CHAPTER ONE
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Growth can mean different things for developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. Rogerian (1996) argued that “development is a widely participatory process of social changes in a society intended to bring about social and material advancement for the majority of people through their gaining of greater control over the environment”. It might be difficult to differentiate a developing country from an underdeveloped country because there is no much difference in their similarities.
Therefore, a developing country is a country that is still undergoing the process of attaining a generally acceptable level of sufficiency with respect to resources. To attain the height of a developing country, some development tools must be applied and one of these is Public Relations. The methods of public relations are highly result-oriented, hence, the need for its use to attain the status of a developing country. Public relations has been efficiently used by developed countries. Public relations can be expressed as the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organiation (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) and the public (Grunig et al., 1984). It encompass a sound and organized two-way communication and continuous information dissemination. Information creates knowledge which helps in shaping opinion with a view to winning goodwill that could be built with the aid of Public Relations practices.
Public Relations as a profession is concerned with communicating policies and actions to special groups or the public at large (Ekpo, 1993).
The British Institute of Public relations (BIPR) defines public relations as ‘the deliberate planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.” This definition suggests that public relations is the creation or establishment of mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. It also suggests that public relations is not a haphazard process. It must be consciously designed. Planning calls for attention, deliberation, research, anticipation, analysis and consequences. Public relations efforts must ensure that not only does the organisation understand its publics, the publics must equally understand the organisation. It must understand its reasons for whatever actions it takes. As a public relations officer or manager of your firm, for instance, it is your duty to ensure that mutual understanding is achieved between your firm and its several publics. More often than not, the publics are passive at performing this role. Therefore, your organisation must take proactive steps towards achieving it. ‘Sustained effort’ means that it is not enough to start the plan; it must be carried through to a logical end. This is not usually very easy in the face of a precarious economy, political instability and other factors. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) says “public relations is concerned with or devoted to creating mutual understanding among groups and institutions.” The PRSA recognises the place of groups and institutions in the public relations process. It admits that these entities have interests that must be protected. It also presupposes a streamlining of these benefits for mutual good. The concept of mutuality in this definition makes you as a public relations man or woman an intermediary between your organisation and its publics. This implies that you should be able to align the interests of these two parties for their mutual advantage. You do this by convincing your organisation that public relations attempts to put the broad interest of the public first before the special interest of the organisation. By doing this, the organisation is indirectly serving its own interest; hence PR has what is called “enlightened self interest”. Another definition is that given Cutlip, Center and Broom, in their book Effective Public Relations which is considered the bible of public relations in America. According to them, public relations is the “management function that identifies, establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and its publics upon whom its success depends.” Now, take note of the last part of the definition, ‘upon whom its success depends,’ because this is one fact that very many organizations have not realized. A company’s success or failure depends considerably on its relationship with its various publics. We shall see these publics in another module.
Public relations is a management tool designed to establish support among a fir
.