Impossible Odds: Contributions of Legal Counsel and Public Relations Practitioners in a Hostile bid for Conrail Inc. by Norfolk Southern Corporation

The contingency theory of accommodation in public relations advances the role of public relations beyond its publicity and media relations roots to a crucial place in conflict management. In advancing the theory, Cameron and his colleagues have identified a matrix of variables that might affect an organization's stance toward an individual public. Contingency theory offers a more complex and realistic portrayal of changing public relations activity along a continuum from pure advocacy to pure accommodation of a given public at a given time. Further, proscriptive variables (e.g., legal factors, regulatory agencies) add parsimony to the theory by establishing ground rules that affect a stance toward a public at a given time. The following case study, an in-depth analysis of Norfolk Southern's hostile takeover of Conrail, illustrates the dynamism of conflict management in public relations as well as the proscriptions on how an organization handles conflicts.