The Importance of Intercultural Public Relations - Essay Example

? Intercultural Public Relations Public relations, which is the way individual or corporate shares information with the public has been in existence for a very long time with its three key and main aims being informing the people, persuading people and integrating people with other people. Globalisation has made organisations and firms have people who participate in business activities with them from different racial, religious, gender, ethical and cultural backgrounds. With this diversity, the way information is passed has to be in such a way that the intended meaning reaches all the stakeholders without offending or excluding anyone. This has forced the field of public relation to device ways on how to deal with this problem and several theories or ways have been formed as guidelines on dealing with the issue of intercultural public relations1. This paper will try to look into detail how the intercultural public relation problem has been addressed by different theories and how these theories differ and their similarities, it will look at the importance of studying intercultural public relations. One of the theories of intercultural public relations is the cross-cultural adaptation that was brought forward by Robert Park, in this model he identified four steps in this theory that people have to undergo. The first step is the contact step where the individual is exposed to another culture; this is followed by competition where the two different cultures compete against each other. Thirdly, this is where the less dominant culture learns to accommodate the cultural aspects of the dominant one and finally he is assimilated into the group and he learns to assimilate other members. One of the theories under this is epistemology where an individual acquires communicational skills from the dominant culture and his own way of thinking is transformed in to that of the host2. In another dimension, the public influence model that is mainly practised in countries that are hierarchical in nature such as India and in Africa, however in other countries such as the United States of America it is practised in minimal levels. In this case, public relation is not with respect to the larger community or a group, rather it is with people of a higher social class or those with influence. This is where people with more personal influence are likely to achieve their goals or higher levels of success. Dialogic method is another way in which intercultural public relations can be viewed; this is where the organisation and the public that it is addressing are viewed as equal partners. In this model, all people are brought on board in the decisions of the organisation. As the name suggests, it involves dialogue between an organisation and the public without bias or prejudice and it appreciates the opinions and personal worth of every stakeholder of the organisation. This method involves admitting when one party is wrong, empathising and allowing the decisions made collectively to change the way things are done, it aims at building strong and long lasting relationships in the process of doing business. In working with this model a lot of interpersonal and intercultural communication skills are required and a genuine concern for people and it is not dictated by pre mediated rules and regulations. Due to the diversity of individual and stakeholder in different sectors, understanding of their varied and different cultural backgrounds helps in knowing how to deal with them. Genre approach to intercultural public relations in this case helps public relation researcher or theorist to understand the various cultural backgrounds and communication styles and not merely trying to feed information that an organisation wants the public to know3. An intercultural public relation expert should engage in six activities that include identifying the special characteristics of the situation or culture, identifying the intended effects on the audience, clarifying the motivational intention of the organisation, examining how the meaning of the public relations event is created identifying the strategic considerations and using communication principles and theory to understand how culture influences organisations and communication4. In understanding the specific features of the situation or culture, a public relation expert should try to understand what specific cultural norms will guide how the public will interpret the message to be passed across and what the public expects from the organisation in terms of the communication. In addition, how the audience of the public relation information responds to the information is usually a key point to consider since some may be passive about the information where they feel less interested in it or they cannot act while others will be very receptive of the information and act towards it. In some cultures, some individuals or personalities are more popular or are more influential in terms of public opinion than others are, for instance in some cultures, religious leaders are more likely to be listened to while in other cultures political leaders or media personalities have more influence on the people. In identifying the intended audience effect, a public relation experts deals with whether the goal of the event is marketing, propaganda or a passing a sincere piece of information, where, when it is marketing and propaganda, relationship building is key. Identifying the specific goals of an event helps in determining how to communicate, however in most cases when dealing with different cultures people always tend to judge the other cultures based on their own, this in essence causes the goals of the communication process not to be achieved5. In dealing with intercultural relations, the superiority or inferiority of a culture should not be a key point rather focusing on understanding them helps pass the message and achieve the goals effectively; this calls for a in depth research of the cultures that the information is intended to pass to. In getting the motivational intent of the organisation and the audience, a key issue is usually in finding the ground where both the organisation and the audience share similar cultural values, this enhances the interaction; in a case where a personal interaction is present, understanding of the verbal and non verbal communications cues will be key. In the media industry, factors such as colour, symbols among other factors are key in determining the success of the interaction. In order to create a meaning to a public relation activity, understanding how the culture operates, the communication nature of the culture or the symbolic language that is used or how different people in the culture are treated matters a lot in creating the intended meaning of the public relation activity. Strategic considerations that are need to be considered include the role of government in a certain culture, religion or social leaders, understanding the media is also key in making intercultural public relation activity efficient since in different cultures the media operates differently. The sixth activity a professional on intercultural public relations uses the communication skills and theories to understand the culture and how they make sense of any information given to them. This ensures that in carrying out the public relation activities, the organisation will have a better understanding of the community and therefore the direction and framing of the activity will be in such a way that the people belonging to the culture in which the activity is targeted embrace the information and respond positively. Another way to look at intercultural public relations is through the four models that were advanced by proponents of public relations Gruniq and Hunt; they tried to analyse public relation through the models of press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetric and two-way symmetric models. In the press agentry model, pure propaganda is used in public relation and is mainly used in marketing of products, as the information that is passed is to attract customers to the organisation or to create a certain perception about an organisation. In an intercultural context, the information is packaged to appeal to all the cultural backgrounds of the different audiences. Information model is designed to pass some true information to the public and does not necessarily insist so much on the publicity or promotion that accompanies press agentry model, this model aims at just passing information to the audiences in different cultural backgrounds without necessarily having carried out research in the respective cultures they are targeting. The two-way asymmetric model of public relation focuses on the organisation getting a lot of feedback from the audiences in different cultural backgrounds, the accumulated information is then used to manipulate the audience toward adopting the perspective that the organisation desires contrary to the organisation using the information to improve on itself. The two-way symmetric model relies on honest communication between the organisation and its audiences; it involves a lot of compromises and negotiations to come to a collective agreement. This requires an organisation to significantly change their modes of operation and it is commonly used by government agencies and non-profit making organisation in their activities. The above methods of dealing with intercultural public relations have some common feature, most notably is that they all accept that the different cultural backgrounds are a hindrance to a single way of effective public relations6. A public relation activity that may seem effective in one cultural context may perform dismally in another cultural context depending on the social values and norms of the respective cultures. Another point of convergence of the different public relation theories is that all of them emphasise the need for organisation to be in contact with their clients, however the method that should be used differs7. This in essence means that an organisation cannot run its activities successfully without keeping in contact through the various ways that different theories postulate. Despite these theories agreeing on some various issues, in others there are major differences that make them unique, these differences are mainly on the way to go about the activity of public relations in various contexts and the results that are expected from them8. While some of the theories argue for public relations where all the stakeholders come on board as equal partners and all decisions are reached through a consultations and compromises from all sides. Other theories argue that the information should come from one of the parties, that is in most cases the organisation carrying public research and direct it towards the public, the major beneficiary in this case is the organisation that carries the public relation activity. As a public relations student, intercultural relations is a field that is mandatory to study if one has to have a successful career in the field of public relations. This is supported by the fact that the current trends in the world are pointing toward a global free market, which encourages free movement of labour across countries and different religious and cultural backgrounds9. Knowledge of how to deal with a mixture of people from all regions of the world will be a key in determining successful organisation or governments and those that fail. As the various nations aim at strengthening their trade and friendship ties, more diplomatic missions will be opened by countries in different regions with different cultural inclinations with respect to the country seeking diplomatic relations. A public relation professional who has a background in intercultural public relations will be required to determine how to pass information about his country to the host nation in a way that will be acceptable and in accordance with the norms and cultural standards of both countries; this will determine the success of the diplomatic ties between the nations10. Intercultural public relations is a field in the larger public relations discipline that has developed rapidly in the recent past due to globalisation, various theories on how to handle intercultural public relations have been brought forward by various proponents of the same to explain the different perspectives. However, with the integration of the world still ongoing, different perspectives of this field of public relation are bound to emerge and this will require more studies and research in to them in order to come up with better and more advanced theories to deal with them. Bibliography Bhawuk, Dharm. 2009. "Intercultural Communication in a Dynamic Environment". Psychology & Developing Societies. 21 (2): 161-181. Jelen, Alenka. 2008. "The nature of scholary endeavors in public relations". Public Relations Metrics. L'Etang, Jacquie. 2009. "Public Relations and Diplomacy in a Globalized World: An Issue of Public Communication". 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