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The double-edged sword of legitimacy in public relations

Henrik Merkelsen
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The double-
The double-edged sword of edged sword
legitimacy in public relations
Henrik Merkelsen
Department of International Culture and Communication Studies, 125
Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark
Received August 2010
Revised August 2010
Abstract Accepted December 2010
Purpose – This paper seeks to clarify the various aspects of legitimacy in public relations in order to
establish a better understanding of the limits of professionalization. Legitimacy has always been a
central concept in public relations. In order to ensure a license to operate, the conduct of organizations
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needs to be perceived as legitimate by their stakeholders and the public in general. Public relations has
since its conception as a modern profession been confronted with several issues concerning the
profession’s own legitimacy. The overall cause for these legitimacy problems is often ascribed to the
immaturity of the profession and professionalization is generally regarded as an appropriate cure.
Design/methodology/approach – Through theorization of the connection between legitimacy,
power and professionalization the paper points to two important challenges to the professionalization
of public relations: the conflicts of legitimizing the potentially disputed role of public relations as an
intermediary function between client and public interests; and the dilemma of legitimizing a profession
that has legitimacy as its own object and therefore is dependent on discretion in order to be successful.
Findings – The paper identifies four axes of legitimacy in public relations, each constituting different
relationships with specific and often conflicting legitimacy claims: client-public, profession-client,
profession-public, and profession-academia.
Originality/value – As a consequence of these distinct legitimacy claims the paper stresses some
important limits of the professionalization project in public relations.
Keywords Public relations, Organizations
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Not only is legitimacy, as a fundamental challenge in the relationship between business
and society, the very object of the public relations profession, the public relations
profession is itself subject to challenges of legitimacy in its relations with clients as
well as with the public. Furthermore, public relations as a scholarly field is struggling
for academic prestige, a struggle that is similar to (and often overlap) the profession’s
attempts to legitimize itself. Despite the miscellaneous aspects of legitimacy in public
relations, professionalism is often suggested as a universal cure to the problem.
Professionalism is to resolve the general unflattering reputation of public relations
(Broom and Dozier, 1983; Hon, 1998) and some of the measures suggested are
guidelines for measurements of effectiveness (e.g. Lindenmann, 1997) and objectives
(e.g. Anderson and Hadley, 1999), global standards for professional ethics (Kruckeberg,

A draft version of this paper was presented at the CIPR Conference – Stirling 21, University of Journal of Communication
Management
Stirling, September 2009. The author wishes to express his gratitude for the generous feedback Vol. 15 No. 2, 2011
on the presentation from the fellow participants of the Conference. The comments from two pp. 125-143
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
anonymous reviewers have substantially strengthened the arguments of the paper. A special 1363-254X
thanks to them. DOI 10.1108/13632541111126355
 JCOM 1993) and a professional certification as known from lawyers (Pieczka and L’Etang,
15,2 2001). Better professional training and education is supposedly the key to higher
professional standards (Ehling, 1992; L’Etang and Pieczka, 2006b).
Although it would be foolish to argue against education as a necessary means to
improve professional practice, it is appropriate to reflect upon the limits of
professionalization in terms of the sometimes conflicting aspects of legitimacy in
126 public relations. This paper argues that in order to exploit the full potential of a
theory-based professionalization, the legitimacy of public relations needs a more
systematic examination than the public relations literature has accomplished thus far.
The paper points to a fundamental challenge regarding the professionalization of
public relations when confronted with legitimate claims of the clients on the one hand
and the public on the other hand. This challenge constitutes the double-edged sword of
legitimacy. Another equally important challenge is: How to legitimize a profession which
has legitimacy as one of its own constitutional elements and core concepts. Unveiling
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how these challenges has been dealt with in public relations theory can explain how the
legitimacy issues in the field – both in terms of practice and in terms of theory – have
become interconnected in a way that has caught public relations in a theoretical stasis.
As a point of departure for future research on legitimacy in public relations, the
paper identifies four separate axes that constitute fundamental challenges to the
legitimacy of public relations as a profession as well as an academic discipline. The
first axis pertains to the relationship between the organization and the public(s) where
the public relations function serves as an intermediary. This axis is termed the
client-public axis. The second axis pertains to the relationship between the public
relations function itself and the public(s). As the public relations function is embedded
in the profession as a whole, this axis is termed the profession-public axis. The third
axis pertains to the relationship between the organization (or client) and the public
relations professional. This axis is termed the client-profession axis. The fourth axis
pertains to the relation between the public relations as a professions vis-à-vis a
scholarly field and is termed the profession-academia axis.
The arguments of the paper fall in five sections. The first section defines legitimacy
and emphasizes the relationship between power and legitimacy and how this
relationship feeds into the challenge of professionalization. The second section
identifies two major dilemmas in the professionalization project. It furthermore
suggests that as a side effect to the solution of these dilemmas different aspects of
legitimacy in public relations have become intertwined in a way that has complicated
theoretical progression in the field. The third section identifies four axes of legitimacy
and point to their implications for public relations practice and theory. The fourth
section addresses the double-edged sword of legitimacy by looking into some of the
most noticeable problems of legitimacy in public relations. The fifth section describes
how public relations theory has dealt with the double-edged sword of legitimacy and
reassesses the legitimacy problems from the perspective of organizational hypocrisy. It
stresses that while hypocrisy may be a legitimate means for the public relations
profession it is not a sustainable foundation for public relations theory. The paper
concludes by stressing that if theory is to progress beyond fruitless debates over the
ethical status of public relations and maintain a position as an authority within its
proper domain, future studies must take into account the multifaceted nature of
legitimacy in public relations.
 Legitimacy, power, and professionalization The double-
The concept of legitimacy is a cornerstone in politics where: edged sword
[l]egitimacy involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief
that existing political institutions are the most appropriate or proper ones for the society
(Lipset, 1959).
But the concept is not limited to politics as any system or organization needs active or 127
passive support from its environment in order to survive. Most contemporary studies
of legitimacy are to be found in the vast and expanding literature about organizations.
In a seminal paper Suchman addresses the various definitions of legitimacy and
proposes a broad and inclusive definition of his own:
Legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are
desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values,
beliefs, and definitions (Suchman, 1995, p. 574, emphasis in original).
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Although legitimacy is “at the core of most, if not all, public relations activities”
(Metzler, 2001) the concept has attracted very sparse attention from public relations
scholars (Wæraas, 2009). Several scholars have pointed to legitimacy as a central topic
in future public relation theories (Boyd, 2000; Massey, 2001; Vercic et al., 2001; van
Ruler and Vercic, 2005; Gower, 2006), but the topic remains rather unexplored. When
public relations theory addresses the topic of legitimacy, it is however possible to
identify two lines of influence from political science, sociology and philosophy.

A societal perspective: the devotion to dialogue

The first line of influence stems from the era of enlightenment and the subsequent
devotion to dialogue as a vehicle for public reasoning, although the link to legitimacy
mostly remains unspoken. The idea that political decisions need legitimation from
public engagement through dialogue is central to contemporary theories about
deliberative democracy (e.g. Habermas, 1989, 1996; Rawls, 1993). In public relations
these ideals can be traced back to Ivy Lee’s “Declaration of Principles” and more recent
in Grunig’s persistent defence of the moral superiority of the two-way symmetrical
model (e.g. Grunig, 2006). The contemporary celebration of dialogue in public relations
theory (Kent and Taylor, 2002) falls into this category as well.
It is a particular conception of legitimacy that Grunig and colleagues employ. While
the public relations objectives (i.e. mediating between an organization and its publics)
acknowledge the latent nature of societal norms, the measures used to affect these
norms (two-way symmetrical communication) is attached to a procedural legitimacy
(Suchman, 1995) which is founded on a moral imperative. In other words: the
relationship between an organization and its environment is defined by a pragmatic
notion of legitimacy, while the public relations measures employed to mediate between
the parties are defined by a moral notion of legitimacy. This construction corresponds
to the Habermasian concept of discourse ethics (Habermas, 1990) and meets similar
challenges as to explaining the foundation of a procedural legitimacy – as illustrated
in the discussion between Habermas and Rawls (see, e.g. Lafont, 2003).
Although the functional approach introduced by Grunig and colleagues has met
vast criticism and several alternative approaches have been proposed, critical and
similar competing approaches to public relations has uncritically adopted the moral
imperative behind the procedural legitimacy. This has led to endless discussions about
 JCOM whether public relations is ethical or not, while the foundation for the moral yardstick that
15,2 ethics in public relations is measured by remains rather unexplored. The impact of those
alternative approaches still remains rather peripheral and it would be an exaggeration to
label these approaches as established paradigms. In the following discussions this paper
distinguishes roughly between the dominant vis-à-vis the critical paradigms[1].

128 A managerial perspective: licence to operate

The second line of influence comes from sociologists like Weber (1978) and Parsons
(1960), but often the influence has gone through organization theories that “have made
legitimacy into an anchor-point of a vastly expanded theoretical apparatus addressing
the normative and cognitive forces that constrain, construct, and empower
organizational actors” (Suchman, 1995, p. 571). According to Suchman these studies
can be divided into Institutional Legitimacy Theory and Strategic Legitimacy Theory.
The former, consisting of neo-institutional approaches (e.g. Powell and DiMaggio, 1991;
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Meyer and Rowan, 1991; Scott, 1995) and organizational population ecology (e.g. Hannan
and Freeman, 1989; Zucker, 1989), has its focus on how certain organizational structures
have gained acceptance from society at large. In this tradition “legitimacy and
institutionalization are virtually synonymous” (Suchman, 1995, p. 576). The latter is
more concerned with the managerial perspectives on how to gain acceptance from
society and build up legitimacy as a resource similar to other organizational assets. This
strategic perspective on organizational legitimacy is predominant within resource
dependency theory (e.g. Dowling and Pfeffer, 1975; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Ashforth
and Gibbs, 1990) and it is mainly here we find the influence on public relations theory.
In public relations the strategic legitimacy is often treated under the headline of licence
to operate (e.g. Heath, 2001), because being legitimate “enables organizations to attract
resources necessary for survival (e.g., scarce materials, patronage, political approval)”
(Hearit, 1995). As Habermas (1979) has argued, the concept of legitimacy tends to become
important only when legitimacy is questioned. This observation corresponds to the
taken-for-grantedness that is entailed in the concept of legitimacy (Suchman, 1995).
Therefore it should not come as a surprise that most of the public relations literature that
actually deals with organizational legitimacy is to be found in the more specific domains
of issues management (e.g. Coombs, 1992; Pratt, 2001; Heath, 2002) and crisis
communication (e.g. Hearit, 1995; Coombs and Holladay, 1996; Heath et al., 2009).

Two major dilemmas in the professionalization project

When organizations attract critical attention from the media or interest groups it is not
solely because their actions are controversial. Their size and subsequent impact on
society are important factors as well. For that reason organizations with prominent
brands are more exposed to critical attention than less visible organizations (Dezenhall
and Weber, 2007, p. 201). Leading brands are not only highly visible targets. They also
signal power, and:
[t]he obverse of the exercise of power, for the business firm as for the state, is the problem of
legitimizing that power (Mitchell, 1986, p. 199).
As Weber comment on the relationship between power and legitimacy there is a:
Generally observable need of any power, or even of any advantage of life, to justify itself. The
fates of human beings are not equal. Men differ in their states of health or wealth or social
 status or what not. Simple observation shows that every such situation he who is more The double-
favoured feels the never-ceasing need to look upon his position as in some way “legitimate”,
upon his advantage as “deserved”, and the other’s disadvantage as being brought about by edged sword
the latter “fault”. That the purely accidental causes of the difference may be ever so obvious
makes no difference (Weber, 1978, p. 953).
The logic is simple: The more powerful an organization, institution or whatever entity
is perceived to be, the more it needs to legitimize itself. 129
The relationship between power and legitimacy is central to the professionalization
of public relations. Professionalization is also empowerment (Pieczka and L’Etang,
2001). Building up a profession is a way of ensuring the legitimacy, or
taken-for-grantedness, through an institutionalization of the power that members of
this profession exercise. In public relations, however, the project of professionalization
is bound to face two major dilemmas.
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The first dilemma: who benefits from the professionalization?

According to Larson (1977) the main driver for professionalization is the marketability
of a certain service, hence the costumers constitute the focal point of professional
legitimization efforts. But getting social acceptance from customers is not enough to
build up a profession. Professions are dependent upon a wider societal acceptance. For
instance:
[a]ll professions, in their pursuit of monopoly and privilege, have to enter into a special
relation with the state, but lawyers in all parts of the division of legal labour have a specific
relation with the state (MacDonald, 1995, p. 20 – my italics).
In the case of the public relations profession a similar “specific relation” is required,
namely that to the public. The public relations practitioner, sometimes referred to as a
lawyer in the court of public opinion (Hutton, 1999), is dependent upon social
acceptance from the public if he is to successfully defend his client in the court of public
opinion.
This is the first dilemma: Who benefits from the professionalization and to whom is
it desirable, proper, or appropriate and hence a potential object of legitimation? When
the professionalization project focuses on the marketability, for example by providing
planning procedures and metrics that lead to a more successful defence in the court of
public opinion, this will affect the power balance between the client-organization and
the public. The client-organization will gain power which again has to legitimize itself.
But it is not only the client-organization that faces new challenges to its legitimacy.
When public relations by the public, on whose acceptance it is dependent, is identified
as a profession that empowers the client-organization in the court of public opinion, the
PR profession itself is bound to face challenges to its legitimacy. This fundamental
dilemma fosters public scepticism towards the PR profession, a challenge that the PR
function often seeks to deal with by either making itself invisible to the public, for
example by disguising itself as corporate social responsibility, or by insisting on being
a boundary spanner or intermediary between the management function and publics.
While invisibility may be a viable solution to the PR practitioner it does not contribute
to the legitimacy of the profession. In order to assist the legitimization efforts towards
the public it is favourable for the PR profession to define itself as a boundary spanner,
insisting on terms such as symmetry, dialogue and mutual understanding rather than
 JCOM advocacy. In this sense the PR practitioner becomes a special kind of lawyer which
15,2 represents both parties in a potential controversy, thus disregarding the conflicting
stakeholder demands and expectations that are associated with this role.

The second dilemma: how to legitimize a profession that has legitimacy as its own object?
The institutionalization of any profession aims at not only getting public acceptance
130 but also at legitimizing itself in a more radical way, so as to make its exercise of power
seem natural and self evident to the public. This taken-for-grantedness represents the
most subtle and powerful source for legitimacy because:
for things to be otherwise is literally unthinkable (Suchman, 1995, p. 583, italics in original).
Legitimacy in this respect is not just about adjusting professional behavior to societal
norms; it is also the active yet subtle influence on these norms.
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Influencing public opinion and societal norms is the proper domain of public
relations practice, and as such any attempt of professionalization rests upon practices
that belong to the domain of public relations. But as the precondition for a subtle and
hence successful influence on societal norms is that the effort is unnoticed by the
public, the professionalization of public relations becomes a complicated project. In this
respect, identifying something as “just PR” constitutes a stigmatization of an
unsuccessful attempt of influence[2]. The logic of this mechanism is a major challenge
to the professionalization of public relations. While other professions can benefit from
subtle and discrete public relations techniques in their professionalization projects, this
is not an option in the professionalization of public relations. Trying to make the
elements of public relations invisible in the promotion of the PR profession would be
both absurd and impossible.
This is the second dilemma: How can you legitimize a profession that has legitimacy
as its own object and therefore is dependent upon discretion in order to be successful?
The professionalization project has sought to overcome the first dilemma by defining
public relations in terms of mutuality rather than advocacy. Although this solution
disregards the potential conflict between client and public interests it assists the
professionalization project insofar that it offers a relief from these tensions. But the
tensions reappear within the theoretical domain of public relations in the ongoing
debates about the ethical status of public relations.
While the first dilemma has found a pragmatic, although theoretically unstable,
solution there is no remedy for the second dilemma. Together these two dilemmas
contribute to a theoretical instability as PR theory continuously reproduces issues of
professional legitimacy as a “part of the field’s self-reflective institutionalization”
(Christensen and Langer, 2009).
Some scholars have suggested that the current state of affairs in PR theories is a
consequence of the profession being young and immature (L’Etang and Pieczka, 1996).
But the profession in its modern conception is more than a hundred years old and there
has been an enormous amount of theory building and theoretical discussions for
several decades (Sallot et al., 2003; Botan and Hazleton, 2006). The fundamental
problems, however, remain the same and the theoretical debates have had difficulties
in advancing beyond the question of whether public relations is ethical or not. Part of
the problem is how the legitimization project has intertwined different aspects of
legitimacy in public relations. This may have been advantageous to the
 professionalization project but it has at the same time produced some theoretical The double-
confusions. The following section tries to sort out some of this confusion by pointing to edged sword
four specific categories of legitimacy in public relations.

The four axes of legitimacy in public relations

Although Weber considers power to be a resource as opposed to a relational conception
of power (see, e.g. Dahl, 1957), legitimacy as the reverse side of power always involves 131
other people’s perceptions and therefore is essentially relational. In addressing the
dilemmas of professionalization in public relations it is possible to identify four main
categories that define different relationships of legitimacy.
The fundamental challenge is the legitimacy issues that arise between
organizations and their environment (whether this is termed stakeholders,
constituents or publics). This is the first category and the relationship of legitimacy
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is defined by an axis with the client-organization and the public at each pole. But as we
have seen, situating the PR function as an intermediary imposes new aspects of
legitimacy. The professionalization of public relations has to gain acceptance from the
public as well as from the boardroom and thus has to legitimize itself from a potentially
disputed point of departure. This dilemma involves two separate axes of legitimacy
that constitute the second and the third category, each axis with the client vis-à-vis the
public at one pole and the public relations profession at the other. Furthermore the
process of professionalization is supported by a scholarly field that itself is struggling
for academic prestige and legitimacy. This fourth and last category is defined by an
axis with the public relations profession at one pole and academia at the other. This
leaves us with four distinct yet often intertwined axes of legitimacy in public relations:
the client-public axis, the profession-client axis, the profession-public axis, and the
profession-academia axis.

The client-public axis of legitimacy

This is the axis that involves the fundamental legitimacy problem, as corporations
which fail to respond to the expectations of the public risk losing their license to
operate and being perceived as “soulless monsters” (Marchand, 2001). The PR
profession owes its existence to that very problem but it is important to note that the
PR profession is not the problem owner of this legitimacy problem. By defining itself as
an intermediary or boundary spanner the PR profession is accountable both to the
client and to the public, thus facing the double-edged sword of legitimacy.
Although this axis constitutes the proper domain of public relations, studies are
dominated by scholars in different disciplinary branches within organization theory
such as organizational population ecology (Hannan and Freeman, 1989; Zucker, 1989),
resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978), and neo-institutional
approaches (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Scott, 1987; Scott, 1995; Meyer and Rowan,
1991).
As efforts to achieve legitimacy tend to be more successful when they operate
through subtle and discrete means, the stigmatization of public relations constitutes an
obstacle to the achievement of organizational legitimacy. In this respect corporate
social responsibility offers itself to organizations as a competing approach that is not
(yet) contaminated by public distrust. But as PR and CSR by and large share both ends
and operational means (Clark, 2000), perhaps we should be less concerned with the
 JCOM threat of CSR outperforming PR. The case may rather be that PR in order to obtain its
15,2 objectives often finds it advantageous to disguise itself as CSR. As such the
consequences of this threat are of minor relevance to the PR practice although it may
cause some problems as to the professional identity of practitioners. The theoretical
implications, however, are important because public relations theory loses terrain to
competing theories such as corporate social responsibility.
132
The profession-public axis of legitimacy
This is the axis that deals with how public relations practices affect society and how
the public perceives the PR profession in terms of legitimacy. Theories that focus on
this axis are often to be found within the critical paradigm, emphasizing the effects that
public relations has on society. But the dominant paradigm has an important link to
this axis insofar that Grunig’s two-way symmetrical model can be viewed as an
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attempt to ensure the procedural legitimacy of the profession.

As attempts to build up organizational legitimacy are likely to be more successful
when the operational means are subtle and discrete, efficient public relations practices
often involve strategies that aim at making the client’s PR effort less controversial in
the public, e.g. by disguising corporate PR initiatives as corporate social responsibility.
The PR function serves its own and the client’s interests best by making itself invisible
to the public, as the credibility of corporate messages drop dramatically when
associated with public relations (Callison, 2001).
The invisibility of effective public relations is not a problem to the practice of public
relations. On the contrary, the problems tend to arise only when public relations
becomes visible, and hence an easy target for stigmatization. While practitioners in the
field deal with the unflattering reputation of public relations in a pragmatic way, the
underlying mechanisms, however, have major implications for the theoretical debate
between the dominant and the critical paradigms in public relations. In relation to the
public both paradigms implicitly define the procedural legitimacy of the profession in
terms of a moral imperative. As a consequence these debates never progress beyond
predictable and pointless arguments concerning the ethical status of the PR profession,
thus leaving important questions regarding how public relations can contribute to
resolving societal problems of legitimacy unanswered and unanswerable.

The profession-client axis of legitimacy

This is the axis that deals with accountability and professional legitimacy in a more
narrow sense. Theories that focus on this axis are predominantly normative and often
to be found within the dominant paradigm, emphasizing the effects public relations has
in terms of supporting client objectives. The fundamental question is how the PR
profession can document its efforts to the client, but obviously the legitimacy of the PR
profession in the public enters as a critical factor in the relationship to the client. In
practice this critical factor is evident when client relationships are surrounded by
“professional secrecy”.
Defining public relations as corporate communication, public affairs or the like is a
way of resolving the legitimacy problems in the relation to the client. In this tendency
the stigmatization of public relations is accompanied by the successful introduction of
convincing metrics of corporate reputation and brand equity. Accordingly, disciplines
such as corporate communication appear as successful competitors to public relations.
 But similar to the case of CSR defining the practice as corporate communication may The double-
only be a superficial way of avoiding stigmatization. Again the practical consequences edged sword
may be minor, but the theoretical implications great if public relations theory loses
terrain to competing theories.

The profession-academia axis of legitimacy

As the establishment of professional training programs is one of the basic 133
requirements in any professionalization project (Wilensky, 1964) the link between the
profession and academia is of major importance to the professionalization of public
relations. In the PR literature education and research together with ethics and
certification are generally understood as the defining characteristics of a profession
(Pieczka and L’Etang, 2001), and if judged solely by the number of university courses
and programs in public relations, academia has made a successful contribution to the
professionalization process. But despite its apparent success public relations as a
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theoretical discipline is struggling for academic prestige and its strong relation to the
profession is sometimes subject to critical remarks concerning the intellectual capacity
of public relations as a scholarly field (e.g. Cheney and Christensen, 2001). Thus, public
relations as a distinct scholarly field faces a challenge in legitimizing itself as an
academic discipline (see, e.g. Botan and Hazleton, 2006). Apparently public relations as
a scholarly field faces a dilemma of conflicting stakeholder demands similar to the
double-edged sword that characterizes the relationships between the profession and
the client-organization vis-a-vis the public. In this case PR academics face conflicting
demands from the academic establishment and PR practice.
This tension may be an important factor in explaining why many researchers in the
field prefer to define themselves in other terms than public relations and in a similar
vein why the emergence of competing disciplines has had a great appeal over the past
decade. This is most noticeable within the field of organizational communication,
which is not hampered by the reality of any profession and is widely recognized as an
intellectually strong scholarly field. Thus, organizational communication is a strong
competitor to corporate communication, CSR and similar theories in threatening the
theoretical domain of public relations.

The fundamental legitimacy problems of the public relations profession

This section deals with the double-edged sword of legitimacy in light of the four axes
of legitimacy identified in the previous section. It addresses the conflicts of legitimacy
that arises between the profession-public axis and the client-profession axis as these
conflicts constitute the main challenge to the professionalization project.

Ensuring legitimacy in the public

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. The
title of this critical analysis of the public relations profession from Stauber and
Rampton (1995) captures the essence of the public distrust in public relations. Research
into the credibility of PR professionals reveals the same unflattering image of the
profession: The public generally thinks of PR professionals as untrustworthy (Sallot,
2002; Callison, 2001, 2004; Edwards, 2006). In this regard the skepticism from the
general public is similar to the reasoning of critical scholars that see public relations as
a manipulating and unethical practice (e.g. Olasky, 1987; L’Etang, 1996).
 JCOM Although ethics, trust and legitimacy are different concepts and one does not
15,2 necessarily presuppose or lead to the other, there is a general tendency that:
audiences perceive the legitimate organization not only as more worthy, but also as more
meaningful, more predictable, and more trustworthy (Suchman, 1995, p. 575, italics in
original).

134 In this respect legitimacy serves as a reservoir of continuously confirmed positive

expectations that build up trust. And consequently the lack of trust is often a symptom
of underlying legitimacy problems.
In the case of public relation the public distrust is not just a consequence of being
identified as a henchman for corporate interests. Surely an enlightened public will
treat any partisan contribution with some skepticism. But the public distrust in
corporations does not per se affect the legitimacy of corporations. The public distrust
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in public relations, however, exceeds this healthy skepticism and to some degree this
hyper skepticism may be produced by the efforts to stage public relations as an
intermediary. As such the professionalization project with its apparent solution to the
double-edged sword of legitimacy has paradoxically fostered even more public
distrust.
In explaining the relationship between truth and politics Hanna Arendt compares
the old-fashioned portrait with the modern image. While the portrait is supposed to
flatter the reality, the image is supposed to offer a full-fledged substitute for it (Arendt,
1961, p. 252). The staging of public relations as an intermediary between client and
public interests as opposed to an advocacy for client interests constitutes a similar
transformation. But as public skepticism towards modern image making has been
increasing, a profession proclaiming the alleged objectiveness or neutrality associated
with image making cannot expect to avoid stigmatization simply by stating slogans
such as “Down with Image, Up with Reality” (Bernays, 1977). The credibility problem
is irreversible once the public has identified public relations as the profession which
capitalizes from confusing the distinctions between image and reality, and in this case
the public distrust does affect legitimacy.
Some years ago the image problem of the public relations occupation led to a
discussion in UK about whether public relations would benefit from a name change
(Theaker, 2004, pp. 321-3). Although a name change would probably just confirm the
critics in their perception of public relations as the art of throwing smoke screens or
sugarcoating unpleasant truths, many PR agencies and corporate PR departments
today define themselves in terms of “reputation management”, “corporate
communication” etc. In doing so they avoid the stigmatization of being associated
with public relations (Freeman et al., 2010), but at the same time this practice
contributes to the identity crisis of public relations (Hutton, 1999).
These legitimacy problems are situated on the profession-public axis. But as the
objective of professionalization is to “win social approval to define and control their
work and their relationships with other actors such as clients” (Pieczka and L’Etang,
2001, p. 225) the relation between the PR profession and the public becomes a means
rather than an end. The main objective is to establish a favorable position in relation to
the client, and as such profession-public axis and the client-profession axis cannot be
separated in the professionalization project.
 Ensuring legitimacy in the board room The double-
As we have seen, it is not only in relation to the public that the PR profession faces edged sword
severe legitimacy problems. PR professionals also lack recognition from their clients or
from the management when working in-house. Many organizational staff functions
aspire to become management functions and so does public relations. This competition
for managerial recognition is an important factor in the domain battles between the
softer business disciplines such as marketing, PR, HR and IT. To some extent these 135
battles for professional prestige are paradoxical as the conception of these distinct
professions is the result of a necessity for specialization that in the first place is meant
to relieve the management from information overload (see, e.g. Galbraith, 1974).
However, this does not prevent these disciplines from competing for prestige and
power; a competition that is very intense between public relations and marketing
(Hutton, 2001). Although the predominance of one over the other is contingent upon
factors such as type of industry and geographical region, it is fair to say that marketing
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has won this competition (Hutton, 2001) – not only in terms of access to management
but also in terms of introducing a managerial ideology where concepts such as internal
marketing and internal consumers have been successfully adopted in many
organizations.
The relation to marketing imposes two major threats to the professional identity of
public relations as an intermediary between the client and the public. First and
foremost, the subordination of public relations to marketing, as an element of free
publicity within the promotional mix, threatens the notion of symmetry. When public
relations is subordinated to marketing it becomes a henchman for corporate interests,
i.e. it becomes inherently asymmetrical. The other threat has to do with accountability.
Where marketing has been successful in documenting results, it has been difficult for
public relations to do the same (Broom and Dozier, 1983; Fairchild, 2002; Laborde and
Pompper, 2006). This misfortune may not be accidental as it can be a challenge to set
up metrics for measuring concepts such as “mutual understanding”. Practical attempts
for creating PR metrics have, however, focused less on mutuality and more on
supporting client objectives (e.g. Lindenmann, 1997).
These legitimacy problems are situated on the client-profession axis, and although
the object of professionalization on this axis is related to the ability to document value
for money, the broad social approval of the profession cannot be neglected as a
necessary resource.

How public relations theory has dealt with legitimacy

As we have seen, the profession-public axis and the client-profession axis become
inseparable in the professionalization project. The position as an intermediary seems to
be both a solution to and a continuous source for the legitimacy problems that
constitute the double-edged sword. As a result the legitimacy of the PR profession is
marked by a high degree of instability. While the potential conflicts associated with
this solution probably constitute a general condition for the profession, it is fair to say
that in the light of these circumstances the professionalization project has been
successful: In the absence of a real solution to the conflicts, trying to hide them is an
acceptable alternative.
But from a theoretical perspective the failure to distinguish between the different
axes of legitimacy has resulted in important theoretical confusions. The following
 JCOM section points to how the dominant paradigm in public relations in its efforts to assist
15,2 the professionalization project uncritically has adopted the intermixture of the
profession-public axis and the client-profession axis as a point of departure for the
excellence studies in public relations.

The uncritical promotion of professional legitimacy

136 A brief look into the history of the discipline yields some insights that can serve as an
explanation for the legitimacy problem in public relations. First and foremost the
literature about public relations has for many years been produced by professionals.
Grunig ascribes to himself the honor of being the first academic to introduce scientific
methods in the theory development of the field (Grunig, 2006) leading to the theories of
excellence in public relations, which form the theoretical basis for the dominant
paradigm in public relations research today.
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The famous four-in-one model introduced by Grunig and Hunt (1984) and the
theoretical assumptions behind it served as an initial platform that had great
explanatory value both in terms of accounting for the evolution of PR practice and as a
normative guide. The devotion to symmetrical communication as a way of equaling
out unequal power positions has, however, been widely criticized (e.g. Miller, 1989;
L’Etang, 1996; Berger, 2005; Roper, 2005; Stoker and Tusinski, 2006) and so has the
systemic notion of public relations as an intermediary function between the
organization (management or dominant coalition) and the public (e.g. Pieczka, 2006).
Despite confusions about whether the Grunigian two-way symmetrical model is to
be considered a descriptive or a normative model – or both – empirical evidence
suggests that PR practitioners are more loyal to corporate agendas than to public
interests (Gabrielsen, 2004), thus introducing some imbalance to the alleged symmetry.
And as the research findings in the excellence project have failed to confirm the
evolution thesis – and rather confirm Grunig’s (1984) initial contingency thesis – this
paper argues that the dominant paradigm within PR theory with its ‘ethical
persistence’ (see, e.g. Grunig, 2001) serves mainly to ensure the legitimacy of the
profession itself.
This argument is further strengthened by the examination of a wide range of PR
textbooks – including Grunig and Hunt’s Managing Public Relations from 1984 – by
Peggy Hoy and her colleagues. They argue that the presentation of PR history as an
evolution going from manipulation to dialogue has very little to do with research based
history writing and can rather be explained as an attempt to inscribe public relations
into a certain theoretical paradigm (Hoy et al., 2006). It is reasonable to interpret the
ethical evolution thesis, which is present from Goldman’s (1948) notion of
the-public-be-informed to Grunig’s ideas about the supremacy of two-way
symmetrical communication, as a way of dealing with the double-edged sword of
legitimacy. In this case, promoting a theoretical concept of the PR function as a
boundary spanner that operates through an ethically sound two-way dialogue serves
neither as a representation of reality nor as a case of best practice but rather as a way of
ensuring the legitimacy of the PR profession.

Hypocrisy as a necessary strategy

While theoretical development is a precondition for professionalization there is no
point in arguing against academia contributing to professional legitimacy. But in the
 case of public relations the interface between the practical challenges of The double-
professionalization and the role of academia has led to an important theoretical edged sword
delusion. The delusion has to do with how the profession-public axis and the
client-profession axis have become intertwined in a way that conceals the fundamental
conflict associated with the double-edged sword of legitimacy.
The idealistic presentation of public relations as ethical by the dominant paradigm
and the predictable critical counterstatements (e.g. L’Etang and Pieczka, 2006a) deal with 137
the double-edged sword of legitimacy, each from a different perspective. Both
perspectives fail, however, to make explicit the definition and context of legitimacy.
Furthermore both perspectives more or less explicitly measure the ethics of public
relations practice with a moral yardstick that do not take into account the very dynamics
of legitimacy and how its institutionalizing effects are intertwined with societal norms.
As public relations is actively engaged in influencing public opinion it should not –
and by definition cannot subjugate itself to societal norms as moral imperatives. This
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goes without saying when it comes to the results of successful public relations efforts
that aim at changing the public attitudes that constitute societal norms. But it is
equally important when it comes to the procedural legitimacy of the public relations
techniques employed in these efforts. In this respect embracing concepts such as
symmetry and dialogue may serve as a pragmatic illusion for the PR profession,
because those concepts correspond to deeply rooted ideals about public reasoning that
goes back to the era of enlightenment. But publicly speaking up for well-established
societal norms has never prevented anyone from setting these norms aside when
judged appropriate.
Like the proposals from Machiavelli (1988) to his Prince, public relations practitioners
must deal with societal norms and moral obligations as variables. In Machavelli’s own
words this activity involves a great deal of hypocrisy. Brunsson’s (1989, 2003) defines
organized hypocrisy as the tactic of separating the causality of talk, decision and action.
This maneuver allows for the organization to say something different from what it
actually decides or does. From an organizational point of view this is sometimes a
necessary, and hence legitimate, strategy when dealing with conflicting stakeholder
expectations. When legitimacy in public relations is stretched out on an axis between
client and public interests, hypocrisy becomes necessary and legitimate from the client’s
perspective, simply because hypocrisy ensures better conditions for effective public
relations. A crucial part of this hypocrisy is the presentation of public relations as an
ethical enterprise devoted to ideals of symmetry and dialogue.
From the perspective of PR practitioners the celebration of dialogue is both
understandable and justifiable, because it offers a relief from the tensions associated
with their potentially disputed function as intermediary between client and public
interests. But from a theoretical perspective more attention needs to be given to how
the celebration of dialogue sometimes is assisted by a heavy dose of hypocrisy. Since
the era of enlightenment the concept of public dialogue has occupied a position as a
normative ideal in western democracies and because of this position the concept is
open to strategies of hypocrisy (Merkelsen, n.d.). In order to explore this, it is crucial
that public relations theory emancipate itself from the ethical constraints that cause
this hypocrisy.
In this respect the two-way symmetrical model serves as an example of an uncritical
adoption of societal norms. Instead of studying how public relations affects societal
 JCOM norms (in casu the devotion to dialogue), the dominant paradigm has uncritically
15,2 adopted those norms and made them into a theoretical cornerstone. These norms
should rather be the object of investigation than the foundation for the investigation.
But the dominant paradigm is not alone in this mistake. The moral imperative
associated with the procedural legitimacy of public relations has caught the entire
debate between the dominant paradigm and the critical paradigm in a theoretical
138 stasis, and the rejection of this imperative is a precondition for advancements in the
studies of legitimacy in public relations.

Concluding remarks
The paper has pointed to two important challenges as to the professionalization of
public relations. Legitimacy is the key word in both of these challenges. First, the
notion of the public relations professional as an intermediary between client and public
interests imposes a fundamental challenge. One of the public relations professional’s
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main responsibilities is to ensure the organizational legitimacy of the client. But client
and public objectives may not be compatible, and increased efficiency in meeting client
objectives is likely to affect the public acceptance of the profession negatively.
Secondly, attempts to legitimize an entity are more successful when subtle and discrete
means are employed. As public relations is the instrument by which organizations gain
legitimacy, the public relations efforts will be more efficient insofar as they avoid
attracting attention to themselves. Both challenges point to important limits of the
professionalization project in public relations.
Given those limits, the paper has argued that the celebration of mutuality and
symmetry as a way of concealing the conflicts which obstruct the professional
legitimacy of public relations may be an appropriate solution to PR practice. But PR
theory would benefit from a more systematic examination of the different aspects of
legitimacy in public relations. The paper has furthermore argued that the procedural
legitimacy associated with the devotion to dialogical and symmetrical principles in
public relations is founded on a moral imperative which is open to hypocrisy and that
the rejection of this imperative is needed if future studies are to progress beyond the
usual debates over the ethical status of public relations.
With the purpose of assisting the main arguments of this paper four axes of
legitimacy have been roughly depicted. Their conceptual potential as a point of
departure for future studies concerning legitimacy in public relations remains yet to be
explored. The specific challenges that pertain to each axis are currently dealt with from
a wide range of competing theories. If public relations theory is to maintain a position
as an authority within its proper domain it cannot afford to lose terrain to these
competitors.

Notes
1. Categorizing the contemporary approaches to public relations in the dominant paradigm and
the critical paradigm may seem unfairly reductionistic. But, on the other hand, there is a
strong tendency in public relations literature to mistake aspirations for actual establishment
regarding paradigms. For example, Hallahan (1993) identifies no fewer than seven
alternative paradigms to the dominant paradigm, and a number of other paradigms have
been proposed since then. In light of this, it seems reasonable to argue that contemporary
public relations theory is defined by two major paradigms: one is dominant and the other in
opposition. The latter consisting of scholars that define themselves as critical, rhetorical,
 postmodern etc. For the sake of convenience, and to emphasize their role as opposition, the The double-
general label “critical paradigm” seems suitable.
edged sword
2. A similar question of professional stigmatization can be traced back to Plato’s attempts to
delegitimize the profession of rhetoricians in ancient Greece (see Gorgia, L’Etang, 1996). In the
past decade’s debates over political spin doctoring these attempts are even more evident. Esser
et al. (2001) notice that the term spin is never used by members of the profession, but rather as a
counterstrategy for journalists (and sometimes political opponents) that seek to discredit the 139
increased professionalization of political communication.

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Further reading
Plato (1994), Gorgias (trans. Waterfield, R.), Oxford University Press, Oxford.
van Ruler, B., Vercic, G., Bütschi, G. and Flodin, B. (2004), “A first look for parameters of public
relations in Europe”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 16, pp. 35-63.

Corresponding author
Henrik Merkelsen can be contacted at: hm.ikk@cbs.dk

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