ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNICATION AS A STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATION

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction

Communication is regarded as effective tools in public relation. Most organizations in Nigeria today tend to perform poorly due to lack of information dissemination strategies.

According Richter, (2000), communication is the process of meaningful interaction among human beings. It is the act of passing information and the process by which meanings are exchanged so as to produce understanding. Communication is a process which requires a sender, a message, a medium and a recipient. Though, the receiver may not be involved or aware of the sender’s intent to communicate at the time of communication; it is expedient that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. Thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space.

On the other hand communication is very important and may have significant effect on effective public relations procedure. The term “Public Relations “was used for the first time in the United States and the United States Post Office Railway Union and in the first decade of the twentieth century, this country was created the office of public relations at the institute. In 2006, the first private company which the public services offered to its customers was created. In 2007 Association of Public Relations (IPR) provides a definition of public relations, which is still used. In this definition, PR is planned and continuous efforts to establish and maintain goodwill and understanding between an organization and its target audience (Skandari, 2004). Words “planning” and “continuous” show that goodwill and understanding itself does not obtained easily and in fact, must “create” and “maintain” and also determined that public relations activities are planned and the purpose of public relations is to create goodwill and understanding.

Most organizations in Nigeria always fail to implement good public relation strategies and thus a collapse in information communication processes among the organization, the satff and the general public.

2.0 Objectives Of The Paper

The main aim of the paper is to examine communication as strategic public relations. Other specific objectives of the paper are:

1.      to determine the relationship between effective communication and strategic public relations in an organization

2.      to investigate on the factors affecting the public relations practices in an organization

3.      to determine the extent to which effective communication has improved organizational performance

3.0 Concept of communication

Communication is a means of bringing about change. It is the mainstream of any organization growth. There is need form interaction and understanding of management-employee relations this will bring about increased performance of all parties involved in the communication process or chain.

According to Banihashemi (2011), communication as a medium, a means to performance ends, or as constitutive, as the end in itself. Communication is a process of transmitting information from one person to another. According to Stephen (2011), communication is a critical factor in directing and mobilizing the workforce towards the accomplishment of the organizational goals or objectives.

By creating understanding it enhances co-operation and promote effective performance. According to Williams (2007) smart managers understand that the end effective, straight forward communication between managers and employees is essential for success According to (Mckinney, Barker, Smith& Davis,2004)communication is essential to effective team performance and communications for any organization is like blood flow in the human body.

Therefore any organization that understands the importance of communication uses it in their organizational environment. Since, it ensures coordination of factors of production and most importantly material and human elements of organization as an efficient network of change and advancement.

According to Snavely (2001) as cited by Robins(2006), communication process is initialed through the following means the sender-encoding-the message-the channel decoding-the receiver- noise and feedback. It is estimated that managers spend over 80% of their day communicating with others. Since most of the basic management process- planning, organizing, leading and controlling cannot be performed without effective communication. Importantly, the relevance of communication keeps advancing as the world becomes a Global village.

The need to become visible to the world has made many organizations to embrace new technology that would increase organizational performance. There are also many issues affecting communication ranging from difference in sex, role of silence, inference of government and cross- cultural inference.