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Explaining the Origins of Public Relations: Logics of Historical Explanation
Tim P. Vos a{ }^{a}
School of Journalism, University of Missouri,
Online publication date: 31 March 2011
To cite this Article Vos, Tim P.(2011) ‘Explaining the Origins of Public Relations: Logics of Historical Explanation’, Journal of Public Relations Research, 23: 2, 119−140119-140
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Explaining the Origins of Public Relations: Logics of Historical Explanation
Tim P. Vos
School of Journalism, University of Missouri
Abstract
This study reviews a major body of research-historical explanations for the emergence of public relations as a social institution. This review of public relations histories identifies three distinct logics of historical explanation-a functionalist logic, an institutional logic, and a cultural logic. It then describes how these three logics are used in public relations histories and explores the theoretical and methodological challenges that each of these approaches presents.
This study reviews a major body of research-historical explanations for the emergence of public relations as a social institution. Histories of corporate public relations are not rare. A body of literature has emerged to account for the rise of public relations (e.g., Cutlip, 1994; Ewen, 1996; Marchand, 1998; Tye, 1998). In fact, the historiography of public relations (e.g., L’Etang, 2008; Olasky, 1985/1986; Pearson, 1990) has emerged in its own right to examine the frameworks, approaches, and theories of PR’s origins and development. The study at hand differs from these others by focusing on the logics of historical explanation (Sewell, 2005). Pearson also purported to explore various explanations in public relations history. However, his focus was on identifying distinct narrative or interpretative frameworks and not on the underlying logic of explanation. A logic of explanation is not a framework, approach, or theory. Rather it is, as
- Correspondence should be sent to Dr. Tim P. Vos, Ph.D., University of Missouri, School of Journalism, 181-B Gannett Hall, Columbia, MO 65211. E-mail: vost@missouri.edu ↩︎
Parsons (2007) described it, the most basic element of what causes what. Each logic constitutes “the separable elemental bits or segments into which … explanations of action can be broken down” (p. 3). This review of public relations histories identifies three distinct logics of historical explanation: a functionalist logic, an institutional logic, and a cultural logic. Although these three logics are not exhaustive of the logics of explanation used in the social sciences, they are the three that figure most prominently in PR histories. This study describes how these three logics are used in public relations histories and explores the theoretical and methodological challenges that each of these approaches presents.
L’Etang (2008) has noted that doing PR history involves “some philosophical reflection at the outset” (p. 323). Identifying those logics of historical explanation that drive the narration of corporate public relations history is an important philosophical step. In fact, it is particularly important because those logics of explanation are almost never explicitly acknowledged. This oversight muddles our historical inquiry into the who, what, when, where, and how of public relations history. In other words, this empirical inquiry proceeds based on some unexamined assumptions, which blinds people to the theoretical and methodological complications those assumptions present. Public relations historians have reexamined dominant narrative and interpretative frameworks, most notably revisiting the progressive approach to PR history (e.g., Gower, 2008; Olasky, 1985/1986; Pearson, 1990). Something similar must also be done by examining the logics of historical explanation.
Crafting historical explanations, far from an irrelevant academic exercise, is central to how scholars understand public relations today (Brown, 2006). L’Etang (2008) has reminded her fellow public relations historians that “historical explanations are not neutral and include ideological or moral components” (p. 322). For example, Pieczka (2006) has argued that a form of functionalist logic, systems theory, is one of the key “presuppositions underpinning current public relations theorizing” (p. 333). This presupposition both influences and is influenced by the functionalist histories of public relations. This study also allows me to explore how it is that history matters. Pierson (2004) argued that current theorizing in the social sciences must make more “progress in treating institutions as themselves important objects of explanation” (p. 103). The first step in doing this, according to Pierson, is to see institutions in their temporal context. The consequence of taking this step is that we are able “to identify and explicate some fundamental social mechanisms.” We are able to craft “arguments that can ‘travel’ in some form beyond a specific time and place” (p. 6). In other words, a history of public relations as a social institution contributes to the broader effort of theory building in the social sciences.
One of the difficulties in any attempt to explain public relations as a historical outcome is a lack of precision in defining the actual outcome. Few disciplines have struggled with defining their own institutionalized activities in quite the same way as public relations. Much scholarly labor and debate have gone into defining public relations (e.g., Gordon, 1997; Hutton, 1999; Long & Hazelton, 1987; Moore, 1966; Vercic, van Ruler, Butschi, & Flodin, 2001). As Olasky (1984b) has pointed out, different definitions can lead to different historical narratives. The difficulty in defining public relations has led to differences among historians in identifying the historical arrival of public relations as a social institution. Cutlip (1994) concluded that the first public relations agency was founded in Boston in 1900 to generate publicity for clients. However, other historians of public relations have made distinctions between a publicity phase, explanatory phase, and mutual satisfaction phase in public relations (e.g., Canfield, 1968). Although some have made slightly different distinctions (e.g., Grunig & Hunt, 1984), they typically agree that public relations borrowed practices from each phase. Regardless of the precise stages or phases, there is some agreement that press agentry or publicity-seeking activities do not constitute public relations as a social institution. In fact, some historians have questioned whether it is even valid to posit publicity seeking as an evolutionary ancestor of PR (Gower, 2008; Lamme, 2009; Russell & Bishop, 2009). Although public relations practitioners would sometimes create publicity, their duties were more expansive. Those duties included mediating between the public and clients-shaping the public’s view of the client and the client’s view of the public.
Attaching a date to the emergence of the explanatory or mutual satisfaction stage is tricky. Some point to Ivy Lee’s “Declaration of Principles” in 1905 as a seminal moment (Hiebert, 1966). Others have noted that public relations counsel, a term that captures the mediator role of the field, was not part of the vernacular until the 1920s (Olasky, 1984b; Tye, 1998). The aim here is to understand explanations of corporate public relations as a social institution, i.e., as a set of shared beliefs and practices across a variety of organizations. One indicator that corporate public relations attained institutional status in the 1920s is that the first time the New York Times index included public relations, or something approximating it, as a regular entry was 1927 (“The New York Times index,” 1927). Nevertheless, as Pierson (2004) argued, institutions must be understood not as static entities, but rather “in time” (p. 1), and thus setting an exact date for a historical outcome can be counterproductive. Nevertheless, dates are important in as much as any explanatory factor identified by historians must obviously precede or be contemporaneous with the outcome being explained. If PR did, indeed, arrive in 1905, explanations that point to the Creel Commission’s work a decade later are problematic at best.
FUNCTIONALIST LOGIC FOR EXPLAINING PUBLIC RELATIONS
If corporate public relations has an official history, it is the story once told by public relations pioneer Edward Bernays and repeated in subsequent histories of public relations (Bitter, 1987). “The first recognition of the distinct functions of the public relations counsel arose, perhaps, in the early years of the present [20th] century as a result of the insurance scandals coincident with the muck-raking of corporate finance in the popular magazines” (Bernays, 1928, p. 41). The explanation that public relations grew out of a reaction to muckraking is repeated, often with less specificity, in “Study Guide for the Examination for Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) Examination” and in public relations textbooks. The textbooks range from general PR texts (Coombs & Holladay, 2007; e.g., Heath & Vasquez, 2001) to narrower PR fields (e.g., Nichols, 2002; Rotman & Gerasimo, 2001). Coombs and Holladay (2007) summarized the point succinctly: “Muckrakers are considered the impetus for modern public relations” (p. 66).
This explanation may have the ring of an official history because it is validated by one of public relations’ chief historians. Cutlip’s (1994) history of public relations provides an elaboration of Bernays’ original argument:
In the fading era of the ‘the public be damned,’ exploitation of the people and their resources was bound to bring, ultimately, protest and reform once the people were aroused. And aroused they would be with the development of a popular forum in the nation’s press and magazines and utilization of this new national forum by the Muckrakers to expose the abuses of people, long hidden from their view. In turn, these attacks created the need for institutions and industries under attack to defend themselves in the court of public opinion as well as the court of law. (p. 3)
Cutlip underscored his point by quoting historian Merle Curti. “The expert in public relations was an inevitable phenomenon, in view of the services he could provide” (qtd in Cutlip, 1994, p. 3).
The underlying logic of explanation in these accounts of public relations’ beginnings rests on functionalism. At one time, functionalism was the chief paradigm in sociology and other social sciences (Huaco, 1986). The logic of functional explanation, however, is borrowed from biology. Social systems are like ecological systems. All aspects of an ecosystem are interrelated-a change to one aspect of the ecosystem will necessitate changes in other aspects of the system until the system achieves equilibrium. Society, like nature, abhors a vacuum. An essential role in a system cannot go unfillednature or, in the case of a social system, society will fill a vacuum to bring the system to equilibrium. Any social function can be understood as
performing some role in the preservation or maintenance of a social system. In other words, the survival of a social system is dependent on its ability to achieve equilibrium (Huaco, 1986; Mahner & Bunge, 2001; Turner & Maryanski, 1979).
This form of societal functionalism is readily recognizable. A particular institution or a particular social practice exists because it solves a social problem. For example, any society must solve the problem of distribution, the apportionment of goods and services to those who need them to survive, prosper, or be content. This distributive function has been performed in specific ways in various societies. Primitive societies met this need through a kinship structure. But as society outgrew this arrangement, other institutions, such as the state or the marketplace, were created to meet this need (Janos, 1986). Modern mass media have been understood in similar terms-the need to surveil one’s surroundings has been complicated by the size and complexity of modern societies, creating a vacuum filled by the media of mass communication (Siebert, 1956; Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1973). Media practice varies from one system to another or from one time to another, based upon the organization and needs of the system. In other words, “the press always takes on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates” (Siebert et al., 1973, p. 1). To understand media form and content “one must look at the social systems in which the press functions” (Siebert et al., 1973, p. 2).
This logic of explanation is not confined to the story of muckraking’s role in the rise of public relations. Cutlip (1995) used this logic to explain the early adoption of publicity practices. He pointed to how nonprofit groups “faced with the need of raising money through voluntary contributions were among the first to see the need for planned publicity to win public support” (Cutlip, 1995, p. 252). These actors’ actions are explained in terms of the vacuum that needed to be filled. Much of the story about progressivism’s role in the creation of public relations is told in similar terms. Progressivism recontoured the American social landscape, forcing industrial and government actors to adapt to the new environment. Public relations practitioners filled a new need created by new realities in American life. As Adams (1999) concluded, “Railroads, utilities, and oil companies, which were hit by bad publicity from Progressive legislation and muckrakers, especially felt the need to hire press agents who could make their case persuasively” (p. 110). Thus, the story also reconnects to muckraking; e.g., Filler (1976) explained how progressivism came to expression in the muckrakers, which in turn created the need for public relations. This is what has been called the counter-defense or conservative defense-PR comes about as a means of answering muckraking’s accusations (Raucher, 1968).
Although not without some heuristic value, the functionalist logic of explanation proves unsatisfying on several levels. First, as Curti’s (1982) conclusion most clearly demonstrates, the outcome is presented as the cause, rather than the effect. This is one of the chief criticisms of functionalism-it explains causes by way of effects, rather than an effect by way of causes. The argument is that an outcome occurs because it creates a functional social system. Such an argument “is at most a functional account, not a functional explanation” (Mahner & Bunge, 2001, p. 89). Second, the argument begs the question of why public relations emerged at this moment. The functionalist answer suggests that awareness surrounding corporate scandals had risen to such a level that corporations needed a kind of public relations that had heretofore not been available. However, such an argument, in and of itself, is not convincing. As Gray, Frieder, and Clark (2005) have shown, Americans had experienced and duly noted any number of business scandals prior to the early 1900s. In fact, some of the scandals in the 1800s had involved some of the same kinds of actors, e.g., railroad barons, who have been cited as central to the rise of public relations in the early 20th century. The functionalist answer to this counter-argument is that it took the kind of outcry generated by the muckrakers to force corporations to take action. But this presents a third problem-functionalist logic is typically tautological. The evidence to support this claim, i.e., public relations grew out of a response to muckraking, is the outcome itself. How much public outrage did it take to precipitate change? The answer is: “as much outrage as the muckrakers whipped up.” Fourth, functionalist arguments typically fail to provide evidence of a satisfying selective or adaptive mechanism. The suggestion from Cutlip, who is more specific than most, seems to be that the court of public opinion and the court of law functioned as a means of rewarding organizations that employed public relations. But, corporations had lawyers to win in the court of law and it is not clear why public relations was necessary to win in this venue. If public relations was such a strategic advantage in the court of public opinion, it is not clear that corporations or publicists clearly saw it as such. As Cutlip (1994) has pointed out, there were fewer than 10 public relations agencies well over a decade after muckraking had reached its peak. One can also argue that public opinion was not the necessary selective mechanism - the new public relations counselors only had to be selected by their clients, not the public. Finally, functionalism is ahistorical in as much as certain social functions, even certain public relations functions, are presumed to be necessary in all cultures at some time or another. Such an approach can put just about anyone in the public relations business; e.g., Julius Ceasar is cast as “one of the early public relations practitioners” (Bitter, 1987, p. 21) and Lady Godiva staged publicity events (Newsom & Scott, 1985). Cutlip’s (1995) exploration of the roots of
American public relations casts America’s founding fathers as practitioners of PR and Brown (2003b) put forward St. Paul as Christendom’s first PR agent. Granted, L’Etang (2008) has argued that there is much to learn from exploring the history of PR functions amongst the ancients and others.
A similar species of explanation, although not immediately recognizable as a relative to the story told previously, is also offered for the beginnings of public relations. In this story, public relations comes about when and how it does because of the efforts of pioneers who saw the need for a new type of institutionalized communication. For example, Olasky (1987), like other public relations historians (Hiebert, 1966; Spellman, 1985), argued that a turn to the mediation function in public relations came about, in no small part, through the efforts of PR pioneer Ivy Lee. According to Olasky, Lee’s economic views reflected collaborationist ideas that yielded a new kind of persuasion.
Leading supporters of “partnership” … need(ed) a strategist, one with a sophisticated understanding of both economics and popular psychology. They needed a spokesman who could create the impression that “selling to the public” was inferior to “serving the public interest.” They needed someone who could stride into boardrooms and convince businessmen committed to selling that a new style of assessing corporate conduct - not just good sales but good “public relations”-was needed. (Olasky, 1987, p. 10)
In this story, PR turns out the way it does because Ivy Lee devises a new way of doing things. Other stories are just as likely to highlight the role of Edward Bernays (Ewen, 1996; Olasky, 1984a, 1984c; Tye, 1998). Cutlip (1994) explained the rise of the first Washington agencies in similar terms-“The discerning interest groups began to see the need to go beyond the legislator to his constituents to build support for or foment opposition to proposed legislation” (p. 27).
This kind of argument is what Pierson (2004) called actor-centered functionalism; i.e., “outcome X (an institution, policy, or organization, for instance) exists because those who design it expect it to serve the function Y” (p. 107). The logic of actor-centered functionalism is similar to its societal counterpart in that a disruption of a social equilibrium must then be addressed by some powerful actor. The actor’s actions should then be seen as intended to restore the equilibrium or necessary to fill a social vacuum. The logic of an actor-centered explanation for a historical outcome is to begin with an assessment of the function of the institution, policy, or organization, and then to determine who benefits from such a function. The explanation is crafted “through reference to the benefits these actors expect to derive” from an institution, policy, or organization (Pierson, 2004, p. 104).
Actor-centered functionalism carries many of the same problems as social or societal functionalism noted previously. It also presents some additional problems. First, the actor-centered approach privileges the motivations of a single actor when multiple motivations can be at work. As noted, there is an inherent tautology when the historian works backward to single out one motivation based on one effect. Second, the actor-centered approach assumes “that exclusively instrumental goals guide the behavior” (Pierson, 2004, p. 110) of the actors. This overstates the agency of one or two actors. Even though Lee and Bernays are by many accounts considered the fathers of public relations, they struggled to define what they had purportedly created (Penning, 2008). This was not unique to Lee and Bernays. A variety of “practitioners could not agree on definitions,” leaving “public relations inconsistently defined” (Penning, 2008, p. 355). Although Lee and Bernays did have new ideas that one can recognize as central tenets of corporate public relations, other public relations practitioners and their clients had to find these ideas worth adopting. Third, the agency of the actors may also be overstated in as much as some practices or organizational behaviors may not be the product of those who ostensibly have crafted the institution. Thus, although one may focus on some public relations practices as reflecting the innovations of Lee or Bernays, other practices, e.g., the dissemination of publicity, predate them. Thus, fourth, scholars need to see even powerful actors as subject to their larger institutional or cultural settings. For example, Jaques (2008) concluded that ‘issue management’ is unique in that its “origins and development can be so clearly traced to one man,” Howard Chase (p. 336). However, this begs the question of why it was that Chase originated the discipline so late in his life, and not sooner. Looking at his life experiences in their institutional and cultural settings would help address that question. Institutional and cultural settings will be elaborated in the following.
It should be noted that actor-centered functionalism is the same logic of explanation used by some critical or Marxist scholars (e.g., Chomsky & Barsamian, 2001; Smythe, 1981) who see the origins of public relations in the designs and needs of capitalists. In Smythe’s story, public relations arises because the captains of industry needed a means of combating growing public mistrust of Capitalism. In these stories almost all actors, except the business leaders and the public relations counselors, have their agency bound.
It should also be noted that not all scholarship that invokes functionalist language ultimately makes a functionalist argument. For example, Gower (2007) argued that with changes in early 20th century society, particularly in journalism, “corporate public relations became a necessity” (p. 6). But in Gower’s explanation public relations emerged from a perfect storm when journalism embraced a muckraking watchdog role and adopted objectivity as its professional ethic.
INSTITUTIONAL LOGIC FOR EXPLAINING PUBLIC RELATIONS
If the reaction-to-muckraking explanation has competition as an official history for the rise of public relations, it comes from those who point to the role of the Committee on Public Information (CPI). The CPI was formed by George Creel at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson at the outset of World War One. The committee was organized to “unite public opinion behind the war at home and to propagandize American peace aims abroad” (Cutlip, 1994, p. 106). To accomplish that task, the committee brought together professionals from many fields: “leading journalists, publicists, and advertising men, along with novelists, academic intellectuals, moral crusaders, and muckrakers of every sort from across the land” (Jackall & Hirota, 2000, p. 13). Each profession brought with it established rules and routines. Within a new organizational context, those rules and routines mixed together to produce new means of communication and persuasion.
Pinkleton (1994) argued that the CPI launched practices that public relations practitioners would subsequently use in their campaigns (see also Ewen, 1996). The CPI created “an organized, systematic campaign designed to reach targeted audiences with specific messages, often through specialized media” (Pinkleton, 1994, p. 239). Pinkleton concluded that the CPI was “a valuable training ground” for some of the pioneers of public relations. “These practitioners were the leaders among a handful of budding public relations experts who were able to take the lessons learned from the CPI and apply them to other areas, including product promotion, constituent and political relations, and fund raising” (Pinkleton, 1994, pp. 239-240). For example, later public relations practices made use of CPI tactics, such as using community opinion leaders, the so-called four minute men, to influence public opinion. In fact, the CPI had recognized early on that it would have to reach diverse audiences, separated by stubborn social divisions. Thus, when Bernays argued in 1928 that public relations counseling was distinctive in understanding the “groupings and affiliations of society” (p. 13) and that it relied on “the group leader with authority” (p. 37) as a way of reaching those groups, he was simply borrowing or adapting ideas and practices previously used by the CPI.
Gower (2007) told a similar story about the role of the CPI in PR’s emergence. The press agents who went to work for the CPI had heretofore focused on getting out information. They emerged from the CPI versed in “how images and symbols could be used effectively to influence the public” (Gower, 2007, p. 14). Gower extended this argument to account for public relations’ growth after World War Two. The armed services had trained some 75,000 "public information officers or communication specialists
during the war" (Gower, 2007, p. 15), flooding postwar America with a new wave of public relations practitioners.
An institutional logic of explanation need not be confined to the story of the CPI or war-related activities. Curtin’s (2008) account of the Fred Harvey Company shows how at least one company crafted “sophisticated public relations practices,” not out of a functionalist response to progressive reformers, but rather out of a “strong company culture and creed” (p. 270). Curtin found evidence that PR practices could just as easily be traced to the organizational culture of a family owned and operated company than to the large corporations under attack from muckrakers. In fact, Boyd (2001) showed how at least one of these large corporations cultivated practices that seemed antithetical to PR. Thus, these smaller firms propagated organizational routines and practices that would eventually be grafted into the institution of public relations and would ultimately be used to benefit the larger corporations.
An institutional explanation also takes note of the institutional practices and discourse borrowed from other institutions. A practice or rhetorical strategy that works well in one setting might be adapted to another institutional setting. Two examples can be cited. First, PR practitioners borrowed journalistic practices for their publicity efforts. Public relations counselors who had worked as journalists knew how to whip up publicity (Cutlip, 1994). Second, Ewen (1996) argued that Bernays borrowed a defining characteristic of public relations from law. “Eliciting a deliberate association with the legal profession, which advised clients on how to maneuver their ways through the complexities of law, Bernays described a counsel on public relations as one who would prescribe for a client the most effective ways to navigate an increasingly complicated, often hostile, social environment” (Ewen, 1996, p. 163). Interestingly, it was Ivy Lee who had a legal background, but it was Bernays who made the explicit connection to public relations.
The underlying form of explanation here is an institutional logic. An institutional logic emphasizes that “individuals turn to established routines or familiar patterns of behaviour to attain their purposes” (Hall & Taylor, 1996, p. 939). In other words, the individual’s rational calculation is bounded by his or her institutional position. Presented with the same institutional obstacle course, rational people will navigate the course in essentially the same way or via the same path. The path, once constructed, will represent a predictable road of travel; but the path, once altered via new institutional obstacles or rules, will also present a predictable path of travel. Public relations pioneers such as Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays, and others helped move public relations beyond mere publicity because they were continuing down a road they had already traveled with the CPI.
The institutional approach also emphasizes “the asymmetries of power associated with the operation and development of institutions” (Hall & Taylor, 1996, p. 938), which is to say that institutions alter power relationships, bounding the ability of some interests to attain their goals and increasing the ability of other interests to attain theirs. Public relations firms that hitched their wagons to the great American industrialists gained significant advantages from their patrons. Firms that offered little more than publicity would have less means when competing with those full service public relations firms bankrolled by big business.
An institutional logic of explanation comes with fewer inherent flaws than a functionalist approach. Nevertheless, there are issues that need to be considered. Like the functionalist approach described herein, an institutional explanation that points to the role of the CPI does little to explain those public relations practices, such as publicity seeking, that remain part of the public relations repertoire. However, the explanation does seem to correspond with some of the distinctive features of public relations that emerged closer to 1920 than 1900, such as efforts to influence the public through community leaders. Meanwhile, institutional practices borrowed from journalism would help explain publicity activities. Although the emphasis on asymmetries of power may be valuable, a story that argues that public relations won out over publicity agencies because of their favored status with large corporations bears close examination. The story places significant weight on the instrumental choices and rational capacities of big business leaders to choose the best adaptation (i.e., public relations over publicity)-an assumption that needs more scrutiny (Marchand, 1998). In addition, some of the close associations between big business and those who would become public relations counselors predate the emergence of public relations, as opposed to publicity, firms (Hallahan, 2002, 2003; Marchand, 1998). This begs the question of why PR did not emerge sooner. Finally, an institutional logic does not fully account for why a practice or rhetorical strategy in one institutional setting would be adapted to another setting. For example, Pearson (1990) concluded that it is not clear if Ivy Lee ever saw the institutional continuities between the legal profession and PR. According to Hall and Taylor (1996), this problem is generally why institutional explanations borrow from a cultural logic of explanation to round out their stories.
CULTURAL LOGIC FOR EXPLAINING PUBLIC RELATIONS
A minority report on the origins of corporate public relations comes in the form of a cultural explanation. One such cultural account casts public
relations as the product of the progressive movement. As Hallahan (2003) put it, “Public relations historians do well to recognize how the roots of contemporary public relations practice can be traced to Progressivism” (p. 411). The progressive movement had washed over politics, industry, and society, bringing with it an ideology that expressed the “ideals of reform, cooperation and participation” (Hallahan, 2003, p. 411). The progressive movement took aim at those decision-making processes that affected the public but proceeded out of the public view. Public policy should not be crafted by party bosses in smoke-filled rooms, nor should public life be dictated by business titans in corporate boardrooms. Some histories cast public relations counselors as active participants in the progressive movement, bringing openness and honesty to cloistered corporate leaders (Hiebert, 1966). Other histories stress how corporations were under assault from progressive regulators and do-gooders and made use of public relations counselors to help them bend to the new environment (Gower, 2008; Ponder, 1990; Stole, 2006). Corporations accepted their public obligations, to some extent, and, as Gower (2008) put it, used public relations “to influence public opinion by telling their side of the story, and they did so to avoid government regulation” (p. 315). Cutlip’s (1994) account of Ivy Lee’s rise in public relations blends these narratives: “Young Lee grew up in a . . . nation with its burgeoning industrial revolution that was rushing headlong into the 20th century and the Progressive era of reform that would make Ivy Lee’s role as a publicist and conciliator essential” (p. 39). Lee’s Declaration of Principles would make progressive values such as openness and transparent decision-making foundational norms for the public relations enterprise (Gower, 2008).
The progressive movement, in fighting the fractious influence of political machines, also sought the “efficient pursuit of social progress and securing unity by overcoming factions” (Sproule, 1997, p. 53). Emergent public relations practices had been put to use to these ends during World War One, and, as Sproule (1997) pointed out, put to use in subsequent efforts to form public consensus. With social unity emerging as a key progressive value (Khurana, 2007), some early public relations practitioners had embraced the use of their field for “achieving social harmony” (Bush, 1991, p. 114). However, progressives had misgivings about managing public opinion based on a commitment to full democratic participation in public life. Some saw opinion management as a dangerous obstacle to “free public choice” (Sproule, 1997, p. 53), a concern expressed throughout the 20th century (St. John, 2006). As Sproule demonstrated, Progressivism could push and pull public relations in seemingly contradictory directions.
Historians have also noted that contradictions within the progressive movement arose because a progressive ideology was limited in its reachon the one hand trusting an activist public to press for reforms once
publicity had lit the darkened corners of American life, but on the other hand fostering a reclusive public fearful of the “alien and ‘dangerous’ elements that seemed to govern life in the city streets” (Ewen, 1996, p. 51). As Ewen observed, many Americans found fervor for privacy at the moment they were retreating from a public sphere increasingly populated by African Americans, Jews, Italians, and Irish. Bush (1991) identified the paradox: “How could so many Americans promote the increased democratization of the electorate while simultaneously viewing the public as a dull herd” (p. 114)? The result was a public relations practice that embraced the spectator-audience, playing to their passions and prejudices. But the result was also an added impetus for managing public opinion, given the belief that less rational elements had been enfranchised (even if only partly so).
Stoker and Rawlins (2005) also told a story about the influence of progressivism. They argued that publicity was originally used by the progressives to refer to broader educational efforts, but that as the concept became more elastic, public relations practitioners used it for narrower ends. In the process, publicity “lost what little intrinsic value was given to it by progressives” (p. 186). Instead, “publicity then became associated with big business, professional propagandists, and government, which ironically, were the things it was once meant to reform” (Stoker & Rawlins, 2005, p. 186). Public relations practitioners were able to take a culturally legitimated practice and put it to use for their own ends and the ends of their clients. What is not entirely clear is the extent to which this is a story of cultural legitimation (i.e., culture used interpretatively), rather than a story of actors with the agency to achieve their ends by co-opting a Progressive vocabulary (i.e., culture used instrumentally). Nevertheless, this is a history of Progressivism as a cultural force.
A more straightforward progressive story has also been told. Aside from progressivism’s do-gooder reforms, the movement’s early focus was on rationalizing scientific management practices (Carpenter, 2001; Hofstadter, 1963; Hood & Jackson, 1991). Public relations was just one more management function-managing the public’s perceptions of clients and their causes - that made sense for an efficient operation. This is the argument put forward by Tedlow (1979), who argued that progressive muckraking was addressed by progressives’ adoption of scientific management principles. “Public relations was a product of the rationalization of corporate press relations which resulted both from a general movement to increase efficiency and from a desire to respond to journalistic criticism” (Tedlow, 1979, p. 19). Interestingly, Pimlott (1972) came close to making this argument, but ultimately opts for a functionalist twist instead. He concludes that as businesses differentiated a variety of functions, such as accounting or sales, there was a need to spin off the PR function as well.
Although the cultural logic of explanation is dominated by the progressive story, historians have offered other cultural explanations, some narrower in scope and some broader. A narrower explanation might identify a cultural attitude or tradition for playing a role in the formulation of public relations. For example, Sproule (1997) pointed to the “American go-getting tradition of boosterism” when accounting for the origins of public relations practice (p. 54). Brown (2003a) offered a broader explanation, pointing to the assent of mathematical probability as the basis for quantitative social science in late 19th century America and subsequently a foundation for public relations, which relied on “probability’s relationalistic and pragmatic outlook” (p. 385). And Olasky (1984b) cited the mechanistic worldview of the period as influential in how Bernays understood public relations as a mechanism for regulating public opinion.
The logic of cultural explanation is that the founders of public relations adopted meaning systems from their culture. These meaning systems or tool kits, which included cultural values, attitudes, ideas, provided actors with both constraints and opportunities (Geertz, 1973). Thus, culture “locks man into a certain approach to life but also provides answers to the deepest questions about the meaning of life” (Laitin, 1986, p. 13). In other words, culture is the means by which individuals interpret reality. The new PR practitioners operated the way they did because it seemed natural, right, or rational to do so. It might be inferred from this that culture is a coherent, or perhaps even systematic, phenomenon. For example, political historians refer to the American creed as a uniquely American set of values, ideas, and attitudes regarding, among other things, democratic participation in public life. Thus, according to Huntington (1981), “The ways in which individuals, groups, and classes act in politics are decisively shaped not only by their own perceptions of their immediate interests, but also by the ideological climate and the common political values and purposes that they all recognize as legitimate” (p. 11). Huntington conceptualizes culture as relatively coherent-a coherence based on an underlying ideology. Progressivism is put forward as just such an ideology to explain the origins of public relations.
An examination of the relationship between ideology and culture brings into focus what sort of claims can be made about the systematic, coherent nature of culture and the methodological challenges inherent in positing a cultural explanation. Swidler (1986) referred to ideology as “explicit, articulated, highly organized meaning systems” (p. 278). Culture, on the other hand, is “not a unified system”-in fact, Swidler argued, “all real cultures contain diverse, often conflicting symbols, rituals, stories, and guides to action” (p. 277). Swidler saw diversity within cultures, from potentially little diversity in unsettled historical periods to potentially much diversity in
settled periods. In a settled period, an ideology has won out and has become intertwined with cultural practices and institutions. But because active efforts to establish a cultural system have faded and were never particularly successful in articulating a fully systematic culture in the first place, cultural practices can become more diverse and thus less closely in line with an ideology. Progressivism, some historians conclude, is a case in point. Hofstadter (1955) concluded that progressivism was “a rather vague and not altogether cohesive or consistent movement” (p. 5).
Swidler’s definition of culture has important implications for a cultural explanation of public relations. Culture is not to be understood as a national or systemwide phenomenon, which is how it is sometimes invoked in historical narratives about public relations. Rather, according to Swidler (1986), culture provides a tool kit of various “cultural elements” that can be used to “construct diverse strategies of action” (p. 281). Swidler was not alone in her understanding of culture. Sewell (1999) concluded that
culture is not a coherent system of symbols and meanings but a diverse collection of “tools” that, as the metaphor indicates, are to be understood as means for the performance of action. Because these tools are discrete, local, and intended for specific purposes, they can be developed as explanatory variables in a way that culture conceived as a translocal, generalized system of meanings cannot. (p. 46).
Incidentally, even though referring to culture as a toolkit or to cultural values and ideas as tools suggests an instrumental view of culture, Swidler or Sewell largely defined culture in interpretative terms. When individuals are confronted with new situations they draw on a range of culture meanings to chart their courses of action.
To the point at hand, culture can thus be viewed as distinct values, attitudes, and ideas, each of which should be explored for its role in the emergence of public relations as a social institution. These cultural values, attitudes, and ideas may work singularly, together in an additive effect, or together in an interactive effect. Progressivism is not necessary for the emergence of public relations-after all, PR has developed worldwide in countries without Progressivism as a coherent ideology. But, if one accepts Swidler’s (1986) definition of culture one might conclude that certain progressive values, such as the values of efficiency and unity, almost certainly played some role in the origins of PR.
The central issues one faces in conceptualizing and operationalizing culture as explanation or cause are the ontological status of cultural values, attitudes, and ideas as separate from cultural action, behavior, and conduct and the causal influence of the one on the other. In other words, how can
values and attitudes be identified, and once identified, established as explanations for specific actions and conduct? Any attempt that wants to “give cultural processes more theoretical autonomy” (Alexander, 1988, p. 2), as Durkheim argued, must establish culture as an ontological reality with the power to affect change. Geertz (1973), among others, see this as an intractable problem. Culture is context-“culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is context” (Geertz, 1973, p. 14). Nevertheless, Durkheim argued that “social facts” have an ontological reality (Morrison, 1995, p. 155). Durkheim concluded that social facts are things that have a reality and can subsequently be observed. But as Morrison (1995) pointed out, “Durkheim was powerless to grasp these ‘forces’ conceptually or make their ‘causal nature’ subject to direct observation” (p. 157).
I can identify at least three tacks to arguing that an ethic, value, or attitude has caused a particular action, behavior, or conduct. Each has its shortcomings. Clearly, the most problematic tack is to infer motives from action. For example, one might infer that the new practices used by the new PR practitioners to manipulate public opinion resulted from new conceptions of public opinion. Although it may be less problematic if there is a convincing theoretical linkage connecting the motive with the action, this tack is the least reliable. Most actions can have any number of motivations.
A second tack is to document the express motives of the actors involved in a particular action. The historian or social scientist can interview or survey the participants in an action to ascertain their motives. For example, Tye (1998) is one of several historians to interview Bernays. Or, historians could identify contemporaneous interviews or diaries of early practitioners as a means of establishing motives, as some have done with the papers of Bernays and Lee. The shortcoming in such an approach is that actors may not be able or willing to articulate their motives. They may have reasons to be untruthful or may just be unaware of how particular cultural values shaped their actions.
The third tack is a combination of tactics used by social scientists in determining causation. Step one establishes coexistence or correlation. For example, the rise of public relations corresponds with rising public distrust in large corporations. Step two establishes the prior existence of the explanatory factor. For example, public distrust, partly stoked by the muckrakers, preceded the rise of PR. The final step is the most difficult. Alternative explanations must be ruled out. For example, Tedlow (1979) poked holes in arguments that public relations grew out of “anti-big-business animus” (p. 16). The problem with this third step is that eliminating all the alternative explanations may be a near impossibility. Identifying all possible explanations of action, behavior, or conduct potentially pulls the researcher into
the complicated web that Geertz (1973) has identified. As a practical matter, the researcher can, through the process of scholarly, communal discernment, advance some arguments as more fruitful than others. But, the barriers presented by the complicated web of culture are still formidableso formidable, that explanations will always be tentative, just as conclusions about what are values as distinct from actions will also be tentative. It is worth recalling that Hall and Taylor (1996) concluded that cultural arguments are best used alongside institutional arguments.
It is also important to understand that cultural values, attitudes, and ideas are central to legitimation (Horwitz, 1989). In other words, cultural values, attitudes, and ideas bound the agency of the central actors in the historical drama. As Dobbin (1994) concluded about the role of culture in public policy debate, “Strong interest groups lose political battles all the time, and it is often because political culture offers their opponents compelling arguments and offers them little in the way of rebuttal” (p. 221). It stands to reason that culture may play a similar role in the emergence of public relations. In fact, this seems to be the logic of Stoker and Rawlins’ (2005) aforementioned argument-the emerging PR practitioners needed to accommodate their activities to the public’s progressive ideals to gain legitimacy as a distinct social institution.
Marchand’s (1998) explanation for the rise of public relations tells the same kind of story-“the corporate quest for social and moral legitimacy spurred an array of public relations initiatives” (p. 3). Corporations sought legitimacy through a series of trials and errors. Public relations practices yielded some successes. For example, railroad magnet George F. Baer fared better in his dustups with political leaders once he hired Ivy Lee. And although Marchand (1998) argued that PR “clearly crossed a threshold” (p. 42) around 1907, it was held back by big business’s ‘masculine,’ production-focused mindset. It would take time for business leaders to accept the more feminine, communicative activities of public relations practitioners.
A logic of explanation that relies on cultural legitimacy can sound much like a functionalist argument. The soullessness of the American corporation was a void that needed to be filled and PR filled it. This kind of cultural account, however, implies that the legitimacy attained by public relations is the selective mechanism in the evolutionary adaptation of big business to a heretofore hostile environment. Companies that used PR attained more legitimacy than those that did not, even if it took many years for businesses to fully recognize that fact. Interestingly, the legitimacy of PR, itself, needed to overcome some deeply held cultural attitudes, attitudes that Marchand (1998) identified as masculine, before it was accepted by business. How those attitudes came to change is less clear.
CONCLUSION
This study reviewed a major body of public relations research-historical explanations for the emergence of corporate PR as a social institutionand identified three logics of historical explanation. As the review underscored, public relations history has long been told with a functionalist logic, whether that be social or actor-centered functionalism. A functionalist approach presents serious theoretical, methodological, and empirical problems. An institutional logic of explanation, although holding more promise than functionalism, often tells an incomplete story. A cultural logic presents its own theoretical and methodological challenges.
Institutional and cultural logics see public relations in a temporal context—not just as the answer to what the world needed at a particular moment, but as a historically situated institution whose DNA can be traced back, at least in part, to its context in the early 20th century. Thus, these logics allow people to explore how it is that history matters. Institutional and cultural factors represent some of the fundamental social mechanisms, as Pierson (2004) would call them, that move history forward. In fact, a valuable next step in public relations history would be to explicitly compare the rise of PR as a social institution in the United States to the origins of PR in other countries (L’Etang, 2008). Do similar cultural values play a legitimating role across countries? Do similar institutional actors play a role in the origins of public relations across countries? Or do similar institutional or cultural conditions yield different PR practices across countries?
Exploring the logics of explanation is a valuable activity for public relations. By exposing some of the problems that come with functionalist explanations, for example, one can tell a different history of public relations. People may, as Brown (2006) put it, avoid the “teleological distortion of history” (p. 207). They can even consider a possibility that functionalism does not permit but that an institutional or cultural logic does allow-that some public relations activities may be unintended consequences; i.e., not necessarily the intention of the designers. In fact, this might account for how it was that key early practitioners struggled to define their own field (Penning, 2008).
Public relations textbooks often include some history of the field-a practice that is often meant to inform, and in many cases legitimate, public relations practice (Hoy, Raaz, & Wehmeier, 2007). How it is that history is used to legitimate contemporary corporate public relations practices comes into focus when we explore the logics of historical explanation. Public relations practitioners will likely find it easier to embrace a profession that is functional, rather than dysfunctional. Functionalist histories of PR invoke the vocabulary of legitimation-any historical adaptation must have been
needed, necessitated, or required, or it would not have happened. This approach does double duty, because it also negates the delegitimizing discourse that has challenged the morality of some public relations practices. But, a functionalist logic of historical explanation does not have a monopoly on legitimation. Some cultural histories of public relations may also be put into the service of legitimating the discipline. Those histories that accentuate the role of the American creed in the origins of PR-for example, the role of the values of cooperation and order-serve to highlight the unique American character of public relations, even if those values may not have been exclusive to the United States (L’Etang, 2004). Nevertheless, PR practitioners will likely find it easier to embrace a field that is American rather than un-American.
Critical PR historians (e.g., Brown, 2006; Russell & Bishop, 2009) may be correct that public relations theory is still handicapped by an insufficiently grounded history. However, that shortcoming may stem, in part, from an inattention to the logic of explanation employed by historians. A functionalist logic, for example, allows scholars to get by with limited empirical detail. Thus, attention to the logics of historical explanation provides a valuable new contribution to a vital field. Self-awareness about the logic of historical explanation directs our scholarship in ways that can improve the theory, methodology, and empirical veracity of the history of public relations as a social institution.
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