Bridge or buffer: two ideas of effective corporate governance and public engagement

• Published date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1555
• Date: 01 May 2016

■Academic Paper

Bridge or buffer: two ideas of effective

corporate governance and public

engagement

Soojin Kim

1

*and Jeong-Nam Kim

2

1

Singapore Management University, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore, Singapore

2

Purdue University, Brian Lamb School of Communication, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

This study identifies organizational factors that influence corporatate governance and formulation of public relations

strategies for public enagement. This study explores intertwined relationships between public relations strategies and

organizational factors. A total of 22 qualitative interviews were conducted with a diverse pool of communication con-

sultants. Results show that the two public relations strategies, bridging and buffering, are frequently observed and

linked with key factors such as size, organizational culture, environment specificity, and strategic orientation. Impli-

cations for future public relations and corporate governance research are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &

Sons, Ltd.

About two decades ago, a leading scholar of stake-

holder theory raised an important question that still

applies to today’s business practices: ‘How corpora-

tions should be governed and managers ought to

act’(Freeman, 1994, p. 413). Many management

scholars attempted to address this question with

varying results (e.g., Spitzeck & Hansen, 2010;

Sacconi, 2007; Shahin & Zairi, 2007). One definition

refers to corporate governance as a ‘set of principles

concerning the govering of companies and how

these principles are disclosed or communicated

externally’(Parum, 2005, p. 702), and hence, it

involves an organization’s communicative efforts

with its key stakeholders with an aim to achieve

its strategic goals.

There are two main approaches of corporate gov-

ernance: shareholder model and stakeholder model.

Although the shareholder model has dominated

corporate governance research and practice, it has

also been criticized because of its impracticality es-

pecially in the context of crisis management, its neg-

ligence of intrinsic values of various stakeholders,

and its incapability of addressing ethical responsi-

bilities for stakeholders (Margolis & Walsh, 2003).

Responding to the criticism of shareholder model

of corporate governance, scholars developed and

proposed the stakeholder model of corporate gover-

nance (e.g., Alpaslan et al., 2009).

Several scholars have conducted research on cor-

porate communication and governance (e.g., Ayuso

et al., 2006; Parum, 2006). Interestingly, there is rela-

tively little research on the stakeholder model of cor-

porate governance in the context of public relations

strategy as an engagement strategy. The dominant

coalition makes decisions on the basis of its under-

standing of publics who are affected by the behav-

iors of organizations. The public relations manager

should advise the dominant coalition about strategic

decisions that affect its governance as well as its pub-

lics (Grunig et al., 2002). Public relations strategy as

an engagement strategy should dictate how the be-

haviors of an organization should be governed in re-

lation to organization–public relationships and how

*Correspondence to: Soojin Kim, Singapore Management Univer-

sity, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, 50 Stamford Road,

Singapore, 128047, Singapore.

E-mail: soojin.pr@gmail.com

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 16 Number 2 pp 118–127 (2016)

Published online 16 January 2015 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1555

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.