Collectivism, Collaboration, and Societal Corporatism as Core Professional Values in Public Relations

Public relations must achieve professional status before its social role will be broadly accepted as valuable to society and organizational clients will accept readily the advice of public relations counselors. Professions are based on core values and a body of knowledge that provides expertise on how to implement those values. Professionalism empowers public relations managers to negotiate with clients to change organizational behavior-helping organizations to rise above the "wrangle in the marketplace" to consider the interests of publics as well as their own interests. The core value of public relations is the value of collaboration, which also can be found in the concepts of societal corporatism, collectivism, and communal relationships. Activist groups benefit from professional public relations counsel just as much as other organizations, and the same generic principles of public relations apply to activist communication. Activist groups must use specific applications of these principles, however, when they need to overcome a lack of power.