An Investigation into the Role Played by Public Relations in Selected Public Institutions in Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

In this age of modern technologies and high-level competition in business, Public Relations (PR) should be taken as a crucial function in organisations.  PR today is diachronic as it links the organization with its key constituents. PR as a profession is generally misunderstood or misinterpreted and sometimes reduced to publicity or propaganda. The rationale of the present study was to explore and explain the lived experiences of Public Relations (PR) practitioners working in public institutions in Harare.  The study's main objectives were: to examine theories and practices of PR globally and to establish how PR is practiced in Zimbabwe. A qualitative paradigm was chosen because it is incisive and ‘drills – deep' into issues. The research used phenomenology as the guiding research design. Purposive sampling was used to pick seven PR practitioners and the data were generated using in-depth interviews supported by observation and documentary analysis. The data were analysed through qualitative content analysis which involved verbatim transcriptions, interpretations of data narrations and reviewing of scripts while at the same time listening to audio recorded tapes. The study was driven by the role theory. The study findings revealed that PR practice in the selected organisations was synchronic and one-way although some challenges existed for some practitioners. These findings illuminated that PR is still a technical function in most public institutions and the study concluded that Zimbabwe as a developing country which relied mainly from the developed world in terms of PR material need to produce its own PR literature and train its own people.  What came out from the study is that generally the PR theory and practice are almost the same in most countries although literature has shown that application can vary from one country to another. As a result, it is recommended that PR in the public sector in Zimbabwe should catch up with current trends and that the country need to develop its own PR literature and create its own body of knowledge to suit local situations as well as catching up with current global trends of taking PR as a serious management function.