Systems Theory

Systems theory was developed to understand the dynamics of natural and human phenomena. The system is a basic unit of analysis. Theory addresses the nature of each system as part of its environment that consists of other systems. The key concern of proponents of systems theory is to understand how well or poorly each system [Page 840]functions within its dynamic relationship with other systems.

Most definitions of public relations imply that communication plays a strong role in the interdependence of the public relations practitioner, the organization, and its stakeholders. This interdependence is equated to Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn's open system rather than a closed-system perspective. Presented in 1966, the open system stems from the 1940s and 1950s and is based on the biological approach of Ludwig von Bertlanffy, who emphasized the interconnectedness of all the parts of a body. Each human or social system, like each physical organism, is surrounded by permeable boundaries. Organizations in open systems are dependent on other organizations or groups in their environment. They cannot depend only on internal processes and interaction as in a closed system. Organizations also must interact with other groups in their environments.

In 1986, Gerald Goldhaber described a systems loop, the loop being input from the environment, throughput, and output with feedback coming back on the loop to be reinput into the organization. This feedback represents the effects of other organizations or groups of the organization and leads it to adapt or change to coexist better with its environment. Organizations representative of closed systems believe they are independent of environmental influences. To succeed and survive, however, in an increasingly turbulent environment that cannot be ignored, organizations are dependent on or have to cope with factors in their environment. Public relations is one of the primary links in sustaining this interdependence, both internally and externally, to the organization.

Factors in the environment that affect an organization also result in decisions that have inescapable consequences for the relationships the organization has with its stakeholders. Relationships exist whether acknowledged or not. That is where public relations contributes to an organization's existence.

The strategic skill used by public relations practitioners to manage these relationships between an organization and its stakeholders is boundary spanning. This is the process by which the practitioner scans stakeholders in the organization's environment useful for it to adapt to that environment. Boundary spanners are individuals within the organization who frequently interact with the organization's environment and who gather, select, and relay information from the environment to decision makers of an organization. That interaction with the environment can be on a formal or informal basis. These stakeholders serve in a microsystem with public relations that could be referred to as a public relations system.

Many scholars in public relations purport that research and theorizing in public relations is strongly influenced by systems theory and that systems theory could be considered a meta-theory for public relations. Systems theory tenets are evident in many studies of public relations and implied in others. It was in 1976 when both Bell and Bell and separately James E. Grunig first incorporated systems theory in public relations. Probably the most extensive development of systems theory in public relations was Larissa A. Grunig's (a.k.a. “Schneider”) doctoral dissertation of 1985. She concluded in the structural-functionalist tradition that structure and organizational constraints control the flow of information from within the organization and from it to its external stakeholders. However, functionalism alone is insufficient to justify systems theory as a meta-theory in public relations.

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