Public relations, organizational communication and informational issues: analysis of their interrelationships in Latin American journals

Abstract

Public relations is a complex activity regarding its role in organizations and the diffuse theoretical framework that makes it difficult to build a conceptual network to justify its existence and relevance nowadays. In the organizational environment, alongside public relations, the communication system and dissemination of information are equally fundamental for the internal administrative roles and the relationship with the external environments and the different strategic audiences. In that organizational context, information management is inherently related to organizational communication and improved informational offer for developing people in the organizational context. Public relations, organizational communication, and information are interwoven with most organizations' reality as they are linked to the organizational and productive processes, and their roles and activities influence relationships and interfere in planning, results, and institutional objectives. Organizations include different types of people who work and use communication and information to make sense of daily work. In that respect, public relations act as facilitators between organizations and different audiences. Therefore, the relationship between these three concepts - public relations, organizational communication, and information - refers to organizations' world and how they deal with the exchange and sharing of meanings that influence the social, cultural, and economic environment. This study was motivated by the need to understand how theoretical frameworks and affinities are built between organizational communication, public relations, and information in scientific journals in Latin America. It aims to investigate the key elements that emerge from the intersection between public relations, organizational communication, and information in organizations. Besides, it analyzes the interrelationships of public relations, organizational communication, and information in Latin American journals. This study is exploratory and qualitative, and its methodology is a systematic review, which identified 14 articles. Of those, half prioritize the concept of organizational communication in its control and informational dimensions related to management, procedures, flows, and information processing. The concept of integrated communication emerges in four articles through a systemic view. Public relations are conceptualized in a polysemic way in six articles and are linked to both information sources and organizations' relationship with their different audiences. Information comprehensively appears as both a process and knowledge associated with systems, techniques, and technologies. The articles prioritize a functionalist notion of organizational communication as an articulating axis between the three concepts and is linked to management, which mixes information, communication, and public relations to promote access to information and dialogue. Regarding the concepts' interrelationships, only four out of the 14 articles developed all of the terms selected in the search. Furthermore, it is inferred that organizational communication represents the stronghold that supports the three concepts in the analyzed articles. Those are associated with management activities, amalgamating information, communication, and public relations to make it easier to convey and access information, promoting the opening of dialogue channels (formal and informal), social interaction, and credibility, thus collaborating to build the image, identity, and reputation of ambivalent and intricate contemporary organizations.