James Grunig, Professor Emeritus of University of Maryland is a noted public relations theorist and author of many textbooks in communication faculties in the world. Professor Grunig who attended this year’s edition of PR Award, said the big collapses in United States could have been prevented by specialists in public relations and gave advices for a better management of one of the biggest crisis in history.
“I’m not sure there’s a public relations person who had the knowledge that the financial products were so risky that he or she could have provided such advice. I’m not even sure that the CEOs of the investment banks really knew what was going on, either. So it’s hard to say what PR could have done in that crisis,” Grunig said in an interview for Wall-Street.
The professor notes a special case: head of PR department of Merril Lynch attended an international public relations conference a week ago. Being asked if the investment bank’s collapse could had been avoided, Merrill Lynch representative recognized that few weeks ago he heard rumors among employees of how dangerous some products and decisions of the banks may be. He refused to communicate to CEO O’Neal the rumors.
“Then the whole crisis occurred. He mentioned that the CEO was fired. The PR person said to the CEO “Here’s what I’ve heard earlier”. And he said “I wish you would have told me that. Because it would have been very helpful”. I’m not sure that in something so complicated – finance is one of the most difficult areas of the corporation to really understand by public relations people, especially if they are not so well trained. Which is why it can be dangerous to keep information from the CEO,” Grunig said
At this point, nothing can be prevented anymore, and PR persons cannot act to manage the crisis. Professor Grunig is the author of a crisis management theory that consists of
