PUBLIC-RELATIONS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION - AGENDAS FOR THE 1990S

The steady progress of public relations toward true professional status demands aggressive foresight and planning to assure that appropriate educational and research efforts are in place. Toward that end, this paper argues that: 1. (1) Public relations should be located in a communication discipline. 2. (2) Core research and theory should be advanced by isolating and empirically testing a limited number of functions that embrace the interaction between organizations and their stakeholders and maintain a commitment to ethics as well as pragmatics. 3. (3) The discipline should not make artificial distinctions between information and persuasion. 4. (4) The array of auxiliary disciplines should be as wide as possible and tailored to each practitioner's needs. 5. (5) The ideal curriculum should train practitioners to add value to the organizations they serve. © 1991.