Issues Management and Strategic Planning PRL2001 Strategic Planning

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Issues Management and Strategic Planning PRL2001
Strategic Planning

• Course Examiner - Elizabeth Dougall
• Lecture 7, Week 7
• Semester 2, 2002

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Objectives

• On completing the lectures, tutorials and
  readings for this week you should be able to
• Discuss strategy and strategic planning in
  relation to issues management
• Describe the relationship between public opinion
  and public policy and issues management
• Describe some of the theories relevant to issues
  management.

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Strategy and Strategic Thinking

• To be strategic, public relations must pass one
  basic test...Everything done must be aligned with
  the corporate vision or mission - the companys
  reason for being - and must substantially
  contribute to achieving the organisation's
  objectives. Ideally, public relations should be
  part of the team helping to create the
  corporate mission and set the objectives.
• Philip J. Webster (1990, p. 18)

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Strategy and Strategic Thinking

• It makes little sense to...
• Conduct research, identify and segment publics,
  develop and communicate messages, listen to
  feedback, stage events, send media releases and
  use other communication tools etc ...
• if there is no strategic purpose upon which
  these activities are founded.

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Strategy and Strategic Thinking

• Strategic management involves
• discovering the long-term goals of the
  organisation
• making a series of decisions and
• allocating resources
• ...so that the organisation is steered toward
  those long-term goals.

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Strategy and Strategic Thinking

• Operational management is doing things right
  (on a day-to-day basis).
• Strategic management is doing the right things
  (over the longer term).

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Strategy and Public Relations

• Strategy typically refers to the overall
  concept, approach, or general plan for the
  program designed to achieve a goal.
• Tools or Tactics refer to the operational
  level the actual events, media and methods used
  to implement the strategy.

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Strategic Planning

• Market and Public Policy Forces in Decision
  Making
• For most organisations there are two processes by
  which decisions are made in the socio-political
  arena
• 1. the market system, and
• 2. the public policy system.

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Strategic Planning

• Market driven decisions primarily aim to adapt to
  changing market conditions and competitor
  initiatives.
• Examples include
• introducing a product/service
• abandoning a product/service
• targeting new markets for product/service
• increasing quality of product service
• downscaling quality of product/service
• diversifying operations

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Strategic Planning

• Policy Driven Decisions
• - adapt to changing public policy conditions
  that can affect market conditions and competitor
  activities.
• Examples include
• taking a public communications stance on key
  public issues
• changing operations to adapt to public policy
  issues
• changing missions to adapt to public policy
  issues
• changing operating standards to adapt to public
  policy issues and
• changing product/service lines or mix to adapt to
  public policy issues.

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Strategic Planning

• Issues management can help an organisation in
  several ways, by
• making it sensitive to socio political trends
• avoiding being driven only by marketing and
  operating philosophies and
• integrating public policy concerns into the
  organisation operating system

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Strategic Opportunities

• Technological and Economic forecasting attempts
  to determine what innovations are likely to
  challenge the direction of the market.
• Social monitoring looks for changes in values,
  lifestyles, and demographics that might affect
  its operating environment or marketing plan.
• Public policy forecasting focuses on the
  legislation, regulatory agencies and special
  interest groups that may affect the operating
  environment.

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Public Opinion

• A public is defined as
• A group of people who
• face a similar indeterminate situation
• recognise what is indeterminate and problematic
  within that situation and
• organise to do something about the problem.
• (Seitel 1989, p. 15)

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Public Opinion

• What is Public Interest?
• the aggregation, the weighing and balancing of a
  number of special interests that allows the
  organisation to prioritise its actions to meet
  audience needs.
• a common or universal interest and concepts of
  value that are generally accepted in society.
• the organisation should attempt to meet the
  basic needs and wants of those who make up
  communities (corporate social responsibility).

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Public Opinion

• Public Interest
• involves the acceptance of the interests of the
  majority to resolve differences.
• If all people have had the chance to participate
  in the decision making than any outcome will be
  in the public interest.

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Public Opinion

• Public issues are those that find their way into
  the public policy process because the extent of
  the problem forces some course of action to be
  taken to lessen the impact of the issue

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Public Opinion

• The common interest in life largely eludes
  public opinion entirely and can be managed only
  by a specialised class. I set no great store on
  what can be done by public opinion or the action
  of the masses. (Lippmann in Glasser and Salmon,
  p. 389)
• public opinion no longer refers to opinions
  being expressed in the public and then recorded
  in the press. Public opinion is formed by the
  press and modelled by the public opinion industry
  and the apparatus of policy, (Lippmann in
  Glasser and Salmon, p. 392)

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Public Opinion

• Where an organisation does not seem to respond to
  the demand of public opinion it is left to
  government to fill the void and legislate policy
  that is in the best interests of the people.
• In some cases it is public opinion and the
  resulting policy that controls the viability of
  an organisation.

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Public Opinion

• What is the relationship between public opinion
  and public policy?
• There are three major active forces in issue
  evolution political elites, the general public,
  and the mass media, (McLeod et al, 19 , p68).
• ..efforts of a single individual are virtually
  meaningless to the macro electoral process
  because one persons vote almost never determines
  an election outcome, (McLeod et al, 19 , p55)

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Theories to Explore in Issues Management

• Social Judgement Theory
• People filter, distort, and ignore information
  that does not confirm their attitudes, including
  those toward businesses. In other words, people
  who question the performance of private sector
  organisations willingly accept facts that confirm
  their predispositions.
• Institutional Theory
• Firms are rewarded for developing internal
  structures isomorphic (identical or similar to)
  with external institutional pressures i.e..
  Organisations facing the same institutional
  environment will have similar structures.

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Theories to Explore in Issues Management

• Resource Dependence Theory
• Two broad tenets
• 1. Organisations are constrained by, and depend
  on other organisations that control critical
  resources for them and
• 2. Organisations attempt to manage uncertainty
  and their dependencies on external groups in
  order to acquire more autonomy and freedom

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Theories to Explore in Issues Management

• Greening and Gray (SR 6.1)- Proposed five (5)
  hypotheses in relation to issues management
  structural development
• High levels of firm-specific media exposure about
  issues will be positively related to issues
  management structural development
• High levels of interest group pressure will be
  positively related to issues management
  structural development
• The extent to which firms have experienced severe
  crises will be positively related to issues
  management structural development
• Size will be positively related to issues
  management structural development
• Top management commitment will be positively
  related to issues management structural
  development

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Today

• No Tutorials today.
• Very important lecture and tutorials next week.