A STUDY ON THE PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTITIONER ROLE IDENTITY OF COMMUNICATION SCHOLARS IN HONG KONG
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Authors: Lennon Tsang
Keywords: academic role identity, higher education, HEI, public relations, stakeholders, practitioner role identity, academic practice
Abstract: In this qualitative study, whether a primacy of the public relations (PR) practitioner role identity exists among communication scholars in Hong Kong was investigated. PR practitioner role identity was measured by examining whether communication scholars in Hong Kong practiced PR while performing their academic duties and what PR practice behaviours they had performed. This gives rise to my research question of “Does a primacy of PR practitioner role exist among communication scholars in Hong Kong?” To investigate the PR practitioner role, data on PR practice behaviours were obtained through narratives collected in a series of 10 in-depth interviews of subjects selected using a purposive sampling method to achieve distinct and comparable results and findings. The textual data of the behaviour narratives were coded and analysed using the newly developed communication scholars’ role identity (CSRI) framework. The CSRI model was developed by combining the role identity framework and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework. The CSRI framework was used to examine the role identity to determine the differences in the beliefs regarding norms, process elements and the possible behavioural outputs of communication scholars. By understanding their different beliefs, the main research question regarding whether a primacy of the PR practitioner role identity exists among communication scholars could be answered. The result of the study showed that no primacy of the PR practitioner role was found among communication scholars interviewed in Hong Kong, as Hong Kong communication scholars interviewed believed that research, rather than PR, was their top priority. The results of the in-depth interviews, i.e., the verbal descriptions of behaviours, were consistent with the results of another data set used to examine the actual behaviours of communication scholars in Hong Kong. The actual behaviours related to the PR practitioner role identity measured included the scholars’ news appearances in a 10-year period and the actual behaviours related to the academic role identity measured included the scholars’ number of academic publications in the same period. Regarding the results of the actual behaviours, no primacy of the PR practitioner role identity was found among communication scholars in Hong Kong as well. This reinforced the findings of the in-depth interviews.