The last theory about today's lecture is the theory of Fully Functioning Society.

So we talked about communication, right?

How we communicate with different publics?

How we should communicate to the excellent?

What models of PR is out there?

Then we switch to relationships,

where relationship was the focus,

was the main outcome of our practice.

We talked about dialogue which helps to build quality relationships.

But you see in all those theories,

we haven't talked much about the society,

about why public relations exist in society at all.

So, we always talked about the organization and the public.

With this theory, we remember that we live in the society,

and public relations actually help so the society to become fully functioning.

So, let's see what the main ideas.

Society consists of multiple collectivities,

people living and working in groups with varying degrees of agreement,

permeability, trust, power, and interdependence.

Individuals and collectives are confronted with a relative fraught with chaos, entropy,

and turbulence to which they wish to bring

order by exerting control through enlightened decision making.

So basically, in two words,

life in a very chaotic society.

Different ideas, the media information is just flowing on us

all the time and we have to do something with this.

We have to find out what's the true in all of that and

we have to make an enlightened choice.

So public relations help to make that enlightened choice.

It is a force,

to foster community as blended relationships,

resource distribution, and shared meanings that advance and yield to enlightened choice.

It is a steward of multiple interests in harmony and collaboration.

It is a steward of democracy and Robert Heath

is the main author of that theory, main Idea maker.

Seven premises of the theory: legitimacy,

corporate social responsibility, power symmetry,

collision of interests, interaction of collectivities,

social discourse and meaning creation, community relationship dynamics.

Legitimacy, to help society to become more fully functioning,

organizations must foster legitimacy.

How they're doing it?

We are being reflective,

and public relations help them to be reflective, right?

We're willing to consider and instrumentally advance others' interests.

Remember the dialogue?

We think everyone is equal in

their right to speak up and the right to have another point of view.

We're being collaborative in decision making,

being proactive and responsive to others communication and opinion needs,

and we are working to meet or exceed the requirements of relationship management,

including being a good corporate citizen.

So, we're not only building relationships but

we're actually building relationships for the good of the society.

Second, corporate ocial responsibility,

an essential part of the legitimacy.

In the word culprit,

we mean here all collectivities.

So not religious organizations, but non-government,

all kinds of small communities,

everything that's organized and functional are considered to be a corporate.

There are possibilities seen when the organization meets or

exceeds the normative expectations of stakeholders and stake-seekers.

In that way, the organizations achieve a level of good that

helps the society become more fully functional.

Power symmetry.

The key idea of power is a key idea in public relations.

Power is a counterpart of legitimacy.

It is the essence of reflective management.

What we need to do?

We have to be reflective in our management.

We have to assess whether our power is used only for

narrow interests or for the larger interests of society.

We have to exercise

this responsible power control and power

comes from shared meaning as well as the ability to influence outcomes.

So organizations, they have resources and many times they have power.

So, public relations in their organizations help to balance this power

and to see that it's used to benefit both organizations,

public, and the society at large.

Collision of interests.

Interests are an irrefutable part of the human experience.

From our interests comes our expectations.

They can be altruistic, selfish or self-centered.

For our interests, for our expectations, form social contexts,

our understanding of the world,

our understanding goals of the society and we interact with publics.

Organizations interact with individuals to balance those interests.

This effort toward balance foster expectations that people construct and share.

Basically, when we find this common ground,

in our interests, in our expectations,

in our relationships, we become better members of society.

The next one is interaction of collectivities.

Society is a complex of collectivities engaged in

various dialogues and distributions of power resources.

So, we have organizations,

we have corporate organizations,

we have small organizations,

we have government, we have associations, we have unions,

we have hospitals, we have people,

just local small communities on the street on your neighborhood.

So all of those, they have to communicate, and when they communicate,

they construct and share and norm-based expectations.

And in those expectations,

individuals seek to make enlightened choices in the face of risk,

uncertainty, and reward and cost ambiguity.

So, we help us public relations,

help to find this common ground,

find a way to make this enlightened choice,

find a way for those collectivities to build relationships with each other,

to understand each other,

and share the meanings of their norms in the society.

Social discourse and meaning creation.

We don't do just advocacy, right?

We do advocacy, we do a lot of things in terms of

persevering and seeing our point of view.

However, we also use other forms of discourse in which help people to

co-create meaning and guide the activities which lead them to coordination.

People create a sense of culture that defines what

actions are allowable and expected for civil society.

So, there's an Ekman theory and there are all other theories.

So basically we help to create this culture,

we help to create those norms of communication.

And the last one, Community Relationship Dynamics.

A relationship must be symmetrical.

It must fit between stakeholders and

stakeseekers and reflect the dynamics of communitas rather than corporatas.

And here we have to define communitas and corparatas.

And it's better to understand those terms differing them because they're different.

We have to divide them.

In communitas, people see themselves as their organizations

and the organizations as bound together.

They share instrumental and symbolic reality.

In contrast, corporatas thrives on partisan exploitation as organizations intrude into,

dominate and manipulate any stake exchange.

So let's talk a little bit more about variables that define communities.

Communities, communitas must be open.

They foster two-way communication based on listening,

shares values, shares information.

Being responsive, respectful, candid, and honest.

Trustworthy: build trust among publics and clients,

being reliable, notexploitative, and dependable.

Communitas are cooperative and they engage in collaborative decision making,

assures that the needs and wants of the organization and stakeholders are met.

Communitas aligned, they have shared interests, rewards,

goals with those of stakeholders or

organizations and stakeholders and the publics have those shared interests.

Communitas have comparable views opinions,

fosters mutual understanding and agreement to co-create meaning.

And there must be commitment of course,

supports the community by being involved in it,

investing in it, and displaying commitment to it.

So the organization must commit to building community,

must commit to foster a mutual understanding,

must commit to align their shared interests with the stake holders.

So by doing this,

they build communitas rather than corporatas.

Key concepts, all the theory,

we discuss the premises,

we discuss the ideas.

Key concepts: public sphere,

it is an area in social life where individuals can come

together to freely discuss and identify societal problems.

And through that discussion,

they can influence political action.

The second definition of public sphere is that it is a site for

the production and circulation of

discourses that can in principle be critical of the state.

The idea of public sphere was brought by Habermas

and he saw it at that time as just place,

it can be a bar or a club where people would come and they talk about their ideas.

And they talk freely, they're not afraid that someone is

going to come and grab them and put in jail for their thoughts.

No, they discuss over there,

they discuss and they try to find the shared meaning about it.

So this is the idea of public sphere.

The next concept is a civil society.

Downey and Fenton defined it as a place where

individuals and groups are free to form organizations

that function independently and that can mediate between citizens and the state.

The place where autonomous public spheres reside.

So we have public spheres,

we just talked about them, bars.

Let's put it this way, sites where people talk and

we have civil society where those public spheres resides.

So in one civil society,

there are many of those spheres everywhere,

and those spheres should have relationship between each other.

Civil society includes a broad variety of

organizations and relationships among those organizations

and those relationships are crucial for

collective goal achievement at the local state and international level.

We always think about society.

So we have civil society,

in that society we have public spheres.

We have relationships which are going on between organizations,

publics, government, associations and the stronger those relationships are,

the freely the information goes,

the better the norms are established,

there is more trust in those relationships,

the better for the civil society,

the stronger the civil society is.

The next concept is a social capital.

Those are the features of social organizations such as networks, norms,

social trust, social capital facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.

Social capital leads to civil society and public spheres because it builds trust.

So, without social capital there is no civil society,

without social capital there are no public sphere.

Basically it helps those two other concepts to become,

to appear, to be stronger, to be better.

But there are different kinds of social capital.

There is bonding social capital,

one that's in a group,

and it's between this tight-knit group.

So people believe each other in that group but they don't believe

other people and they don't really want to talk to the other people,

this is bonding social capital.

And there is bridging social capital,

that's cross-cutting ties across different social groups.

So the group's trust promotes cooperation and participation in civic life.

So they still trust each other in the group,

but they trust other people as well.

And our goal as public relations practitioners build both bonding social capital

and bridging social capital and bridging for a democracy is even more important.

Eric Sommerfeldt wrote that "Public relations,

when it builds collective trust, cross cutting relationships,

and facilitates a plurality of views,

creates the social capital requisitive for communities to form and societies to function.

Really, basically we build communities, we build societies,

and we help those organizations,

those communities, those societies to work together for the public good.

We help society to become fully functioning.

Fully Functioning Society Theory

Communication theory: bridging academia and practice

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