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Latest
Features
Integrating Real and Virtual Environments in Stakeholder Relationship Management
by
Fabio Ventoruzzo, FERPI, University of Udine
(Gorizia), 1. Introduction: Towards Socially Responsible and Managerially Accountable Public Relations For decades public relators around the world have argued, amongst other rationalizations, that client/employer pressures on efficiency explain, and (partially) justify, irresponsible and unsustainable professional practices. This paper argues that a savvy use of the Internet in order to integrate one-with-one, one-with-few and few-with-few off and on-line relationships, strongly reduces the impact of this argument. Today’s growing challenge from external stakeholders for multi dimensional socially responsible public relations needs (also) to focus on reducing pollution in an over-saturated information environment1. Public relators may strongly support this objective when (and if) they carefully and methodically select key and relevant interlocutors with whom an organization chooses/accepts to entertain one-with-one or one-with-few interactive and symmetrical relationships, rather than by (traditional and/or high-tech, off and on-line) spamming enlarged segments of influential publics with costly, irrelevant, often annoying and sometimes misleading unilateral and asymmetric communication. In parallel, the compelling challenge from client/employers for managerially accountable public relations2 also needs to focus on a more efficient identification of key influential publics, thus generating cost effective and better deployment of human and financial resources. From this perspective there seems to be no serious contradiction between socially responsible, sustainable and accountable public relations practices when:
a) they reduce unnecessary information
pollution; 2. The Sense of the De-Pollution Issue In 2003, each human being on this planet was exposed to 800 million bytes of information with a 30% year on year increase since 20013, while the overall volume produced only last year was more than three times that much! Amongst many other implications on individuals (reduction of attention spans, disincentive to detail, failure to detect priorities…), there is serious concern for the increase of behavioural addiction to media/information:
Although in no way subscribing to a luddite position towards this recent quanti/qualitative explosion of information, it seems relevant for public relators to be: a) fully aware of the phenomena, Both of these elements demand that professional practice quickly migrate from a one-to-many unilateral, asymmetric communication directed versus end-recipients, to a one-with-few and multilateral persuasive5 communication with influencers, as well as to a fully bi-lateral and symmetric communication with active stakeholder groups. This approach helps to reduce traditional off-line and new on-line spamming methods and…because influential publics are today more precisely identifiable and consequentially more specifically competent…. also improves the overall quality of communicative processes. 3. Segmenting Key Publics Every organization has its own influential publics, but a useful segmentation process could look something like this:
4. Listening to Active Stakeholders Before Defining Specific Objectives A public, private or social organization wishing to relate effectively with its influential publics to reinforce and consolidate its licence to operate, will listen to (and interpret) expectations of active stakeholder groups before defining its specific operative objectives. These objectives normally reflect the implementation of an explicit, feasible and coherent strategy designed to bridge the organization’s mission (what I am today) to its vision (where I want to be tomorrow) adopting defined and sustainable day-to-day guiding principles. This process is normally effective not only because, by adapting objectives to stakeholder expectations the organization considers acceptable, it greatly improves objective definition, but it also reduces their time of implementation. At the same time, the detailed awareness of stakeholder expectations which are not acceptable will enable the organization to anticipate, plan and more effectively cope with adversarial resistance thus, and once again, shortening implementation time of its pursued objectives. And….management circles today generally recognize that -in an increasingly complex environment in which more and more subjects of all kinds demand to have a say- an organization’s ability to reduce the implementation time of its objectives is, together with the overall quality of objective definition processes, the most valuable and desirable amongst today’s performance indicators. 5. Diverse Behaviours According to Influential Publics The effective organization will develop to-the-point, no-thrill, sober, pull, negotiative and symmetrical relationships with active stakeholders (communicational behaviour) mainly by relying on desk analysis, one-with-one, one-with-few , face-to-face, telephone and any other form of dialogue, including virtual on-line dialogue. After having defined pursued objectives, the organization will prefer to employ rhetorical and persuasive communication methods to attract the attention of
principally relying on staging events, involving media, using opinion leaders and third party endorsements, while also attempting to persuade them to eventually migrate to a more cost effective and active stakeholder status (persuasive behaviour). Finally, the organization will continue to develop erga omnes symbolic communication to influence end-recipients by appropriately integrating advertising, direct response and other below-the-line activities both on and off-line, always making sure to embed in every message, tool and channel immediate feed-back facilities with incentives to end-recipients who use them (communicative behaviour). 6. The Transitional Crisis of the Internet In the last decade, like with every other profession, public relations and communication management have enormously benefited from the growth of the Internet. Some of the principal benefits have been:
Today, in every one of these instances we are experiencing and absorbing an alarming quantity of irrelevant information, organizational self-representation and un-necessary, un-requested e-mail, plus an increasing number of viruses…which inevitably imply a re-evaluation of the cost benefits of features we have only recently learned to consider essential and therefore take for granted, even if (only fifteen years ago...) they were not generally available. This transitional crisis of the Internet poses serious issues to every profession, but even more so to public relators as their practice has much more than an average ‘stake’ in the Internet, and while serious online relationships are inevitably migrating towards better protected and privately accessible organizational websites, they now need to be transformed into effective pull, interactive and symmetric environments which, and by enlarge, they certainly are not today! No professional more than the savvy public relator is capable of grasping and making a better use of this opportunity to allow the organization to more effectively dialogue in a one-with-one and one-with-few mode with active stakeholders, while also attracting the attention of potential stakeholders, issue influencers, end recipient opinion leaders and end-recipients themselves. If one also considers the Internet as a network of subjects willing to interrelate on issues of common interest (in either a synchronic and/or an a-synchronic mode) there is an immense opportunity to exploit a virtual environment characterized by low external costs and where high labour intensive relationships are formed, consolidated and developed, and fully integrate this opportunity with the ‘real life’ environment, appropriately using all different nuances of each. Many successful
and effective virtual communities have sprung up in all
sectors and areas of business, leisure and interpersonal
relationships including web logs6, but their
key performance indicators seem to differ from one
another and very few clear and common competence threads
appear to be detectable. 7. Characteristics of On-Line Relationships The integration of real and virtual relationship environments implies full awareness that in both instances the relating subjects are real ….although, one must also consider that in a virtual environment: a) the relationship is mediated by a
computer, The integration of on-line and off-line relationship environments also demands that the organization re-adapt its traditional worldview of messaging and general communication fluxes (with rather than to; bi-directional and symmetric rather than one-way and asymmetric), as well as of relationship systems by expanding the labour rather than the traditional capital intensive interpretation of the public relations profession. In other words, there is plenty of hard work that content-competent public relators (particularly in their account executive and advocate roles) need to perform, and new e-skills to be learned, to fully exploit the potential of on-line one-with-one and one-with-few relationships. These are skills which tend to differ from those required for off-line and real life relationships, although the two complement each other. 8. A Savvy Use of the Internet to Develop Relationship Systems Listening to active stakeholder expectations before the organization decides which specific objectives to pursue, is an activity which may be greatly enhanced through an intelligent use of the Internet, intended as an information tool –and this by the way of boundary spanning, silent/or not silent participation in news and conversation groups and forums, reading stakeholder e-letters, web logs and posted documents … But even more so, as an active relationship environment- and this by the way of forming, in an organization’s password protected web site, areas for one-with-one and one-with-few question and answer sessions, debates, discussions, web logs and ongoing or ad hoc issue forums. The fact that active stakeholders are, as such, aware and hold an interest in an interactive and symmetric relationship with the organization is a formidable incentive to exploit this opportunity, while the absence of time/space constraints reduces costs and increases the effectiveness of the integration process between the two relationship environments. The ‘always relative’ need for symmetry in this case enables each party of the relationship to take the initiative; to decide if, when and how and even about what to relate, thus while finally and fully generating ‘control mutuality’: to which level are relating parties willing to relinquish mutual control of the very relationship? And, going further and once more
inside an organization’s web site, the public relator
may also wish to enable active stakeholder groups to
debate relevant issues amongst themselves in few-to-few
password protected environments, with or without direct
participation of the organization… The same process is also possible when one deals with potential stakeholders, but it is more complicated and only feasible if the effort is preceded by an effective push message which reaches them and attracts their latent potential attention, persuading them to:
a - migrate to the organization’s
website, Further complications emerge when an organization attempts to attract the attention of issue influencers as well as that of end recipient opinion leaders. Here again a push announcement is essential and may be both off-line (direct, through specific issue related media or in the context of issue related events) or on-line through issue related e-letters, e-zines, forums, web logs, websites… These different paths may reciprocally intertwine: a viral marketing on-line initiative may prepare/enhance on future off-line event; or an effective presence on-line may recruit regardless of off-line initiatives… It is certain that traditional off-line public relations tools such as events, media relations and ad hoc publications will continue to be effective in attracting the attention of these two segments, and that only after having persuaded them to support and spread the organization’s messages, the organization may try to attract them to a website and convince them to interact in a protected relationship environment. Finally, the potential extension to attract end recipients (users, consumers, beneficiaries) on an organization’s password protected website areas, highly depends on more traditional integrated communication techniques, which of course are also inclusive of on and off-line messages and tools. In the end, one may assume that the integration of real and virtual relationship environments greatly increases effectiveness, reduces unnecessary communicative pollution and contributes to the reduction of overall relationship and communication expenses by the organization.
9. Conclusion (1): There seems to be no reason why an on-line relationship should not be evaluated adopting and adapting similar criteria in use for off-line relationship. Y. H. Huang’s (1997) generally accepted criteria to evaluate off-line relationships are:
Of these four, considering the inextricable coldness of an on-line relationship and the overall on-line identity question, the criteria of trust appears to be more compelling and deserves special attention.
10. Conclusion (2): Taking this into consideration, in any given relationship one may identify: a- four levels of trust:
b- four levels of relationship:
When an organization identifies, for each of its active stakeholder groups, every relevant on-line and off-line relationship and communication tool in use in any given period, it may position these on a relationship/trust matrix (as shown in figure 1), also indicating the perceived effectiveness of each as valued by the same stakeholder group, easily monitorable today through the deployment of accessible, usable and cost effective on-line opinion searching tools.
Figure 1 The Relationship/Trust matrix was developed by FERPI (Italian Association of Public Relations) and Sda Bocconi (Milano) and specifically by dr. Erika Mallarini from Sda Bocconi. This integrated model will allow the savvy public relator to set qualitative objectives for each of the tools analysed, operate and repeat the monitoring exercise after a specific period and measure if those objectives have been met.
11.
Conclusion (3): Integrated Stakeholder Relationship Management (ISRM) is the management process by which an organization -focused on developing pull, interactive and symmetric relationships with its influential publics- integrates real and virtual relationship environments and monitors the dynamics of its relationship systems in order to effectively pursue objectives which have been decided after having listened to active stakeholder expectations . ISRM is an effective response to the increasing attention of management science towards the value attributed to the immaterial quality of relationship systems which, in turn, are at the very core of the public relations process and profession. Relevant sources:
Internet sources:
Footnotes:
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