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The aim of this paper is to begin a conversation about historicising the public relations (PR) curriculum in universities.

The paper discusses PR history and historiography to identify the underlying ideological and methodological influences. It considers scholarship on PR education, and the inclusion or, more often, the exclusion of history except where it serves to reinforce a narrative of steady, and apparently unproblematic, professional development. The paper reviews the presentation of history in textbooks and discusses the authors' experiences of teaching PR history. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the inclusion of history in the PR curriculum offers an important critical intervention in PR education.

The PR curriculum tends to meet industry expectations around practice and skills in order to develop students as future practitioners. But this paper argues that a more historical and historiographical understanding of PR can develop in students important skills in research, analysis and interpretation. It can also introduce students to working with ambiguity and alternate perspectives. Foregrounding new histories and challenging existing histories introduce students to richer and more complex understandings of PR. It also introduces students to epistemology and ethics, and therefore offers a way to introduce critical thinking into the curriculum.

A more historical understanding of PR develops student skills in research, analysis and interpretation as well as critical thinking.

A number of scholars including Benno Signitzer and Jacquie L'Etang have proposed public diplomacy as an alternative model to describe and/or inform the practices of public relations. However, international relations and political science scholars claim major differences between public diplomacy and PR, and few studies have sought to reconcile these claims and counter‐claims. The purpose of this paper is to report a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy.

This article reports a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy and the “new diplomacy” as described by Shaun Riordan and public relations (PR) as defined in Excellence theory and other contemporary models of PR to identify commonalties as well as divergences, and discusses how these can inform PR theory and practice.

This analysis shows similarities between these fields of practice, as well as six unique concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” that inform corporate diplomacy and organisational diplomacy as an alternative paradigm to “public relations”.

Reconceptualising PR as corporate and organisational diplomacy involves much more than a name change. It recasts PR within alternative theoretical frameworks that are significantly different to those of dominant paradigms of PR and informs new and refined approaches to practice.

Adopting the concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” also would provide a more ethical and societally‐orientated approach to PR.

Most studies comparing public diplomacy and PR have focussed on commonalities with a view to expanding PR's territorial claim or gaining validation of PR. This analysis takes the opposite approach, identifying concepts and principles of public diplomacy and “new diplomacy” that contribute to an alternative paradigm of PR that is more effective, more societally‐orientated, more ethical, and ultimately more publicly accepted.

The paper takes up the challenge offered in the call for papers for this special issue to explore the notion of public relations as “ethical guardian”. The approach taken is to review some influential academic perspectives as well as practitioner perspectives that emerged throughout the 20th century. It is argued that the ethics and social responsibility have long been an intrinsic part of public relations self‐identity. The paper identifies a number of problems for the public relations occupation that arise from its historical legacy and considers the implications for professional status.

This paper reviews the history of public relations (PR) education in the UK in the context of the process of professionalisation. Drawing on the sociology of the professions, it describes the criteria for an occupation to be accorded professional status and the role of education in that process. The relationship between academia and practice is given some consideration and some of the challenges facing practitioners and academics in relation to legitimacy and status are identified. Finally, the paper suggests some new issues for research in the field and argues for an ethnographic turn in PR.

In the 1990s evaluation has been at the centre of a continued debate in public relations. With the new millennium in sight public relations practitioners, academics and professional bodies are not only asking for an intensified discussion, but are also looking for guidelines of best practice which are seen as a necessary step for further development towards professionalism.

This paper seeks to clarify the various aspects of legitimacy in public relations in order to establish a better understanding of the limits of professionalization. Legitimacy has always been a central concept in public relations. In order to ensure a license to operate, the conduct of organizations needs to be perceived as legitimate by their stakeholders and the public in general. Public relations has since its conception as a modern profession been confronted with several issues concerning the profession's own legitimacy. The overall cause for these legitimacy problems is often ascribed to the immaturity of the profession and professionalization is generally regarded as an appropriate cure.

Through theorization of the connection between legitimacy, power and professionalization the paper points to two important challenges to the professionalization of public relations: the conflicts of legitimizing the potentially disputed role of public relations as an intermediary function between client and public interests; and the dilemma of legitimizing a profession that has legitimacy as its own object and therefore is dependent on discretion in order to be successful.

The paper identifies four axes of legitimacy in public relations, each constituting different relationships with specific and often conflicting legitimacy claims: client‐public, profession‐client, profession‐public, and profession‐academia.

As a consequence of these distinct legitimacy claims the paper stresses some important limits of the professionalization project in public relations.

The purpose of this paper is to capture historical data relating to the enactment of public relations work based on gender in post-war Britain. The paper contributes new insights on gender formations in public relations practice during that period in that cultural context, providing a point of contrast with present day practice.

Historical sociology.

The paper presents data drawn from interviews and document analysis that reveals the separation of male and female work in public relations.

The research provides contextual historical background to the burgeoning contemporary research that is focused on issues relating to gender and LGBTQ in public relations, and highlights historical features which may have shaped the contemporary occupational culture in the UK. The research may provide useful background context for comparable studies in adjacent disciplines.

This is a culture-specific study and cross-cultural comparisons would be useful in understanding the extent to which female work in public relations has been similarly framed historically.

There is historical residue in the popular representations of women in public relations in film and media in the UK, for example the notion of “PR girl”. Understanding the origin of such stereotypes and their persistence is important for professional bodies and practitioners.

The paper brings to light previously unpublished opinions and perspectives from the post-war era.

Communication, like quality or professionalism, is one of those words that is constantly bandied around without ever being properly considered; they are universally considered to be a ‘good thing’, the motherhood and apple pie concepts of modern management. By the same token any publication that is designed to help managers, especially managers of NHS Trusts to improve their communication skills must also be considered to be a good idea and of benefit to managers. Whether this slim guide, however, is the best way to achieve better communications for NHS Trusts is debatable. The stated aim of the publication is to provide a ‘short but comprehensive overview of modern communications principles and practice and to show how these can be applied to NHS Trust management’. It would be more accurate to say that this is a short guide to the different terms used to describe communications. This booklet does not provide any real practical guidance on how to apply these techniques in the NHS, or perhaps more importantly, any strategic direction for Trusts which want to improve their communications.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that public relations (PR) history‐writing has profoundly shaped the discipline and that its US bias may have limited theoretical developments. The author aims to explore the challenges in writing PR history and to consider some of the strategic philosophical issues and challenges that face historians.

Historical interpretations are shaped by authors' social constructions and thus the paper is written reflexively. The author discusses the way in which histories are structured and patterned by their authors' assumptions and values about the nature of time; human civilisation, progressivism, situationalism, inevitability, human agency, cultural change, flux and transformation.

Existing (largely US) PR historical writing is analysed in terms of its theoretical impact through the “four models” and it is argued that this typology is not appropriately applied to other cultures with different paths of historical evolution. As a way of demonstrating this point, key aspects of British developments in the twentieth century are drawn out to reveal a dozen “models” of PR practice that could potentially form the basis of theoretical research.

Overall, the paper contributes a discussion of historical methodology in relation to PR; shows the connection between history and theory‐building in PR; and demonstrates that history from other cultures can reveal alternative models for theoretical development.