tical Model
Awareness of Pagan's international issues management strategy facilitates better recognition of the ways in which TNCs and industry business organisations have tried to influence international public interest debates, particularly at the level of the United Nations.20 To gain a broader picture of corporate public relations strategies and techniques, however, particularly of those which attempt to engineer consent, an analytical working model can be useful. This model is based on analysis of actual corporate PR strategies (such as those described in PR textbooks, issues management industry seminars, leaked documents and accounts of activists), blended with insights from theories on communication and power.21
A synthesis of these sources indicates that an engineering of consent or issues management strategy usually has three, sometimes overlapping, components:
intelligence gathering and an assessment of the socio-political climate in which the particular company is operating;attempts to manipulate public debates in a direction favourable to the company; andattempts to exclude what the industry perceives as diverging or antagonistic voices from the public debate