Revisiting organization–public relations research over the past decade

Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 85–87

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Public Relations Review

Short Communication

Revisiting organization–public relations research over the past decade:

Theoretical concepts, measures, methodologies and challenges

Yi-Hui Christine Huang∗, Yin Zhang

School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 11 June 2012

Received in revised form

20 September 2012

Accepted 29 October 2012

Keywords:

Organization–public relationship (OPR)

OPR research

Review

a b s t r a c t

This paper develops a better understanding of organization–public relationships (OPR) by

analyzing empirical studies published in academic periodicals from 2000 to early 2011. A

clear trend in the early years of the past decade was a greater focus on scale development,

whereas in the latter half of the decade the emphasis was on scale application. Two main

streams of OPR research reflect distinct clusters of authorship and research foci. In addition

to providing a research summary, this study consolidates the lessons learned from OPR

scholarship and provides suggestions for future research.

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Organization–public relationship (OPR) has been emphasized in public relations research and practice since the 1980s.

OPR has been criticized, however, for being informed more by intuition than meticulous conceptualization and rigorous

methodology (Broom, Casey, & Ritchey, 1997). Ki and Shin (2006) stress that relevant research has neglected to study OPR as

a dynamic process existing within diverse contexts (p. 195). Responding to the call for further conceptual and methodological

work on OPR,this paper analyze empirical studies published in various academic journals from 2000 to early 2011. This study

makes several important contributions to the field of public relations in general and to the field of relationship management

in particular. First, we situate OPR at a higher conceptual and operational level. Second, we extend Ki and Shin’s work (2006)

by adding data collected after 2004. Finally, we help refine extant theories of public relations effectiveness (Grunig, Grunig,

& Dozier, 2002) by explicating the antecedents and outcome variables of OPR.

2. Method

We searched four SSCI journals – the Journal of Public Relations Research, the Public Relations Review, the Journal of

Communication, the Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and two newly established academic journals in the

field, the Journal of Communication Management and the International Journal of Strategic Communication. Keywords were

used to search for titles and abstracts of articles: “organization–public relationship(s),” “OPR”, “relationship management,”

“relationship building,” and “relationship maintenance.” A total of forty studies, containing either quantitative or qualitative

data, are represented in this survey.

The complete study can be requested from the author.

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 39431846.

E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (Y.-H.C. Huang).

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

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.10.001