Public Relations and Collaboration

Public Relations and Collaboration
IPRA Gold Paper No. 17
International Public Relations Association 2008

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PUBLIC RELATIONS AND
COLLABORATION:
THE ROLE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
AND COMMUNICATIONS SUPPORTING
COLLABORATION IN A COMPLEX,
CONVERGING WORLD

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By Roger Hayes
Past President, IPRA, 1997 and Member Emeritus
Foreword by Robert Grupp
IPRA President, 2008
IPRA Gold Paper No. 17
IPRA Public Relations World Congress
Beijing, People’s Republic of China
November 2008

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5
Acknowledgements
8
Foreword
12
Note on terminology
13
Introduction
18
Globalisation – context and catalyst
24
Public Relations and Related Literature
– Combining rigour and relevance

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33
Key concepts

34
Relationships

37
Collaboration

40
Business / Corporate Diplomacy
45
Conclusion
47
Bibliography

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Acknowledgements
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The value of the time, energy, intellect and resources by volunteers to support the
initiatives of not-for-profit, member-based organisations such as IPRA cannot be
overestimated. This is certainly true for this IPRA Gold Paper: “The Role of Public
Relations and Communications Supporting Collaboration in a Complex, Converging
World.”
Roger Hayes deserves enormous credit for writing and editing this Gold Paper.
Although a volunteer himself, this project was a natural fit for Roger. As IPRA
president in 1997, he traversed the globe meeting IPRA members and other
col eagues in public relations creating “a global dialogue” among practitioners.
In many ways, his experiences and findings that year were a forerunner to the
concepts expressed herein. He is a consummate “corporate diplomat” and, not
surprisingly, continues to live on an airplane. IPRA and the profession are indebted
to him for writing this paper.
As she so often does, Sandra MacLeod immediately rose to offer help engaging
chief communications officers from North America and Europe in dialogue on
questions posed by this Gold Paper. As Group Chief Executive of Echo Research,
she hosted and with colleague David Michaelson chaired three separate roundtable
discussions in New York, London and Zürich, which provided invaluable thinking to
this analysis. Thanks are due to the following:
Roger Bolton, APCO Worldwide International Advisory Council Member and Past
President, Arthur W Page Society
Jim Murphy, Chairman and CEO of Murphy and Co and retired CMO with Accenture
Peter Debreceny, retired Vice President Corporate Communications, Al state, and
Co-Chair Institute for Public Relations
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Public Relations and Collaboration
Henner Alms, Principal, Dr Schanz, Alms & Co
Maril MacDonald, CEO, GagenMacDonald and President, Arthur W Page Society
Ed Williams, Director of Communications, BBC
Paul Bell, Chief Executive, Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières
Charles Naylor, Chief Communications Officer, Credit Suisse
Inge van Halst, Global Communications Manager, Dow Chemical
Jan Mueller, Vice President Issues & Strategic Communications, EADS
Lucian Hudson, UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Philip Dewhurst, Head of Public Relations, Gazprom Marketing & Trading
Toni Simonetti, Vice President Global Communications & CCO, GMAC Financial
Services
Joerg Winklemann, Vice President Global Communications, IBM Global Sales &
Distribution
Simon Warr, Director of Communications, Jaguar Land Rover
Harvey Greisman, Senior Vice President & Group Executive Worldwide
Communications, MasterCard
Nick Hindle, Vice President Communications, McDonald's Restaurants Limited
Rolf Schlapfer, Global Corporate Communications, Roche
John Morgan, Head of Public Relations, Skandia Investment Group
Simone Lauper, Global Communications, Swiss Re
Aedhmar Hynes, CEO, Text 100
Tim Johns, Vice President Corporate Communications, Unilever
Jim Kerr, Global Corporate Media & IR, Unisys
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Acknowledgements
Simon Lewis, Group Corporate Affairs Director, Vodafone
Margery Kraus, President and CEO of APCO Worldwide, was an eager contributor
to this Gold Paper. She and her team at APCO, which included Jennifer Biggs,
sponsored this effort as well as the IPRA 2008 Public Relations World Congress in
Beijing. APCO is a global public affairs and strategic communication consulting firm
that Margery founded in 1984. She has transformed APCO from a company with
one smal Washington office to a multinational firm in major cities throughout the
Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
We should also thank Jim Holt, CEO of IPRA and the team at its Secretariat
near London, for coordinating with the sponsor and the organizers in Beijing on
translation, publishing and distribution.
From the International Public Relations Association, with thanks.
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Public Relations and Collaboration
FOREWORD
When I was vice president of IPRA in 2006 I began reflecting on our association’s
heritage and reading about the IPRA founders, who had the highest ideals. They
wanted nothing less than to use public relations to help the world reunite after
World War II – and those early leaders did contribute mightily to that objective.
Our IPRA pioneers were public relations officers and businessmen from various
nations who shared a vision: To use our profession to foster understanding of
common interests and build respect for nationalities, cultures and contributions by
people across a dramatical y changed world. Today, nearly 55 years later, we in IPRA
continue to pursue a very similar goal.
I have observed that public relations people al over the world speak about the
future with a mix of genuine optimism and some apprehension. I count myself
among those who believe that the challenges we face in today’s world are neither
unprecedented nor insurmountable.
One characteristic of the world that continues to fuel my optimism is our
‘interconnectedness.’ I find that even people who disagree about the value of
globalisation are able to agree that a dominant characteristic of our world is
interdependence.
In January 2007, I joined two former IPRA presidents and several other members in
representing IPRA at a Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy that drew 160
leaders in public relations to Washington D.C. We engaged in dialogue to explore
specifical y how the private sector can become more involved in and supportive
of public diplomacy. Participants identified actions they believed could have the
greatest impact on private sector public diplomacy efforts. This encompassed three
broad areas of activity:
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