Development of professional roles in the practice of public relations in Chile

Public Relations Review 38 (2012) 446–453

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Public Relations Review

Development of professional roles in the practice of public relations in

Chile

Claudia Mellado∗, Sergio Barría

School of Journalism, University of Santiago (Chile), Av. Ecuador 3650, Estación Central, Santiago de Chile, Chile

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 3 December 2011

Received in revised form 29 March 2012

Accepted 4 April 2012

Keywords:

Public relations

Public relations practitioners

Professional roles

Role conceptions

Chile

a b s t r a c t

Using survey responses of 577 public relation practitioners, this article examines role con￾ceptions in Chilean public relations, as well as the effects that different individual and

organizational factors have on their professional worldviews. The results show that how

Chilean practitioners perceive their roles can be grouped into four different types: the long￾term strategic,the short-term technical,the passive-complaisant, and the active-vigilant. In

general terms, Chilean public relations practitioners distance themselves from the passive￾complaisant role, giving greater importance to the other three. The findings also reveal that

gender, education level, job commitment, perceived autonomy, organization type, and geo￾graphical location are the factors that better predict Chilean PR professional roles, while

hierarchy level and organization’s reach do not directly affect their perceptions.

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Since modern public relations education was established, researchers have tried to identify the functions and roles of

the profession within the communication field. The profound political, economic, and social changes that have been rapidly

occurring during the last decades around the world, especially in emerging and transitioning democracies and economies

(Moreno, Molleda, & Suárez, 2006), have intensified this search of identity in a more and more complex, competitive, and

globalized environment. The decrease in the State’s power, the importance given to public opinion, the centrality of mass

media, the organizations’ exposure to social scrutiny, the increased process of competition, the expansion of the society of

consumers, and the multiplication of conflicts and crisis are some of the aspects involved in these changes (Tironi & Cavallo,

2004).

Professional roles in public relations, also known as professional orientations or professional worldviews, have been

analyzed by the literature as the normative and real functions ofthe public relations practice that guide individuals’ behavior

within the organizational context(Costa, 2005;Molleda & Ferguson, 2004;VanRuler,Verciˇ c, ˇ Flodin, & Buetschi, 2001; Zerfass,

Tench, Verhoeven, Verciˇ c, ˇ & Moreno, 2010).

The abundant research on PR professional roles developed in the US and Europe contrasts with the little theoretical and

empirical work that exists on the topic in Latin America. Although previous efforts have been carried out in some countries

of the region (González & Akel, 1996; Molleda, 2001; Molleda & Ferguson, 2004; Molleda, Moreno, Athaydes, & Suárez, 2010;

Simões, 1992), Western cultural influences on the Southern Hemisphere have strongly impacted the dominant approach

through which the profession’s role and function have been conceived (Sharpe & Simoes, 1996).

In Chile, the few studies focused on public relations are mostly concerned with descriptive aspects of the job mar￾ket, demographic characterization, public relation’s history, and the study of protocol and etiquette in event organization

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +56 2 7184420.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Mellado), [email protected] (S. Barría).

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.04.001