4) EXPLAIN THE NEED FOR ETHICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS IN RELATION TO THE CONSCIENCE OF AN ORGANIZATION.
The importance of ethics is not only visible in public relations alone; on the contrary it encompasses each and every aspect of our daily life. The public relations of organisations that lack ethical principles are bound to fail sooner or later. The field of ethics, also called moral philosophy, involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. It is defined by Parsons (2008:28) as the application of knowledge, understanding and reasoning to questions of right or wrong behavior. With this definition one can say that ethics are personal values system that each person uses to judge the right or wrong behaviour in others. In public relations discipline, ethics includes values such as honesty openness, loyalty, respect, integrity and forthright communication. Careful and consistent ethical analyses facilitate trust, which enhances the building and maintenance of relationships- after all, that is the ultimate purpose of the public relations function, (Bowen, 2008). Thus this essay will explain the need for ethical public relations in relation to the conscience of an organisation.

Organisations accomplish more of their long term goals when they integrate some of what publics want, meaning that the management engages in an ongoing relationship of give and take with the publics. Scholars (Goodpaster & Matthews, 1982; J. E. Grunig & L. A. Grunig, 1996;
Heath&Ryan, 1989; Manheim&Pratt, 1986) have argued that organisations exist by permission of society, and, therefore, must serve society in a responsible manner. Organisations are faced with a growing demand to prove that they are responsible corporate citizens, behaving in the public interest as well as in the interest of business. Moral philosophy intersects the interests of business in the challenging mandate for corporate accountability and transparency. The central responsibility for ethical organizational decision-making should be seen in terms of helping an organization communicate with its stakeholders and its publics. Helping an organization to be accountable for its behavior should be seen as one of the primary contributions of effective public relations.

Organizations’ today because of economic, social situations operate in a competitive environment. Therefore, they constantly need the services of their public relations department to be effective. Public relations practitioners have an important role to communicate between various sectors in business and public communities. Hook (2006) maintains that public relations is not just representing the organisation to the public, they must also represent the public to the organisation. For this reason, the need for ethical public relations practitioners is to help employees to understand how the public perceives their organisation’s actions. If the profession of public relations is seen as ethical, then the public will be more likely to accept the actions of public relations practitioners. For this reason, professional public relations practitioners today are extremely sensitive about ethics (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). Consequently, to be successful, public relations practitioners are required to make intelligent and analytical decisions on situations that otherwise might damage an organisation’s ethics and also reputation.

Public relations practitioners are using ethics to change unethical situations to ethical situations. Therefore, depending on these values one can say that public relations is frequently seen as the ethical heart of an organisation because they are making ethical decisions essential to establish relationships between the organisation and its public, (Seitel, 1998:77). This view is supported by IPMZ Public Relations module (2011:29) that public relations have the responsibilities to balance the needs of the society with the needs of clients , during this public communication process , public relations practitioners act as spanners, connecting the firm with the public and engage in both speaking and listening in order to practice ethical communication. As a result, one can say that, ethics is an indispensable part of the organisation. Therefore, public relations practitioners must be honest and trustworthy, acting at all times in the public interest.

Bowen (2010) argued that public relations can go beyond the role of relationship building to providing the information that a democracy needs to function, allowing organizations to be known and understood by citizens and governing bodies. This view requires the moral autonomy to be an objective counselor to the organization, rather than being co-opted by it (Bowen, 2006).
Ethical public relations are a practical thing to do as it protects the organisations from legal and regulatory problems. It also helps organizations build credible and action based relationship with its publics, with long term and positive consequences, thus gaining a competitive advantage. Ethical public relations enable professional communicators to be conversant with the value systems of their organisations before these values are publicly called into question.
Heath (2001) asserts that issues management as the primary function that seeks out and resolves problems before they become crises, is an area with a natural propensity to identify perplexing ethical issues. Public relations practitioners help the organisation to identify issues that will become ethical problems allowing the organization to take a proactive stance to defining and managing the issue, rather than a reactionary stance when it is defined by the publics. Therefore, self vigilant awareness of spotting and discussing ethical issues is an ethically responsible approach for an organization, showing willingness to resolve problematic issues which shows morally good intentions.

Grunig (1992) holds that ethical public relation function is responsible for conducting research on the publics and maintaining linkages with strategic publics in the organization’s environment. This aspect of knowing the views of publics and maintaining relationships with them places public relations in a unique position to understand how others will evaluate organizational decisions. In contrast, other organizational functions are limited in their ability to enact this role. For instance, marketing focuses almost exclusively on consumer publics. Because many issues arising within an organization have salience with other publics, the public relations function is the natural locus of managing these issues and considering their ethical implications. Therefore, public relations is a logical place to review the consequences of how organizational decisions will impact and be perceived by many varied publics hence taking the role of being the conscience of an organisation. Matters of organizational policy are often decided in concert with top decision makers from finance, legal, operations, and other relevant departments in an organization. These representatives comprise an issues management team, and each member brings different strengths and weaknesses to the decision-making process. The Chief Executive Officer relies on the ethical counsel of the public relations professional for a connection to the values, beliefs, and views of varied publics, because other organizational functions will see the issue from their own particular perspective. Thus public relations managers as boundary spanners are in an ideal position to know and understand the values and beliefs of publics within an organization’s environment. Public relations practitioners might sometimes be the only managers in an organization who understand the beliefs, interests, and values of publics enough to represent them and include those in strategic decision making and planning, (Bowen, 2008).
The above view is seconded by IPMZ Public Relations module (2011:34) that public relations function is to counsel top management about ethical issues by using issues management, research, and relationships with publics, and conflict resolution because most of the top management knows little or nothing about the capabilities of public relations beyond media relations. Public relations practitioners know the values of key publics involved with ethical dilemmas, and can conduct rigorous ethical analyses to guide the policies of their organizations, as well as in communications with publics and the news media. Careful and consistent ethical analysis facilitates trust, which enhances the building and maintenance of relationships.

However, in practice this is not always the case as Pires (1999) highlights that there are too many practitioners out there who are developing campaigns based on unethical practices. This can ruin an organisation’s reputation permanently. Therefore, ethics must always be central in all organizational discourses making the role of public relations practitioners to be the one of solving customer’s problems and suggesting ideas to them. In these ways public relations practitioners can support the organisation (Leeper, 1996). In addition Fitzpatrick and Gauthier (2001) assert that the public relations practitioner has to represent the customer’s interests. This view means that public relations practitioners must always guide their customers in an ethical direction. Ethical analyses can contribute to the effective operation of the entire organization by helping to align the interests of the company with those of its stakeholders and publics.

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