THIS DOCUMENT IS A PRESENTATION OF A COURSE WORK: MERITS AND DEMERITS OF IN HOUSE PR DEPARTMENT AND OUT SOURCING.
Question: Analysis the advantages
and disadvantages of;
a).having an in house PR
department in an organization
b). outsourcing a PR
consultancy firm.
PR is a communication function of management through which
organizations adapt to, alter and maintain their environment for the purpose of
achieving organizational goals-Professor Lawrence
W. long and Todd Hunt.
It entails a range
of activities which are thus; issues management, counseling, government
relations, special events, name it; all these can be achieved in two ways- in
house deemed internally and by outsourcing-externally.
Johanna Brown a contributor to the eHow website defines in
house PR department as, “…it means that they have at least one PR practitioner
on staff.” (Updated on 16 March 2012). With such strata at hand, a company is
capable of achieving its desired goals internally. The following are the
advantages and disadvantages of an in-house department in an organization The
advantages are thus;.
There is easy access to top management
(http://www.craigpearce.info). PR being an important arm of a company, if
hosted by the company herself, the practitioners get easily to top management;
thus their credibility is visible when they present their budget to the top
management, (Dough, Judy & Dean, 1996). This partly helps curb dilution of
information and saves time in time s of crises’
The in-house department besides the easy access to top
management has the priviledge to have access historical and confidential
information about a company, (Johanna Brown-http://www.ehow.com.Updated on 16
March 2012). This enables the practitioner to easily develop appropriate
communication strategies in line with the historical factors and the
confidential information which helps the company to the peak of a ‘home made
product,’ as opposed to ‘exported products
When hosted in house, it harbors a stable environment void
of uncertainties and distress. The department is taken as a ‘home child’, thus
the tense environment though resent are minimal.
In addition, the culture of fear springing from the strong
focus is reduced. The tale of ‘billable hours + my job threat =stress and
uncertainty is breached away to a great level. The practitioners are assured of
their pay and benefits like leave, insurances and so on. (Ibid).
In house departments tend to enjoy employee-centric feature
of companies. When the performance reviews, counseling, leave provisions are
allotted, they are much more employee oriented, especially those on the staff,
(Ibid).
There is consistency and whole sum service of an
organization (issuesinmic.wikispace.com). Consistency is guaranteed due to the
availability of the practitioners and it is for the organization own product;
this redeems time and resources. The fact that it’s internally hosted, it
concentrates only and only on the hosts issues which results in to the peculiar
communication strategies and a broad scale of the company- specialization.
(Ibid).
However, in-house PR
department in an organization has disadvantage s as follows;
There is lack of impartiality which partly arises due to
their loyalty to the company, they biase favor of it often are uncritical. Due
to zeal and pressure if located in the marketing department.(www.goodrealtionship.info).
They usually give a blind eye and a deaf ear to the outsiders in favor of
inside. This is unethical-non objectivity ands fairness.
There is the existence of a narrow cope of experience. The
department may be headed by an expert in a single field like journalism or even
marketing; when diversity emerges such department falls prey due to limited
knowledge of it and an expert in the
‘irrelevant field ’ at the time / moment (Jerfkins1993-.ibid).
There is lack of training, especially in cases of transfer
of senior management and their reluctance for senior courses in the PR
department. Due to a crisis, top mangers from other departments are copied and
pasted in the PR department without adequate training in PR; and to worsen
matter, they disdain the efforts of upgrading.
In addition, there is difficulty in training other employee
in cases of many branches which arte far apart: partly due to the size of the
organization being small. The transfer factor has been responsible for the
adversarial situation between the media and the PR departments.
In-house PR departments suffer from the allocation of
responsibilities to potential top management executive, defying professional
ethic of specified knowledge of a subject. This has also partly caused the
intense relations between the media and the PR Department being adversarial in
nature.
They often employ PR practitioners for wrong reasons,
especially to protect top management form the media; they act as apologist for
top managements inadequacies. In addition they are overloaded with irrelevant
work for instance of the human resource department, the marketing department to
mention a few which ahs resulted into the poor performance of these departments
and worse of it all the department has been taken as a ‘puppet’
On the other hand outsourcing simply implies a company
purchases a product or service from a third party as opposed to producing them
in house. It is the responsibility of the outsourced firm to help the company
achieve its desired goal-external assistance through a payment. Outsourcing can
be done for short term or long term basis, and the following are its
advantages.
Outsourcing involves low personal costs (www.PoRtolio.htm)
which entails wages and no employee benefits thus as reduced overhead costs for
equipment and space (Baker 2001 cited in Ibid.) in addition to the low costs
they can be anticipated by the client company (Wetchester2002 as cited in Ibid)
There is effectiveness, due to the inability of a single
person to handle company matters partly due to overload of work irrelevant in
some cases, outsourcing foots with greater effectiveness and advance d
resources .
It also guarantees speed and quality due specialization.
Quality as a result from capitalization on a particular issue and having great
expertise in the field.
There is flexibility which results from the upper hand over
the outsourced company. The company has the power to direct the outsourced firm
to work on their directives, thus the organization can shift the outsourced
company from one thing to another powered by payments.
It matches along with extra expertise and knowledge
rendering multiply skills (Cutlip, Centre, and Broom, 2002). The wide range of
business and contacts enables great success in building relation ship and
rapport with the media. The agencies are well acquainted with the facets of the
media; they know how and when senior reporters like to receive their
information (Tyler 2006-Ibid)
It brings about shift of focus in organizations due to
specific work and recommendations of their results. The organizations follow
the recommendations thus a shift from less consequential issue to more
intricate and influential once in the long run increasing the likeness of
organization success (Baker 2001-Ibid)
It renders impartiality pertly because it does not suffer
from internal myopia and are not zealously loyal to the Organization. They come
in with fresh perspective and take up the job as their own (Dough, Judy and
Dean 1996) the internal problems do not threaten them does objectivity and
independence
Out sourcing guarantees an all round communication strategy
since they are outsiders with expertise. They create a linkage between and
among the insiders and outsiders having both the inside and outside ears and
eyes of the organization resulting into solid information paving way for great
and appropriate communication strategy for the organization.
However out sourcing has disadvantages as follows.
It minimizes the clients that is to say their first
priority is else where.
The desired attention is not rendered partly because of the
organization small size thus the big farms take precedence due to their size
status and financial consideration (Boroshok 2006) secondly they are availed
only where payment is made, and they priotize money.
There is lack of clear knowledge and understanding of the
organization, which comes in terms of the language and the terminology used
that may result into misinterpretation booting more problems (Simpson
2006-Ibid) they may have expertise in one area thus when anew thing is
presented to them due to their inacquintance of the matter undesired result Is
the out come.
In addition in times of crisis’s they may be late owing it
to the lack of historical and confidential information the lack of specific knowledge in general as
compared to in house department (Boroshok 2006-Ibid) thus the collapse of the
organization
There is provision of partial services due to the many
clients and projects in the waiting list. With even bigger and financially
stable companies in the list the small companies receive incomplete work. In
addition they lack intimacy with the organization- outsource organization
relation thus distaining the effort of the organization.
There is excessive division of labor with outsourcing, many
projects and other priorities at hand they divide work to very many row
employees who give undesired result. They also possess tendencies of assigning
bulky work to inexperienced workers. The experienced once are sent to
financially stable and high status organizations at the expense of the low
financially unstable organization.
In conclusion its appropriate has the situation dictates
for both in-house and out sourced PR departments in and organizations. However
for purposes of confidence ease and relation an in house department is
preferable to and out sourced; albeit out sourcing should always be at the back
of the mind.
Bibliography
Dough
Newsom, Judy V. Turk, Dean Kruckebery (1996) (6th ed.) this is PR.
The Realities of Public Relations. Wadsworth Publishing Company. London
Scot M.
Cutlip, Allen A. Center,
Glen M. Broom (2006)(9th ed) Effective Public Relation. Prentice
Hall, New Jersey.
Websites
http://Careride.com_pr_adv_dis.of
inhouse.public relation department.aspx.
Danielle
L. Ace Reputation Maker (ARM) @ Nak Promotions
http://www.goodrelationship.info/disadvantages
of_an_in (2)4.htm
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