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The need for international public relations in a modern world characterised by collapsing trade barriers and increased international trade sets the stage for the study reported in this paper. The authors argue that public relations practitioners and scholars should recognise the importance of culture (both societal and organisational) as a variable that affects public relations practice in various countries. They then report on quantitative and qualitative data gathered from 81 public relations practitioners working in Japan. They conclude that media relations are highly valued by Japanese practitioners who use friendships, typified by the personal influence model, to conduct their media relations. Wa, kou‐chou, amae and tatemae were among the cultural concepts that played a significant role in the way Japanese public relations practitioners operate. Although Japanese practitioners valued symmetrical forms of public relations, they seemed constrained to practise the one‐way models. The authors conclude that similar studies of public relations practice in various cultures will contribute to effective public relations and help toward building a strong theory of international public relations.

As a profession, public relations has become a global enterprise. Public relations education is only now beginning to catch up with the global nature of the profession. It is quite widely acknowledged that as far as public relations education is concerned, the USA is the leader in the number of universities that offer public relations courses as well as in the breadth and depth of the public relations curriculum. In its October 1999 report on the status of education in the USA, the Commission on Public Relations Education constituted by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), called for curricula that prepared students to be effective communicators in the “age of global interdependence”. This paper argues that educators around the world are being hampered by the lack of an established body of knowledge (based on empirical evidence) about public relations practices in different parts of the world. This lack of evidence is preventing educators from preparing their students to become useful professionals who can meet the challenges of the “age of global interdependence”. The paper reviews literature identifying environmental variables that should help one understand public relations practices in different given countries. Based on this review, the paper operationalises these environmental variables as a next step towards cross‐national research. The paper also stresses the need to gather appropriate case studies in international public relations. Future researchers should be able to use this framework for conducting crossnational comparisons of public relations, thereby providing educators with the necessary empirical evidence to prepare the public relations professionals of the future.

This study of multinational companies in China focuses on the role culture plays in relationship cultivation. The author interviewed 40 participants from 36 multinational companies in China. The findings revealed that characteristics of Chinese culture, such as family orientation, guanxi, relational orientation (role formalisation, relational interdependence, face, favour, relational harmony, relational fatalism and relational determination) had an influence on multinational companies’ relationship cultivation strategies. Multinationals from Western countries were found, however, to be more persistent in maintaining their own cultural values in relationship building than multinational companies from Asian countries.

Public relations (PR) education has not kept pace with the rapid globalisation that has occurred since 1992. The existing PR body of knowledge, and PR curricula around the world, have a US bias. In order to prepare PR students in various parts of the world to become effective multicultural professionals it is essential for experiences and perspectives from other continents to be integrated into PR education. The complexities of societal factors such as culture, political systems and media systems make Asia a challenging place to conduct strategic PR. It is time for educators to integrate experiences from other continents into the PR body of knowledge, thereby building PR curricula that contribute to training truly multicultural PR professionals.

The present study examined the status of globalization of the public relations (PR) agency industry and its environmental factors by analyzing 101 countries.

Data were constructed from content analysis and multiple archival sources. Cluster analysis and multiple regressions were used for data analysis.

The present study identified the four distinctive groups of countries in the number of global PR agencies per country. These groups are (1) globalized top countries, (2) globalized major countries, (3) globalizing countries and (4) peripheral countries. The study also found that the degree of globalization of the PR agency industry in a country was associated with its democracy, economic system (gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment inflow), legal system (rule of law), cultural system (power distance and long-term orientation) and media system (Internet penetration rate) factors.

The previous studies on the global PR agency industry was limited to investigating a few leading agencies, but this study analyzed 114 global PR agencies and their diffusion in 101 countries and explored the influence of each country's characteristics (i.e. political, economic, legal, cultural and media factors) identified as the global PR environment factors.

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

Research is recognised as an essential part of planning and evaluation in most areas of marketing and corporate communication, including advertising, direct marketing and, increasingly, public relations and corporate communication disciplines such as employee communication and community relations. Understanding of audience interests, awareness, perceptions and information needs is critical to strategic planning of communication campaigns. Secondly, identification and quantification of changes in awareness, perception and, ultimately, behaviour is necessary to evaluate objectively the effectiveness of communication (ie the outcomes or results). Nowhere is research more important than in multicultural and cross‐cultural communication. International relations began with human migrations and trade and reach new levels today with globalisation, corporations, organisations and governments increasingly seeking to create consistencies and shared values across divergent cultural groups. They seek to create consistencies and shared values in relation to products (eg Coca‐Cola, IBM, McDonalds), policies (eg trade agreements) and in popular culture such as films, television programmes and news media. Social rules and shared values, ie the culture of communities, affect organisations seeking to communicate multiculturally and cross‐culturally at two levels. First, the “home” culture of the organisation wishing to communicate shapes policies, plans and products that are produced. Secondly, the cultures of audiences inform and substantially shape their interpretation and use of information. Often, multicultural and cross‐cultural communication is a case of “Chinese whispers” on an international scale. What one says or shows is frequently not what others hear or see. Studies cited in this paper show that culture is a vitally important factor in communication. Yet, companies and even governments attempt communication with little understanding of audiences which they wish to reach and with which they wish to build relationships and understanding. This paper examines cultural considerations specifically in the field of public relations and corporate communication in the Asia Pacific region which is comprised of a diverse range of cultures and has been identified as the largest market in the world. Thus, it is increasingly a focal point of global communication campaigns.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the practices and outlooks of public relations (PR) and corporate communication practitioners in six countries of South East Asia, through the eyes of practitioners themselves.

The paper draws on the findings of a doctoral research project comprising an online questionnaire sent to 100 active PR and corporate communication practitioners in six countries of South East Asia, attracting 30 responses; and a subsequent series of 14 semi-structured, in-depth face-to-face interviews. While taking some account of a range of theories in formulating questions, the research is primarily inductive in nature, seeking to reveal self-perceptions of the working worlds, worldviews, values and concerns of practitioners themselves.

The project confirms, in the South East Asian context, hypotheses previously advanced by researchers including Sriramesh (2004), Sriramesh and Vercic (2001), Bardhan (2011) and others which assert that distinctive worldviews and local and regional cultures can be significant considerations in understanding the ways that communication strategies are developed and applied in different geographical locations. Going further, the research confirms that local practitioners see other environmental variables including differences in infrastructure, the composition of local languages and a range of other factors which go beyond “attitudes” and “values” as having important impacts as well, and therefore being worthy of more detailed attention by international communication planners and scholars.

The research has implications for practitioners seeking to develop effective communication strategies in South East Asian environments. For scholars, the research has implications for better understanding of the significance of a range of environmental variables which may impact the effectiveness of professional practice in the region but which as yet may not be sufficiently recognised by existing theory and case studies. The project has a small sample size, with respondents drawn primarily from the membership of two English-speaking international professional associations. All research was also conducted in English. It may therefore not be fully representative of all practitioners across the region.

The findings draw attention to ways that communication strategies might be more successfully developed and applied in particular Association of South East Asian Nations countries, and how professional practice in this region can help to better inform the development of more inclusive, comprehensive and critical “international” PR theory, curriculum and pedagogy.

The research has social implications in regard to promoting better understanding of the outlooks and influences upon a group of professional people who arguably enjoy disproportionate influence upon the communities and societies in which they operate, by virtue of the work they undertake to explain, persuade and build relationships on behalf of other influential parties.

This is the first research project providing extensive first-hand simultaneous insights into the working worlds and personal outlooks of a broad cross-section of corporate communication practitioners across a number of major countries of South East Asia, embracing a comprehensive range of discussion topics.

Much of public relations scholarship in the last three decades has been dominated by discussions about best practices. Theories developed over the years have often been based on western practices with little focus on emerging economies such as Africa. The growing call for a shift to a new system, especially from a non-western perspective has resulted in scholars examining public relations scholarship and practice in other jurisdictions, particularly in Asia. The onset of globalisation increased the scholarly discussion on public relations theorising, with culture playing a significant role in these discussions. This paper undertakes a review of the various discussions on public relations theorising due to globalisation and discusses its implications for public relations scholarship and practice in Africa.

The paper approaches the issue by examining relevant literature on globalisation and societal changes, public relations theorising, and the African worldview.

The paper concludes by proposing an African public relations framework that reflects the African worldview. The framework proposes that African public relations can be premised on four levels, humanist, relational, communalist, and strategic.

This research is limited in the sense that the proposed framework has not been empirically tested for verification. It offers scholars the opportunity to empirically test it within the African setting.

The framework presents an opportunity for practitioners to review public relations practice within the African context.

The paper's originality is premised on the development of a public relations framework premised on African social values.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent literature on global public relations in order to scrutinize how contemporary transformations are conceptualized in the field, and what this means for the understanding of public.

The authors offer a critical analysis and discussion of recent publications in order to explore the nexus of “public”, “culture” and “global”, questioning whether the increased interest in a specific understanding of culture actually contributes to the field’s ability to deal with complex and transforming publics in a meaningful manner.

The majority of global public relations literature applies redundant understandings of globalization. It attaches prime importance to the concept of culture and contributes little to the understanding of transforming publics. Few scholars acknowledge the limitations of using “culture” for the definition of publics in global contexts. Alternative approaches to understanding “publics” in global public relations research and practice are hardly offered.

The findings imply that global public relations research would benefit from abandoning monolithic social science categories and from working transdisciplinary in order to refine its understanding of contemporary societal and social transformations and their implications for the understanding of public and relationship building.

The discussion indicates that public relations practitioners could benefit from reorienting their understanding of publics in globalizing societies in order to build and nourish mutually beneficial relationships. The authors apply the insight into contemporary business practices to offer public relations practitioners a starting point for reorientation.

The authors contribute to global public relations scholarship with an alternative approach to the understanding of transforming publics which merges the spatial turn and the practice turn known from wider humanities and social science research, and relevant business practices.