Editorial 30.3: The situational theory of publics Free

In previous issues of the Corporate Communications: An International Journal (CCIJ), we have increasingly covered issues such as equality, inclusion and diversity, and environmental affairs. The publishing of these topics has been on the rise since I took over as an editor, and I have written many editorials about these issues (e.g. Topić-Rutherford, 2025; Topić, 2024, 2022). Increasingly, what appears in published issues over the last five years is the notion of behaviour and publics. Whilst we have talked about behaviour in some issues and editorials, the notion of publics underlies many issues and works published, but it has not been presented as a topic in itself, waiting for a suitable issue to arrive to engage with this important theory.

Studying publics is not a new area of research. Systems theory, capturing also a situational theory of publics, was developed a while ago. However, despite vast research on publics, in this journal issue and many others, not enough papers use this theory. This theory is an excellent tool to explain the behaviour of publics because systems theory looks at organisational communication, where communication is understood as a way of creating relationships to achieve organisational goals (Lattimore et al., 2009). Grunig, Grunig and Dozier (2002) argued that organisations are interdependent with their environment, which involves customers, suppliers and employees. But, publics are not a unified group of individuals, nor are all organisations the same because some organisations are open systems (PR departments collect information from publics based on feedback and try to enhance relationships), and some operate under a closed system (no feedback from publics is taken into consideration or sought and decisions are based on personal preferences and experience) (Lattimore et al., 2009). Grunig and Hunt (1984) then developed a typology of publics, arguing that publics consist of groups of people who share the same view on a given issue regardless of their origin, thus dividing publics into four types, non-public (no impact between organisation and publics), latent (publics as endangered by the organisation but there is no awareness of collective action against the organisation), aware (a group recognises a problem) and active (a group recognises a problem and organises a collective action to solve it). Grunig and Hunt (1984) thus argued that a common mistake PR practitioners make is initiating communication with groups only when action gets organised, instead of acting earlier and communicating during the decision-making process. This then led towards identifying the situational aspect of publics where Grunig and Repper (1992) argued that it is not always possible to communicate with all of the publics because not everyone is interested in having a dialogue with the organisation. Thus, publics should be identified as members of sub-groups that need to be monitored, for example, during elections, only active voters should be given attention, not just those who generally registered to vote (Grunig and Repper, 1992; Lattimore et al., 2009). Situational, in this case, means that organisations need to assess publics’ communication needs by dividing them into those who actively seek information from those who passively receive information, which then leads to the notion of being able to predict when publics seek information. For example, we take into consideration problem recognition (whether publics know there is an issue), constraint recognition (what are the obstacles towards resolving the issue among publics) and the level of involvement (how much publics care about the issue) (Lattimore et al., 2009). According to the situational theory of publics, segmentation of publics should be done before and after PR action to ensure there are strategic subgroups such as “active/activist public, aware public, aware public, latent public, and non-public” (Kim, 2011, p. 2). This theory is particularly useful for campaigning about sensitive issues and where there is a threat of NGO activism because NGOs can initiate consumer boycotts and create reputation damage. The situational theory of publics explains when and why people seek information, and how their decision-making process works respective to communication (Grunig, 2003, 1989; Kim and Grunig, 2011). The theory was later extended to a situational theory of problem-solving (Kim and Grunig, 2011) but that is out of the scope of this editorial.

In this issue, articles cover topics such as environmental cause-related marketing and message design in the context of social norms and consumer behaviour; the role of banks in promoting environmental sustainability; communication in financial organisations; green attitudes and consumption criteria; effective environmental communication in the context of climate change; DEI policies and how they are implemented respectively to trust, democracy, happiness and economic development; diversity in organisations respective to advocacy on sociopolitical issues; consumer’s views of gender-based pricing; consumer complaints on social media, etc ^[1]. However, what is underlying most of the articles in the present issue, and how I read these articles, is the notion of publics, how to communicate with them, how they make purchase decisions, their values and the impact some policies have on the behaviour of publics. Therefore, publics should be central to what organisations do and how they communicate; however, research should also use the publics theory more and shed further light on publics and the way they respond to messages and behave towards organisations. This goes back to fundamentally seeing public relations and corporate communications as first and foremost communication functions, leading also to Laswell and his famous behavioural theory of communication, which asks the following questions, “Who? Says what? In which channel? To whom? With what effect?” (Laswell, 1948, p. 37). Or, in the context of publics, “who – behaves in what way (either online or in person) – which channel is being used for behaviour – with what effect (for the organisation)” (Topić, 2024a, p. 633), with the accent for publics research and understanding being on who.

Ultimately, studying publics is about studying human behaviour and communication, and studies considering this approach are particularly welcome to CCIJ. The literature already developed the concept of publics from a strategic communication or PR as management perspective, but behavioural aspect is still somewhat missing when it comes to using the situational theory of publics, and there is a prospect for further developing that theory from a behavioural perspective. Organisations should generally take an active role in building relationships with stakeholders, and sometimes these stakeholders expect organisations to take a proactive role in problems they find important. However, not all stakeholders expect something, and not all stakeholders behave in the same way, thus analysing stakeholders and considering them as groups of publics can be beneficial for organisations, not just researchers. These relationships, built with the right publics, should be built proactively, not only when something happens, as this creates value for both stakeholders and organisations (Goodwin, 2003; Maak, 2007; Slabbert and Barker, 2014). Relationship building is a cornerstone of public relations and is based on trust, respect and two-way communication, which can only be built based on understanding between stakeholders, organisations and their publics.

Volume 30, issue 3 of the CCIJ presents a set of studies tackling environmental affairs and gender in corporate communications, focusing particularly on understanding publics. CCIJ continues to publish research broadly linked to equality. In the world of climate change, increased environmental destruction and with mainstream media saturating coverage on environmentalism, whilst mainstream politicians oppose environmental policies and deny gender inequality, these topics become more relevant than ever. This issue of CCIJ thus offers articles analysing these issues and tackling awareness of publics and how to approach them to increase the support for these important issues further.