Bowen (2009) has noted how public relations scholars have said that becoming
part of the dominant coalition is a main goal for the field. Perhaps
the time has come to move on to a more social role for public relations, which
today means moving beyond financial considerations and toward social and
environmental motivations. Therefore, public relations and corporate communications
could be clearly differentiated as simply having different goals.
Public relations might focus on functional, societal, and organizational outcomes
with the purpose of building mutually beneficial relationships between
key stakeholders instead of succumbing to the temptation of searching for a
magic empirical/monetary measurement method that appeals to senior managers.
Corporate communications might acknowledge that it is an amalgam
of more established fields, such as public relations, marketing, and organizational
communication, and that its priority is related to business outcomes,
such as earnings, sales, and market share, to communication, even if these are
to be pursued at the expense of other societal goals.