تفسیر : تمرین روابط عمومی در لهستان - تجارب یک مشارکت مشاوره میان فرهنگی

Three years ago, the first author was privileged to review the revised edition of The Global Public Relations Handbook (Sriramesh and Verˆciˆc, 2009) for Public Relations Review. Recently, he dusted off his copy of this text and his notes on it. He re-read both the editors’ introduction and theoretical framework for global public relations, and the specific chapter on PR in Poland, which the authors (Ryszard Ławniczak, Waldemar Rydzak and Jacek Tr˛ebicki) referred to as an economy and society in transition. Then he asked his Polish business associate to co-author a short article that would compare the editors’ global framework and the chapter authors’ broad assertions about Poland (and their now rather dated 1999 case study of the “The Capitalist Manifesto” of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers) against the reality of doing 21st century PR in this unique country. So as not to keep the reader in too much suspense, we will state from the outset that the general framework described in the Global Public Relations Handbook is pretty solid, and that Poland is still transitioning slowly away from a half-century of socialism in its economic and political life, a process that began in 1990. But as always, the devil is in the details, and any American who wants to practice PR cross-culturally in Poland (or anywhere else) had better defer to his local partner if he or she wants to succeed.

Three years ago, the first author was privileged to review the revised edition of The Global Public Relations Handbook (Sriramesh and Verĉiĉ, 2009) for Public Relations Review. Recently, he dusted off his copy of this text and his notes on it. He re-read both the editors’ introduction and theoretical framework for global public relations, and the specific chapter on PR in Poland, which the authors (Ryszard Ławniczak, Waldemar Rydzak and Jacek Trębicki) referred to as an economy and society in transition. Then he asked his Polish business associate to co-author a short article that would compare the editors’ global framework and the chapter authors’ broad assertions about Poland (and their now rather dated 1999 case study of the “The Capitalist Manifesto” of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers) against the reality of doing 21st century PR in this unique country. So as not to keep the reader in too much suspense, we will state from the outset that the general framework described in the Global Public Relations Handbook is pretty solid, and that Poland is still transitioning slowly away from a half-century of socialism in its economic and political life, a process that began in 1990. But as always, the devil is in the details, and any American who wants to practice PR cross-culturally in Poland (or anywhere else) had better defer to his local partner if he or she wants to succeed. Let's start with theory. Sriramesh and Verĉiĉ state upfront (p. 3) that they “believe that identifying the impact of environmental variables on public relations practice helps increase our ability to predict which strategies and techniques are better suited to a particular organizational environment.” To link environmental variables to public relations practice, they draw on the 1996 work of the Excellence Project, which suggested five specific variables that “could be used to design public relations strategies specific to a given country: political ideology, economic system (including the level of development of the country's economy), degree of activism (the extent of pressure organizations face from activists), culture, and media system” (p. 4).