rrpp2

■ Special Issue Paper

A profile of South African publicrelations practitioners in topperforming organisations

Tanya le Roux* and Annelie Naudé

School for Communication Studies, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

The public relations practitioner is expected to have the skills and knowledge to be able to operationalise the descrip-tion and definition of public relations within their specific environment. Although various studies describing SouthAfrican public relations practitioners had been performed, these studies are limited in terms of size and scope anddo not offer a clear profile of the practitioner and whether they are equipped to perform the necessary tasks. This art-icle is based on a study that obtained data from practitioners in top performing organisations. It profiles South Africanpractitioners and confirms that they need support in order to play a strategic role. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

In the recent debates that focused on the descriptionand definition of the public relations function, it hasbeen agreed that the function is expected to focus onthe building and management of relationships withstakeholders, ideally by means of symmetrical two-way communication, in order to create mutuallybeneficial relationships, to contribute to the greatergood of society and to ensure the survival andgrowth of the organisation (Steyn, 2000a; Gruniget al., 2002; Van Ruler and Verčič, 2005; Grunig,2006; Van Tonder et al., 2006). The question iswhether public relations practitioner1 has the neces-sary skills to perform the aforementioned tasks ef-fectively. This question can be answered by acomprehensive investigation to profile South Africanpublic relations practitioners in terms of demo-graphic variables, their experience of the profession,their career experience, their organisational environ-ment and the roles the practitioners performed.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ANDLITERATURE REVIEW

Overview of the public relations profession inSouth Africa

The industry has taken the lead in Africa on produ-cing public relations literature (Rensburg, 2002).South Africa was also the first country to compilea body of knowledge for public relations in Africain 1980; Public Relations and Communication Man-agement Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA) wasthe first public relations association globally, to ob-tain International Standards Organisation certifica-tion and was a founding partner of the GlobalAlliance for Public Relations and CommunicationManagement, and South Africa published the firsttext book on strategic public relations (Rensburg,2002; Smith, 2002; Steyn, 2005). The role researchin South Africa has also made huge advances in de-fining and empirically verifying the role of the strat-egist, manager and technician within the SouthAfrican environment (Steyn, 2000a, 2000c; Everett,2006). The specific South African roles identified re-quire different skills and make different contribu-tions to the organisation than the roles identifiedin the USA and Europe (Steyn, 2000a, 2000c; Mosset al., 2005; Everett, 2006).South Africa’s developmental context and ever-

changing political and economic situation result ina great need for the existence and excellence of cor-porate communication as a function, as this function

*Correspondence to: Tanya le Roux, School for CommunicationStudies, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa.E-mail: [email protected] author acknowledges that various labels such as communica-tion manager, communication management practitioner, communica-tion management professional and communication managementconsultant are in some instances suggested. However, for the pur-poses of this study, the more generally accepted terms of corporatecommunication practitioner and public relations practitioner will beused interchangeably or in correlation with the source used.

Journal of Public AffairsVolume 11 Number 4 pp 303–315 (2011)Published online 18 August 2011 in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.423

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

becomes even more crucial in fast-changing envi-ronments where stakeholder relationships can bemore volatile (Grunig, 1992; Cutlip et al., 2002).

The latest King Report (King III Report), publishedin 2009 (Steyn, 2008; IoD, 2009), is expected to havea great influence on public relations owing to thefocus on stakeholder relationship management aspart of good corporate governance (De Beer, 2008).Steyn (2008) states that the public relations practi-tioner will still need the necessary skills and insightto use this opportunity within their specific organisa-tion. From the aforementioned, it is clear that theSouth African environment offers the public relationspractitioner very specific challenges and opportu-nities, which should be reflected in their profile.

Roles and tasks expected fromSouth African practitioners

In South Africa, the practitioner performs the strat-egist, managerial and technician roles as identifiedand verified in different studies (Steyn, 2000b,2000c; Everett, 2006). This three-role categorisationas defined for South African practitioners was usedin this study.

The South African public relations strategistThe public relations strategist practises public rela-tions at the macro level and focuses on the boundary-spanning role. In this role, the practitioner analysesthe environment and interprets this informationfor management—as an early warning system—and, in return, interprets the organisation’s view-points for stakeholders to assist organisations toadapt to changes in their environment and thereforesurvive (Warnaby and Moss, 1997; Moss et al., 2000;Steyn and Puth, 2000; De Beer, 2001; Grunig, 2001;Grunig et al., 2002; Steyn, 2007). The strategist fur-ther focuses on actions such as, amongst others,relationship building with stakeholders, reputationrisk management, and is responsible for public rela-tions strategy (Steyn and Puth, 2000; Everett, 2006;Everett and Steyn, 2006).

The South African public relations managerIn the role of manager in South African public rela-tions, the practitioner gives input on the functionalstrategy by advising on consequences of behaviour,suggests communication messages and formulatesstrategy and plans for messages to be communi-cated outside the organisation at the meso level(functional, departmental or divisional level) (Steyn,2000c, 2007; Steyn and Puth, 2000). The public rela-tions manager assists the organisation to explain it-self to stakeholders. The relevant duties include,amongst others, developing and implementing pub-lic relations strategy (on the meso level), developingplans, managing, leading the public relations de-partment and educating management on their com-munication responsibilities and capabilities (Everett,2006; Steyn, 2007).

The South African public relations technicianThe South African public relations technician’ role,similar to those identified in other countries, is per-formed at the micro level and is used to express theorganisation’s strategy and plans on an operationallevel to stakeholders. It includes producing com-munication products such as writing and editingcommunication publications, producing audiovisualmessages and creating graphics (Steyn, 2000c, 2007;Steyn and Puth, 2000).

STUDIES CONDUCTED ON THE SOUTHAFRICAN PUBLIC RELATIONSPRACTITIONER PROFILE

A few studies were conducted in South Africa toinvestigate and provide more information on thepublic relations practitioner profile. The first wasthe study by Petersen et al. (2002) and the seconda study by Holtzhausen (2005). This was followedby the Corporate Communication Internationalstudy titled Corporate Communication Practices andTrends South African Benchmark Study 2007/2008,conducted by De Wet et al. (2008) and a study onthe professionalisation of the function in SouthAfrica conducted by Niemann-Struweg andMeintjies(2008). These studies found that the public relationspractitioner landscape in South Africa has thefollowing main characteristics:

• Most practitioners are female. Niemann-Struwegand Meintjies (2008) reported the figure at 64%females; De Wet et al. (2008) reported 57.7%; andboth Petersen et al. (2002) and Holtzhausen(2005) reported 70% of respondents to be female.

• Practitioners are highly educated. Niemann-Struweg andMeintjies (2008) specifically reportedthat 37% of practitioners have 4-year degrees,Honours or 4-year diplomas; 27% held a 3-yeardegree or diploma and 25% a Masters degree.De Wet et al. (2008) found that 34.6% of respon-dents held a degree, 26.9% an Honours degree,19.2% a Masters degree and 7.7% a Doctorate.Holtzhausen (2005) found more than 90% ofrespondents degreed, and Petersen et al. (2002)found that 78% of respondents had formal educa-tion beyond high school level, with 14.5% havinga Masters degree and 1% a Doctorate. In thesestudies respondents were only asked to indicatetheir level of education, regardless of it being spe-cifically in corporate communication or otherdisciplines.2

2In Petersen et al.’s (2002) study, respondents were asked whateducation level they held, then if they had public relations train-ing before starting their first job and in which country this educa-tion took place. Therefore, education levels of ‘public relationsspecific education’ were not taken into account.

304 T. le Roux and A. Naudé

Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Public Affairs 11, 303–315 (2011)DOI: 10.1002/pa

• According to Petersen et al. (2002), half of therespondents reported a combination of Afrocen-tric and Eurocentric worldviews, but were lean-ing more towards the Eurocentric views.

• It was argued that most practitioners perform allroles. This indicates multi-skilling and multi-tasking (Petersen et al., 2002). De Wet et al.(2008) reported on how practitioners viewed thefunctions of corporate communication (those ofstrategist, manager and technician) and the specifictasks they perform, but not specifically the roles thatthey perform.

• Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies (2008) foundthat most practitioners (97%) argue that profes-sionalisation of the public relations industry is ne-cessary. De Wet et al. (2008) agreed and found thatrespondents were in favour of professionalisationthat focused mainly on improving the body ofknowledge.

Although the foregoing studies provide valuableinformation on corporate communication practi-tioners and the corporate communication field,there are certain limitations. The Corporate Com-munication International study conducted by DeWet et al. (2008) used a convenience sample of only26 top organisations. Although the samplingmethod was scientific, the sample size was too smallto safely generalise any findings from the study.

In the Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies (2008)study, convenience sampling was used, althoughwith a much larger sample of 1213 respondents ofwhom 900 were registered members of PRISA.However, only 49 responses were received for thisstudy, resulting in a 4% response rate. Of these 49respondents, 65% were PRISA members.

Following a similar trend, the studies of Petersenet al. (2002) and Holtzhausen (2005) included onlyPRISA members as part of the sample, resulting ina general bias towards PRISA members in the stud-ies on the South African public relations landscape.

The minority of corporate communication practi-tioners actually belong to a professional organisa-tion. O’Connor and Muzi Falconi (2003), forinstance, argued that only one-twelfth of practi-tioners globally actually belong to a professionalbody. Niemann-Struweg and Meintjies (2008) fur-ther agreed that PRISA membership consists ofapproximately 3500 practitioners, with many prac-titioners falling outside its membership.

When taking into account the estimation that ap-proximately 10 000 people were employed in theprofession in 2003 in South Africa (O’Connor andMuzi Falconi, 2003), one can argue that the fore-going samples are not representative of public rela-tions practitioners working in high-performingorganisations in South Africa. Membership ofthe other main professional body active in SouthAfrica—the IABC—was not taken into account inthe samples of these studies. Therefore one could

argue that the aforementioned studies’ results arerestricted by their sampling methodology, limitingthe studies in terms of size and scope.

METHODOLOGY

In this study, methodological triangulation—usingboth qualitative and quantitative research methods—was applied (Robson, 2002). This method was usedto increase reliability and validity in the study, asthe shortcomings of one method is compensatedfor by the other method. The data generation activ-ities included a literature study, semi-structuredinterviews and a questionnaire.The literature study was used to examine existing

literature on, amongst others, the profile of publicrelations practitioners globally and in South Africa.The literature study was followed by semi-structuredinterviews with four purposefully selected seniorpractitioners, well established and with experienceand standing in the profession. (Baxter and Babbie,2004). The chairpersons of the South African corpo-rate communication professional bodies (PRISA andIABC) were also interviewed. The interviews wereused in order to verify information obtained in theliterature study and to guide the compilation ofthe questionnaire.The largest challenge in the data collection phase

was to determine the population and drawing asample for the study, as a list of public relationspractitioners in South Africa is not available, otherthan the practitioners who belong to professionalcorporate communication bodies. These member-ship lists cannot be regarded as a suitable popula-tion for this study, as the membership lists of thetwo professional bodies in South Africa (PRISAand the IABC) had the potential to exclude manypractitioners from the research population (Gruniget al., 2001; O’Connor and Muzi Falconi, 2003).The population was therefore then defined as

public relations professionals working in the 1319top performing organisations in South Africa acrossall industries as listed on South Africa’s Top 300National Companies List (Fletcher, 2007) and the Fi-nancial Mail Top 200 Companies List (Williams, 2005).All government-owned organisations (state or

para-statal sector), non-private sector organisations,non-profit sector organisations, small and mediumbusiness sector organisations and organisationsthat were duplicated on the aforementioned listswere eliminated. The data were collected in the10months from October 2006 to July 2007.The number of completed questionnaires

obtained was 262. This constitutes a response rateof 19.9%. Acknowledging practitioners’ limited timeto take part in research which does not form part oftheir jobs, the response rate is satisfactory. Itmatches well with other public relations studies thatyielded response rates of 12.8% (Grunig et al., 2001),

Profiling South African PR practitioners 305


19.3% (Kim and Reber, 2008) and 20.9% (O’Neil,2003), respectively.

The questionnaire data were coded, capturedand analysed with the assistance of the StatisticalConsultation Services at the North-West University.Both the programs STATISTICA (StatSoft Inc., Tulsa,Oklahoma, USA) and SPSS (SPSS Inc., Chicago,Illinois, USA) data analysis software were used tocalculate descriptive statistics, as well as inferentialstatistics such as correlations and differentiations.

FINDINGS

Demographic data on South African publicrelations practitioners

The respondents’ demographic data included typicaldemographic information on gender, race, age, lan-guage abilities and education, as well as data on theirworldview.

Gender, race and ageAs could be expected, most South African publicrelations practitioners are female (80.2%, n= 210).Most are White (80.5%, n= 210), although therewere a small number of Black respondents (11.9%,n= 31), and an even smaller number of Asian,Mixed race and Indian respondents (7.6%, n= 20).Because these findings could be a result of thosepractitioners who selected to participate in thestudy, conclusions on the success or not of affirma-tive action cannot be made.

Most of the respondents (79.3%, n= 208) were be-tween 25 and 50 years of age, although most fell intothe 31–40-year-age category (35.0%, n= 92). This canbe explained and is supported by the fact that theprofession is still very young. This is also in linewith other international findings, such as those ofBeard (1997) and the IABC (2002).

As expected, age correlated positively with therespondents’ monthly income (r= 0.441, p< 0.000,n= 250) and years of experience in corporate com-munication (r= 0.678, p< 0.000, n= 255). However,in the semi-structured interviews the respondentsindicated that age should not necessarily be viewedas equal to appropriate experience.

When investigating the differences between ageand the other demographic data, Kruskal–Wallistests indicated that there are some statistically andpractically significant differences between age androle performed by the practitioners (H= 8.006,p= 0.018).Table 1 indicates that older practitioners are more

likely to perform more senior roles, as can beexpected.

Language abilitiesWhen indicating their home language, more thanhalf of the respondents (53.7%, n= 139) confirmedthat their home language is English, whereas 29%(n= 75) indicated Afrikaans, and 4.2% (n= 11) indi-cated that they spoke both English and Afrikaansat home. A small number of respondents (11.2%,n= 29) reported their home language was Xhosa,Zulu, Tswana or Sotho. The rest of the respondents(1.9%, n= 5) indicated languages such as German,Greek and Portuguese as their home language. Afurther question on multi-language proficiencywas then asked.All the respondents could speak, read and write

English, which is the accepted business languagein South African. A very large number could alsospeak (88.5%, n= 232), read (90.5%, n= 237) andwrite (79.0%, n= 207) Afrikaans. The third mostwidely spoken language is Zulu (17.2%, n= 45), fol-lowed by Sotho at 9.2% (n= 24) and Xhosa at 6.5%(n= 17). The languages that were read or writtenfollowed the same pattern as indicated in the lan-guages that could be spoken, namely English, fol-lowed by Afrikaans and then Zulu.When comparing the number of respondents who

indicated their home language as English and thosethat indicated that they could speak, read and writeEnglish, it would seem that bilingualism is indi-cated in almost half the cases. Therefore, the as-sumption can be made that many practitioners areable to understand, and even speak, more thanone language.

Education and skillsRespondents were asked to indicate their qualifica-tions (not specifically pertaining to corporate com-munication) in a multi-response question (total

Table 1 Percentage of respondents per role and age

Actualrole

Age, years (% of respondents)

Total NYounger than 25 25–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 Older than 60

Technician 8.3 24.2 34.8 16.7 12.9 3.0 100 132Manager 4.8 21.4 40.5 20.2 9.5 3.6 100 84Strategist — 13.5 21.6 56.8 5.4 2.7 100 37Total 253



percentage will therefore exceed 100%). Except fortwo respondents, all the respondents had completedmatric (final year at school). The results showed that56.5% (n= 148) of the respondents had obtained a/any degree or a post-graduate degree (in calculatingthis number, multiple mentions were eliminated)(Figure 1).

Respondents were also requested to indicate theircorporate communication qualifications. Because thiswas also a multi-response question (respondentscould indicate having a degree and a diploma, ormore than one degree), the total percentage for thisquestion will not add up to 100%.

The results indicated a lack of formal corporatecommunication education. Specifically the smallnumber of respondents, who had obtained a Bachelorof Commerce degree in corporate communicationand/or a postgraduate qualification, is worrisome.Groenewald (1998) found the background obtainedthrough a Bachelor of Commerce degree (businessbackground) to be necessary, and various otherauthors (Plowman, 1998; Steyn, 2000a; Le Roux,2004) argued it to be beneficial, for a practitionerto be able to contribute to organisational perform-ance. Furthermore, it is acknowledged that in manycases, knowledge of research and evaluation proce-dures is usually only gained at a Masters or Doc-toral level (Grunig, in Plowman, 1998).

In general, it would seem that respondents arewell educated, but not necessarily in corporatecommunication, although they are performing cor-porate communication tasks. This implies thatrespondents most probably lack the necessarymanagerial, strategic and business knowledge ofcorporate communication within the strategicandrelational framework (Steyn, 2000a; Ferreiraand Verwey, 2004; Le Roux, 2004; Plowman, 2005;Boynton, 2006; Yeo and Sriramesh, 2009), whichwould assist practitioners in contributing to organ-isational performance.

As shown in Table 2, the findings of this studydiffer considerably from those reported by otherresearchers. This could once again be due to the dif-ferent populations used by this study and those ofthe mentioned authors, which only focused on pro-fessional body members.The interviewees pointed out that only education

within the strategic and relational paradigms wouldequip the practitioner to contribute to organisa-tional performance. Furthermore, both the intervie-wees and chairperson of the IABC agreed thateven more than formal education, an attitude oflife-long learning would mostly benefit thepractitioner.

Practitioner worldviewIt is interesting to note that in four of the aforemen-tioned statements the practitioners mostly agreedwith both an Afrocentric and Eurocentric world-view (Table 3). In only two statements theyfavoured one specific worldview:

• On the question of all people share a common bond(Afrocentric), most practitioners were leaning to-wards Afrocentrism. This is in agreement withthe suggestion of Van Heerden (2004) that practi-tioners need to understand people as socialbeings in order to be successful in Africa.

• On the question of living in harmony with nature(Afrocentric), respondents were leaning towardsan Afrocentric worldview.

In summary, one could argue, therefore, thatpractitioners have a relatively balanced Eurocentricand Afrocentric worldview and sometimes leanmore towards the Afrocentric worldview regardingnature and human relationships. This balancedworldview is argued in literature, to lead the practi-tioner to be sensitive and more successful in theSouth African environment (Van Heerden, 2004).

Figure 1 Respondents’ level of education in public relations. PR, public relations; B.Com, Bachelor of Commerce; B.A.,Bachelor of Arts



Respondents’ experience of the profession

In order to understand how the respondents haveexperienced the corporate communication profes-sion, the terminology used to describe the function,as well as membership of a professional body wereprobed.

STANDARDISED TERMINOLOGY FORTHE FUNCTION

Most respondents 74.3% (n= 191) referred to corpo-rate communication when referring to the functionand around one-quarter (24.5%, n= 63) referred tothe function as public relations. In only 1.2% (n= 3)of the cases practitioners referred to both corporatecommunication and public relations. One could argue,therefore, that because almost three-quarters of therespondents used the term corporate communication,the name of the profession is fairly standardised.

Literature suggests that there is great confusionover the terminology used to describe the function,which leads to, or develops because of, a lack ofclarity in the definition of the function and thus bur-dens the profession with many challenges. Therespondents in the semi-structured interviews, al-though mostly using the term corporate communica-tion, agreed that there was no clear definition ofthe function in business and argued that the profes-sion was still developing and growing towards sucha definition. However, one should not directlyequate the use of terminology with a clear definitionof the function. It is possible that there could besome agreement on the terminology used, but notnecessarily agreement on the definition of thefunction.

MEMBERSHIP OF A PROFESSIONAL BODY

Membership of a professional body influenced howrespondents experienced the function, as these bod-ies support the practitioner with information on thediscipline and networking opportunities. Almosttwo-thirds of the respondents (63.7%, n= 167) did

not belong to any professional body. In literature,O’Connor and Muzi Falconi (2003) suggested thatnon-membership could be as high as 92%. The inter-viewees confirmed this finding by indicating thatthey ceased their membership of professional cor-porate communication bodies as the organisations’offerings were lacking.For those who did belong to a professional body,

the employer in most cases paid the respondents’professional membership (70.2%, n= 73). However,some respondents (28.8%, n= 30) paid their ownmembership. Only one respondent indicated thatshe or he shared the membership costs with theemployer.Differing from the suggestion made by the chair-

persons of the two professional bodies, in mostcases the respondent’s employer paid membershipfees, negating the argument that membership costswere too high for an individual to pay, as a reasonwhy people do not join the organisations. However,specifically in tough economic times, organisationsbecome more cost conscious, which could influencetheir willingness to pay for employees’ professionalmembership.

Respondents’ career experiences

In describing the respondent’s career experiences,attention will be given to their job title, employmentdetails, monthly income, years working for a par-ticular organisation, years of corporate communica-tion experience, type of career experience, timetaken out of their careers and mentorship.

Job titleThe respondents’ job titles varied extensively(Table 4).Just more than 40% (43.3%, n= 97) of the practi-

tioners had a communication-related reference inthe titles assigned to them. From Table 4, one cancalculate that almost 40% of the respondents prac-tising communication did not have titles that repre-sented the discipline and could be experiencingencroachment from other disciplines. In literature,the focus has been on marketing’s encroachment of

Table 2 Comparison of practitioner education levels

Qualification

Niemann-Struwegand Meintjies(2008) (%)

De Wet et al.(2008) (%)

Holtzhausen(2005) (%)

Petersen et al.(2002) (%)

As per generaleducation

findings (%)

As per PReducation

findings (%)

3-year degree (or diploma) 27.0 — — — 34.0 30.94-year degree (or diploma) 37.0 — — — 16.8Honours degree — 26.9 — — 23.7 6.5Masters degree 25.0 19.2 — 14.5Doctorate — 7.7 — 1.0All the above/anydegree level

— — 90.0 78.0 56.5 34.0



the function, and in the interviews on journalists’encroachment of the function. However looking atthe titles, it seemed as if human resources may alsopresent a challenge to the function in terms of en-croachment. These findings agree with Van Rulerand De Lange (2003) who posit that encroachmentis done by various functions such as general man-agement, marketing, office management, humanresources and even finance.

Interestingly, one can gather from the titles thatother functions such as marketing and humanresources also encounter encroachment.

From the aforementioned discussion, it is clearthat there is no specifically accepted title for a cor-porate communication practitioner. Furthermore,the use of the word communication versus communi-cations and titles that only depicted one aspect of thecommunication function contributes to this prob-lem. The myriad of job titles do, however, indicatethat the function is still vaguely defined, as the titlescan create confusion and inconsistent perceptions ofwhat the function is and what it is supposed to de-liver and focus on.

Furthermore, it is clear that even between theroles performed by the practitioner there is no spe-cific title convention, which once again could indi-cate the confusion of expectations for the corporatecommunication practitioner within the variousroles. Interestingly most strategists (46.9%, n= 15)held human resources-related titles.

Table3

Afrocentricversus

Eurocentricworldview

find

ings

Afrocen

tric

worldview

(A)

Lev

elof

agreem

ent(%

)

Europ

eanworldview

(B)

NFu

llyag

ree

withA

Agree

withA

Agree

with

both

A+B

Agree

withB

Fully

agree

withB

i.Iwill

measu

remysu

ccessin

lifeaccording

tointerpersona

lrelationships

16.5

15.7

51.0

9.4

7.5

i.Iwill

measu

remysu

ccessin

lifeaccording

totheacqu

isitionof

ago

odjob,

lifestyle

255

ii.Allpe

ople

shareacommon

bond

42.0

27.8

24.7

4.7

0.8

ii.Allpe

ople

areun

ique

anddifferen

t255

iii.O

neshou

ldliv

ein

harm

onywithna

ture

25.9

31.0

31.8

9.4

2.0

iii.O

neshou

ldman

agena

ture

toge

tthemost

outof

it255

iv.T

eam

achiev

emen

tsareim

portan

t13.3

10.2

71.0

4.3

1.2

iv.Ind

ividua

lachiev

emen

tsareim

portan

t255

v.The

elderly

canoffergo

odad

vice

9.5

11.5

69.2

5.9

4.0

v.One

shou

ldacqu

ireon

e’sow

nkn

owledge

253

vi.Interdep

enden

ceisgo

od5.1

8.7

68.9

11.8

5.5

vi.C

ompe

tition

isgo

od254

Table 4 Job titles

Titles % n

Communication practitioners, officers orspecialists or communication task-specific titles—not on the managerial level

24.6 55

Communication practitioners on themanagerial level

18.7 42

Titles referring to people in the humanresources function

16.5 37

Title associated with being responsiblefor a client account, thus providingconsultation services

11.2 25

Titles referring to people in themarketing function

10.7 24

Titles referring to people in generalmanagement functions

4.5 10

Titles referring to people in the combinedmarketing and communication function

4.0 9

Administrative titles 3.1 7Titles referring to the top manager in thecompany on board level

2.7 6

Titles referring to corporate or publicaffairs specifically

1.8 4

Titles referring to people in the financefunction

1.3 3

Titles referring to people in the combinedmarketing and human resources function

0.9 2

Total 100.0 224



Employment detailsMost practitioners worked full time 95.3% (n= 246),with only 4.7% (n= 12) of the practitioners workingpart time.

Monthly incomeMost respondents earned between R10 001 andR30 000 per month before tax (Table 5).

Monthly income positively correlated with re-spondent age (r= 0.441, p< 0.000, n= 250), and age,in turn with respondents performing the managerialand strategist roles, as indicated earlier. This indi-cates the seniority associated with the managerialand strategist roles.

These findings were further investigated bymeans of a Kruskal–Wallis test to determine the dif-ference between monthly income and the actual roleperformed, which delivered a statistically signifi-cant result (H= 48.73, p= 0.000).

The following cross-tabulation illustrates the dif-ference. Respondents in more senior positions, suchas the manager and strategist, earned more thanthe respondents in junior positions, as could beexpected (Table 6).

When considering that a respondent had to growinto the managerial or strategic function, it is logicalthat monthly income correlated with the practi-tioners’ number of years experience in corporatecommunication (r= 0.463, p< 0.000, n= 244). Thus,the longer the practitioners have worked in corpor-ate communication and grown to perform the man-agerial or strategist roles, the higher their monthlyincome.

Years working for a particular organisation and years ofcorporate communication experienceTable 7 indicates that 59.6% (n= 155) of respondentsworked for a particular organisation for less than6 years. This may indicate that corporate communi-cation practitioners have been appointed over thelast 10 years into newly created posts. However,it could also indicate that practitioners were verymobile in their careers, opting to move to betterpositions or new challenges.Most respondents, 62%, have more than 5 years

corporate communication experience. It seems thatthe more years of experience in corporate communi-cation the respondents have, the longer they haveworked for the specific organisation (r= 0.495,p< 0.000, n= 253).

Type of career experienceOnly 28.2% (n= 74) of respondents had only corpo-rate communication experience, whereas the rest ofthe respondents had experience outside corporatecommunication or experience in both corporatecommunication and other fields. Most respondentshad between 2 and 10 years experience outsidecorporate communication.The fact that most respondents had experience

outside corporate communication, indicates thatthe field is still relatively new and that some respon-dents have selected to move into the field fromanother discipline. This conclusion is supportedby the data indicating that most respondents have

Table 5 Monthly income before tax

Salary: monthly income before tax (R) % n

0–10 000 13.2 3310 001–20 000 32.8 8220 001–30 000 24.4 6130 001–40 000 16.0 4040 001–50 000 5.2 13More than 50 001 8.4 21Total 100.0 250

Table 6 Percentage of respondents per role and income

Role

Income (%)

nR0–R10 000 R10 001–R20 000 R20 001–R30 000 R30 001–R40 000 R40 001–R50 000 More than R50 000

Technician 21.3 40.9 25.2 7.9 1.6 3.1 127Manager 3.8 27.5 26.3 28.7 2.5 11.3 80Strategist 2.9 14.7 20.6 17.6 20.6 23.5 34Total 241

Table 7 Years working for current employer and yearsof corporate communication experience

Number of years

Years workingfor currentemployer

Years of corporatecommunication

experience

% n % n

0–2 37.7 98 18.8 483–5 21.9 57 19.2 496–10 21.2 55 26.7 68More than 10 19.2 50 35.3 90Total 100.0 260 100.0 255



non-corporate communication qualifications. Thisdoes not necessarily indicate encroachment, assuggested by various authors (Ehling et al., 1992;Lauzen and Dozier, 1992; Hogg and Doolan, 1999;Grunig et al., 2001; Van Ruler and De Lange, 2003;Lee, 2005), but rather a career change by the respon-dents (Table 8).

Time taken out of their careersRespondents were asked whether they have takentime out of their careers, and if that was the case,to indicate the reasons. More than two-thirds ofthe practitioners (68.3%, n= 179) did not take anytime out of their career, and none took more than20 years time out of their careers.

Most respondents took time out of their careersfor family reasons (8.1%, n= 21), followed by pursuinganother career (7.7%, n= 20) and travel (6.9%, n= 18).A few individuals did take time out for study(2.3%, n= 6), due to unemployment (0.8%, n= 2) anddue to illness (0.4%, n= 1). The number of respon-dents that took time out for family reasons can beexplained when considering the number of femalesin the profession.

MentorshipThe data show that the practice of mentorship iswidely applied in the South African environment.The finding is in agreement with the interviewees’suggestion that mentorship is part of African cultureand therefore applied in business, but not necessar-ily to the corporate communication profession.

Respondents usually had a non-corporate com-munication mentor. Almost half of respondents,49.3% (n= 128), had either a business or communica-tion and business mentor. When taking into accountthe emphasis in the semi-structured interviews onthe importance of business knowledge for practi-tioners, this finding becomes important. It couldpoint to the fact that respondents intrinsically recog-nise the need for business knowledge and try toaddress this issue by finding a particular type ofmentor (Table 9).

Respondents’ organisational environment

In order to describe the respondents’ working envi-ronment, the organisation’s annual communicationbudget, as well as the prominence given to the func-tion, will be discussed.

Table 8 Experience outside corporate communication

Experience outsidecorporatecommunication

%Total% n<2 years 2–10 years 11–20 years >20 years

None 28.2 28.2 74Journalism 1.9 13.0 1.9 0.4 17.2 41Business management 2.3 9.5 3.8 0.8 16.4 43Human resources 2.3 9.2 4.6 1.1 17.2 45Government — 0.8 — — 0.8 2Company secretary — 0.4 — 0.4 0.8 2Television and film 0.4 0.8 — — 1.2 3Project management 0.4 0.8 — — 1.2 3Publishinga — 2.7 0.8 — 3.5 9Research — 1.2 — — 1.2 3Finance — 3.1 0.8 0.4 4.3 11Administration — 15 1.5 0.8 17.3 10Marketingb — 8.0 0.8 0.4 9.2 24Tourism — 1.9 0.8 — 2.7 7Educationc — 3.1 1.2 0.4 4.7 12Law 0.4 0.4 — — 0.8 2Otherd — 3.4 — — 3.4 9

aPublishing includes editing, designing page layout and magazine work.bMarketing also includes advertising.cEducation includes lecturing, training, teaching, coaching and mentoring.dOther includes business development, distribution, estate agent, import/export/retail, information technology, psychology, restaurantmanagement and technical.

Table 9 Mentorship

Mentorship % n

No mentor 30.0 78A communication mentor 13.8 36A general business mentor 25.8 67Both a communication andgeneral business mentor

23.5 61

Another work-related mentor 6.9 18Total 100.0 260



Annual communication budgetA third of the respondents, 33.4% (n= 81), indicatedthat they did not know what their organisation’s an-nual communication budget is. It is possible thatthis response is a result of practitioners not wantingto make their organisation’s communication bud-gets known.

For those who could answer the question, thecommunication budgets tended to be under R10m,forcing the practitioner to be creative in the applica-tion of solutions.

T-tests indicated that there are some statisticallyand practically significant differences between an-nual communication budgets and the type of re-search organisations applied (d=�1.09, t=�16.97,p< 0.000). Those organisations using both informaland formal research have higher annual communi-cation budgets than organisations conducting onlyinformal research (Table 10).

Prominence given to corporate communicationThe prominence of the corporate communicationfunction in the organisation may be demonstratedby, amongst others, the focus on doing communica-tion research. It was positive to note that a total of54.8% (n= 142) of the respondents reported thattheir organisations conducted both formal and infor-mal corporate communication research (Table 11).

The focus of communication research is also im-portant as this indicates whether the function istested only on the technical (output) or also on thestrategic (impact) level.

Only 18.5% (n= 46) of the organisations focusedon the number of articles and newsletters produced,amount of media coverage, number of people attendingevents, etc., whereas 27.3% (n= 68) only focused onresearching changes in behaviour/perceptions/relation-ships. More than half of the organisations, 54.2%(n= 135), focused equally on aforementioned areasof research, once again pointing to the credibilitygained for the profession in understanding the func-tion’s contribution to the organisation (Grunig et al.,2001; Taff, 2003; Gupta, 2007). This finding is in con-trast with the suggestion of Austin and Pinkleton(2001) and Woodall and Smith (2003) that

practitioners only focus on the output measure-ments and thereby inhibit their own work.

Roles performed by the respondents

As suggested in literature and by the respondents inthe semi-structured interviews, the role performedby the practitioner encapsulates the tasks they per-form. In order to understand which roles therespondents’ performed, it was necessary firstly tounderstand which tasks they performed and sec-ondly to determine the time allocated to the tasksperformed. Thereafter, the actual role performedby each individual were determined, while also tak-ing into account the most important three taskscompleted by each individual in the past 3months.

Tasks performedRespondents were asked to select from a list of tasksall those that they had been involved with. Accord-ing to the tasks indicated by the respondents, theywere preliminarily categorised into the three roles.If a respondent completed mostly tasks within onerole, that role was allocated to the respondent.However, if the respondent completed an equalnumber of tasks within two roles, or even all threeroles, it was indicated as such. The possibility ofthe dual performance of roles has been alluded toby Bassett (1996) and Moss et al. (2000).As expected, the most practitioners enacted tech-

nical tasks, followed by managerial tasks and lastlystrategic tasks (see Table 12). It is, however, note-worthy that 13.9% (n= 34) of the respondents werecategorised into two roles simultaneously—5.7%(n= 14) conducted the technician and managerialroles, 4.5% (n= 11) the managerial and strategistroles, and 3.7% (n= 9) were found to conduct thetechnical, managerial and strategist roles equally.The respondents enacting the role of the strategist

according to the tasks completed, positively corre-lated with the annual communication budget allo-cated to corporate communication (r= 0.326,p< 0.000, n= 243). Thereby indicating that the more

Table 10 Annual communication budget

Annual communication budget % n

Do not know 33.3 81R0m–R10m 51.4 125Between R10m and R20m 5.3 13R20m–R30m 2.9 7Between R30m and R40m 3.3 8R40m–R50m 1.2 3Between R50m and R60m — —More than R60m 2.5 6Total 100.0 243

Table 11 Type of corporate communication researchconducted

Type of research conducted % n

No research at all 7.7 20Do not know 5.0 13Only informal research(talking to people, field reports,reading newspapers/internet)

22.0 57

Only formal research(perception/reputation/imagesurveys, content analysis)

10.4 27

Both formal and informal research 54.8 142Total 100.0 259



strategically the practitioner acts within the organ-isation, the higher their corporate communicationbudget could be.

Time allocated to tasksAlthough in the research of Steyn (2000b) and Everett(2006) the respondents only indicated the tasks theyperformed, it was deemed necessary to also includethe time that respondents allocated to these tasks, assuggested by Le Roux (2004).

In a subsequent question, each respondent wasasked to indicate the percentage of their time spenton each of the activities they were involved in. Theaim of this question was to verify the initial role cat-egorisation which was based only on a selection ofthe tasks performed.

In general, most time spent was on tasks asso-ciated with the technical role, followed by the man-agerial and then strategic roles. A second preliminarycategorisation into the various roles was made,based on time spent per role (see Table 12).

Actual role performed by respondentsIn order to then determine the actual role performedby the respondents, the tasks that each respondentperformed, the time allocated to each task and themost important tasks completed in the past3months were all taken into account.

As could be expected, just over half the respon-dents (52.2%, n= 132) were found to be technicians,with a third acting as managers (33.2%, n= 84) and14.6% (n= 37) acting as strategists.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

From the aforementioned profile of public relationspractitioners who are active in the top South Africanorganisations, the following can be deduced:

• The data differ extensively from that reported inother studies. This could be explained by scruti-nising the sampling procedures used in the stud-ies. Therefore it would seem that not using the

professional body’s membership lists as thepopulation for academic studies, would be bene-ficial and provide a more balanced and true pic-ture of the profession.

• The seniority of the strategic public relations rolewas confirmed by its correlationwith age, monthlyincome and annual communication budget.

• The respondents can be described as mostlyWhite women between 25 to 50 years. Conclu-sions on the success of affirmative action in thefield can however not be made.

• The finding that respondents seemed to havequalifications outside of corporate communica-tion raised questions on to their knowledge ofpublic relations practice. However, career experi-ence data showed that most respondents hadmore than5 years corporate communication ex-perience. Therefore, it would seem that respon-dents rely more on experience than formaleducation, to equip them for their job. Unfortu-nately, the respondents indicated that their ex-perience is in many cases outside publicrelations, and not within the relational and stra-tegic public relations paradigms. In addition,most respondents did not belong to a professionalbody that could provide them with informationon and understanding of the function. This canbe a dangerous trend for the profession, as therecannot be certainty that a practitioner will havethe desired knowledge and skills to play the roleexpected from them. The large number of techni-cians active in the profession could substantiatethis point, as the practitioners might not havethe knowledge to move to the managerial orstrategist role. The lack of senior mentors withinthe field and the resulting loss of valuable knowl-edge (given that their experience was gainedwithin the relational and strategic paradigms) tothe profession add to this predicament. Further-more, older, experienced strategists are exitingthe profession, without managers and techniciansnecessarily being able to take their place.

• Respondents were to some extent, although muchless than suggested in literature, still confronted

Table 12 Preliminary role categorisation

Role

Role categorisation ofrespondents according to

tasks completed

Role categorisation ofrespondents according to the

percentage of time spent in each role

% n % n

Technician 52.2 128 52.2 128Manager 24.1 59 24.1 59Strategist 9.8 24 9.8 24Technician and manager 5.7 14 5.7 14Manager and strategist 4.5 11 4.5 11Technician, manager and strategist 3.7 9 3.7 9Total 100.0 245 100.0 245



with the problem of the vague definition of thefunction, as suggested by the findings regardingjob titles. However, the name of the functionseemed fairly standardised, and the data indi-cated that the concept of the public relations func-tion had been accepted, but that the specific tasksof the practitioners relating to the function mightstill be vague. The fact that some practitionersalso perform dual roles could indicate a confusionas to the tasks expected of various practitioners,or might just be a result of the economic climatein the country and the fact that the appointmentof more than one person is not affordable to theorganisation.

The profile of the South African public relationspractitioner in top performing organisations thusconfirms that the practitioners need support,through mentorship, professional bodies or formaleducation, to equip them to play a strategic role intheir organisations.

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