How public relations fits into corporate purpose – Scholar Q&A with Flora Hung-Baesecke

September 26, 2023 • Jonathan McVerry

Purpose-driven organizations benefit from maintaining values that seek to resolve societal issues. A team of Page Center scholars noted a remarkable lack of direction in how public relations can contribute to developing this corporate purpose. Page Center scholars Flora Hung-Baesecke and Maureen Taylor from the University of Technology Sydney and Yi-Ru Regina Chen from Hong Kong Baptist University are leading a study that will explore public relations’ role in developing purpose-driven organizations. They will do this by examining how an organization and its stakeholders define and apply corporate purpose, which is shared among its stakeholders – employees, NGOs, the government, etc. The research team will conduct in-depth interviews with senior public relations staff, employees and shareholders from an organization that runs retirement villages in Australia and New Zealand. They will also talk to NGOs and government officials involved in aging care. Hung-Baesecke and Chen are long-time Page Center scholars. This is Taylor’s first time working on a Center-funded project. Their study is part of the 2023 call for research proposals focusing on prosocial communication.

Can you discuss how you and your team define prosocial communication in relation to your Page Center project?

Prosocial communication is the intention to help or to bring positive change to society, or in the case of this project, to the issue of corporate purpose. We zoom out the scope to the organization management level to examine how an organization’s purpose will drive its behavior that brings about positive societal impact. We think that in Australia and New Zealand – probably this is the same everywhere – there are some issues and problems in the aging care industry. In Australia, the government lacks enough funding to provide support for retirement homes, and there is a problem of staff shortages. So, quality is a concern. We had the opportunity to work with a retirement village operator and we found that the company’s purpose guided its practices. They are very successful because they have a model – of course, it’s not 100% fixed – that tackles the problems in the aging care industry in these two countries. We thought it would be a good case study to work with. So, for us, prosocial communication is learning how an organization’s purpose can drive its operation and how communication can work with key stakeholders to resolve issues.

Can you share or explain the company’s approach to corporate purpose?

This Page Center grant continues research from last year when we worked with this organization. The company is based in New Zealand, and I don’t know how much you know about Kiwis, but they are a very friendly, nice and relaxed people. So, the company’s purpose is “It’s got to be good enough for mom, or dad.” The idea is, based on the information from this organization: we all have our parents who one day we need to think about in terms of taking care of them and making sure they receive quality care. Also, very often, we think about talking to our mothers first whenever something comes up, instead of our fathers (haha!!). So, this kind of Kiwi humor in the company’s purpose statement reflects how ordinary people like us think of our parents and the care they need to receive in their retirement life.  When we interviewed the company, they explained to us how its purpose leads how it operates. They explained how the company’s purpose affects employees and how they hire people. The employees share the same values. This purpose also directed how they work with the government to jointly resolve aging care issues and problems in Australia and New Zealand.

What is your plan for this project? How will you learn about public relations’ role in building shared corporate purpose?

Right now, we are in discussion with the company to actualize our research and we are applying for human ethics approval and our human ethics application just got approved. If you look at the current literature so far on the concepts of dialogic communication, organizational listening and investigating for a real context in public relations literature, you haven't found much yet. So, we want to demonstrate how the concepts of dialogic communication and organizational listening can be used in real context and in an organization's strategy. This is where we see the value.

When we started last year, I noticed that practitioners and scholars started to pay attention to the importance of purpose. There is research about the benefits of an organization’s purpose, meaning it can enhance the employee relationship and have an impact on society, but how does an organization develop purpose? How does an organization know its purpose can meet stakeholders’ expectations? We have the communication background, so we would like to explore what kind of role communication can play in motivating the development of organizational purpose. So far, there is no literature discussing this. We think that a purpose should be developed by cooperating on expectations from stakeholders. So, that is why we think dialogic communication and organizational listening can help reach that goal. That is the main purpose for this study.

Another purpose for this research is to identify a list of organization-stakeholder tensions that arise during the creation and implementation of a shared purpose. It is inevitable that stakeholders have different interests that may affect how a shared purpose can be established. We need to suggest a communication frame to address those tensions.

What expectations or goals do you have for when this project is completed?

We hope that our research can enrich the literature on public relations ethics, because if you look at the current discussions on public relations ethics, a lot of times they focus on practitioners, ethical behaviors or ethical value orientations. How we define organizational purpose is the ethical reason and guiding principle for an organization to accomplish its business goals that will result in economic and social values. We elevate that to the organizational level, and we believe that this can be the next stage for public relations research. We believe that for this research, we can propose an organizational communication framework for organizations to think about when they want to develop shared purpose. What are the steps that they can take to develop shared purpose with key stakeholders?

Talk about the Page Center’s role in helping you conduct your research – both currently and in the past.

In our research career, both Regina and I have received Page Center grants a few times and we are always very grateful for the opportunity. I believe these grants actualize what we think can be done to enrich the body of knowledge in the areas we study in public relations. Two research projects that are very dear to me, creating shared values and this one, a shared-purpose driven organization, were supported by grants from the Arthur W. Page Center. A lot of people outside public relations think it’s spin or they think it’s not important, but having the Page Center emphasizes ethical behaviors and the positive contributions public relations can make – not just to organizations, but to society. With the help of these grants, I have published quite a number of publications that really helped me develop the research ideas to show the values of ethical practices. You see the results and the results are beneficial. Not just for scholars, the results are really prosocial.