Profiling Indonesian Practitioners

Public relations should be an approach more than a technique.

It is a framework that ensures consistency and maintains transparency, not a means to hide uncomfortable facts as a result of management defect.

A study by W. J. Keegan reported in The Administrative Science Quarterly in 1994 of the information sources drawn on by senior management found out that ‘public relations people are good sources of competitive information because they hear so much. Even if they are not directly involved, they are in the grapevine’.

A survey of 292 respondents (Ananto, 1997) found out that the majority of respondents were in-house practitioners (85%), educators and instructors (4%), independent consultants (6%), observers and others (5%). The respondent worked in private institutions (49%), state-owned companies (12%), educational institutions (11%), PR consultant (10%), government offices (7%) and others.

Another study (Ananto, 2001) of 144 respondents found out that the respondents worked in private institutions (48%), state-owned companies (32%) and multinational corporations (20%). 73% of the respondents had internal and external publics to handle, 16% handle internal and only 11% handle external public. Working as Staff (52%), Manager (39%), and Director (9%), the respondents were in-house practitioners (66%), academia (18%), Observer (9%) and Consultant (7%). Length of service in public relations positions range from 5 – 10 years (36%), less than 5 years (30%), 10 – 15 years (21%) and more than 15 years (13%).Most of the respondents came from social science as much as 84% and only 16% had acquired exact sciences. The monthly salary ranges from less than 3 million rups (16%), between 3 – 5 million rups (50%) and 34% of the respondents were salaried more than 6 million rups.

Both studies indicated that the higher the responsibility of a of practitioner is holding in a management position, the greater the demand a person has to acquire management science. It also found out that the more strategic the position of a practitioner in management position, the lesser tendency towards female practitioners as perceived to be the dominant figure in public relations practice.

(Ananto, 2001)