literature, to lead the practitioner to be sensitive and more successful in the
South African environment (Van Heerden, 2004).

Figure 1 Respondents level of education in public relations. PR, public relations; B.Com, Bachelor of Commerce; B.A.,
Bachelor of Arts

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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DOI: 10.1002/pa

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T. le Roux and A. Naud


Table 2

Qualication
3-year degree
4-year degree
Honours degree
Masters degree
Doctorate
All the above/any
degree level

Comparison of practitioner education levels

Niemann-Struweg
and Meintjies
(2008) (%)

De Wet et al.
(2008) (%)

Holtzhausen
(2005) (%)

Petersen et al.
(2002) (%)

(or diploma) 27.0


(or diploma) 37.0

25.0

26.9
19.2
7.7

90.0

14.5
1.0
78.0

Respondents experience of the profession


In order to understand how the respondents have
experienced the corporate communication profession, the terminology used to describe the function,
as well as membership of a professional body were
probed.

STANDARDISED TERMINOLOGY FOR


THE FUNCTION
Most respondents 74.3% (n = 191) referred to corporate communication when referring to the function
and around one-quarter (24.5%, n = 63) referred to
the function as public relations. In only 1.2% (n = 3)
of the cases practitioners referred to both corporate
communication and public relations. One could argue,
therefore, that because almost three-quarters of the
respondents used the term corporate communication,
the name of the profession is fairly standardised.
Literature suggests that there is great confusion
over the terminology used to describe the function,
which leads to, or develops because of, a lack of
clarity in the denition of the function and thus burdens the profession with many challenges. The
respondents in the semi-structured interviews, although mostly using the term corporate communication, agreed that there was no clear denition of
the function in business and argued that the profession was still developing and growing towards such
a denition. However, one should not directly
equate the use of terminology with a clear denition
of the function. It is possible that there could be
some agreement on the terminology used, but not
necessarily agreement on the denition of the
function.

MEMBERSHIP OF A PROFESSIONAL BODY


Membership of a professional body inuenced how
respondents experienced the function, as these bodies support the practitioner with information on the
discipline and networking opportunities. Almost
two-thirds of the respondents (63.7%, n = 167) did
Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

As per general
education
findings (%)

As per PR
education
findings (%)

34.0
16.8
23.7

30.9

56.5

34.0

6.5

not belong to any professional body. In literature,


OConnor and Muzi Falconi (2003) suggested that
non-membership could be as high as 92%. The interviewees conrmed this nding by indicating that
they ceased their membership of professional corporate communication bodies as the organisations
offerings were lacking.
For those who did belong to a professional body,
the employer in most cases paid the respondents
professional membership (70.2%, n = 73). However,
some respondents (28.8%, n = 30) paid their own
membership. Only one respondent indicated that
she or he shared the membership costs with the
employer.
Differing from the suggestion made by the chairpersons of the two professional bodies, in most
cases the respondents employer paid membership
fees, negating the argument that membership costs
were too high for an individual to pay, as a reason
why people do not join the organisations. However,
specically in tough economic times, organisations
become more cost conscious, which could inuence
their willingness to pay for employees professional
membership.

Respondents career experiences


In describing the respondents career experiences,
attention will be given to their job title, employment
details, monthly income, years working for a particular organisation, years of corporate communication experience, type of career experience, time
taken out of their careers and mentorship.
Job title
The respondents job titles varied extensively
(Table 4).
Just more than 40% (43.3%, n = 97) of the practitioners had a communication-related reference in
the titles assigned to them. From Table 4, one can
calculate that almost 40% of the respondents practising communication did not have titles that represented the discipline and could be experiencing
encroachment from other disciplines. In literature,
the focus has been on marketings encroachment of
J. Public Affairs 11, 303 315 (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/pa

255
253
254

255
255

255

1.2
4.0
5.5
4.3
5.9
11.8
10.2
11.5
8.7
13.3
9.5
5.1
iv. Team achievements are important
v. The elderly can offer good advice
vi. Interdependence is good

71.0
69.2
68.9

0.8
2.0
27.8
31.0
42.0
25.9

24.7
31.8

4.7
9.4

i. I will measure my success in life according


to the acquisition of a good job, lifestyle
ii. All people are unique and different
iii. One should manage nature to get the most
out of it
iv. Individual achievements are important
v. One should acquire ones own knowledge
vi. Competition is good
7.5
9.4
15.7
16.5

i. I will measure my success in life according


to interpersonal relationships
ii. All people share a common bond
iii. One should live in harmony with nature

51.0

Fully agree
with B
Agree
with B
Agree with
both A + B
Agree
with A
Fully agree
with A

Level of agreement (%)

Afrocentric worldview (A)

Table 3

Afrocentric versus Eurocentric worldview ndings

European worldview (B)

Proling South African PR practitioners

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Table 4
Titles

309

Job titles
%

Communication practitioners, ofcers or


24.6 55
specialists or communication taskspecic titlesnot on the managerial level
Communication practitioners on the
18.7 42
managerial level
Titles referring to people in the human
16.5 37
resources function
Title associated with being responsible
11.2 25
for a client account, thus providing
consultation services
Titles referring to people in the
10.7 24
marketing function
Titles referring to people in general
4.5 10
management functions
Titles referring to people in the combined
4.0
9
marketing and communication function
Administrative titles
3.1
7
Titles referring to the top manager in the
2.7
6
company on board level
Titles referring to corporate or public
1.8
4
affairs specically
Titles referring to people in the nance
1.3
3
function
Titles referring to people in the combined
0.9
2
marketing and human resources function
Total
100.0 224

the function, and in the interviews on journalists


encroachment of the function. However looking at
the titles, it seemed as if human resources may also
present a challenge to the function in terms of encroachment. These ndings agree with Van Ruler
and De Lange (2003) who posit that encroachment
is done by various functions such as general management, marketing, ofce management, human
resources and even nance.
Interestingly, one can gather from the titles that
other functions such as marketing and human
resources also encounter encroachment.
From the aforementioned discussion, it is clear
that there is no specically accepted title for a corporate communication practitioner. Furthermore,
the use of the word communication versus communications and titles that only depicted one aspect of the
communication function contributes to this problem. The myriad of job titles do, however, indicate
that the function is still vaguely dened, as the titles
can create confusion and inconsistent perceptions of
what the function is and what it is supposed to deliver and focus on.
Furthermore, it is clear that even between the
roles performed by the practitioner there is no specic title convention, which once again could indicate the confusion of expectations for the corporate
communication practitioner within the various
roles. Interestingly most strategists (46.9%, n = 15)
held human resources-related titles.
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T. le Roux and A. Naud

Employment details
Most practitioners worked full time 95.3% (n = 246),
with only 4.7% (n = 12) of the practitioners working
part time.
Monthly income
Most respondents earned between R10 001 and
R30 000 per month before tax (Table 5).
Monthly income positively correlated with respondent age (r = 0.441, p < 0.000, n = 250), and age,
in turn with respondents performing the managerial
and strategist roles, as indicated earlier. This indicates the seniority associated with the managerial
and strategist roles.
These ndings were further investigated by
means of a KruskalWallis test to determine the difference between monthly income and the actual role
performed, which delivered a statistically signicant result (H = 48.73, p = 0.000).
The following cross-tabulation illustrates the difference. Respondents in more senior positions, such
as the manager and strategist, earned more than
the respondents in junior positions, as could be
expected (Table 6).
When considering that a respondent had to grow
into the managerial or strategic function, it is logical
that monthly income correlated with the practitioners number of years experience in corporate
communication (r = 0.463, p < 0.000, n = 244). Thus,
the longer the practitioners have worked in corporate communication and grown to perform the managerial or strategist roles, the higher their monthly
income.

Table 5

Years working for a particular organisation and years of


corporate communication experience
Table 7 indicates that 59.6% (n = 155) of respondents
worked for a particular organisation for less than
6 years. This may indicate that corporate communication practitioners have been appointed over the
last 10 years into newly created posts. However,
it could also indicate that practitioners were very
mobile in their careers, opting to move to better
positions or new challenges.
Most respondents, 62%, have more than 5 years
corporate communication experience. It seems that
the more years of experience in corporate communication the respondents have, the longer they have
worked for the specic organisation (r = 0.495,
p < 0.000, n = 253).
Type of career experience
Only 28.2% (n = 74) of respondents had only corporate communication experience, whereas the rest of
the respondents had experience outside corporate
communication or experience in both corporate
communication and other elds. Most respondents
had between 2 and 10 years experience outside
corporate communication.
The fact that most respondents had experience
outside corporate communication, indicates that
the eld is still relatively new and that some respondents have selected to move into the eld from
another discipline. This conclusion is supported
by the data indicating that most respondents have

Table 7

Years working for current employer and years


of corporate communication experience
Years working
for current
employer

Monthly income before tax

Salary: monthly income before tax (R)


010 000
10 00120 000
20 00130 000
30 00140 000
40 00150 000
More than 50 001
Total

Table 6

13.2
32.8
24.4
16.0
5.2
8.4
100.0

33
82
61
40
13
21
250

Number of years
02
35
610
More than 10
Total

Years of corporate
communication
experience

37.7
21.9
21.2
19.2
100.0

98
57
55
50
260

18.8
19.2
26.7
35.3
100.0

48
49
68
90
255

Percentage of respondents per role and income


Income (%)

Role
Technician
Manager
Strategist
Total

R0R10 000 R10 001R20 000 R20 001R30 000 R30 001R40 000 R40 001R50 000 More than R50 000
21.3
3.8
2.9

40.9
27.5
14.7

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

25.2
26.3
20.6

7.9
28.7
17.6

1.6
2.5
20.6

3.1
11.3
23.5

n
127
80
34
241

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Proling South African PR practitioners


non-corporate communication qualications. This
does not necessarily indicate encroachment, as
suggested by various authors (Ehling et al., 1992;
Lauzen and Dozier, 1992; Hogg and Doolan, 1999;
Grunig et al., 2001; Van Ruler and De Lange, 2003;
Lee, 2005), but rather a career change by the respondents (Table 8).
Time taken out of their careers
Respondents were asked whether they have taken
time out of their careers, and if that was the case,
to indicate the reasons. More than two-thirds of
the practitioners (68.3%, n = 179) did not take any
time out of their career, and none took more than
20 years time out of their careers.
Most respondents took time out of their careers
for family reasons (8.1%, n = 21), followed by pursuing
another career (7.7%, n = 20) and travel (6.9%, n = 18).
A few individuals did take time out for study
(2.3%, n = 6), due to unemployment (0.8%, n = 2) and
due to illness (0.4%, n = 1). The number of respondents that took time out for family reasons can be
explained when considering the number of females
in the profession.
Mentorship
The data show that the practice of mentorship is
widely applied in the South African environment.
The nding is in agreement with the interviewees
suggestion that mentorship is part of African culture
and therefore applied in business, but not necessarily to the corporate communication profession.

Table 8
Experience outside
corporate
communication
None
Journalism
Business management
Human resources
Government
Company secretary
Television and lm
Project management
Publishinga
Research
Finance
Administration
Marketingb
Tourism
Educationc
Law
Otherd

311

Respondents usually had a non-corporate communication mentor. Almost half of respondents,


49.3% (n = 128), had either a business or communication and business mentor. When taking into account
the emphasis in the semi-structured interviews on
the importance of business knowledge for practitioners, this nding becomes important. It could
point to the fact that respondents intrinsically recognise the need for business knowledge and try to
address this issue by nding a particular type of
mentor (Table 9).

Respondents organisational environment


In order to describe the respondents working environment, the organisations annual communication
budget, as well as the prominence given to the function, will be discussed.

Table 9

Mentorship

Mentorship

No mentor
A communication mentor
A general business mentor
Both a communication and
general business mentor
Another work-related mentor
Total

30.0
13.8
25.8
23.5

78
36
67
61

6.9
100.0

18
260

Experience outside corporate communication


%

<2 years

210 years

1120 years

>20 years

Total
%

28.2
1.9
2.3
2.3

0.4
0.4

0.4

13.0
9.5
9.2
0.8
0.4
0.8
0.8
2.7
1.2
3.1
15
8.0
1.9
3.1
0.4
3.4

1.9
3.8
4.6

0.8

0.8
1.5
0.8
0.8
1.2

0.4
0.8
1.1

0.4

0.4
0.8
0.4

0.4

28.2
17.2
16.4
17.2
0.8
0.8
1.2
1.2
3.5
1.2
4.3
17.3
9.2
2.7
4.7
0.8
3.4

74
41
43
45
2
2
3
3
9
3
11
10
24
7
12
2
9

Publishing includes editing, designing page layout and magazine work.


Marketing also includes advertising.
c
Education includes lecturing, training, teaching, coaching and mentoring.
d
Other includes business development, distribution, estate agent, import/export/retail, information technology, psychology, restaurant
management and technical.
b

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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312

T. le Roux and A. Naud

Annual communication budget


A third of the respondents, 33.4% (n = 81), indicated
that they did not know what their organisations annual communication budget is. It is possible that
this response is a result of practitioners not wanting
to make their organisations communication budgets known.
For those who could answer the question, the
communication budgets tended to be under R10m,
forcing the practitioner to be creative in the application of solutions.
T-tests indicated that there are some statistically
and practically signicant differences between annual communication budgets and the type of research organisations applied (d = 1.09, t = 16.97,
p < 0.000). Those organisations using both informal
and formal research have higher annual communication budgets than organisations conducting only
informal research (Table 10).
Prominence given to corporate communication
The prominence of the corporate communication
function in the organisation may be demonstrated
by, amongst others, the focus on doing communication research. It was positive to note that a total of
54.8% (n = 142) of the respondents reported that
their organisations conducted both formal and informal corporate communication research (Table 11).
The focus of communication research is also important as this indicates whether the function is
tested only on the technical (output) or also on the
strategic (impact) level.
Only 18.5% (n = 46) of the organisations focused
on the number of articles and newsletters produced,
amount of media coverage, number of people attending
events, etc., whereas 27.3% (n = 68) only focused on
researching changes in behaviour/perceptions/relationships. More than half of the organisations, 54.2%
(n = 135), focused equally on aforementioned areas
of research, once again pointing to the credibility
gained for the profession in understanding the functions contribution to the organisation (Grunig et al.,
2001; Taff, 2003; Gupta, 2007). This nding is in contrast with the suggestion of Austin and Pinkleton
(2001) and Woodall and Smith (2003) that

Table 10

Annual communication budget

Annual communication budget


Do not know
R0mR10m
Between R10m and R20m
R20mR30m
Between R30m and R40m
R40mR50m
Between R50m and R60m
More than R60m
Total

33.3
51.4
5.3
2.9
3.3
1.2

2.5
100.0

81
125
13
7
8
3

6
243

Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Table 11

Type of corporate communication research


conducted

Type of research conducted

No research at all
Do not know
Only informal research
(talking to people, eld reports,
reading newspapers/internet)
Only formal research
(perception/reputation/image
surveys, content analysis)
Both formal and informal research
Total

7.7
5.0
22.0

20
13
57

10.4

27

54.8
100.0

142
259

practitioners only focus on the output measurements and thereby inhibit their own work.

Roles performed by the respondents


As suggested in literature and by the respondents in
the semi-structured interviews, the role performed
by the practitioner encapsulates the tasks they perform. In order to understand which roles the
respondents performed, it was necessary rstly to
understand which tasks they performed and secondly to determine the time allocated to the tasks
performed. Thereafter, the actual role performed
by each individual were determined, while also taking into account the most important three tasks
completed by each individual in the past 3 months.
Tasks performed
Respondents were asked to select from a list of tasks
all those that they had been involved with. According to the tasks indicated by the respondents, they
were preliminarily categorised into the three roles.
If a respondent completed mostly tasks within one
role, that role was allocated to the respondent.
However, if the respondent completed an equal
number of tasks within two roles, or even all three
roles, it was indicated as such. The possibility of
the dual performance of roles has been alluded to
by Bassett (1996) and Moss et al. (2000).
As expected, the most practitioners enacted technical tasks, followed by managerial tasks and lastly
strategic tasks (see Table 12). It is, however, noteworthy that 13.9% (n = 34) of the respondents were
categorised into two roles simultaneously5.7%
(n = 14) conducted the technician and managerial
roles, 4.5% (n = 11) the managerial and strategist
roles, and 3.7% (n = 9) were found to conduct the
technical, managerial and strategist roles equally.
The respondents enacting the role of the strategist
according to the tasks completed, positively correlated with the annual communication budget allocated to corporate communication (r = 0.326,
p < 0.000, n = 243). Thereby indicating that the more
J. Public Affairs 11, 303 315 (2011)
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Proling South African PR practitioners


Table 12

Preliminary role categorisation

Role categorisation of
respondents according to
tasks completed
Role
Technician
Manager
Strategist
Technician and manager
Manager and strategist
Technician, manager and strategist
Total

Role categorisation of
respondents according to the
percentage of time spent in each role

52.2
24.1
9.8
5.7
4.5
3.7
100.0

128
59
24
14
11
9
245

52.2
24.1
9.8
5.7
4.5
3.7
100.0

128
59
24
14
11
9
245

strategically the practitioner acts within the organisation, the higher their corporate communication
budget could be.
Time allocated to tasks
Although in the research of Steyn (2000b) and Everett
(2006) the respondents only indicated the tasks they
performed, it was deemed necessary to also include
the time that respondents allocated to these tasks, as
suggested by Le Roux (2004).
In a subsequent question, each respondent was
asked to indicate the percentage of their time spent
on each of the activities they were involved in. The
aim of this question was to verify the initial role categorisation which was based only on a selection of
the tasks performed.
In general, most time spent was on tasks associated with the technical role, followed by the managerial and then strategic roles. A second preliminary
categorisation into the various roles was made,
based on time spent per role (see Table 12).

Actual role performed by respondents


In order to then determine the actual role performed
by the respondents, the tasks that each respondent
performed, the time allocated to each task and the
most important tasks completed in the past
3 months were all taken into account.
As could be expected, just over half the respondents (52.2%, n = 132) were found to be technicians,
with a third acting as managers (33.2%, n = 84) and
14.6% (n = 37) acting as strategists.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION


From the aforementioned prole of public relations
practitioners who are active in the top South African
organisations, the following can be deduced:
The data differ extensively from that reported in
other studies. This could be explained by scrutinising the sampling procedures used in the studies. Therefore it would seem that not using the
Copyright 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

313

professional bodys membership lists as the


population for academic studies, would be benecial and provide a more balanced and true picture of the profession.
The seniority of the strategic public relations role
was conrmed by its correlation with age, monthly
income and annual communication budget.
The respondents can be described as mostly
White women between 25 to 50 years. Conclusions on the success of afrmative action in the
eld can however not be made.
The nding that respondents seemed to have
qualications outside of corporate communication raised questions on to their knowledge of
public relations practice. However, career experience data showed that most respondents had
more than5 years corporate communication experience. Therefore, it would seem that respondents rely more on experience than formal
education, to equip them for their job. Unfortunately, the respondents indicated that their experience is in many cases outside public
relations, and not within the relational and strategic public relations paradigms. In addition,
most respondents did not belong to a professional
body that could provide them with information
on and understanding of the function. This can
be a dangerous trend for the profession, as there
cannot be certainty that a practitioner will have
the desired knowledge and skills to play the role
expected from them. The large number of technicians active in the profession could substantiate
this point, as the practitioners might not have
the knowledge to move to the managerial or
strategist role. The lack of senior mentors within
the eld and the resulting loss of valuable knowledge (given that their experience was gained
within the relational and strategic paradigms) to
the profession add to this predicament. Furthermore, older, experienced strategists are exiting
the profession, without managers and technicians
necessarily being able to take their place.
Respondents were to some extent, although much
less than suggested in literature, still confronted
J. Public Affairs 11, 303 315 (2011)
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314

T. le Roux and A. Naud

with the problem of the vague denition of the


function, as suggested by the ndings regarding
job titles. However, the name of the function
seemed fairly standardised, and the data indicated that the concept of the public relations function had been accepted, but that the specic tasks
of the practitioners relating to the function might
still be vague. The fact that some practitioners
also perform dual roles could indicate a confusion
as to the tasks expected of various practitioners,
or might just be a result of the economic climate
in the country and the fact that the appointment
of more than one person is not affordable to the
organisation.
The prole of the South African public relations
practitioner in top performing organisations thus
conrms that the practitioners need support,
through mentorship, professional bodies or formal
education, to equip them to play a strategic role in
their organisations.

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