The Holy Grail for global business executives today is employee engagement. Recent studies indicate that close to 85% of employees believe they can positively impact quality of their organization’s products and services.  The sad truth though is that those same studies indicate less than 1/3 of employees globally are actively engaged in their jobs. Engagement is about individual behavior. People who have both an emotional and intellectual bond to the organization.  ...

The fourth annual Grunig Lecture, presented by the Institute for Public Relations, the University of Maryland and the Public Relations Society of Americ ...

Last week I made a case for the need for an action-oriented set of priorities for the public relations research, measurement, and evaluation function. Our goal at the managerial level, is to quantify public relations’ contribution to meeting organizational goals and building organizational value. To achieve that goal, we – research measurement, and evaluations professionals  – need to attend to issues of a measurement framework, standards, and data quality. This week I address three th ...

Does academic research matter to public relations practitioners? Do not be afraid. Come into the light with me, a non-PhD practitioner who finds value in academic research. In the weeks ahead, I will seek out quality academic and other research, drawing insights for communications practitioners. When activists target an organization, typically the corporate communications function is on point for a response. The challenge is to understand the gap between activist demands and corpora ...

The 9th Annual North American Summit on Public Relations Measurement recently concluded. The Summit featured excellent presentations by Yahoo!, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and Conagra and Blue Marble Enterprises; panel and discussion sessions on outputs and outcomes and on standards; and pre-conference workshops covering a research and measurement boot camp, social media measurement, st ...

In a reflection of our maturity, research and evaluation are now routinely required by public relations investment underwriters. As a result, the question of “should we measure?” has been supplanted by “how much should we spend to measure?” The conventional wisdom of marketing and communication has long governed that “ten percent for research” is the right number, a number which, by the way,  is several times greater than the average.  But, like so many imperatives, the ten perc ...

By: Tom Watson, Ansgar Zerfass and James Grunig Measuring Return on Investment has been a hot topic, as public relations seeks to demonstrate its contribution to building organizational value. How can this managerial concept be applied to public relations? Professors Tom Watson, Ansgar Zerfass, and James Grunig add to the debate. ‘ROI’ IN PUBLIC RELATIONS: A DIALOGUE Since publishing research (...

One of the characteristics of the world that motivates me is our “interconnectedness;” or our “interdependence.”  If you accept that people across the world – people like you and me – have many ...

Kudos to Barry Leggetter and AMEC for launching a collaborative effort to create global social media standards.  “It is always the marketplace that drives the demand for standards, whether it is the standard format for DVDs or standards for public relations research,” says David Geddes, who chairs IPR’s Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation.  Next w ...

Prof Tom Watson of Bournemouth University in England, talks about the International History of Public Relations Conference (IHPRC), which was held recently. I’m now breathi ...