Grunig and diversity. Read Harvard Business Review!

I am continuing reading Excellence in Public Relations and Effective Organizations.

While, as a whole, I find the book quite deep for such a theory-lacking field as PR, I have to say that the points risen seem to me quite general and may be applied to any organization employing women rather than strictly a PR firm or a department. I am not being too original with this critique, here’s a much better example of a comment:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_4_18/ai_77010728 [1]

Anyway, what I admire about the Grunig family (apart from their enviable capability of working side-by-side and still staying married to each other) is their practice of extensive research.

I really loved some of the findings titled “Qualitative Results Related to Gender and Diversity”. Basically, the survey conductors interviewed top communicators of various PR specializations trying to find out something more sophisticated than conventional wisdoms like a woman has to be twice as good as a man to succeed, etc.

To be precise, according to the authors, the results of this survey provided ” an insight into how the process of creating conducive conditions for both the public relations function and for women occur in excellent organizations.”

So, a few interesting thoughts:

“The top communicator at the heart health organization…deplored women’s “whining” about their status. …She proposed that women start behaving like the top executives do. She suggested reading the Harvard Business Review, in particular. Without taking such action, she contended, it is women’s own failure when they fail to become part of the management team. ”

Now, girls, what do you think?

Another respondent suggested that women should not make a big deal out of… being women. I hope she didn’t mean we should drink regular Coke and smile invitingly to secretaries.

According to the authors, the focus group participant said,” It’s just kind of doing business work and not paying attention to the fact that you’re a female and everyone around you is male.”

Where does this” top communicator at a statewide public utility” come from? You see, here in the UK we keep hearing about LACK of men in PR. Where has she got this “everyone around you” to deal with?

On a more serious note, the author poses a question. How will we bring the famous female approach to PR if we start fighting our normal feminine behavior? Mary Kay Ash is quoted in the book, and she doesn’t like this concept of an “effort to imitate men”.

Then the authors go into basic organizational techniques to empower diversity such as Promotion from Within or Awareness or Diversity Training Programs. We have heard about

them before.

To cut a long story short, L.Grunig and J.Grunig believe that empowering diversity and giving more managerial roles to women will bring positive change to communication and PR fields and add to excellence of an organization.

[1] Actually, the critique refers to another book by Larissa Grunig, "Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice", but the ideas described are quite the same as in the book I am mentioning.