THE EVALUATION OF PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PORT HARCOURT”

THE EVALUATION OF PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGIES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PORT HARCOURT”

INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background to the Study

          The practice of public relations is as old as civilization. As an aspect of communication which no man can do without. Public relations is central to every human activity. The only unfortunate thing about it is that not every one that has the privilege to relating with the public possess the necessary knowledge and skill to do so. For this reasons, the world of public relation has been thrown into more confusion than ever.

          Public relation is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics. It is often referred to as (PR), gains an organization or individual exposure to their audience using topics of public interest, activities, campaign, news item that do not require direct payment because public relations places exposure in credible third- party outlets. (Cutlip, 1982). Ordinarily, public relations would mean relationship with various organizational publics by means of information. The objective therefore would be to achieve mutual understanding with the publics so that the objective of the organization could be achieved.

          Public relation is one of the fundamental factors that determine the level of performance that is achieved by an organization or institution within a given period. All definition and concept do emphasize that the basic philosophy underling public relations practice is that that people matter and the support of public opinion is of prime importance in all sphere of public opinion (p.112).

          Although standard explanations of what public relations is the way professionals and non-professionals carry out their business of relationship in the name of public relations leaves much to be desired by many who know and value public relations.

          According to Salu (1994), it is a deliberate planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding and goodwill between an organization and its publics, but more to this understanding is the fact that practice of public relation in an organization or institution function. As a management function public relations experts believe that the public relation executives or practitioner must be allowed unlimited access to the deliberation of the decision making boards or machinery of the decision practicing organization (P.24).

     It also implies that the management of such organization must be well informed and be made to support the basic process of evaluating the attitudes of the publics identifying the attitudes of the publics policies and procedures of the institution with public interest and developing as well as executing programmes of action which will calm public understanding and acceptance and goodwill.

     Suffice it therefore to say that for public relations to be practiced by a public relations to be practiced by an organization or institution as a management function, the main function of management must be brought to bear in the conception, processing and execution of public relations programmes (p.35).

Brech (1975) outlines the management function to include:

a.     Planning: i.e. determining courses of action

b.     Organization: Coordinating activities and resources.

c.      Heading: Motivating and managing employees.

d.     Controlling: Interacting meaningfully

e.      Staffing: Recruiting the right workforce.

1.2     Statement of the Problem

          Public relations is aimed at achieving mutual understanding and is formed on the basis that people must be well taken care of and to be treated right respect must certainly be given to the forces of public opinion, therefore there has been a setback and failures may be as a result of various factors ranging from poor managerial handling to poor public relations management.

          However the existence of many other renowned organizations and institutions are faced with the problem related to poor public relations practice. One way propaganda appear to be the must commonly adopted public relation strategy by the institutions operating in the Niger Delta region. This one sided approach will continue to full face-off between them and the operations of other institution and unless more appropriate strategies is adopted by the institutions, public relations will not see the light of the day.

          It is against this backdrop that the study seeks to evaluate public relation strategies in the university of Port Harcourt.

1.3     Objective of the Study

The following are the objective of the study:

1.     To determine the public relations strategies adopted by the university of Port Harcourt.

2.     To ascertain the impact of public relation strategies in the University of Port Harcourt.

3.     To determine the extent to which these strategies have affected the institution.

1.4     Research Questions

The following research questions have been formulated to guide this study. They are:

1.                 What are the public relations strategies adopted by the university of Port Harcourt?

2.                 What are the benefit of public relations strategies in the university of Port Harcourt?

3.                 To what extent does the strategies adopted affect the institutional growth?

1.5     Significance of the Study

          Public relations as was earlier indicated as a sinc quonon for any institution or individual corporate body or organization that seek goodwill, good image better understanding with people, thus the study which seeks to evaluate public relations strategies in the university of Port Harcourt should be of immense benefits to the management of university of port Harcourt: the outcome of the study will be useful not only to the institution but to the entire students  in evaluating the benefits of the public relations department, the outcome of the study will also be of immense benefit to the public relations practitioners who can apply the experiences from this study in their consultancy effort with other institutions. The study will also act as a resource material for further studies.

1.6     Scope of the Study

          The study is limited to the public relations strategies in the university of Port Harcourt. The reason for this proximity is to be able to control certain variables, for instance in meeting with the respondents.

1.7     Limitations of the Study

          The researcher in the course of carrying out this research faced a lot of challenges that almost worked against the success of this study among the challenges were, finance which almost worked against the success of this project but when the little fund was minimize, the researcher overcome, time. The limited given for the submission of the study almost impeded on the success of this study, but when dateline was set, the researcher succeed; non-availability of relevant material also limited the success of this study but when visited the library, interns and consult experts the researcher overcome.

1.8     Definition of Terms

          For easy understanding of the study the following terms will be defined.

1.     Public relations is the act and science of analyzing trends, predicting, their consequences counseling organization leaders and implementing planned programmes of action which will serve both the organization’s and the public interest.

2.     Strategy: Strategy is defined as a plan that is intended to achieve a particular purpose or as the process of planning something or putting a plan into operation in a skillful way.

3.     Evaluate: To evaluate means to form an opinion of the amount, value or quality of something after thinking about it carefully.

4.     Publics: A group of people with which an organization communicates with: example; opinion leaders, neighbours, consumers, suppliers.

5.     Organization: A group of people who form a business together inorder to achieve a particular aim