Engagement (Stakeholders)

Public relations is founded on the principle that engagement requires an understanding of and dialogue with stakeholders. Stakeholder theory developed in academic studies that examined business ethics as well as incorporating communication and management models. It concerns the relationship between organizations (mostly from a corporate perspective) and those people and groups that could be defined as stakeholders. Naturally, such relationships depend on how well organizations and their stakeholders engage with one another.

In 2007, Xu Wu suggested that much public relations activity is best described as stakeholder relations with key areas of work such as issues management and crisis communication. The importance of stakeholder theory to public relations has been highlighted in 2009 by Stefan Wehmeier whose Delphi study of scholars and practitioners found it to be the second most relevant theory to current practice (after agenda building) and comfortably the most important theory for the future. Terence Flynn in 2006 argued that the role of public relations managers is to act as relationship builders between and advocates for both their organizations and multiple stakeholder groups. However, in 2008, John A. Ledingham reasoned, the attributes of relationships (such as trust, openness, involvement and commitment) differ from concern for the needs of stakeholders.

Peter M. Smudde and Jeffrey L. Courtright, in a 2011 article, contended that stakeholder management has an inherent rhetorical nature, particularly in the way that an organization's stakeholders are identified and how relationships are maintained and, in circumstances of change, are improved through co-created meaning. Similarly, Kenon A. Brown and Candace L. White in 2010 have noted that managing stakeholder relationships helps avoid the worst effects of a crisis situation.

A major concern of stakeholder theory is identifying who can be defined as stakeholders. Smudde and Courtright noted that the need to engage with stakeholders so as to maintain and improve relationships. These practices are reactive and proactive. Reactive stakeholder management concerns learning lessons from past events whereas proaction requires anticipating and influencing future activities, environments, and relationships.

In addition to the different theories of stakeholding and definitions of stakeholders, scholars and practitioners have investigated technological developments that portend fundamental changes to the way that organizations interact with their stakeholders. Terence Flynn advised a move away from thinking of organizations and their publics as simplistically involved in a two-way process to seek an equilibrium that satisfies the mutual interest of all parties.

The conduct of those relationships is based on communication and, as Rian van der Merwe, Leyland F. Pitt, and Russell Abratt (2005) stated, technology has changed stakeholder communication behavior. Stakeholders communicate with each other publicly, thereby becoming more vocal and influential in their interactions with organizations.

To understand how organizations engage, recent studies have examined the type of online communication in which they engage. In 2010, Sora Kim, Jae-Hee Park, and Emma K. Wertz sought to identify and categorize Web-based messages that top corporations (Fortune 500 companies) use to engage with stakeholders. Of these groups, shareholder needs were found to be addressed most often and activist needs least often. Such a gap could be a signpost to a potential threat to an organization's reputation.

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