Stakeholders and Publics: Grunig's Situational Theory

Public relations is all about building and maintaining relationships between an organisation and its publics. But what does ‘publics’ mean, exactly? And what is the difference between publics and stakeholders, two words we often hear being used interchangeably?

Stakeholders are people who have a stake or interest in an organisation. As a result, they affect the organisation and at the same time are affected by it. An organisation’s stakeholder cluster could include employees, customers, investors, the local community, the government, the media etc and is specific to each organisation.

Although many do not differentiate between the term stakeholders and publics, Grunig and Hunt (1984) for example, distinguish publics as stakeholders that face a problem or have an issue with the organisation; or as stated by Grunig and Repper (1992, p.125), ‘People are stakeholders because they are in a category affected by decisions of an organisation or if their decision affects the organisation. [...] The stakeholders who are or become more aware and active can be described as publics.’ ‘Publics form when stakeholders recognise one or more of the consequences (of the behaviour of the organisation) as a problem and organise to do something about it or them’ (cited in Tench, R et al, 2006, p.241).

So to prevent stakeholders from developing into publics, organisations must manage relationships to keep stakeholders satisfied. 

Grunig’s Situational Theory (Grunig & Hunt, 1984) asserts that publics can be identified and classified according to the extent to which they are aware of the problem and to the extent to which they do something about the problem. Specifically the theory examines how publics are formed and how this can help an organisation segment the publics accordingly in order to communicate with them. In this theory four categories of public are identified: 

• Nonpublic: No problem is recognised or exists
• Latent public: Problem is there, but public does not recognise it
• Aware public: Group recognises that a problem exists
• Active public: Group is aware of the problem and organises to respond to it.    

The type of public determines how and what you communicate to the public. This theory then, points out that an organisation should communicate with its latent and aware publics to solve any problems or issues before the situation escalates and the publics decide to take action.

There are many ways in which an organisation can segment its publics and they all provide useful tools which an organisation can use to plan its communication strategy.

References:

Tench, R. & Yeomans, L. (2006). Exploring Public Relations. England: Pearson Education Limited. 

Grunig, J. E. & Hunt, T (1984). Managing Public Relations. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston