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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the corporate behavior of Volkswagen in its emissions scandal. It describes and analyzes a complex ethics dilemma within the purview of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability (CS) and examines how this dilemma impacts critical stakeholders, thus offering several “opportunities to learn” for professionals.

The case takes a stakeholder perspective, applying Cavanagh et al. (1981) and Gao’s (2008) ethical judgement framework. It is situated within a qualitative approach to textual analysis. Social actors, topics and evaluative statements were identified and grouped into broader categories.

Six major stakeholders were directly affected by Volkswagen’s behavior: customers, investors and shareholders, the US Environmental Protection Agency, German authorities, European institutions and society-at-large. Stakeholder concerns were condensed into three dominant themes: economic, legal and environmental. According to the ethical judgment framework, Volkswagen corporate behavior showed ethical problems, theoretically demonstrating that under no ethical principle was Volkswagen’s actions justifiable, even under instrumental justifications.

The analysis was primarily based on corporate material and news media reporting. Consequently, diverse managers’ prospectives and opinions are not entirely captured.

This paper offers several “opportunities to learn” for corporate communication professionals.

The focus on stakeholder perspectives allows professionals to take an outside-in approach when evaluating the impact of corporate actions on stakeholders’ interests. The case analysis through Cavanagh et al. (1981) and Gao’s (2008) ethical judgment framework provides a practical theoretical instrument to assess corporate behaviors that can be used both as pre- and post-evaluations of corporate actions on CSR and CS issues.

Two sets of questions animate this discussion: (1) What is corporate social responsibility? Why is it desirable? How can it be assessed? (2) Why should public relations practitioners be interested in corporate social responsibility?can public relations do to promote corporate social responsibility globally? Drawing on a variety of literature, the authors argue that corporations out of their own self‐interest must embrace a global approach in fulfilling their social responsibility and that public relations professionals have an obligation to carry out that responsibility by recognising in their practices that the most important “corporate” stakeholder is society itself.

While propaganda was central to U.S. public diplomacy in earlier times, and remains central today, the United States must now practice true public diplomacy, which should rely, not only on political theory and the theories of international relations, but also on theories and models of public relations that are based on two‐way symmetrical communication and community‐building. A propaganda model centers the United States at the hub of the global milieu in its relationships with other nations, i.e., a diplomatic worldview in which the ‘spokes’ of America's communication and relationships radiate outward to satellites of stakeholders; in contrast, the United States is not centered so self‐importantly in a community‐building model. Rather, this model recognizes that America is only one part of a global social system. America's public diplomacy must recognize that the United States' global constituents are ‘publics,’ not ‘markets,’ and that an effective public diplomacy model must be one that is not propaganda or market‐oriented advocacy, but one that is based on two‐way symmetrical communication and community‐building.

This article offers some brief reflections on the relationship between culture and the potential development within the field of Corporate Social Responsibility in Mexico. Thoughts expressed are necessarily subjective and set within the wider context of organisational communication and community relations in Mexico City. The focus is on the significance of open communication, participation and closer relationships with the Other.

This paper examines the evolution of two separate fields, which are essentially concerned with the same issues but are framed by different academic and professional disciplines and practice. It appears that public affairs management researchers often fail to take into account parallel literature from the discipline of public relations — even when purporting to offer an interdisciplinary approach. Equally, the public relations literature frequently fails to speak the language of business management and narrowly defines such key business activities as marketing, policy and strategy. In this paper, the authors present evidence prescribing the differing evolution of public affairs and public relations. They compare and contrast public affairs and public relations in terms of their definitions, scholarship, survey evidence, leading writers, academic and professional associations and educational programme content. They conclude by offering several suggestions for closing the gap between the two areas.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage understanding of the practical value to managers and communication practitioners of the positive lessons from issue and crisis management cases.

Unlike many other areas of management writing, which focus on new approaches and best practice, issue and crisis management cases often highlight “PR disasters” where other managers may simply count themselves lucky that it happened to someone else. This paper uses well known examples to explore the reasons for this focus on failure and proposes ways for managers to move beyond schadenfreude to secure genuine learning and competitive advantage from the adverse experiences of others.

Whereas many industry “award winning” cases are self‐serving and prone to wisdom after the event, there is a growing body of authoritative case‐books and other material which can provide useful evaluation and benchmarking for an organization's own activity, both internal and external.

While academics and their students are familiar with the use of communication case analysis, this paper explores the range of published case study resources for practitioners and other managers who may be less aware of what is currently available and how independent analysis and insight can help facilitate effective performance against accountability.

This is a general review of the German concepts and provisions for the self‐regulation of PR practitioners. They differ from the various systems published so far in this Journal (Vol. 8 No.1, 2003). The purpose of the paper is a contribution to the actual debate about the most appropriate approach to tackle ethical problems of the guild.

The paper first describes the structure and the procedures of the German PR Council, outlining a number of peculiarities: this body censures not only members of the supporting associations but non‐members and non‐PR professionals as well; it acts publicly; it pronounces and publishes verdicts and rebukes, and it issues specific rules of conduct in the case of uncertainties. Consequently the paper deals with the methods of conceiving codes and guidelines. It explains the differences which German practitioners discern between ethical and quality provisions. Within this context it discusses the German reservations with regard to some of the proposals of the newly formulated “Global Protocol on Ethics in Public Relations”.

This proposition induces a discussion about the ethical principles which guide the Council's endeavours. The paper proposes a shift in the moral assessment of the four Grunig models from dialogue to information activities as the prime moral challenges. As a result of these findings the paper states the Council's legitimacy.

Finally, the paper reports the various reactions of those who have been rebuked. It gives an evaluation of the Council's influence on the practice of PR in Germany based on new surveys and facts. The German experiences with the enforcement of codes are summarised as an ongoing process of self‐assurance of the PR guild and its public esteem.