روابط عمومی “هویت ارتباط” در پژوهش: روشنگری یا توهم  Preach wine and serve vinegar: Public relations, relationships and doublethink

1. Introduction The purpose of this study is to highlight a particular disconnect between how the field represents itself in an organization–public relationship (OPR) context and the existence of specific attitudes and practices in the profession and academia. It shows that situations exist where both practitioners and scholars fall short ofthe challenges they setthemselves in an OPR context. This includes the failure of practitioners to marry rhetoric with action and a gap in how researchers frame and then study organization–public relationships. To illustrate these examples of preaching wine and serving vinegar, the study uses the Orwellian concept of doublethink as a conceptual device to tease out such tensions. These contradictions are framed as public relations doublethink and presented as critical propositions designed to illustrate the gaps that can exist between representation and reality. This highlights that organization–public relationships (OPR) generate challenges for PR as both a practical and theoretical discipline. Ledingham and Bruning (1998, 2000) have been at the vanguard of the OPR research movement since the late 1990s although other scholars promoted the need for public relations to focus on relationships (Cutlip, Center, & Broom, 1987; Ferguson, 1984) earlier. All argue that the central focus of PR should shift from communication to relationship management. They define organization–public relationships as “the state that exists between an organization and its key publics” providing “economic, social, political and/cultural benefits to all parties involved” creating a situation that is “characterized by mutual positive regard” (Ledingham & Bruning, 1998, p. 62). Although it is commonly cited, this definition of OPR should be treated with caution. According to Pohl (2010), for example, it excludes the negative relationships that can develop between an organization and other groups. Such an argument highlights that even formative thinking around OPR is contested territory and Macnamara (2012) provides a useful summary of the key disputes in this area. This article’s exploration of doublethink is timely due to the increasing pre-occupation with the idea of organization–public relationships in both PR practice and theory. First, in the professional realm as evidenced by the recent activity associated with the re-imagining of PR as an industry underpinned by the idea of relationship rather than perception management (The Global Alliance, 2013a). Second, in the academy the complementary surge of scholarship concerned with understanding the nature of relationships is noted (Huang & Zhang, 2013). For the first, this article argues that such aspirations are blighted by issues associated with the willingness and capability of organizations to listen to their stakeholders. For the second, it highlights a disconnection between a discourse that acknowledges the complex nature of relationships and the reality of how they are being studied in PR.