The state of Australian public relations: professionalisation and paradox

It is almost a decade since the last empirical study of Australian public relations appeared in the academic literature. This paper reports on a survey conducted immediately prior to the onset of the global financial crisis aimed at revealing the state of public relations in Australia. In particular, the study investigated levels of professionalisation in terms of such criteria as the strategic orientation of public relations, its position within organisational hierarchies, and the importance placed on ethics and professional development. The findings show Australian PR professionals to be highly educated, comparatively well paid and frequently in positions of influence with their CEOs. Paradoxically despite these strengths, the profession in Australia does not seem to have outgrown public relations' pervasive identity crisis

The Role of Corporate Reputation Versus Relationships in Building Employer Brand Equity: The case of a Major Private Hospital

In Australia and many other developed countries, there are now acute skills shortages in a number of different industries - healthcare being a notable example. The need to attract and retain the best available employees has become a critical managerial task. Building a strong employer brand offers a promising approach to this problem. The academic literature is still at a relatively early stage of development but internal relationship marketing and corporate reputation have been identified as two key concepts associated with employer branding. This case study of a private hospital in Australia explores the role of these concepts in building employer brand equity. Initial findings suggest corporate reputation has an asymmetric impact - the costs of a negative reputation far outweigh the benefits of a positive one

Reputation or relationships: What really drives perceptions of employer attractiveness in the health industry?

Managing relationships with key stakeholders has long been regarded as a central concern of corporate public relations. In recent years, however, the concept of reputation management has gained rapidly in popularity, potentially supplanting relationships as the discipline's driving philosophy. This paper presents a case study of a major private hospital in Australia, focusing on the respective roles of corporate reputation versus relationships in forming perceptions of employer attractiveness. Through depth interviews and focus groups involving hospital management and highly skilled professionals, this study investigates what drives perceptions of employer attractiveness. Ramifications for the theory and practice of public relations are discussed

Expecting The Unexpected: Crisis Communication Preparedness In The Tourism Industry

Tourism is an industry highly susceptible to man-made and natural crises. Tourism operators may need to be well prepared to meet a crisis. However, are adequate contingency plans in place? Academic literature is fragmented across at least three major disciplines: strategic management; public relations; and tourism management. This qualitative, grounded theory study of the tourism industry in Western Australia investigates the antecedents of crisis communication preparedness at the individual operator level. The paper raises managerial implications and proposes a model of crisis communication preparedness in the tourism industry

Tourism Events and the Nature of Stakeholder Power

This exploratory case study examines the power relations among the stakeholders of a tourism event in Borneo. It examines the sources of stakeholder power and the pattern of interdependence of various stakeholders, primarily based on interviews with event managers and stakeholders, as well as field visits. An analysis of the different types and amount of resource control, dependency, and network centrality resulted in four different categories of stakeholder power patterns—executive, asset based, referral, and diffuse stakeholders. The study also found that resource-based power was the primary source of power, whereas network-based power was a secondary and supplementary source. The case study revealed that the salience of event stakeholders based on their power was highly variable due to the different types of power that they had. This article contributes to the literature of event tourism, a typology of the event stakeholder powers in a predominately government-owned music festival, and offered practical suggestions to event management. It also advances the stakeholder power concept within event tourism studies

An Experimental Examination of the Differences in Readers's Responses to Editorial versus Advertising for Travel Destinations

The claim that editorial is superior to advertising, although commonly made by academics and practitioners alike, has received limited empirical support. The belief that editorial is more effective is strongly held, amongst others, by destination promoters, who frequently allocate considerable budgets to media 'familiarisations' in the hope of generating positive press. It was therefore decided to test claims for the promotional advantages of editorial in the context of tourism destinations. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, attribution theories and agenda setting theory, the aim of this research was to test experimentally whether potential tourists do indeed respond more favourably to destination editorial than advertising, in relation to affective and conative impacts. A sample of 271 students was exposed to selected editorial and advertising for the destinations New Caledonia and Hong Kong, embedded in 12-page, full-colour, mock travel magazines. The study found that the editorial format was deemed to be more credible by readers than its advertising counterpart, but no direct format based differences were observed for respondents' attitudes to the brand or behavioural intentions. However, source credibility was found to be highly correlated with both brand attitude and behavioural intentions, suggesting editorial has an important indirect effect on these key dependent variables

Preach wine and serve vinegar: Public relations, relationships and doublethink

This article argues that organization-public relationships (OPR) generate challenges for PR as both a practical and theoretical discipline. The investigation is set against the backdrop of the growing pre-occupation with OPR in research and practice. The study highlights disconnections between how the field represents itself in an OPR context and the existence of particular attitudes and practices in each of these areas. It uses the Orwellian concept of doublethink as a conceptual device to tease out these tensions. These contradictions are framed as public relations doublethink and presented as critical propositions designed to illustrate the gaps that can exist between representation and reality. The article also debates the implications of these examples for the practical and theoretical development of public relations using research that considers how organizations listen to stakeholders on-line. It seeks to stimulate further debate through a new conceptualization of social media listening, as well as a set of inter-disciplinary insights concerned with the study of complex phenomenon. © 2014

Fluid-structure interaction in blood flow capturing non-zero longitudinal structure displacement

We present a new model and a novel loosely coupled partitioned numerical scheme modeling fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in blood flow allowing non-zero longitudinal displacement. Arterial walls are modeled by a {linearly viscoelastic, cylindrical Koiter shell model capturing both radial and longitudinal displacement}. Fluid flow is modeled by the Navier-Stokes equations for an incompressible, viscous fluid. The two are fully coupled via kinematic and dynamic coupling conditions. Our numerical scheme is based on a new modified Lie operator splitting that decouples the fluid and structure sub-problems in a way that leads to a loosely coupled scheme which is {unconditionally} stable. This was achieved by a clever use of the kinematic coupling condition at the fluid and structure sub-problems, leading to an implicit coupling between the fluid and structure velocities. The proposed scheme is a modification of the recently introduced "kinematically coupled scheme" for which the newly proposed modified Lie splitting significantly increases the accuracy. The performance and accuracy of the scheme were studied on a couple of instructive examples including a comparison with a monolithic scheme. It was shown that the accuracy of our scheme was comparable to that of the monolithic scheme, while our scheme retains all the main advantages of partitioned schemes, such as modularity, simple implementation, and low computational costs

Hazard Assessment of Abraded Thermoplastic Composites Reinforced with Reduced Graphene Oxide

Graphene-related materials (GRMs) are subject to intensive investigations and considerable progress has been made in recent years in terms of safety assessment. However, limited information is available concerning the hazard potential of GRM-containing products such as graphene-reinforced composites. In the present study, we conducted a comprehensive investigation of the potential biological effects of particles released through an abrasion process from reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-reinforced composites of polyamide 6 (PA6), a widely used engineered thermoplastic polymer, in comparison to as-produced rGO. First, a panel of well-established in vitro models, representative of the immune system and possible target organs such as the lungs, the gut, and the skin, was applied. Limited responses to PA6-rGO exposure were found in the different in vitro models. Only as-produced rGO induced substantial adverse effects, in particular in macrophages. Since inhalation of airborne materials is a key occupational concern, we then sought to test whether the in vitro responses noted for these materials would translate into adverse effects in vivo. To this end, the response at 1, 7 and 28 days after a single pulmonary exposure was evaluated in mice. In agreement with the in vitro data, PA6-rGO induced a modest and transient pulmonary inflammation, resolved by day 28. In contrast, rGO induced a longer-lasting, albeit moderate inflammation that did not lead to tissue remodeling within 28 days. Taken together, the present study suggests a negligible impact on human health under acute exposure conditions of GRM fillers such as rGO when released from composites at doses expected at the workplace