Vision and state health department public relations practitioners

Public Relations Review 38 (2012) 592–599

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Public Relations Review

Vision and state health department public relations practitioners:

Prepared to lead?

Kurt Wise∗

School of Communications, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT 06518, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 10 November 2011

Received in revised form 23 May 2012

Accepted 19 June 2012

Keywords:

Public relations

Vision

Health

Leadership

a b s t r a c t

Visions are important to organizational effectiveness. Although providing vision has been

identified as one of the behaviors that best captures organization-wide public relations

leadership, little public relations research has focused on vision. Similarly, state health

departments have drawn little interest among public relations scholars even though states

are a central part of the nation’s public health system. This study addressed the perceptions

of the top public relations professionals at state health departments concerning vision and

their involvement in the visioning process. The practitioners were nearly unanimous in

their belief that organizational visions are important. However, results indicate that some

top public relations practitioners at state health departments are not prepared to make

optimal contributions to the visioning process. In order to take full advantage of oppor￾tunities to serve as organization-wide leaders, public relations practitioners should seek

out information about visioning in order help chart their organization’s future and enhance

their careers.

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Research concerning vision has emanated from numerous fields including leadership (Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Bennis

& Nanus, 1985; Berson, Shamir, Avolio, & Popper, 2001; Nanus, 1992; Rafferty & Griffin, 2004; Sosik & Dinger, 2007; Yukl,

Gordon, & Taber, 2002; Zaccaro & Banks, 2001), management(Ackoff, 1993; Kantabutra & Saratun, 2011; Kantabutra, 2010a),

psychology (Baum, Locke, & Kirkpatrick, 1998; Frese, Beimel, & Schoenborn, 2003), and operational research (O’Brien &

Meadows, 2007). In contrast, public relations scholars have shown only limited interest in vision (Farmer, Slater, & Wright,

1998; Wise, 2010). This is surprising, given that vision has been cited as central to public relations leadership by both

practitioners and educators (Aldoory, 1998) and that vision has been identified as one of three behaviors that best capture

organization-wide public relations leadership (Choi & Choi, 2009).

Public relations research on public health bodies is also scarce. Public relations researchers have focused on other areas

of health-related research in recent years such as the relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists

(Ankney & Curtin, 2002; Avery & Lariscy, 2008; Cho & Cameron, 2007; Lariscy, Avery, & Sohn, 2010) the agenda-building

process of health news (Len-Rios et al., 2009), the practice of broadcast health journalists (Tanner, 2004), and receiver￾oriented health research (Avery, 2010; Springston & Champion, 2004). When public relations researchers have examined

public health bodies, they have tended to focus on national or world public health bodies (Avery & Kim, 2009) or local

health departments (Avery et al., 2010) rather than state health departments. Most of the research concerning state health

∗ Correspondence address: School of Communications, Public Relations Department, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Avenue, Hamden, CT

06518, United States. Tel.: +1 203 582 3807; fax: +1 203 582 5310.

E-mail address: [email protected]

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

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.06.004