This is the case at Chrysler.
At Chrysler, the public relations department now reports to the Human Resources department. Chrysler has lowered the value of PR in its organization. If I was a practitioner at Chrysler, I would be upset.
The fact is that practitioners everywhere are upset. The PRSA website has posted an excerpt from the “Ask the Professor column”, that appears in the March issue of PR Tactics. The article talks about the opinions that surrounding this disturbing trend in the corporate sector.
It definitely is an interesting trend. The column suggests that the trend stems from companies trying to streamline and make operations more efficient and organized. This is just an awful to hear about.
HR is concerned with one group of people and their behavior. These are the employees of the company. PR is concerned with influencing the behavior of multiple publics, outside of and organization and the internally. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? If anyone should be in charge, it should be the PR professionals.
The column suggests that “the key, then, is for PR practitioners to assert themselves as strategic managers, to sell their function as a senior-level responsibility and, of course, display the abilities to back it all up because, in the end, the caliber of the people determines whether they get a seat at the decision-making table.”
As a student studying public relations, this makes me wonder where the industry is heading in the future. The PR profession appears to be continually growing and changing. Let us all hope that this “trend” has reached its peak and is now on the decline or PR as we know it, might soon cease to exist.
