Company level localization and public affairs officers' educational background in Switzerland

• Author: Laura Kristina Schilliger,Peter Seele
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• Date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1525

■Academic Paper

Company level localization and public

affairs officers’educational background

in Switzerland

Laura Kristina Schilliger*and Peter Seele

IMCA, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

As corporate public affairs officers have only rarely been researched in Switzerland, this study contributes a

situation analysis of Swiss public affairs officers, their work processes, and biographical background to further fill

this empirical gap.

First, the existing public affairs research regarding Switzerland is reviewed, and research questions are derived. The

research was conducted by sending out a survey to the members of the Swiss Association for Public Affairs, followed

by personalin-depth interviews with 11public affairs officers. The findingsshow that respondents work in organizations

that employ1 to 82,100 people areall Swiss nationals, andtheir departments aremostly called ‘public affairs’.Therespon-

sibility of public affairs is predominantly for senior or top management level, and the majority of public affairs officers

report to thedirector of their department.The respondents are highlyeducated. Moreover, the paper asks whetherpublic

affairs is conducted in a strategic way by takingFleisher’s 10 elements as a conceptual basis.Results show that strategic

involvement of their activities is rather low. Recommendations are discussed in order to increase the strategic

involvementand advance professionalizationof public affairs in Switzerlandwith specific regardfor the political system.

Copyright © 2014 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Switzerland is a comparatively particular case

partly because of the (semi)direct democracy and

the militia system; therefore, this article offers new

insights on public affair practices and biographical

backgrounds of public affairs (PA) professionals.

The research builds on previous examination of the

Swiss case (Hoffmann, Steiner, & Jarren, 2007; Lurati,

Mariconda, & Reinhold, 2011) and extends the

research agenda by applying and testing existing

PA theories and concepts that are rooted in and ap-

plied to representative, indirect democracies. PA is

also understood here to summarize all the corporate

functions that are related to the management of the

organization’s reputation with external audiences.

Usually, it includes lobbying, issues management,

and community relations (Mcgrath, Moss, & Harris,

2010, p. 337).

The majority of the theories of PA come from the

United States, where PA and lobbying are accepted

and regulated quite differently from Europe. The

importance and relevance of PA management could

be observed specifically in the last few years when

fast growing and successful new companies, such

as Facebook or Google, failed because they did not

engage in it: They had overlooked privacy issues

and did not expect organized stakeholders to act

(Fleisher, 2012). As a result, the function has been

growing constantly (Harris & Moss, 2001).

There is a demand for more European research

in the field (Mcgrath et al., 2010). Addressing this

claim, this paper focuses on corporate PA officers in

Switzerland, who have not been investigated before.

Moreover, Fleisher (2007) suggested various topics

to be researched for developing a PA body of

*Correspondence to: Laura Kristina Schilliger,University of Lugano,

Via Giuseppe Buffi13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerland.

E-mail: laura.kristina.schilliger@usi.ch; laura.k.schilliger@gmail.com

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 1 pp 101–109 (2015)

Published online 5 June 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1525

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.