Inquiring into activist publics in chronic environmental issues: use of the mutual‐gains approach for breaking a deadlock

• Published date: 01 November 2015
• Date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1554

■Academic Paper

Inquiring into activist publics in chronic

environmental issues: use of the mutual-

gains approach for breaking a deadlock

Soojin Kim

1

*, Jeong-Nam Kim

2

, Laishan Tam

2

and Gwang Tae Kim

3

1

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

2

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

3

Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, Ansan, South Korea

This study aims to understand different publics’communicative behaviors for problem solving surrounding an oil

spill issue in Korea. Specifically, it explores the differences between chronic activists and other types of publics who

were affected by this chronic environmental issue. A total of 24 interviews were conducted, from which five different

types of publics were identified. The findings suggest that the majority of activists who are currently working on the

issue are closed-chronic activists, which are slightly different from Ni and Kim’sfindings on chronic activists’

communicative behaviors. Interviews were also conducted with five communication experts to propose viable conflict

resolution strategies for the issue. The mutual-gains approach is recommended as a viable organization–public

conflict resolution strategy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Organizations operate with their own mission and

goals. These include basic goals such as survival

and profitability as well as relational goals such as

fewer conflicts with publics and building favorable

organization–public relationships. These relational

goals are especially critical for organizational effec-

tiveness (Grunig, Grunig, & Dozier, 2002), and

public relations has been acknowledged for its role

in contributing to these relational goals. However,

in reality, it is common for organizations and their

publics to have incompatible goals; as a result, they

encounter conflicts that are often long lasting. In this

backdrop, Plowman et al. (1995) suggest that public

relations be redefined as the ‘management of

conflict between an organization and its important

stakeholders’(p. 238).

Practicing public relations as conflict manage-

ment requires organizations to select their conflict

resolution strategies very carefully so as to mini-

mize conflicts before they escalate (Plowman,

Briggs, & Huang, 2001) or to end the stalemate in

negotiations with angry publics. Several scholars

have pointed out that how organizations perceive

conflicts and pressures from their environment and

publics determines what public relations strategies

organizations formulate to meet their goals (Grunig,

2009; Vujnovic, 2004). For example, some organiza-

tions resort to image-focused strategies to protect

themselves from publics’negative behaviors rather

than to protect their relationships with publics. In

contrast, other organizations proactively seek strate-

gies that align their goals with the interests of pub-

lics who are affected by their behaviors and

decisions, which in turn allow them to make more

*Correspondence to: Dr. Soojin Kim, Lee Kong Chian School of

Business, Singapore Management University, 50 Stamford Road

#05-01, Singapore.

E-mail: soojin.pr@gmail.com or soojinkim@smu.edu.sg

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 4 pp 404–422 (2015)

Published online 8 December 2014 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1554

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

responsible decisions (Grunig, 2006, 2009; Kim,

Bach, & Clelland, 2007; Kim & Ni, 2010).

We believe that using public relations strategies

as conflict resolution strategies or problem-solving

strategies for organization–public relationships is

one of the most significant areas of research that

deserve more scholarly attention. Because conflict

occurs when an organization and its publics do

not understand or accept each other’s interests

and concerns, public relations strategies for prob-

lem solving should be executed on the basis of the

mutual understanding of concerns and behaviors

between an organization and its publics. It is impor-

tant to acknowledge that publics can also use public

relations strategies to resolve issues that affect them

(Kim & Ni, 2013). Hence, public relations strategies

as problem-solving strategies should be viewed

from the perspectives of both organizations and

publics.

Previous research in public relations has focused

on symbolic relationships (Grunig, 1993) and

messaging strategies (e.g., Hazelton, 1993) and has

been organization-centric. For example, although

Werder (2009) attempted to link public relations

strategies to publics by analyzing how effective

message strategies were in influencing publics’situ-

ational perceptual responses, her study focused on

organization-oriented strategies that lack an expla-

nation of why and how publics behave in a certain

way, what problem-solving strategies publics use

to resolve the issue, and what strategies should be

used to narrow the gap between the two parties’

stances on the issue.

Therefore, we believe that it is important to un-

derstand the different types of publics and their

problem-solving behaviors in a conflict before pro-

posing public relations strategies for conflict resolu-

tion. There are several studies on the typology of

publics (e.g., Kim, Ni, & Sha, 2008; Hong, Park,

Lee, & Park, 2012; Kim, Ni, Kim, & Kim, 2012) that

differentiate the different types of publics. However,

there is still relatively little research on the different

types of activist publics and their communicative

actions for problem solving. McCown’s (2007) study

is one of the few studies that focus on specific types

of activists and their problem-solving strategies and

explore how internal activists utilize strategies to

narrow perceived communication gaps.

We found Ni and Kim’s (2009) typologies of pub-

lics useful in understanding the different types of

publics and their communicative behaviors in con-

troversial or conflicting situations. Their typologies

are developed on the basis of the assumption that

both an organization and its publics are problem

solvers in a conflict. Their work was significant in

informing scholars of the benefits of understanding

publics’behaviors, such as why they are either

open or closed to a problem-solving approach,

why they communicate proactively or reactively,

or why they stop communicating about issues

that affect them. By understanding the different

problem-solving approaches or public relations

strategies that diverse publics utilize, organizations

can better develop more realistic and practical strat-

egies so that both parties can bridge the gaps in

their positions.

We believe that it is worth examining whether Ni

and Kim’s (2009) framework of public evolution can

be applied to a different cultural setting. Because Ni

and Kim’s (2009) conceptualization of the evolution

of publics had some limitations (i.e., interviews

were conducted at one university in the USA, and

hence, most participants were students), we can fur-

ther examine the evolution of publics in an issue

over time by applying their proposed configura-

tions of publics to an issue that has affected a larger

population.

This study aims to provide a better understand-

ing of activist publics and their behaviors regarding

a chronic environmental issue in South Korea and to

suggest a public relations strategy as a problem-

solving strategy for the organization and the publics

involved. Not only does this study test the utility of

Ni and Kim’s (2009) framework for understanding

activist publics, but it also seeks to examine the

changes in how publics apply problem-solving

strategies to resolve an issue over time. Further-

more, because it is hard to reach a consensus on

chronic issues, it is important to gain some insights

from communication experts (CEs) in regard to con-

flict resolution.

Several steps were taken to address the goals of

the present study. First, it uses a case-based ap-

proach to better delineate the publics’problem-

solving behaviors and their changes over time. A

chronic environmental issue that affected a large

population in South Korea was thus selected to al-

low an identification of all possible types of publics

and their transitions over time. Second, although

this study specifically examines activist publics

who work on a chronic issue for several years, it is

still important to examine other types of publics in-

volved in the issue. Understanding other types of

publics helps to explain why we need to pay more

attention to the unique characteristics of activist

publics in the given issue; hence, in-depth inter-

views were conducted. Finally, interviews with

CEs were also conducted to gain insights about the

viable problem-solving strategies for the parties

involved.

Inquiring into activist publics 405

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Public Affairs 15, 404–422 (2015)

DOI: 10.1002/pa