Theory-Based Practice

Theory-based practice is public relations practice guided by theoretic generalizations that shed light on the situation at hand; it is thought to be more effective than public relations conducted by intuition or habit, as in the “we do it this way because we have always done it this way” approach. Theory can be defined as any symbolic generalization culled from empirical evidence that is interpreted and is used to describe, explain, understand, predict, and control phenomena under study or consideration. Theory lends a perspective, or way of looking at a situation, that helps determine understanding and the best course of action to address the situation. Different interpretations of a symbolic generalization are likely to stimulate a proliferation of additional theories. Also, different members of a community—such as [Page 852]the public relations profession—are likely to formulate and employ different but possibly related theories. There is no one theory that belongs to a particular community, just as there is no one shared worldview from which theory derives, although similar language pertaining to theory might be shared. Theories are seldom static; on the contrary, theories tend to be dynamic, growing entities that cannot be fully understood if they are divorced from the dynamics of their development.

In traditional science, predictions in the form of hypotheses are derived from theory and can be tested. Theory is flexible, and different methodologies and units of analysis can be used to test it. Such testing of hypotheses may result in the identification of relevant variables or attributes and the development of models of relationships between or among these variables. A common result of testing a theory is a revised or new theory that determines refined or new applications for practice. According to Stephen Littlejohn (2002), theory development is a continual process or formulating and testing sets of concepts believed to explain how things operate.

Generalizations—or theories—useful to public relations can come from many different fields and bodies of knowledge, most often in the social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and communication, including rhetoric and persuasion. Some critics of public relations have questioned whether the field is worthy of scholarship and theory-building efforts, and other critics charge that public relations merely applied theories developed in and by other disciplines. Some supporters of public relations counter that productive theory development is essential for public relations research—or, for that matter, any academic discipline—to be called a science.

M. A. Ferguson (1984) wrote that working from the assumption that theory is not an explanation based on supposition or conjecture but that theory is a way to understand events and to predict research findings supporting the theory, it can be argued that practitioners who question the value of theory in practice have two choices: they can make decisions in their practice of public relations based on intuition or conjecture—essentially, “flying by the seat of their pants”; or they can make their decisions based on generalizations culled from empirical evidence in a scientific approach to practice.

An example of a predominant theory of public relations is “excellence theory.” Proposed by James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt in their 1984 book Managing Public Relations, the theory basically suggests that there are four types or models of public relations—press agentry or publicity, public information, one-way asymmetric persuasion, and two-way symmetric communication—and that public relations practitioners who practice the twoway symmetric model for the organization they are representing are more likely to practice “excellent” public relations. This theory has proven to be very heuristic, in that it has spawned considerable additional research, both by the theory's original authors as well as by dozens of other public relations scholars. Another example is “contingency theory,” which, according to Amanda Cancel, Glen Cameron, Lynne Sallot, and Henry Mitoork (1997), suggests that public relations practitioners decide their courses of action depending on the widely varying attributes of each situation in public relations practice, and that the situations range on a continuum from total advocacy on behalf of the organization being represented, at one end, to accommodation of the organization's publics, at the other end.

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