Perceived professional standards and roles of public relations in China

Public Relations Review 38 (2012) 704–710

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Public Relations Review

Perceived professional standards and roles of public relations in China:

Through the lens of Chinese public relations practitioners

Chunxiao Li a, Fritz Croppb, Will Sims c, Yan Jinc,∗

a Chengdu Overseas Media Service, China b School of Journalism, University of Missouri-Columbia, United States c School of Mass Communications, Virginia Commonwealth University, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 21 January 2012

Received in revised form 6 April 2012

Accepted 1 May 2012

Keywords:

China

Contingency

Professional standard

Performance

Practitioner

Public relations

Survey

a b s t r a c t

As the first quantitative examination of perceived public relations professional standards

in China using an online survey, this study was designed based on the standards of profes￾sional standards inventory Cameron, Sallot, & Lariscy (1996) constructed and tested among

practitioners in the U.S. The survey results suggest six dimensions of perceived standards

of professional performance: (1) role and function in organizational strategic planning, (2)

sufficiency in professional training and preparedness, (3) gender and racial equity, (4) sit￾uational constraints, (5) licensing and organizational support, and (6) participation in the

organizational decision-making team. Four dimensions of public relations roles were also

identified by the survey participants: (1) brand promotion facilitator, (2) public informa￾tion specialist, (3) media relations counsel, and (4) conflict management expert. Primary

practice area was found to affect how Chinese practitioners perceive the six clusters of

professional standards and the four identified public relations roles. These findings provide

insights for bothpractitioners andresearchers onhow Chinesepublic relationspractitioners

view public relations as a profession and how the profession currently holds its professional

standards in China.

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Background

Ina recent article onChina and public relations research, Ovaitt(2011) described the growing public relations professionin

China as “a one-of-a-kind place and experience.”According to Ovaitt(2011), given China’s “fast-developing indigenous public

relations industry,” its “growing number of local practitioners working on the client side and in Chinese and multinational

agencies,” and the Chinese public relations community’s hunger for “research and expert knowledge from many sources,”

it is critical for researchers to examine how things work and further strengthen the research exchange and development.

Although different areas of public relations practice have been examined in the past several years (e.g., relationship

management, Hung & Chen, 2009; Zhang & Taylor, 2010; reputation management and image restoration, Meng, 2010;

Zhang & Cameron, 2003; government affairs, Chen, 2007; Yi & Chang, in press; consumer relations, Wang & Wang, 2007;

corporate social responsibility, Wang & Chaudhri, 2009; crisis communication, Chen, 2009, etc.), the main approaches have

primarily relied on case studies and qualitative research. Noticing this lack of sufficient quantitative research to provide a

bigger picture of PR practice in China, Li, Cropp, and Jin (2010) conducted a survey of Chinese PR practitioners’ strategic

conflict management decision-making processes regarding their evaluations of key components of the contingency theory

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 804 827 3764.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Li), [email protected] (F. Cropp), [email protected] (W. Sims), [email protected] (Y. Jin).

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

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.05.001