Evaluating Relationships

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations has taken an interest in PR Evaluation for a long time and its latest policy document and makes the point that measurement and evaluation are problematic in all areas of management. The CIPR document includes evaluation contribution to management, leadership and organisational performance (to business or organisational success, to better decision-making enabling the organisation to capitalise on opportunities or to avoid mistakes, and to the creation of value) and as a practice with a contribution to make to social and economic development.

It recommends the European Case Clearing House ,case collection accessible through www.caseplace.org maintained by the Aspen Institute in the US, and the resources available at the Institute for PR. The latter being a notable source for all prtactitioners.

The critical research methodologies proposed by CIPR are about creation of value and focus on financial value or measures of activity outcomes which, as we all know, are but a metaphors for real values and thus only partially helpful in the field of relationship management. When considering the principle value of organisations, which are the intangible assets and values (not my conclusin but that of Baruch Lev at the Stern School), we have to move beyond financial measures and look at a wide range of values. Here the CIPR does not offer a great deal of help nor do the references it suggests (even IfPR but it does get closer).

This means that there is a need for wider and deeper search into the literature to help the practitioner identify relevant measures. It is not a case of counting clips but much much more. In providing a proof for the Relationship Value Model, some methodologies have become available but a wider range of tried and tested methodologies are needed.

The Emotional Tug for Affective PR

In developing the Relationship Value Model, I used research into journalists' reporting of actors to identify key concepts in their articles using LSA. Some of these concepts were explicit and so are, according to the theory, 'tokens'. The explicit notions were nouns and verbs. But there were other concepts that were adjectives and adverbs. It occurred to me to look at these again to see if they were really expressions, identified by the journalists, of emotional values.

In most of research by psychologists, there tends to be a lot of post cognition rationalisation but research by Heath and Nairn claim that affective copy, that is copy with an emotional tug, is much more effective. This idea has been around for some time and is an extension of the 'Emotional Selling Proposition'. Some leaders in Brand thinking like Martin Linstrom and Wendy Gordon not to mention many interesting psychologists like Elizabeth Kensinger (pictured above) can rationalise this approach through neuropsycological reserach and a wide view of brand promotion (remembering that, brand promotion is absolutely dependant on relationships).

Given that advertising is very limited in the range of touchpoints it can deploy, and that is is inappropriate for much communication. This is a baton that should be taken up by PR practitioners. Master this idea and we master relationship management, wealth creation and, as a by-product, improve all the processes for every domian of PR practice.

A study of Elizabeth's work is rewarding and is a very significant finding for the practice of public relations as applied using the Relationship Value Model.

I have some way to go, but there is evidence that this is so.

As we know, emotional values have a much stronger effect than other forms of information. Perhaps, in planning our communication, we need to pay close attention to these emotional elements. Watch this space.

Why spend so much time worrying about relationships?

The initial thought is quite easy and seems to make a lot of sense.

It does need a bit more thought because many people and especially Stephen Brunning. John Ledingham have mapped out what we need to consider in developing the theme. There are a number of ways one can come to this subject and in my case it was via the company I set up in the field of PR evaluation.

The early research into some drivers of relationships identified specific themeswhich was published in the early 1990's. that interested people pointed towards some specifics that interested people but which did not show that the relationship extended much beyond the media. Other studies, however did offer important evidence on the effectiveness of editorial on behaviour

Since then many people have looked at relationships management such as T. Dean Thomlison and he looks at relationships with care. His work and his overview of the work of other researchers shows how the model of relationship management would work.

Then came the breakthrough showing that people hold tokens and values that can be identified and which can test the theory.

But this is just mechanics. In following through the model, we find that it is relationships that are the core drivers of organisations; it is relationships that change value and it is relationships that drive all the other forms of organisational management.

This has major implications for economic development, management of societies (and is thus important for government) and how we can view our society from pre-historic times to now.

We do discover that there is a process for managing relationships to change values which can be interpreted as being the nature and role of public relations management. Pretty important I think.

(pictured – Stonehenge, evidence of relationships to create tangible and intangible assets 4000 years ago and very close the where I live)

Porosity and Jean Charles de Menezes

Documents obtained by ITV News are alleged to reveal contradictions in evidence after the killing of an innocent Brazilian during the height of the bomb murders and subsequent attempts at additional bombings in London. According to ITV, a catalogue of police failures led to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes (pictured left) who was innocently caught up in the police response.

The significant part of this story is that, to quote the UK Prime Minister,"the rules of the game are changing”.

The rules that I refer to go back much further and go deeper than his present worries over treason and sedition.

These rules are the rules of transparency, porosity and agency first identified six years ago by the UK's Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Public Relations Consultant's Association. Their joint Internet Commission reportextensive literature on what needs to be done. pointed out that organisations would have to become or would be forced to be more transparent and, as a consequence it is appropriate to respond to the new rules of the game. There is

What the media calls leaks and I call porosity (because some of these events are not leaked, they are just made available in the public domain for anyone to pick up) have to change the way management (and this means PR management as well) operates and has changed the need for transparency and less spin.

Perhaps the Jo More lesson has not been learned. Internal actions are wide open for exposure and email leaks are well documented.

There are many other forms of Internet transparency and there are strategies that need to be implemented in an e-PR savy organisation.

The key issue here is that the rules of the game have changed and there is a need for a different form of governance and competent strategies.

The nature of organisation is different in an information rich age. In addition, this era is now mediated by many networks and we need to understand what the implications are.

PR is 'becoming a management function'

This claim was made by Professor James E Grunig (pictured).

No doubt most people in PR would be horrified to imagine that their work is a process. Each likes to imagine that they have an approach and creativity that is unique and more profoundly effective than any other in the field.

On the other hand most like the idea that PR is identified as a unique capability in the corporate management mix.

We can't have it both ways.

Professor James Grunig noticed thechange in the speech he gave in 2001. He said:

“I have observed public relations practice around the world as a scholarly researcher for over 35 years. In general, I believe five trends are occurring. First, public relations is becoming a profession with a scholarly body of knowledge. Second, public relations is becoming a management function rather than only a technical communication function. Third, public relations practitioners are becoming strategic counselors who are less preoccupied with publicity in the mass media than their predecessors. Fourth, public relations has moved from a profession practiced only by white males to a profession with a female majority and with practitioners of many racial and ethnic backgrounds. Finally, I believe that almost all public relations practice today is global rather than confined to the borders of only one company.”

Take accounting, human recourse management, production engineering or purchasing. Each of those disciplines is a discrete form of management and each has its own processes to aid the management of organisations. Some, like accounting and the law have huge institutional and legal frameworks the proscribe their activities. But all of these 'professions' are, in their own right, creative and specialist. In addition, most managers use some of the skill sets of these varied management practices in their daily life. Budget planning and management in the marketing department uses, among other skills: accounting, human resource management and purchasing management. Thus the skills of the Accountant are shared among other managers as is HR and purchasing.

PR is but another management discipline. Its process can be codified. It is one that, until now and despite the work of Grunig, has not been explicated.

One reason may be because there are so many forms of public relations and the big problem was identifying the underlying practice and common elements of the 40 or so recognisable forms of PR (domains of practice). In addition it has an extensive and broad value chain of practitioner/vendors all working in the same field.

Is it that PR is about reputation, communication or perhaps representing the outside world inside the organisation? Perhaps PR is the part of the company that is the ethics arbiter or provides the capability to foresee danger and 'surprises?

All of these things are true to a greater or lesser degree for some areas of practice and not others. A party planner may be horrified to believe that her work might be about advising the organisation on ethics. Each domain of practice has different priorities and forms of activity. This is true of other professions. Book keepers are not the same as auditors or cashiers – these are different skills in accounting. As for accounting so too for PR.

So what is it that underlies the practice of PR?

It is my thesis that the primary reason for organisations to use PR is to create, sustain, change and nurture relationships in the optimum interests of the organisation and thereby change its value.

In managing relationships we use a very wide range of skills and capabilities. We might use press relations, the web, parties, briefing events and so forth but all are aimed at management of relationships.

The management discipline “Managing Relationships”, like accounting is a distributed form of management. It is applied to greater or lesser effect by managers and employees, aided, supported and managed by the relationship management expert/s in the company.

But it is far too important to be added to the duties of a marketing director or chief executive. It is far too important not to be managed with good metrics, measures, quality controls and strategy as well and operational planning and execution.

It is the primary corporate process for creating wealth. It is a subject worth returning to.

Social Frames and Neuropsychology

There seems to be an inexplicable reason for PR to work when brand promotion and advertising does not. The shift to below the line is palpable. But there is new research that helps us understand what lies behind the success of effective PR.

The search takes one to the powerful work of Giep Franzen and Margot Bouwman (pictured) and their book Mental World of Brands (2002 WARC) and their interesting on-line interview with John Griffiths. I found this from following the thinking of Wendy Gordon in her chapter in Brand new brand thinking - edited by Merry Baskin and Mark Earls (Kogan Page, London 2002).

In less than 15 Year, there has been a sea change in in our understanding of how we think, feel and respond. Work from the research of people like Richard Kaplan and Robert Heath. Give us insights that have never been available until now.

Scanning technology and cognitive brain research experiments have enabled us to understand how the brain works as never before (very well described by Lucinda M. Wilson & Hadley Wilson Horch). And this understanding throws light onto how the accumulation of knowledge and emotional experiences combine to create effects at certain times and in certain situations.

These 'Social Frames' are those moments sought by PR practitioners which deliver the results that the client is looking for. Knowledge, of the client, it seems, is gained from and is moderated by a very wide range of experiences that are built up over time. In a process called synaptic modulation we gain knowledge through the five senses and build up a matrix into which a range of other influences can have an effect.

This knowledge and associated emotional triggers form the basis by which we deliver the client expectation.

The single 'brand' or 'three core messages' are just not enough on their own to have an effect. Indeed at that level, there is a lot of evidence to believe that such approaches are just blocked out.

Set in the wider context of relevant information of 'my newspaper' or 'my magazine' there is an emotional tug, which Guy Consterdine identified as a 'friend dropping in' which provides the powerful influence of editorial over advertising.

This principle applies to the many other domains of public relations practice well beyond the field of media relations.

The basic principle is relevant to all forms of PR. It is in the use and application of the relevant attention and memory process that are all important to the practitioner.

We know quite a lot about what works from a significant body of work in the field of education and much of this may well apply in the field of public relations.

It is quite reasonable to conclude that a broad based, rounded and durable approach to public relations is by far the most effective.

From research in the class room it would be reasonable to extrapolate a Neuropsychological PR approach to develop an even more effective public relations practice. We can reasonably suppose that using a broad range of domains of PR practice the most powerful campaigns would include activities that are most compatible with attention and memory such as:

• Designing collateral, activities and events where publics' ask critical questions and then develop their own approach to find the answers, such as communicating with third parties and opinion formers.

• Using experiences and activities that involve publics' understanding of various perspectives, points of view or a range of corporate/brand drivers, objectives and benefits.

• Using a wide range of approaches to impart information through a wider range of cognitive senses (sight -written word, pictures, video, sound – talking, recordings, music, smell, that moment when you smell newsprint, touch the feel of paper, hands-on product experience, the weight of the briefing, and taste – who said the 'PR lunch' was dead!) to link memory to specific understanding of the client and its products.

• Implementing strategies that encourage the publics to reflect on and reiterate what they learn about the organisation/brand to consolidate learning.

• Posing visual and word problems or puzzles to challenge thinking so that publics learn that there are many ways to understand the client. This type of thinking strengthens the neural connections and gives publics' more confidence in their ability to understand their relationship and experience in the client context.

• Involving publics in real-life experiences related to the client/brand and its objectives especially where there is an emotional element which is very powerful – emotional triggers are by far the most powerful and durable.

• Using peer collaboration or cooperative learning helps broaden a public's understanding of issues and promotes group empathy.

• Developing an integrated approach that encourages publics to face issues and concerns and weave them into the corporate or product competitive mission, sector or thematic.

There is a lot more research that is needed in this area and brand managers are well into these developments. Perhaps we can encourage PR researchers to look more closely at how these fabulous new development in Neuropsychology can aid the practice of PR.

Adding 'Relationship' assets to Intangible Value Reporting

In my post intellectual capital and intangible asset management. I linked to my 1993 paper which proposed relationships should be included among an organisations' intangible assets. The reason for this need is very well described in Accounting in the same year. The paper presented a case for balanced scorecard reporting, a concept first proposed by Kaplan and Norton in the 1990's.

Among most people who research into intangibles, the notion of relationships being at the core of organisational wealth and wealth creation is a complete novelty.

Part of the problem is that few people accept that most accounting is based on metaphors. Money, that familiar metaphor for wealth, is commonly used. Of course money is a token, its wealth is in the values we associate with it.

This means, that for a company, for example, to report on its wealth, it has to explicate what it means by the accounting metaphors it uses. The 'balance sheet' a metaphoric list of of asset tokens disguises what the directors and auditors mean when they describe some of the assets of a company. The list of assets is often difficult to interpret and is seldom complete.

What is less difficult is to examine are the relationships that are at play within the organisation and the tokens that are used to create, sustain and use for levering added wealth in the form of better relationships to optimise the exchange of tokens.

Some approaches to valuing relationships.

LSA

On the basis that 'if you can't measure it, you can't manage it' one of the most important aspects of accounting (not to mention management) is in measurement and evaluation of relationships.

The earliest approach that was used to prove the Relationship Value Model was the applications of LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis). It is based on the work of Deerwester, Dumais, Landauer, . Furnas, and Harshman and allows one to look at a a text corpus to identify 'concept words'. These concepts can be interpreted as tokens and can be given values (I subjectively used Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) or values can be identified from a deeper use of LSA analysis.

This approach identifies the nature of the tokens and where they are common and material between parties identified in the corpus (texts).

There is some work that needs to be done in developing this approach but it works well.

Clarity

With Jon White I worked on a methodology which allowed organisations to identify relative significance of corporate relationships (called Clarity). It was developed long before the Relationship Value Model saw the light of day. However, it does offer an embryonic approach for identifying both actors and tokens using visualisation and focus groups. This approach has the advantage that it examines both 'internal' and 'external' relationships. I have been considering a development of this concept to offer a visualisation process for the identification of actors, tokens and perceived values. It would be a methodology available to identify both the extent and strength of relationships both for auditing purposes and for relationship management.

Social Frames

A further approach for identifying the nature of relationships and which would have helped Mie Augier and Morten Thanning Vendelù in their paper 'Networks, cognition and management of tacit knowledge' is the application of Social Frames.

Using the Social Frames approach we primary require is to be able to observe tokens held by actors.

In addition we need to be able to identify changes in value and that means we need to observe at different times in order to draw comparisons.

The process allows the researcher to ask what ellements exist and which prompt change among actors across four dimensions: Time plus Knowledge, Interactivity, and Environment. The methodology is described on this web page.

It would seem, even with a concept as young as the relationship Value model, that there are already a number of approaches that may be available for measuring and evaluating relationships.

There is a lot more research to be done in this area and, no doubt, there are some keen to help.

See: S. C. Deerwester, S. T. Dumais, T. K. Landauer, G. W. Furnas, and R. A. Harshman. Indexing by latent semantic analysis. in the Journal of the American Society of Information Science 41(6):391--407, 1990

See: M Augier and M Thanning Vendelù Networks, cognition and management of tacit knowledge Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 3 . Number 4 . 1999 . 252±261

PR practice and The Relationship Value Model

The Relationship Value Model is beginning to attract some interest by enquiring minds.

A couple of comments have been made by Frazer Likely, (left) one of those people who has considerable understanding of public relations in its widest sense. His comments were interesting and showed that I have not made the concept of the Relationship Value Model clear in respect to its relevance to one-to-one communication.

One-to-One Relationships

This area of relationship building is very significant.

Personal relationships are in a sense a 'social group'. Social groups can be just two people. Such relationships have specific material tokens (tokens, signs and symbols are explained very well by semioticians) that are unique to these two actors. The classic example is a marriage. The actors in a marriage have material tokens that are special and unique to the partners.

One then finds that such close knit 'social groups' extend into other groups such as family, local community and so forth.

In management terms, one-to-one relationships can only be created and sustained when there are those special material tokens between the actors. A false friend is one who does not hold material tokens dear and special.

In the empirical research, this multiple inter-linked process became quite clear. One of the interesting patterns of groups is seen in politics where politicians have many tokens that are material and form a social group one might call 'politicians'. One finds that there are, among these people, members of social groups one might call 'political parties'. In this grouping, their material tokens (tokens held by actors with common values within a network) are common to the principles of the political party. In such groups one can find additional groups that lean towards factions, policies, constituencies and so forth. Such groupings become quite clear using latent semantic analysis of media coverage for each of the political actors.

Stakeholder and interest groups

A further point raised examines the Model in relations to stakeholders and interest groups, particularly the Freeman view of stakeholders . My view is that the Stakeholder movement is based on an incomplete theoretical construct. Stakeholders, who have a 'stake' in an organisation are a groups of people who hold material tokens in common and among which are material tokens associated with the organisation. The extent of such token convergence will often determine whether an interest group (such as an NGO or pressure group) has the status of the Freemanish 'stakeholder'. My current position on stakeholders
suggests that the boundaries given to stakeholder groups is far too rigid and cannot support the mixture of interests of social groups who have an interest or 'stake' in an organisation.

A 'shareholder' (a type of actor), for example, will hold different material tokens to a 'shareholder-employee' (another form of actor). In turn, a 'shareholder-employee-local community member' will have three sets of material tokens and is not to be confused with the other types of share-owning actors.

Of Reputation building

Earlier this year I did some work on what people in the PR business call their work.

It describes how there are 'domains' of public relations practice all of which aim to change relationships between organisations and their publics.

To my mind each, in its way, is a vital element in the process of creating networks that secure the values of the organisation such that it may prosper.

The networks, often with many channels for communication, are not hierarchical nor semantic but tend to be interlinked.

One very important domains of practice is the area of reputation management and Alan Kelly who has a very interesting approach to competitive reputation advantage prompted me to note some aspects of this practice against the Relationship Value Model.

We are aware that multi-touch communication is much more effective than sheer noise (a description for much advertising) in order that the simple physiological/psychological process of getting the synaptic modifications and the message remembered.

This is why PR tends to be much more effective than advertising. At its best PR is multi network and multi channel.

In a competitive environment, the need is for reputation to be constructed in a wider society and not just in in the minds of the client or its narrow value chain. If the latter, then a competitor message/brand will have the opportunity to be more effective if it uses a broader multi-touch approach.

(see: Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston. Pitman Books)

Intellectual Capital and Intangible Asset Management.

When Patricia Hewitt MP was the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, she called for corporations to have "successful relationships with a wide range of other stakeholders" because they "are important assets, crucial to stable, long-term performance and shareholder value.”

A new book by all the leading thinkers in the field Perspectives on Intellectual Capital: Multidisciplinary Insights Into Management, Measurement, and Reporting edited by Bernard Marr has contributors among the heaviest heavyweights in the field of intellectual capital management and intangible asset management. Contributors include: Guthrie, Mie Augier, David Teece, Göran Roos, Baruch Lev, Leandro Cañibano, Sudi Sudarsanam, Guhlam Sorwar, Jan Mouritsen, Per Nikolaj Bukh, Lisa Fernstöm, Ulf Johansson, Joe Peppard, Martin Cloutier, Richard Gold, Patrick Sullivan, Antonio Lerro, Giovanni Schiuma and Daniela Carlucci, Ahmed Bounfour and Leif Edvinsson, J.-C. Spender.

It is a splendid tour de force but the authors have still not come to terms with the idea that relationships are a valuable, if intangible asset. In a paper to the Bledcom conference in 2003 I argued that relationships should be included among the intangible assets that accrue to organisations. The nature and importance of relationships is missing from the book and I guess that is why The Centre for Business Performance at Cranfield has not been able to nail the big problems associated with measuring intangibles, managing intellectual property and understanding the nature of wealth creation. In my paper 'Towards Relationship Management'

I give an example of how relationship management turns intellectual capital into wealth.

Subsequent work on the Relationship Value Model looks at how one can identify organisations and their tangible and intangible assets in terms of their value both in trading terms and on the balance sheet. This applies to all organisations including governments, voluntary, NGO and, of course, commercial.

Big corporations and economies flourish which is a good thing but they also falter and decline which is not so good. At the same time we find that corporations and the financial markets are valued on the basis, crudely, of physical assets (which are by their nature no more than a metaphor for wealth) and 'goodwill' which are basically assets you can't kick.

The conclusions one might draw is that Patricia Hewitt was, probably by accident, close to putting her finger on the key issue in creating wealth.

Hewitt, P (2004) Foreword to the Draft Regulations on the Operating and Financial Review and Directors’ Report Department of Trade and Industry.

A $100 barrel solution

Reuters reported Oil at $64 a barrel this week which led me to think how the Relationship Value Model would be applied by governments contemplating oil shortage and production problems pushing prices towards $100.

In the first instance, landscaping the broad range of knowledge, opinion and projections by many groups is mandatory. This would need to be across many networks using an array of channels for communication.

Obviously there are the traditional news channels of the nature used in the early empirical research into the Model. There is the academic media which is slow to publish but peer reviewed and there are analyst reports, oil company reports and projections plus the work of the financial institutions.

The commentary among NGO's and unmediated commentary from sources such as Blogs, Usenet, Listserve as well as focus groups and the like may also be of help. The methodologies used will probably be automated content analysis because of its speed and consistency (I would lean towards semantic analysis where I have had considerable success in the past - see below for reference).

Using this approach, we will be able to identify the most significant concepts that are relevant to each communication channel.

Each such concept will be associated with kindred concepts and in combination one would be able to identify similarities and differences between each of the channels and the people who are presenting such views.

In addition, where concepts are presented as an explicit description (e.g. 'oil' or “global warming') we might consider such expressions as tokens and where there are concepts emerging that are semantically associated with such tokens that are implicit or metaphoric (e.g. 'shortage', 'disaster' etc.) we would have identifies values associated with such tokens.

In identifying where there are the same values and associated tokens in any channel, we can assume convergence is occurring (and the actors who have the most affinity) and, in addition, we would be able to identify where there is actual or latent convergence. In both cases, we would have identified the constituents related to the emerging topics and their concerns.

The advantage of this form of landscaping is that it would also provide a view of the 'language' of the people expressing concerns and interest which offers the communicator a lingua franca which would be attractive to and understood by these groupings.

From such information, policy making and the means by which policy can be explicated to the pubic can be made.

(Latent Semantic Analysis is developed from the work presented by S. C. Deerwester, S. T. Dumais, T. K. Landauer, G. W. Furnas, and R. A. Harshman. Indexing by latent semantic analysis. in the Journal of the American Society of Information Science 41(6):391--407, 1990

Falling foul of brand valuation

Earlier this month The Financial Reporting Review Panel published its first report on the results of its pro-active approach to company accounts for review. The report covers the fifteen-month period to 31 March 2005.

Not surprisingly it had problems with reporting on intangibles. John Flynn (left), Vice Chairman of CIM is making interesting comments about brands and thier values and the advent of the Relationship Value Model will give them, and some major corporations some additional ideas for the future.

This is quite important. Some Brands are said to be worth a lot of money. Tesco is said to be worth £4.8 billion as a brand.

Goodwill and intangible assets

The accounts of a number of companies failed to satisfy the disclosure requirements of FRS 10 ‘Goodwill and intangible assets’ which contains a rebuttable presumption that the useful economic life of purchased goodwill or an intangible asset is limited to a period of 20 years or less.

The standard requires the grounds for rebutting the presumption to be disclosed. In a number of enquiries, which included FTSE 100 companies, the Panel found that no such disclosures were provided. The reasons for the failure to include a reasoned explanation for the policy varied from case to case, but included the proposition that the durability of the assets, particularly brands, was well known and understood without further comment and that a number of industry leaders adopted a similar approach to the detailed reporting requirements.

If we start off with Brands we find that most brand valuation and most of the literature is misplaced because it does not factor in the value of relationships. If the organisation does not foster relationships between its brands and consumers, the brand must suffer. And, if this is not enough, the requirement to report on stakeholder relations (and a stakeholder in this context is any 'user' of the annual report) is also up for a major revision.

One recalls that it was not the author who suggested that relationships have value. It was the then Secretary of State, Patricia Hewitt MP and I did report on her assertion at the time.

There are a number of disenting views about brand valuation. John Flynne, Vice Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) says that ‘Brands come second: Brains not Brands are an organisation’s marketing asset

And, one might add, this is only true if the brains have relationships with other brains. The relationship Value Model would seem to be needed to make his latest hypotisis work.

Tinting the rose

In following through the writings of Bathes I spent some time with Wikipedia on Bathes.

The comment that caught my eye is this:

“In His 1968 essay "The Death of the Author," Barthes made a strong, polemical argument against the centrality of the figure of the author in literary study. (Michel Foucaults later article What is an Author? responded to Barthess polemic with an analysis of the social and literary "author-function.") In His 1971 essay "From Work to Text", Barthes takes this idea further, arguing that while a work (such as a book or a film) contains meanings that are unproblematically traceable back to the author (and therefore closed), a text (the same book or film) is actually something that remains open. The resulting concept of intertextuality implies that meaning is brought to a cultural object by its audience and does not intrinsically reside in the object. Barthes' book S/Z is often called the masterpiece of structuralist literary criticism. In S/Z, Barthes dissects the story "Sarrasine" by Honoré de Balzac at length, proceeding sentence by sentence, assigning each word and sentence to one or several "codes" and levels of meaning within the story. Barthes' cultural criticism, published in volumes including Mythologies, is one of the key antecedents for later cultural studies, the application of techniques of literary and social criticism to mass culture.”

Tracing through the links, one comes to a conclusion that there is a superficial similarity between the Relationship Value Model and the work of Bathes. The concept that in a work the audience (well... one member of an audience) will take a cultural object and interpret it with the values brought to it by the audience (person) is close to my hypothesis. But is not exactly the same, if one accepts that a cultural object is the same as a 'token' in the Relationship Value Model. My hypothesis makes much of the network and its ability to offer the means by which tokens and their values (the means of interpretation) can be exposed to the parties using the network. It then goes on to suggest that values attaching to the token, when commonly held (say, between and author and an audience), will create impetus for cognitive consistency and thereby a relationship.

There is interesting background stuff about cognitive science here

Two minds and the nature of a rose

There is a considerable cross over between the work of the semioticians and relationship management theoreticians. Having used the rose as a metaphor to describe how we exchange tokens in networks as part of the process of building relationships I discover from Dr Reginald Watts (who offers us a concept “Towards a visual language – are we standing at the graveside of the written word?”) that Roland Barthes used it in a similar way.

The Relationship Value Model posits that the rose, as a token, has values that help us understand what is meant when it is gift (romantic, peace offering etc.) or represents an asset (to a florist a rose represents stock) or is a twig from a dying shrub depending on the Social Frame (network) in which it is presented.

Multiculturalism needs more research

The BBC's Today programme invited comment about what multiculturalism really means from Labour's John Denham. Denham wants more action to tackle the roots of alienation.

This debate extends to what we mean by 'our country', 'our nation' and the values we ascribe to such notions. The argument can go further. One might ask about 'our community', 'our neighbourhood' and so forth. Multiculturalism is a significant area of social research and a debate will rage because of the emerging critics. There is a need for a capability to be able to research into the drivers behind communities.

This really is what the Relationship Value Model is about. It is an approach to understanding social groups through the tokens and values held by people and held in common such that they describe the nature of the country, nation, community or neighbourhood..

The model is quite explicit in showing how it can be applied in the process of discovering what shapes our society by way of social groups, the tokens that are significant to such groups and the values that attach to such tokens and which are held in common by members.

A third of UK workers couldn't care less about their jobs

A third of British workers could not care less whether their company succeeds or fails as long as they get their pay cheque at the end of the month, according to research from IRS.

A widely reported study study of 15,000 UK workers found that while the overwhelming majority – 85 per cent – enjoyed their work, a significant minority feel unengaged and indifferent about their organisation's success.

Nick Tatchell, project director at ISR said: "It is encouraging that Britons enjoy their jobs but disappointing that such a high percentage of employees are indifferent to their organisations' success.

"The worrying thing for UK companies is that this indifference can lead to a reduction in profits," he added.

This would suggest that British companies are not very aware of what it is that constitutes a company. The Relationship Value Model is based on research that showed that employees have tokens in common with other employees which have common values. These are the 'material' tokens that describe the organisation.

The role of managers is to identify these tokens and to create cognitive consistency among employees. Otherwise as Nick Tatchell points out, they will loose money.

A different approach to the Relationship Value Model

Elizebeth Albrycht's Blog alerted me to the recently released a report called Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business (pdf download).

It's authors, Andrea Saveri, Howard Rheingold, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and Kathi Vian, must have been looking over my shoulder as I worked out the Relationship Value Model.

They write (and I comment):

Connective and pervasive technologies are enabling new forms of human and machine interactions (networks) and relationships; they will present business institutions with a host of new possibilities for organizing people, processes, relationships and knowledge (wealth creation). These forces will accelerate a shift in business strategy from solving concrete business problems to managing complex business dilemmas, which in turn will require a broader set of strategic tools (The Relationship Value Model) and concepts than are provided by competitive models. (1)

Elizabeth summarises findings in the paper:

The authors organize their information by what they are calling "lenses", which enable them to address what the major insights on cooperation are from various disciplines. These seven lenses are:

1. Synchrony (cognitive convergence)

2. Symbiosis (tokens and values)

3. Group Selection (material tokens that explicate an organisation)

4. Catalysis (common values for a range of tokens)

5. Commons (networks)

6. Collective Action (identified among tokens held in common by social organisations)

7. Collective Intelligence (networks of social organisations – such as a business holding tokens and values in common)

Uncanny really!

Groups Get Leverage

The Relationship Value Model received another boost this month from Clay Shirky. Addressing delegates at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford, UK. He said: "Loosely organised groups will be increasingly given leverage.

"Institutions will come under increasing degrees of pressures and the more rigid they are, the more pressures they will come under.

"It is going to be a mass re-adjustment."

The Model addresses these ideas and gives PR practitioners and opportunity to understand what all this is about.

Social Responsibility - Its in the bottom line

Business Ethics magazine report that there is a statistically significant association between corporate social performance and financial performance exists, which varies "from highly positive to modestly positive."

From which we can take comfort in the fact that there is a bottom line benefit available from good relationship management.

Relationship Management counts for a lot.

Rolling back the terrorists

Using Social Frames, a management tool for PR practitioners, to track down terrorists is a pretty cool idea.

The idea behind Social Frames is that is provides a shape to describe target actors (people) or groups of people (publics) who have a lot in common.

Time frame by time frame, we can build up a picture of consumers, employees, vendors and other important groups that affect our social group (OK – company).

The same rules can be applied to terrorist.

By using well informed groups that might include relatives, social workers, religious leaders, police and security experts, psychologists and socilologists, a picture can be made.

It will be information about where the terrorist is typically at different times and on different days. It will identify what assets, information and knowledge tokens are play at those times and, finally, it will identify the interactivity available and in use in that environment.

Hour by hour, day by day, a picture will emerge.

A process like this will be needed for every terrorist and it will, before long, create a picture of places, people a and activities that are common to terrorists.

The Relationship Value Model has many applications.

Who cares about PR evaluation?

The latest comment from CIPR is a mile away from the silly PRE-Fix idea.
At last it makes some sort of sense. But the Institute has a long way to go before it catches up with the media that REALLY like to take serious note

There are loads of people who are interested in PR evaluation. This is obvious when looking at the range of publications that cover the subject in one form or another:

Journal of Applied Communication Research.

Journal of Business Communication.

Journal of Communication.

Journal of Communication Management.

Journal of Employee Communications Management.

Journal of Public Relations Research.

Journal of Reputation Management.

Public Relations Quarterly.

Strategic Communication Management.

Communications World.

Frontline.

O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report.

Public Relations Strategist.

PRSA Strategist.

Reputation Management.

And then there are the publications that cover the back end bit.

Computational Linguistics

Journal of Automated Reasoning

Journal of Language and Computation

Journal of Logic, Language and Information

Journal of Semantics

Linguistics and Philosophy

Natural Language Semantics

Web Journal of Formal, Computational & Cognitive Linguistics

Linguistics and Philosophy
Natural Language Semantics

Journal of Semantics

Journal of Logic, Language and Information

Mind and Language

SALT from Cornell.

Kluwer: Studies in Lingusitics and Philosophy

International Public Relations Review.

The Links to them all is here

40 sorts of PR

For a work on the future evaluation needs of the PR industry, I did a little research into how many types of PR there really are.

Well, there are at least 40 different titles for the practice. The CIPR research is different to their interest groups and only a few groups reflect the roles of PR practitioners.

The Relationship Value Model of PR

The Relationship Value Model can now be viewed online at www.managementclarity.com

This is a new theory of management practice. It is based on a number of comments by practitioners and academics that Public Relations is the practice of managing relationships between an organisation and its publics.

As a theory, it is in its infancy and has been made available to allow you to look at it, criticise it and add to the thinking.

This Blog is but one way that you can have your say and can comment on the thinking and ideas that surround it. I hope that this is an opportunity for practitioners and researchers and look forward to contributions as they come forward.

Feel free to add your thoughts and comments and contribute.

Creating Wealth

This Blog is for people who have a specific interest in a form of public relations concerned with Relationship Management.

The thesis is that Relationship Management is a much wider topic than many would believe. This PDF (is a bit big but...) explains some of the early thinking.

If a practitioner is involved in Relationship Management, then, one may assume, their roll is to change the value of the relationship for both the organisation and the public affected by the change. This would mean there is such a thing as a Relationship Value Model.

Intangible Thinking

(comment from David Phillips - left)

Intellectual Property: Valuation, Exploitation, and Infringement Damages By Gordon V. Smith, Russell L. Parr Is a $195 surprise. The cover says: “This book is designed to simplify the process of attaching a dollar amount to intangible assets, be it for licensing, mergers and acquisitions, loan collateral, or investment purposes.” Which just goes to show that, without valuing relationships (the biggest asset that a company can have), the $ value is worth zip. The book is tangible enough.

We really DO have to put Relationship Management into this kind of unthinking comment.