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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.
304
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.
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.
305
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),
J. Public Affairs 11, 303 315 (2011)
DOI: 10.1002/pa
306
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
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
307
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
308
Qualication
3-year degree
4-year degree
Honours degree
Masters degree
Doctorate
All the above/any
degree level
Niemann-Struweg
and Meintjies
(2008) (%)
De Wet et al.
(2008) (%)
Holtzhausen
(2005) (%)
Petersen et al.
(2002) (%)
25.0
26.9
19.2
7.7
90.0
14.5
1.0
78.0
As per general
education
findings (%)
As per PR
education
findings (%)
34.0
16.8
23.7
30.9
56.5
34.0
6.5
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
51.0
Fully agree
with B
Agree
with B
Agree with
both A + B
Agree
with A
Fully agree
with A
Table 3
Table 4
Titles
309
Job titles
%
310
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
Table 7
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
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
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
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
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
<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
312
Table 10
33.3
51.4
5.3
2.9
3.3
1.2
2.5
100.0
81
125
13
7
8
3
6
243
Table 11
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.
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).
313
314
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