A PROPOSAL ON

EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS PLANNING IN ORGANIZATIONAL

SUSTAINABILITY

(A STUDY OF DUFIL PRIMA FOODS LTD)

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Public Relations is the art and social science of analyzing trends predicting their consequences,
counselling organization’s leaders and implementing planned programmes of actions, which will
serve the interest of both the organization and its public. It is also a deliberate, planned and
sustained effort to establish and maintaining mutual understanding between organization and its
public. In all those, public relations covers wide range of activities. It is first and foremost action
before statement, the specific process employed for these activities involved research, action,
communication, evaluation and efficiency because none of public relations programme is done
haphazardly.

According to Mohd Hamdan (2008), the practice of public relations is an important role to the
organization as it seeks to attract customers, generate interest on investments, improve financial
performance, enhance the image of talented employees, improve return on assets of the
organization, creating a competitive advantage and gain a positive view of financial analysts.
Government Public Relations (GPR) is one of the important tasks in the public sector regardless
of national, state or district. Each department in the public sector to appoint a staff known as the
Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the aim of creating individuals who act as middlemen in the
organization to connect with the audience or between employees and other employees. However,
every employee in the organization needs to practice excellence of public relations for the
success the vision and mission of the organization. Accordingly, every employee in the
Manufacturing sector needs to practice relations with excellence because the staffs are
individuals who are responsible to deliver information and services to the community as well as

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the success of the organization's objectives, mission and vision of the organization.
Organizations are concerned with the images they create in the minds of the publics that they
serve. In organizations, people respond to the image they have of the organization and not
necessarily to its reality, and publics holding a negative image of an organization avoids or
disparages the organization while those holding a positive image drowns to it. A strong
favourable image, comes about when the "organization creates real satisfaction for its clients and
lets others Know about it", and Clients can be satisfied by either products or services; however,
for this to happen some information must pass from the organization to the clients and also from
the organization to the other publics the organization deals with (Kotler, 2002).

Ideally, according to Wilcox eta!. (2009), the involvement of public relations in decision making
to determine the direction of organization and its employees is an effective measure, particularly
for long-term planning organization. Thus, the public relations can identify and communicate
with stakeholders to effective organization which will bring a positive or negative impact on the
organization. Strategic management is also a key element to excellence of public relations at
organization. Public relations activities are not limited to certain media such as television and
newspapers, but are solely focused on the promotion of products or services just like any other
review in some quarters (Toth, 2007). Rather, it involves the use of media as a means of
integration that can function to strengthen and maintain the good name and mutual understanding
between an organization and the public.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Corporate organizations have been embarking on Public Relations to create and maintain a
mutual understanding with their publics. According to Price Et al, (2007), the world of business
is characterized by fierce competition and in order to win new customers and retain the existing
ones, the firms have to distinguish themselves from the competition. But they also need to create
and maintain a positive public image. Public relations (PR) are the way organizations, companies
and individuals communicate with the public and media (Poister and Streib, 2005).Despite the
fact that public relations at Mukwano Group of Companies is facing a lot of challenges; political,
social, economic and technological forces which are constantly evolving, leaving useless
equipment and employees with outdated skills in their wake, as a larger company with multiple
facilities (Smith, A, 2002). And as a result the organizations has registered open criticisms from

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the public due to improper dumping of toxic wastes to the surrounding environment, the
production and supply of poor quality products (like soap, Omo etc.) which at times cause body
itching, irritations and other skin diseases which have left the company unpopular in the public
eye, thus affecting its general performance. So for the organization to amend its loop holes, it
instead adopted effective public relations strategies to help in both creating and maintaining a
good reputation among both the media and the customers by communicating in its behalf and
presenting its products, services and the overall operation in the best light possible(Dozier and
Broom, 1995). This has therefore motivated the researcher to carry out more broad research and
discover the effects of public relations on organization using Indomie Noodles organizations in
Saagamu, Ogun State as case study.

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The broad objective of the study is to examine the effectiveness of public relations on
organization sustainability. Specifically the study seeks to:

1. To establish if public relations practice is relevant to achieving the goals of an

organization.
2. To identify specific functions that can be performed by public relations practitioners to
achieve the goals of an organization.
3. To determine the effect of public relations in organization.
4. To examine how public relations can be strengthened to achieve organizational objective.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION

1. Is public relations practice relevant to achieving the goals of an organization?

2. What are the functions performed by public relations practitioners to achieve the goals of
an organization?
3. What are the effects of public relation in organization?
4. In what ways can public relations be strengthened to achieve organizational objective?

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Public relation is a complex profession, an emerging industry that is at the heart of all
communication. Finding from the study will be relevant to organizations, managers and

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academia. This study is important as it addresses the importance of public relations within an
organization. The study provides a framework as it outlined public relations as an integral
subsystem within an organization. Organizations can use this study as a guideline in assessing
their in-house public relations departments or any other department under which public relations
falls, for the overall interest and success of the organization. The study will also contribute to the
general body of knowledge and serve as a reference material to both scholars and student who
wishes to conduct further studies in related field

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of the study borders on the role of public relations in achieving organizational
objectives. The study will discuss the effect of effect of public relation in organization and
further proffer ways they can be strengthened. The study is however delimited to Indomie
Noodles organization Plc in Saagamu, Ogun State.

1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS

Effect: a change to which a result or consequence of an action or action cause.

Public relation: process that builds mutually beneficial relationship between organization and
the public.

Organization: an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as business or a

government department.

Corporate Image: is the set of beliefs, attitudes and perception that the public have about a
company or brand.

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 CHAPTER TWO

BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODUCTION

This chapter focuses on the review of literature that is relevant to the topic.

2.1 PUBLIC RELATIONS

The British Institute of Public relations (BIPR) defines public relations as ‘the deliberate planned
and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and
its publics.” This definition suggests that public relations is the creation or establishment of
mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. It also suggests that public
relations is not a haphazard process. It must be consciously designed. Planning calls for
attention, deliberation, research, anticipation, analysis and consequences.

Public relations efforts must ensure that not only does the organisation understand its publics; the
publics must equally understand the organisation. It must understand its reasons for whatever
actions it takes. As a public relations officer or manager of your firm, for instance, it is your duty
to ensure that mutual understanding is achieved between your firm and its several publics. More
often than not, the publics are passive at performing this role. Therefore, your organisation must
take proactive steps towards achieving it. ‘Sustained effort’ means that it is not enough to start
the plan; it must be carried through to a logical end. This is not usually very easy in the face of a
precarious economy, political instability and other factors.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) says “public relations is concerned with or
devoted to creating mutual understanding among groups and institutions.” The PRSA recognises
the place of groups and institutions in the public relations process. It admits that these entities
have interests that must be protected. It also presupposes a streamlining of these benefits for
mutual good. The concept of mutuality in this definition makes you as a public relations man or
woman an intermediary between your organisation and its publics. This implies that you should
be able to align the interests of these two parties for their mutual advantage.

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2.2 PUBLIC RELATIONS AND ORGANIZATION

Any company can develop a public relations program regardless of their public relations budget
or number of staff. The key to implementing a successful program is to incorporate
measurements and analysis from the beginning. Overall measurement of public relations
programs should provide a holistic view of public relations compares with corporate goals and
objectives. The company’s effectiveness as a philosophy and as a result of communication
activities has been explored by innumerable authors (McArthur and Griffin, 1997; Schultz and
Kitchen, 1997; Low, 2000; Pickton and Broderick, 2001; Završnik and Jerman, 2006).

Company effectiveness and related performance is a robust and ongoing necessity for business.
Have companies become so good at implementing public relations to achieve effectiveness?
Moreover, an even more important issue concerns the ability of public relations to connect
effectively with key stakeholders who could impact on organisational performance. Public
relations make an organization more effective when it identifies strategic constituencies in the
environment and then develops communication programs to build long-term, trusting
relationships with them.

Participation in strategic management provides the integrating link for public relations to
enhance organizational effectiveness. To provide its unique contribution, however, public
relations must be separate from other management functions. However, communication
programs should be integrated or coordinated by a public relations department and they should
have a matrix arrangement with the other departments it serves. There is ample evidence that the
century-long domination of mass media advertising and advertising agencies in marketing
communications is coming to an end.

2.3 PUBLIC RELATIONS AS VITAL COMPONENT FOR ORGANIZATION’S

EFFECTIVENESS

Lots of different systems have been invented for competitive reasons, each claiming to be a
better form of public relations measurement. Public relations program evaluation plays a
significant role in demonstrating effectiveness (Dozier, 1990; Fairchild, 2002), and
organizational impact(Radford and Goldstein, 2002). As there is no method for measuring
effectiveness, practitioners select from an array of different methods and models to demonstrate

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their effectiveness. Evaluation models can be categorized into those focusing on a specific public
relations process, such as media evaluation, or those accommodating an integrated planning
approach or impact model (Xavier et al., 2005).

Broader outcome measures concern whether audience target groups actually receives the
messages directed at them, were aware of the message, understood it, retained and even acted
upon its meaning. There is a debate as to whether the communication materials and public
relations expertise result in opinion, attitude and/or behaviour changes among target publics
(Phillips, 2001).

A lot of research about the measure of reputation has been done by the academics. They have
explored the relationship between reputation and commercial performance. The Reputation
Institute1 has tackled the measurement of reputation and provides some interesting benchmarks.

Based on a number of published lists of the most admired companies, six sets of criteria or
themes have been identified that appear to dominate the construction of the reputation rating
published by social monitors (Phillips, 2001; 228-229): (1) financial performance, (2) product
quality, (3) employee treatment, (4) community involvement, (5) environmental performance
and (6) organizational issues.

Integrated marketing analysis also includes public relations return on investments. A statistical
model permit public relations to understand how media coverage interacts with advertising,
promotions and other forms of marketing communications to affect awareness, brand loyalty and
sales (Weiner, 2000).

Other public relations performance measurements can derive from how public relations is
managed. Senior public relations professionals participate in the strategic decision processes of
an organisation and counsel other managers participating in that process about the consequences
of potential decisions for the public. In effect, they bring the voices of the public into strategic
decision making by researching and listening to the public before decisions are made. Excellent
public relations departments then strategically plan, administer and evaluate public relations
programmes to communicate with these publics, both before and after management decisions are
made, so that the organisation can build and maintain good, long-term relationships with them
(Grunig and Grunig, 2002).

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2.4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Major theoretical concepts, framing this study, included organization-public relationships,

organizational reputation, cognitive representations, communication behaviours of publics, and
familiarity and experience.

THE CYBERNETICS THEORY

Propounded by W. Ross Ashby and Norbert Wiener in 1960 emphasized on mathematics, theory
of communication and control systems through regulatory feedback. Feedback can be positive
(when the required result is achieved) or negative; instantaneous (when the response is
immediate) or delayed. Feedback is used to gauge the effectiveness of a particular message put
forth or situation that has taken place.Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control
of regulatory feedback both in living and lifeless systems (organisms, organizations, machines),
and in combinations of those. Its focus is how anything (digital, mechanical or biological)
controls its behaviour, processes information, reacts to information and changes or can be
changed to better accomplish those three primary tasks.

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 CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter will examine the various tools to be used in carrying out this research work. These
will include the methods of research design, data collection and presentation. It will present in
detail the respondents responses to the research questions section by section. The presentation
will be in tabular form for quantitative data and descriptive for explanation.

3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN

The research design used in this study is the case study design.

It involves conduction of flexible interviews and the circulation of carefully designed

questionnaires to the various individual in the selected region.

3.3 AREA OF STUDY

The area of study is Dufil Prima Foods Ltd, Sagamu, Ogun State

3.4 POPULATION OF THE STUDY

Population is defined as the total number of persons in a particular situation. Eheduru (2015)
defined it as the “totality of all cases which possesses a set of well defined characteristic or
conform to some design.” it is the entire group of items which the researcher wishes to study and
plan to generalize on. The total population of Dufil Prima Foods Ltd, Sagamu, Ogun State staff
is 70 as at the time of the study.

3.4 SAMPLE SIZE

The researcher used a sample of 50 respondents drawn from the population of 70 permanent
staffs in the bank. The sample was further drawn from the large population due to the fact that
this research was purely academic and was to be collected in a given period of time.

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3.5 SAMPLING TECHNIQUES

To avoid un-guided generalization, the researcher choose to sample as suggested by Amin

(2015), who suggested that sampling is important in selecting elements from a population in such
a way that the sample elements selected represent the population.

The researcher used simple random sampling techniques where for each division from the
company, employees in different departments were randomly chosen.

3.6 METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION

The data will be collected through the questionnaire, and the questionnaires will be distributed to
the respondents at Indomie Noodles organization, Sagamu, Ogun State.

3.7 VALIDITY & RELIABILITY OF THE INSTRUMENT

Validity is important in determining whether the statement in the questionnaire instrument and
interview manuals is relevant to the study. Content and construct validity were obtained by the
help of the supervisor’s input. According to Amin (2015), validity can be and in this case was
assured by use of the content validity index (C.V.I). Reliability aimed at testing for how reliable
were the instruments to the study (i.e. ability of instrument to test for the same results over time).
The fact that the instrument has been previewed by the supervisor therefore gave credence to its
reliability.

3.8 METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS

The study made use of simple percentage mean and tables.

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