Grunig & PR departments. Learn to delegate!

I spent my lazy Christmas afternoons enjoying non-stop feasts with my family and reading two good pieces of literature simultaneously. With one of the two being a Russian edition of Cosmopolitan, the other just had to be “serious”. We’ve heard all about it, but just in case you haven’t got your hands on this book yet, here’s a quick update:


In their Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management the famous academic couple of James and Larissa Grunig investigate how excellent Public Relations determine overall “excellence” of organization. What is the real value of PR to an organization?


Key elements of their theory are grouped into five parts:


Part 1: Excellent PR departments (14 characteristics)
Part 2: Excellent communication programs (planning, implementation, evaluation)
Part 3: Excellent organization and management of a PR department
Part 4: Excellent PR = excellent organization? (how PR helps reach big targets)
Part 5: PR value (monetary!) – how to measure?


Now, looking at the title of my blog you might be wondering how our glamorous PR women fit into the Grunig theory of excellence.


Let’s start with the departmental level:


As it was discovered by the authors, “women in public relations represent a bargain for an organization that employs them”. Specifically, women fulfill dual roles of “staff support” and a “technician”. One top communicator at an economic development agency, quoted by the authors, said that “Females are expected not only to write press releases but type the envelopes and get the stamps, when we could be spending our time doing managerial work”[1].


In fact, we don’t mind stamping envelopes. As long as the male colleagues are busy making cappuccinos.


However, the authors claim there is a clear tendency of shifting female roles in Public Relations towards “manager” rather than “technician”.


Numerous surveys, carried out over the last 25 years and described in the book, show that in public relations men are performing managerial work “(e.g., expert prescriber, problem-solving process facilitator, and communication facilitator)” more frequently.”Men were especially active with regard to strategic planning and policy decision-making.”[2]


Further surveys suggest this state of affairs has very little to do with years of professional experience (against the common stereotype that “there are more managers among men as they tend to have more experience than women”).


According to L. Grunig (2001), an interesting argument was made by focus group participants. It was suggested that women end up combining technical work with managerial task only because they fail to delegate as often and as effectively as men.
I tend to agree with this idea.


The authors’ key conclusion here is the following: “Women may have less opportunity than men to gain strategic expertise because of the time they must spend doing technical tasks.”


That’s some food for thought. We all know delegating is a useful skill, but now it plays a simply tremendous role. Our resolution to start delegating and to stop nurturing others may boost our career in PR (in a long run).


P.S. “Women must tread the line of being very confident and express their views, but avoid the “bitch” label”, says a top communicator in the state arts organization[3].


[1] Grunig J., Grunig L.,, Dozier. Excellent Public Relations and Effective Organizations. 2002. p.187
[2] A survey of 44 PR practitioners working for the 91 school districts in South Carolina (1997). Quoted by Grunig J., Grunig L.,, Dozier. Excellent Public Relations and Effective Organizations. 2002.
[3] Ibid. p.188