Organizational Contingencies, Organizational Blogs and

Public Relations Practitioner Stance Toward Publics

Tom Kelleher

University of Hawai`i at Manoa

School of Communications

Background: A Conversational

Approach to Online Public

Relations

Distributed Public Relations

Prior Propositions

• Blogs more “conversational” than traditional PR online

• Conversational human voice associated with better relational outcomes

Do findings resonate beyond tech firms & publics?

Contingency Theory

• Degree of accommodation toward publics depends on contingencies

• Technology a possible contingency• “Qualified-rhetoric-mixed

accommodation” operationally similar to “conversational human voice.”

Current Study

• Basic contingency hypothesis:– More favorable contingencies for dialogue

will lead to more accommodating stance.

• RQ– Will technological contingencies lead to

more accommodating stance?

Method• 2X2 Experiment

– technological orientation – contingencies for dialogue

• Online survey with Hawaii PRSA membership

• (note: practitioners not publics)

Results

• Manipulations seemed to have worked

• No signif. findings on contingency hypothesis

• Interesting RQ finding:– practitioners in high-tech conditions

reported significantly less accommodating stance

Discussion• Limitations• Benefits in the eyes of publics v. eyes of

practitioners?• Questions of technology diffusion, adoption

and acceptance…

Related Writing

• Kelleher, T. (in press). Conversational voice, communicated commitment, and public relations outcomes in interactive online communication. Accepted for publication in Journal of Communication. (v3 2008 or v1 2009)

• Kelleher, T. (2007). Public Relations Online: Lasting Concepts for Changing Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• Kelleher, T., & Miller, B. M. (2006). Organizational blogs and the human voice: Relational strategies and relational outcomes. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11, 395-414. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/kelleher.html