Social Capital

Luoma-aho state that people have fewer interpersonal relationships than ever before. Putnam describe this with the example of people starting “bowling alone”, this is how his article is named (Putnam). According to him we start bowling alone because of new technologies (Internet etc.) and because a lot more people living alone, than before (Luoma-aho). Putnam invented a theorie about social capital, according to him features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions (Luoma-aho). The aim of social capital is the connection among people to establish bound of trust, understanding and building community (Luoma-aho). Social capital can be divided in two different areas; bridging social capital which is the relationship of an organization towards its external publics and bounding social capital which refers to the internal relationships (Luoma-aho). The main purpose of Putnams theory is the “importance of civic engagement and social ties for the welfare of individuals and societies” in the civic community (Luoma-aho). Civic community is build up of civic engagement, political equality, solidarity, trust, tolerance and strong associational life. 

The Model of capital creation influenced by aspects of Putnam`s theorizing shows that organizations with reciprocal, trusting stakeholder networks have high amounts of social capital (Luoma-aho). One of the important things in Putnam`s theory about social capital is that he made a link between institutional performance and the character of civic life. According to Luoma-aho it is the main aim of public relations to create and maintain organizational social capital, that is why the new definition of public relations should be:” the creation and maintenance of organizational social capital” (Luoma-aho).

I think that social capital can be important, because this can strengthen openess, trust and connections, which are important for getting investors and customers. But this is only what CAN happen, I think social capital does not indeed strengthen trust.  In my opinion social capital is not necessary, it is a nice addition to the work of organizations. I think the model of creating social capital is not right, because there is no good reason why trust results in high social capital. Further this model is circlic this means that also high social capital can lead again to a bad reputation when the experience of working together is bad. For me this shows that social capital is not always a good thing and this is not that important.

In conclusion, social capital can help the organization but it is not necessary, because there is always a possibility to have an organization which has not that much social capital but is still successful. It is not that important to even redefine public relations. It is much more important to keep on thinking how to get a two-way symmetrical relationship.

Literature:

   Luoma-aho, V. Bowling Together- Applying Putnam`s Theories of Community and Social Capital to Public Relations. In On Putnam (S. 231-251).

   Putnam, R. D. Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social.

   Lecture Päivi Tirkkonen: “Social responsibility, trust and legitimacy Putnam, Bourdieu”

Organization- Public Relationships

Organization- public Relationships

Especially for the cost-reduction factor it is important to have a good organization-public relationship (Jahansoozi, 2007). It is in the interest of the organization that they have a good relationship with their publics. According to Jahansoozi there are different types of relationships: exchange relationships which are characterized by the exchange of benefits of both parties; communal relationships in which the parties provide each other with altruistic benefits; covenantal relationships where both parties act for the common good; exploitative relationships where no reciprocal relationships takes place and last but not least the contractual relationships which are characterized as being legal agreements with agreed roles and responsibilities (Jahansoozi, 2007). Jahansoozi (2007) stated that the communal relationships are the ideal ones. I do not agree with that, because I don’t think that in economic sector it is possible to have an altruistic relation. Even if they would have this altruistic relation this would not make any sense because this can never be good for their financial benefit. Further in Psychology there is a great debate whether altruistic behavior exists. I do not think it exists; you never act without any reason. In addition you cannot say that (here) the exchange relationship is not ideal, because it may result in an exploitative relationship. Then it is no longer an exchange relationship, so you cannot say this. I do understand that it is negative when the exchange relationship results in an explorative relationship but for me this is the ideal relationship and they should develop methods or contracts where this shift to an exploitative relationship cannot happen.

I agree that trust should be the most important characteristic in the organization public relationships (Jahansoozi, 2007). Without trust it is impossible to develop commitment, satisfaction, control mutuality and dialogue. I think the author underestimated the role of transparency. We are talking about organizations and not friendship; to get trust the organizations should be as transparent as possible, the more transparency the more trust. I think it takes a long time and effort to get trust. When the organization and the public trust each other the above mentioned characteristics will emerge. I think the degree of commitment, satisfaction, control mutuality and dialogue define what kind of relationship it is.

I think the main challenges in relationship management are to establish a reciprocal relationship with financial benefit for both parties and to keep a good reputation with regard to environmental and social responsibility. I think the reciprocal relationship is not possible if all parties want to have financial benefit. There is always one who wants to get more money or has in general different goals than the other one. The importance of environmental responsibility increased in the last years, especially with the growing fear of climate change and the growing popularity of environment protection. The social responsibility is also very important because like in environment protection there is an increase of interest in this field of the general population. Good reputation is very important for the public, customers, employees and investors. Without them an organization cannot exist. To get a good reputation the relationship with the public is very important; they can represent the organization and influence other people. You have to have a good reputation to get contacts and positive press to get investors. The investors are the ones who should be persuaded why its profitable for them to invest money.

Analysis of the reputation of Mercedes Benz

To analyze what kind of reputation Mercedes Benz Germany has I have read the news on the website of Daimler (www.daimler.com). Daimler AG is a German producer of private and commercial vehicles. The most popular brand is Mercedes Benz. I know that Daimler AG is not an impartial source but most of this news are about facts.

I will analyze the reputation of Mercedes Benz with the help of Employees, Investments, Products, Ethical- Environmental factors and Customers and with a conclusion at the end.

I think that Mercedes Benz has a good reputation in the eyes of employees, this year they have recruited 1.000 employees for the Mercedes Benz factory in Wörth, Germany and 600 employees in the factory in Untertürkheim, Germany (Daimler AG, 2011). This shows that there are a lot of people who wants to work for them and that their economy is very good at the moment. Daimler says that they sold 120.982 cars within one month worldwide. The last quartile of 2011 was the best sold in the history of their company; an accretion of 7, 3% (Daimler AG, 2011). This shows that they should have satisfied customers. At the beginning I talked about trust, that trust is the most important characteristic of the organization- public relationship. Mercedes Benz has a new customer; Transports Publics Genevois (TPG) from the Switzerland. From September 2011 Mercedes Benz delivers 87 new articulated busses to Switzerland. Further Mercedes Benz for the second time in a row got the award of customer satisfaction 2011 (Daimler, 2011). As I said, environment protection is an increasing topic where the customers are interested in. Daimler got an award for inventing new fuel cells for cars which drive with electricity.  Additional they designed a prototype of a truck which drives with sugar cane diesel.

In conclusion I think it is difficult to analyze the reputation of an organization. As I described above Mercedes Benz seems to have a good reputation; this year the recruited a lot of new employees and they got a big new deal with a company from Switzerland. I think in general Mercedes Benz is viewed as producing better quality products which are more expensive than many other companies, for example Volks Wagen (VW) or Opel.  But there are always customers which are not satisfied. I think when it’s about reputation of a company; the most important factor is their sales figures. At the end this is what is important for the company and this is where you can see how many people are satisfied with their products. In conclusion I think Mercedes Benz Germany has a good reputation.

Literature:

Daimler AG. (2011). Nachrichten: Unternehmen. http://www.daimler.com/konzern/nachrichten

Jahansoozi, J. (2007). Organization- public relationships: An exploration of the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group. Public Relations Review , S. 398-406.

Tirkkonen, P. (04. October 2011). Lecture. Identity and image, Reputation and image theories, Crisis communication . Tallinn, Estonia.

Contingency Theory

In the following I will introduce the contingency theory, Guring`s Model of Public Relations and apply these information to public relations of Mercedes Benz Germany.

The contingency theory, a continuum should be the aim of public relations. The continuum comprised no strictly symmetric or asymmetric communication but like a balance between them (Cancel, Mitrook, & Cameron, 1999).  According Guring`s Models of Public Relations (1984) there are 4 different ways of how public relations can work. The first way is called press agentry/publicity; people who use this way act as how one would public relations suppose to act. This is a one-way communication where they may use lies to make other people act. The second way is public information, this also implies a one-way relation but without lying but with a really positive propaganda without the possibility to get or accept feedback. The two-way asymmetrical way is the third one.  The ones who are communicating with each other having a mutual relationship, they can give feedback to each other but the other part does not have these equal rights. That is why it is a asymmetrical relationship. The last one is a two-way symmetrical communication. This is how public relations should be; all parties are equal and have the same input and benefit.

According to Gruning these 4 models can be used simultaneously.

www.mercedes-benz.de

                                                          

                In the following I will analyze the public relations communication of Mercedes- Benz Germany and describe what I would change in their communication.  Mercedes- Benz is a German auto brand which is one of the most popular ones. I investigated the facebook site of Mercedes Benz Germany: http://www.facebook.com/mercedesbenzdeutschland?sk=info . This site looks not very special, it has a general information page, a special Mercedes-Benz page, Videos, Photos and a contact site of Mercedes Benz traders in Germany. I would describe the communication of the facebook site of Mercedes Benz Germany as fitting best in the public information model. The only information which you get about Mercedes Benz is that they are “successful”, they belong together with Mercedes Benz, Maybach, smart and Fuso and that they have 1.500 service points in Germany. Directly on the information page you can read that Mercedes Benz will delete all posts which are discriminatory or offensive.  This gives a very positive picture of Mercedes Benz. But when you continue to read you can read that they will also delete all posts which are not in either German or English, I think this is kind of discrimination. This seems like they expect people with another language to write discriminatory or offensive posts. Further they write that they will delete all posts which link to other auto brands. This is a very one-way communication. When you want to post something on the site you are only allowed to write positive feedback and cannot post anything about another company. This communication does not fit in the contingency theory, because I cannot see any sign of a two-way communication (Cancel, Mitrook, & Cameron, 1999).

                There are several things which I would change in public relations of Mercedes Benz. First of all I would not write what is not allowed to post at the first site which you can see when you enter their site. Maybe it is important to write down that they will delete offensive posts, but you get a negative picture of someone when the first thing which you read is about what you are not allowed to do.  Further I read on their official website: www.mercedes-benz.de  that they for example support the AIDS gala, why are they not posting this in facebook? Further there are a lot of festivals or sports which they finance, I think this is good advertisement and such events should be announced on their official fan page in facebook. I said that this communication fits best in the public information model,  I really mean that is only “fits best”, I think this does not describe it well, because they don’t spread a lot of positive information about their company, maybe it would be interesting how many employers they have (this should be a huge number) .

                In sum I think the developer of this facebook site didn’t put much effort in this and that their public relations fit best in the public information model but they miss much more positive information about themselves.

Literature:

Cancel, A. E., Mitrook, M. A., & Cameron, G. T. (1999). Testing the Contingency Theory of Accommodation in Public Relations. Public Relations Review , S. 171-197.

Lecture: "Excellence Theory and its critics" by Päivi Tirkkonen, 27.09.2011

On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication.

On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication.

This article by Mats Heide is mainly about the American sociologist Peter K. Berger and his view about social interactions and social reality. According to Berger society is a “complex of human relations, and consequently organizations are also complexes of human relations.”(Heide).

When I think about Public Relations I have not thought about crisis communication, but after reading this article I realize that this is also a very important topic for PR. I think crisis became much more important in the last years. Heide wrote that it is “a consequence of late modernity [that we] live in a risk society”. I agree with him that we are “all aware of the risk society, not a least through mass media`s” (Heide).  I would also say that the risk society is a result from modern technology. Don’t you have the feeling that every year there is more crises? In 2010 there was the earthquake in New Zealand and Haiti, Chile, China; lava emission in Island; forest fire in Russia, flood in Pakistan and Australia. These were only the natural catastrophes. I cannot remember there happened so much when I was younger. But as I said, I think it is a consequence of modern technology, we are much better informed. For example the “climate change” can be reported because we have developed better measure instruments and we have more knowledge about all the related things. And it is also a result of the “organization member`s perception and sense making processes” as Heide said. We are looking for a crisis that is why we measure the ice on the North Pole etc.

According to Heide, Berger said that the “language is important in the production of social structures, which are formed by social processes” (Heide). I also think that language is very important, without it we would have much more problems to interact socially with each other. But Berger takes the language too important. He said that the language is “Not chosen by ourselves but forced upon us during our initial socialization” (Heide). I don’t agree with that because I do think animals also have a kind of social life. They normally don’t eat each other (in the same biological race), they raise their children, they can follow a leader etc. But animals do not have language. So I don’t think that we were “forced” to learn a language, I think it was our own will that we thought it would be more easy to use language to communicate.

 A important concept of Berger is institution, according to him it is a “complex of social actions that regulate and rule people`s behavior in different situations” (Heide). One example of a institution is a marriage; I agree that it has special rules and these rules have to be followed, then we get awarded or if we don’t follow the rules, for example cheating on the wife/husband we get sanctioned, for example the divorce.

I agree with Berger that the “environment in which humans act is complex and ever changing […]” (Heide). This is also why habitualization is as important as Berger said, in my opinion. The world Is changing so fast we would never have time and capacity to learn everything from the beginning. We even were not that far in modern technology and other knowledge if we could use the habits from earlier generations. I think habitualization becomes much faster, because of the “influences by traveling, media consumption […]”(Heide). I also think that these factors lead to more diverse and faster changing personalities; maybe this is a reason why the need for virtual communities as assistances in crises of meaning get more popular, because you can find information for everyone and everything on the internet.

Heide said that it is not easy to find criticism of Berger (Heide). I think this is true because Berger does not have a very radical or critical meaning.

I liked this article because it was an understandable overview about social construction. It also become clear why it is not just one sender and one receiver who gets the message, we are influenced in many ways and we even sometimes do not know who/what did influence us. I think Kuhn is right when he says: “The more theory forbids the better”. Even the more new model of many different receivers and senders at the same time is just one explanation of a very unknown phenomena.

Literature:

Heide, M. On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication .

Public Relations relations

Castells: “The Contours of the network society”

Castells` wrote about the new technology. He said that the technology does not produce society but is a part of it (Castells, 2000). I don’t agree with that because in my opinion the technology is a part of society but also produces it. Without technology the society would look much more different, we could only communicate with people who life in the neighborhood, we would not be able to learn about different cultures so fast. Society exists without technology, it has several hundred years, but when Castells said that we are living in a new society already (Castells, 2000) then he should also commit that technology is not only a part of the society but IS the new society.  I think he changed his mind about this because in 2007 he wrote that “our societies continue to perform socially and politically by shifting the process of formation of the public mind from political institutions to the realm of communication, largely organized around the mass media”(Castells, 2007).

When I read the article I had the feeling that Castells is very negative about this new technology, he said that we have to show the challenges of the technologies pose to society and to humans (Castells, 2000). He may be a bit afraid of this technology, because he describes the technology as a “totally open page in terms of what the technology means for our society, civilization, and for the destiny of our planet” (Castells, 2000). I did not get why he is so negative about it.

Literature:

Castells, M. (2000). the contours of the network society. the journal of futures studies, strategic thinking and policy , 02 (00), S. 151- 157.

 Castells, M. (2007). Communication, Power and Counter- power in the Network Society. International Journal of Communication , S. 238-266.