On The Mainstream Of Public Relations Research In U.S.A

Modern public relations have entered China for over twenty years, when public relations researches in China have made great progress. The researches of public relations have developed from summaries of practice experiences to the historical description of PR industry. But the construction of PR theories is still beyond our reach.As the origin of modern public relations, public relations theoretical researches in USA have achieved an avalanche of progresses since the late 1970s. Through the comprehensive continuous analysis of the paradigms in PR research, two schools in PR research are delimited: management school and rhetorical/critical school. With James Grunig as its leading figure, the management school employs system theory as its basic paradigm to discuss how organizations establish and maintain their relationships with stakeholders in the social system and advocate including "management" into the basic tenets of PR.Management school set out its researches from the definition of PR and intends to include the management concept into public relations definition to improve the impact of public relations and its status in the academic field. They made qualitative and quantitative researches about the misunderstanding of public relations and summarized seven genres of this misunderstanding.Based on the definition research, management school constructs the theoretical framework of public relations revolving the concepts of management, communication, relationship, orgainzation and publics. With the theories presented in the program of excellence in public relations and communication management chaired by James Grunig, scholars in the management explore basic models and assumptions of PR practice and PR's social role in the organization, etc. They also borrow theories from related disciplines to develop and perfect those theories and their main achievements include contingency theory of accommodation, relationship management theory, situational theory of publics. They also conduct reflective researches about the applicability of American PR theory to other cultures and presented some viewpoints with local features.Through this historical review of management school in PR researches, the paper aims to introduce the methodology and future trend in public relations research, broaden the horizon of Chinese scholars and lay a platform for the dialogue between the Chinese scholars and their counterparts in foreign countries.