Public Relations or Corporate Communication? Concept Discussions of Academics and Professionals

The goal of this study is to explore the conceptualization of public relations and corporate communication concepts by academicians and professionals and to contribute to the academic literature and its practice. To investigate perceptions, semi-structured interviews were conducted with practitioners as well as academics in Istanbul and Izmir. Data on how the concepts of public relations and corporate communication are understood and defined, how success is defined, and which factors affect success are gathered. Our findings reveal that all practitioners prefer corporate communication over public relations. They view corporate communication as more comprehensive, closer to the business function, and having more support from top management. The negative past of public relations is stated as another reason. Academics seemed to favor public relation over corporate communication. Academics who preferred the former explained that public relations includes the public, and it does not see its stakeholders as an economic unit only. Most interviewees did not emphasize a prominent difference between corporate communication and public relations. In general, the success factors involved in corporate communication and public relations were reported as being similar. It was mentioned that practitioners have similar qualifications, but some participants stress that corporate communication practitioners need to be knowledgeable about business practices. We also discuss the implications of our findings in terms of public relations education