Normative Reflection On The Practice Of Public Relations And Or Corporate Communication In Kenya

Purpose: There has been debate and disagreement among scholars, students and practitioners regarding the correct name to describe the discipline and practice of public relations and corporate communications. Some scholars and practitioners may dismiss such limited focus on nomenclature as trivial, but it underscores different theoretical and practical perspectives brought into the field. While there have been views from an American and European perspective providing a normative perspective, a global consensus on how to describe the discipline has not been arrived at. This study attempted to establish the Kenyan practitioners and scholars' views on this debate, as well as a reflection of the Kenyan practice from a normative perspective. Methodology: Purposive sampling was used to identify practitioners and scholars to be used in this study. Qualitative date was collected through in-depth interviews with twenty-four informants from the academia and practice. The data was analysed through a normative interpretive framework derived from the review of literature. Findings: Findings demonstrate that although there is no difference between corporate communication and public relations, majority of practitioners in Kenya are defined by the public relations perspective. Ironically, majority of the practitioners prefer using the title corporate communication to public relations. The results also show that in Kenya, there is a disconnect between the practitioners and academia's conception of public relations and corporate communication. Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The position of the paper is that the African scholarly conception of public relations is unique and does not fit within the Western normative framework. On the contrary, Kenyan practitioners fall within the normative framework as they are yet to conceive public relations in a broader societal aspect as espoused by numerous African scholars.